Floor Statements

Mr. Chairman, I am going to do something I don't ordinarily do on this floor, which is implore my colleagues across the aisle to please, please, please, support this amendment. Let's take away for at least one day the ``R'' or the ``D'' from behind the President's name. Let's take away the ``R'' or the ``D'' from behind our names and look at this for what it is: a President doing something he says he cannot do--make law--using the excuse that this body cannot act so that he can. That is not how the system works, and it is wrong.

I am here today to tell you that if in the future a Republican President does the same thing, I will be the first to be here with you to stand against that, to fight back.

But today I implore you to please support the amendment even if you are voting against the bill in order to send the message that law is not made in the White House. Law is not made because Congress fails to act. Law is made in this room when we do act, and every single time any President violates that, he violates all of this institution.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Chairman, I think it is noteworthy that once again--once again--and this is the fourth budget cycle that I have been through, the fourth Democratic budget offered here, that never balances. It never balances. How do you ever, ever pay back money that you have already borrowed if you never have a surplus and never get to balance? I have said it before and I will say it again: if you borrow money from me and intend to pay it back, that is debt. If you borrow money from me and never intend to pay it back, that is theft. That is what the Democrats are offering here today, Mr. Chairman. They are encouraging us to borrow more and borrow more and borrow more and never lay out any plan whatsoever for paying that money back to the children and grandchildren from whom we are borrowing.

The only plan that will be offered later today that does that is the Republican budget. I strongly encourage a ``no'' vote on the Democratic plan, a ``no'' vote on continued generational theft, and a ``yes'' vote on the Republican plan.

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

It is good to be back this year to once again offer the President's budget

as an amendment to the Republican budget. That is right; it is the President's budget that I will be offering again this year.

You may recall, Mr. Chairman, that I did this two years ago in an effort to try and drive a debate over what I thought was a misguided document, a document that the President had offered us that I thought offered bad ideas for the future of this country. I came in and offered an amendment--as none of my Democratic colleagues saw fit to do so--and for various reasons failed to get a single vote on that particular amendment.

My colleagues at that time, Mr. Chairman, took the position that my amendment really was not the President's budget. In hindsight, there were things that we could have tightened up, and we did. We tightened up all the loose ends. There is no question now we specifically reference the President's budget in this amendment. This is the President's budget.

Last year, I tried to come and do it again. Last year, I came in with a blank piece of paper. Last year I came in with a blank piece of paper because the President had not offered his budget in a timely fashion, as required by law. Perhaps rightly so, I was ruled out of order, and we did not have a chance to have a vote on that particular amendment last year.

The President has solved that problem for us this year. Still a little late, but at least we have the President's budget now in time to debate it here on the floor during budget week, and I am looking forward to doing that. I am looking forward to doing that, Mr. Chairman, because this budget does a lot of things that I disagree with. It does a lot of things that folks on the other side may agree with. But I think it merits a debate. Any time the President of the United States takes the time and the energy to produce a budget, I think it at least merits 20 minutes of debate on the floor of the House of Representatives.

I look forward to doing that today, and I look forward to having my friends defend a budget that does things such as continuing the Affordable Care Act, adopting immigration reform, supporting common core, creating a new infrastructure bank, creating a $1 billion climate fund, increasing airport fees on passengers, making Pell grants a mandatory spending program, creating a preschool program for everybody, increasing duck stamp fees, extending emergency unemployment compensation, increasing costs for TRICARE on our veterans, and extending the Federal health benefit programs to same sex partners.

I think it is a valid discussion that we should have every year. I was very glad to learn, by the way, that I am not the first person to do this. I was talking to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Barton), who did this with President Reagan's budget back in the 1980s. I would like to see it become a regular feature in this House, and look forward to the debate as we go forward today.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Scalise).

I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Jordan).

Mr. Chair, we are finished with our speakers and reserve the balance and right to close.

Then I will yield myself the balance of the time.

Mr. Chair, my friend from Maryland made a couple of different points. He said that he wishes he could vote for the things in the President's budget. I will say to him again here, I'll say it to you, I will say to anyone listening the same thing I said to the Rules Committee, the same thing I have said the last 3 years: I keep waiting for one of my colleagues across the aisle to do exactly that.

You think I want to be here offering the President's budget? If my colleagues across the aisle would like the opportunity to vote on the President's budget and the items that are contained in it, they have the ability to do so by simply offering this particular amendment.

Failing that, they will have an opportunity to hear today because, if you look at our amendment, it specifically says that the budgetary assumptions underlying this current resolution are based on the data and the policies in the President's budget.

It goes on to say that the concurrent resolution adopts and incorporates by references all data, policy provisions, and information contained therein.

Everything that is in the President's budget is in this amendment. They have plenty of opportunity to vote on this. They can do it themselves. They can vote for what I have offered here today.

Lastly, I will address the point, and my good friend makes a point every single year that this is a political stunt. I want to tell a story as to why it is not this year. It is a real story. It happened to me. It happened to you. It happened to everybody here who represents folks back home.

I get a letter, Mr. Chairman, from the Social Security Administration, telling me that they were closing the field offices in my district.

By the way, they closed field offices in everybody's district. In the letter, they said they did that because we had cut their budget by $1 billion for 3 years in a row.

I am no longer on the Budget Committee, but as Mr. Van Hollen knows, I used to serve on that committee, and I don't remember us cutting the Social Security Administration by $1 billion each of the last 3 years.

So I wrote them a letter and said: you said you are closing the field offices in my district because we cut your budget. Would you please provide me with evidence of that?

What they wrote back is a letter that said: we got $1 billion less from Congress than the President asked for in his budget.

They got more than they did the year the year before and more than they did the year before that. The actual money they had to spend went up, but because they didn't get what the President asked for in his budget, they closed the offices in our districts that serve our constituents.

This is a very important document. Clearly, the Social Security Administration thinks it is an important document. It is at least important enough for us to vote on in the House of Representatives.

With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to extend a special thank- you to the hardworking men and women across the Nation, but especially in South Carolina, who dedicate themselves to keeping the lights on during this difficult winter. For so many of us, switching on the light switch is something that we take for granted. It is easy to forget all the hard work that goes into making that happen.

A couple of weeks ago, Winter Storm Pax hit South Carolina leaving a path of destruction in many of the smaller communities in my district without power, crippled by the ice and snow. It is something that was so dramatic that the executive director of the South Carolina Office of Regulatory Staff said that the storm was the most significant weather event in South Carolina since Hurricane Hugo. And I can assure you that, for us, that is saying a lot.

To give some quick numbers as to what happened, more than 3,000 people went to work in South Carolina. The folks from Duke Energy alone cleared more than 7,000 trees off of the power lines in South Carolina. It is these types of efforts that these folks put in every single winter to make sure that something that we take for granted actually happens when we flip on the lights.

In recognition of those efforts, the efforts that they undertake every single winter, I am introducing a bill today to declare March 31 as National Lineman Appreciation Day.

I hope we can count on my colleagues to send this very small thank- you. It is not much, but it is the least we can do to let these folks know that we don't always take them for granted.

Mr. Chairman, I rise today in support of H.R. 3193 which, amongst many other things, replaces the single Director with a five-member commission.

I would remind my friends across the aisle that this brings the bill into the original spirit of Dodd-Frank, which, when it left this House several years ago, had eventually a five-member commission. All we are trying to do is get back to that original intention.

Further, during the discussions in committee, we focused on the membership of that commission and how it would be a decent idea to have people who are on the commission who actually knew something about the industries that they were regulating.

For example, the CFPB regulates insured banks, non-depository financial institutions, credit unions, all of which are very unique. Wouldn't it be nice to actually have folks regulating those industries who knew something about them?

This is not rare in the world of regulation. The FDIC, which oversees State banks, has been required to have someone on its commission for years who actually has experience regulating State banks. It has not been a problem for the FDIC, and it would not be a problem for the

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 1944, the Private Property Rights Protection Act of 2013.

This legislation addresses the eminent domain practice of seizing private property for the ``public benefit'' of economic development, which was deemed constitutional by the United States Supreme Court in its decision in Kelo v. City of New London. This bill prohibits a state or local government from seizing private property for

economic development if that state or local government receives federal economic development funds, and prohibits the federal government from exercising eminent domain powers for economic development purposes.

While it has not received much attention or debate in the full House of Representatives, my colleagues on the Committee on Financial Services and I have become increasingly concerned about a new proposed use of eminent domain which would be incredibly destructive to our housing markets and to Main Street investors alike.

Dozens of communities across the country are considering a vulture fund-developed investment scheme by which the municipality's eminent domain power is used to acquire underwater--but otherwise performing-- mortgage loans held by private-label mortgage-backed securities and then refinance those loans through programs administered by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA).

Our housing finance system depends on private capital to take risk, make loans, purchase mortgage-backed securities, and help millions of Americans fulfill the dream of homeownership. What this eminent domain scheme considers would be incredibly destructive to the finance of homeownership and would do little more than help a few homeowners who can already afford their mortgage and line the pockets of the investors who developed this proposal. Who would invest in a mortgage knowing that their investment could be stolen just a few months or years later? Ironically, this new risk to the housing finance system would freeze the return of private capital to our markets at a time when many in Congress are looking for ways to increase the role of the private sector and decrease the federal government's footprint.

Using eminent domain in this manner will hurt Main Street investors the most. Those investors and pensioners may be invested in mortgages sitting in communities considering this plan--like Richmond, California--and not even know it. They are the ones who will suffer the most from this particular form of eminent domain.

Mr. Sensenbrenner's legislation shines a spotlight on the abusive uses of eminent domain, including this investment scheme, and I am proud to support the bill. I believe this legislation may have the effect of defeating such a scheme. In addition, I support Chairman Hensarling's efforts to directly target and defeat this use of eminent domain, and I look forward to future opportunities to ensure the protection of private property and the security of our housing finance system.

Mr. Speaker, it is with great pride and pleasure that I rise today to bring to my colleagues' attention the 225th anniversary of the founding of Georgetown University. As a proud alumnus of the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, I will always know that the University and these United States began together in 1789. The University's founding is tied to the first deed of property from which the current University took shape on January 23, 1789--acquired by

Bishop John Carroll, the first Catholic bishop in the United States and the University's founder.

From that date forward, Georgetown's growth and that of our nation have been intertwined. I am proud that the University's federal charter--the second such charter approved by Congress after that of the U. S. Military Academy--was proposed in legislation introduced by one of the University's first students, Congressman William Gaston of North Carolina. As a Carolinian myself, I have to say, from the beginning, Georgetown was off on the right footing. It is fitting that the University's main lecture hall bears the name Gaston Hall.

Our school colors have roots deep in our nation's history as well. During the Civil War more than 1,000 Georgetown alumni served in both the Union and Confederate armies. The blue and the gray, then, reflect the divided allegiances of both students and alumni during that war.

Today, the student body is comprised of students from every state and from 141 nations around the globe.

I am heartened that Georgetown has remained true to the Roman Catholic and Jesuit values on which it was founded. The University prides itself as a place of vigorous dialogue. It pushes students to pursue lives enriched by research and scholarship. I am happy to say that, since my election to Congress, I have had several opportunities to explore some of the issues we are working on in the House of Representatives with faculty who have deep and valuable knowledge on these topics.

I was lucky to study at Georgetown under professors such as Madeline Albright and Fr. James Reddington. They made me think and challenge my assumptions. They helped me grow and shaped my subsequent career. Certainly, Georgetown's commitment to encouraging students to explore public service is reflected in its Mission Statement which ends with an admonition to those who have studied there ``to be reflective lifelong learners, to be responsible and active participants in civic life and to live generously in service to others.'' It is not surprising then that, since William Gaston entered Congress in 1814, over 150 Georgetown alumni and faculty members have served in the U. S. Congress. Others have served as President, governors, cabinet secretaries, judges and as senior diplomats around the globe. Likewise, the University is equally proud of alumni who have gone on to be leaders in their communities in fields such as business, arts, health care or the law.

It is an honor to recognize Georgetown on this occasion of its 225th ``birthday,'' but, more importantly, to wish my alma mater great progress in the centuries ahead.

Mr. Speaker, I got a letter from someone in my district. It says:

You have probably heard about health care reform and

wondered what it means to you. This letter is to let you know

that your MyChoice health insurance plan from BlueChoice

HealthPlan is non-grandfathered. This means you purchased it

or made significant changes to it after March 23, 2010--the

day the Affordable Care Act became law. As a result, the law

requires that your insurance plan expire.

This is not the saddest part of this letter, the fact that this woman was made a promise that no one is keeping to her. The saddest part of this letter is she asked me not to use her name here today.

Someone does need to be held accountable for making promises to citizens that are not kept. But beyond that, someone needs to be held accountable for allowing an environment to grow up where citizens of this country are afraid to have their name spoken on the floor of this House for fear of retribution from their government.

We will deal with health care. We will do the very best that we can. But beyond that, we need to figure out a way to create an environment where people are free to speak their minds on issues such as this.

Mr. Speaker, I am going to do something I don't ordinarily do. I am going to read something:

I just want to reassure people, passing this bill--

particularly as amended--will not in any way, shape, or form

reduce sensible regulation of derivatives. It will not

increase any exposure to the financial system from

derivatives. It was an unnecessary and, I think, somewhat

unwise amendment. The bill before us, particularly as

amended, will restore this to what I think is the appropriate

balance.

Not my words. Not the words of the gentleman from Texas. Not even the

words of Mr. Bernanke, Mr. Volcker, or one of my colleagues' favorite economists, Mark Zandi. Those are the words of the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank), the guy whose name is on the bill, who supported this exact same initiative in the last Congress.

There is plenty for us to disagree about, Mr. Speaker. Why we continue to fight about things that pass out of committee 53-6, that will pass here today on the floor by an overwhelming margin, I have no idea. But there should be some things that we could come together and agree on. And this, H.R. 992, is certainly one of them, and I encourage full support of the bill.

Mr. Speaker, I have been sitting here for the past 45- 50 minutes watching the debate. It strikes me that with all of the financial terms and with some of the heated rhetoric--and it has been heated--I never thought I would see the day where enlightened self- interest was called a cancer in this Nation. I wonder what Alexis de Tocqueville would think about that. But in any event, with all of that, Mr. Speaker, it strikes me that we have lost sight of what we are talking about. We are talking about a bill, what the bill specifically does, and why.

Let's talk first about why we are here. We have a situation where Dodd-Frank has given authority to the SEC to make some rules. The Department of Labor also thinks it has the authority to make rules in the same area.

I hope we can all agree that there is a potential for conflict there. We all know what it is. We have seen it a hundred times before. We don't want the SEC to come out and say that you can't do X and have the Department of Labor come out the next week and say, but you have to do

Mr. Speaker, while we disagree from time to time, in fact, we agree more often than we probably disagree in this House. I think everybody can agree that one of the things we'd like to try and preserve is the concept of a reasoned debate. We want to have reasoned debate about the issues.

It is impossible to do that if folks start exaggerating and fearmongering, and that is exactly what is happening right now on the discussion of the debt ceiling. We hear that if we don't raise the debt ceiling, the world is going to end.

We've been trying to convince people for the last several weeks that the debt ceiling and the default are not linked in any fashion. Thankfully, just 15 minutes ago, somebody else came and agreed with me on this. It's Moody's, who says:

We believe the government would continue to pay interest

and principal on its debt even in the event that the debt

limit is not raised, leaving its creditworthiness intact. The

debt limit restricts government expenditures to the amount of

its incoming revenues; it does not prohibit the government

from servicing its debt.

It goes on to say these two things are not linked. Let's have a reasonable discussion about the debt ceiling and the import of raising it and the import of running the government.

But let's stop trying to scare people and the markets into thinking that if we don't raise the debt ceiling that the Nation will default on its debt.

Madam Chair, here is the question:

It's a question of balancing privacy versus security. It's a question beyond that. It's a question of who will do the balancing.

Right now, the balancing is being done by people we do not know, by people we do not elect and, in large part right now, by somebody who has admitted lying to this body at a hearing. That's wrong.

We should be doing the balancing. We were elected to do that. We need to pass this amendment so that we can do the balancing, not the folks who are not elected and whom we do not know.

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2 minutes.

This amendment is very similar, almost identical, to a similar amendment that Mr. Van Hollen and I offered during the National Defense Authorization Act several weeks ago. We've added a couple of cosponsors. We've added Mr. Coffman, a Republican, and also Mr. Murphy, a Democrat. In addition to that, we've made some important changes to the amendment.

What does the amendment do first of all? The amendment simply seeks to take the OCO budget back down to what the Pentagon asked for. The Pentagon asked for roughly $81 billion. The committee saw fit to give them $86 billion, and we think maybe letting the Pentagon decide how much the Pentagon needs for OCO is probably a good basis for discussion, and it is the basis for this discussion.

There is one exception to that, Mr. Chairman, and this is where the important difference from the last amendment several months ago comes in, which is there is some concern. Mr. Van Hollen and I believed it was ill founded, but there was some concern as to whether or not the previous amendment prejudiced in some fashion the National Guard. While we disagreed with the National Guard's position, we respect it. So for that specific reason, there is explicit language in this amendment that excludes the National Guard from this reduction. Instead of going all the way back down to where the Pentagon asked for, we're giving the Pentagon what they asked for, plus the $1.5 billion for the National Guard.

For folks who had some difficulty with our amendment a couple of months ago because they were concerned about the impact on the National Guard, even though we thought that was, again, ill founded, we have sought to protect that in this particular amendment.

To sum up, Mr. Chairman, what we're asking for is simply what the Pentagon asked for in the first place, with extra protections for the National Guard.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, in closing, I thank my friend for the opportunity here today. I would simply agree with him that it is difficult to plan out 18 months in advance as to what is going to be happening in Afghanistan. However, I would think that the folks best suited to be able to do that planning would be the folks who are actually running the overseas operations. It would be the Pentagon and the Armed Forces, who are the folks who asked for the $81 billion that we are giving them.

To Mr. Van Hollen's point, the Secretary was here saying this is exactly what he needs. I recognize the fact that there could be contingencies, but you have to think that number is already built into the request. More importantly, the additional money, the slush fund, the money over and above the $80.7 billion that the Defense Department has asked for, is not saved for some rainy day, it's not saved for some

contingency that we haven't anticipated that might come up in the next 18 months--it's spent. It's spent.

So we simply ask for support for this amendment and try to get us back in line with spending the amount of money that the Pentagon asked us to spend, respecting the integrity of the base budget, the 302(b)s, but also not using up money in a wasteful fashion in the OCO account.

I yield back the balance of my time.

I come before you today to talk a little bit about energy. Later on today, we'll be talking more about the Offshore Energy and Jobs Act, part of the Republican Party's all-of-the-above energy program. It's a good opportunity for us to talk about various different things in energy.

I was home, Mr. Speaker, a couple of weeks ago going through one of my manufacturing facilities in my district, and I asked some of the folks who were working there what we could do here to help create more American manufacturing jobs. And I was struck by the answer. The answer was very clear. They said, Keep our energy costs down.

They also talked about regulation. They also talked about health care. They talked about a lot of the things we hear all over the place. But the first thing that they mentioned to me, which was to keep energy costs down, was very interesting.

I said, Why is it so important? They make rolled rings, they do heavy manufacturing. It's a metal foundry. And they said that not only does lower energy keep their costs of materials down and make them more competitive in the world, but lower energy also keeps their cost of operations down, which makes them more competitive in the rest of the world, and, obviously, kept the cost to their employees down of simply getting back and forth to work.

Low energy costs were the best thing we could do for this heavy manufacturer back in South Carolina. I think that's very instructive to us, Mr. Speaker, when it comes to answering the question of what we're doing for jobs. We're here today to talk about not just energy but about jobs.

One of the big pieces to our all-of-the-above proposal is the Keystone pipeline. Many people have heard about it. I want to talk for a few minutes about it today.

One of the biggest objections the President made to it originally when it came out was environmental; and many people saw this map from Alberta, Canada, down to the Gulf of Mexico, in which the administration very prominently featured that this went through a large aquifer with a name that I cannot pronounce, in all seriousness. The administration wanted to draw attention to the fact that, Oh, my goodness, this pipeline went through this aquifer and it was going to poison the drinking water in all these Midwestern States and wasn't that a terrible thing. This is the map the administration wanted all of us to see.

This is the map of the real world. This is the map that shows where these pipelines already function and function extraordinarily well. There are pipelines all over the central part of this country, all over this aquifer already, without any harm to any person. Aquifers usually are several hundred feet deep and pipelines are 10 or 20 feet deep. We have the ability, we have the know-how, to do this safely and soundly. We've been doing it for over a century in this country. There are no environmental risks to going in this particular location through this particular aquifer. We know how to do it, and we know how to do it well.

Now we hear a new objection, Mr. Speaker. We hear an objection that the administration doesn't want to backslide. I heard an interview today where

a Democrat activist used that word six or eight times in about 2 minutes--didn't want to backslide on carbon, that we couldn't do this pipeline because it would encourage additional use of gasoline. It would make gas cheaper and that would be bad because we would use more of it. That's the administration's current position.

It's absolutely absurd. If you go to Canada, if you go to where the oil sands are, to where this raw material is, who will you see? You'll see the Chinese. If we don't use this oil, if we do not refine this oil, if we do not take advantage of this particular natural resource that is right across our border, the Chinese will; and it will be used in a fashion that would offend the sensibilities of most of the people who care about the environment.

I've been to China. I remember landing at the runway and not being able to see the end of the runway out of the window because the pollution was so bad. That is how this material is going to be used if we allow it to go overseas.

We have the ability now to keep this material in this country. We have the ability now to help keep our energy prices down. We have the ability now to help keep Americans at work and put additional Americans back to work. And to the extent we keep it out of the hands of the Chinese where there are no rules on how they use this material, we actually have a chance to help the environment.

The Keystone pipeline keeps energy prices down, puts American people back to work, and protects our environment. It is absolutely absurd that it hasn't been approved already, Mr. Speaker, and it needs to be approved now.