Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H. Res. 432, a very important resolution that condemns the attacks on peaceful protesters and supports an immediate, peaceful transition to a civilian-led democratic government in Sudan.

I am so incredibly inspired by the people of Sudan who organized peacefully and adhered consistently to a nonviolent strategy of protest in order to achieve a democratic future for their country.

I especially want to call attention to the Sudanese women, who played an outsized role in holding strong in the face of violence, danger, and even death. In the words of Andrew Gilmour, the Assistant Secretary- General for human rights at OHCHR:

What the world has seen in the past month and still now will go down in history as the greatest mass nonviolent movement of our generation.

Because of this nonviolent people's movement that refused to accept no for an answer, even in the face of brutal and barbaric violence from government-linked militias, the people of Sudan have achieved a real opportunity for peace. Just last week, civilian leaders and the Transitional Military Council reached an agreement where they will share power to pursue a democratic future.

In order for that peaceful transition to work, there must also be justice for those who were killed in the June 3 massacre through an independent investigation with real consequences for the perpetrators, along with true civilian oversight of the security forces.

I am heartbroken for every life that was lost, but I am also deeply hopeful because we have seen the shining light of courage, resilience, and commitment to nonviolent resistance movements and to the possibilities they bring for lasting peace. The United States must stand with the people of Sudan and do everything in our power to help achieve that peace and stability.

And, finally, Mr. Speaker, I just want to recognize a very important person in my home State of Washington, Mubarak Elamin, who has been with me on this issue of Sudan, his birth country, in making sure that we have all the information we need.

Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Madam Chair, let me start by thanking the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Adam Smith, my colleague, for his hard work and leadership on this bill.

My amendment requires a series of independent studies to evaluate potential cost savings with respect to our country's nuclear security enterprise and force structure.

This amendment is a measured approach to ensuring that our military spending meets our national security needs while making the best use of every taxpayer dollar. It would require the Government Accountability Office

to examine options for reducing service contracts, reducing the nuclear security enterprise, rebalancing force structure, and reducing or realigning our overseas presence.

It would also examine realistic, cost-effective ways to use pre-award audits to negotiate better prices for weapons systems and services.

Additionally, it would require an updated and comprehensive series of studies from Federally-funded research and development centers as well as a nonpartisan, nongovernmental think tank. These would supplement the GAO studies and look at cost savings resulting from alternatives to current force structures and our nuclear posture.

Now, I know the other side is going to say that we have done these studies; there is plenty of information out there. But the reality is we operate in a different world, and we need an updated, comprehensive study that deals with our current situation in the world.

Madam Chair, let me be clear that while I do have strong reservations about the top-line spending level in this bill, my amendment would not cut from the top line at all. Instead, it looks at ways that we can make better policy choices; we can better allocate a limited set of resources down the line.

So, in the long term, I believe our defense spending levels are unsustainable, inefficient, and unnecessary. But we have to figure out how to cut that logically, comprehensively, with our national security in the center of that analysis.

So my amendment is a thoughtful solution to give us some of the data we need. I urge my colleagues to support the amendment.

Madam Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Smith), the distinguished chairman of the Armed Services Committee.

Madam Chair, I just want to say that this amendment is a smart, thoughtful way to think about how we reduce military spending over the long term without sacrificing national security.

And, Madam Chair, I don't understand when patriotism got linked to how much money we give to defense contractors. That is not my idea of patriotism.

Patriotism, to me, and protecting the troops means that we make sure that we do not send them into harm's way unless absolutely necessary, which means that we look at the threats of the future, we assess our response to that, and we take care of our troops. This bill does that in many, many, many, many ways.

I have squabbles, as you know, with the top-line spending number because I don't believe that being patriotic means we just continue to raise the amount of money that we give. I think we need to be thoughtful and comprehensive about what our national security looks like internationally.

And, Madam Chair, I also think that national security should mean how we treat people here in this country. If we send troops overseas and yet we cut their healthcare, we take away preexisting conditions for their family members, we refuse to provide public education, that is not helping our troops while they are overseas to worry about their families.

So national security is a big picture conversation. It is not about how much money we give to defense contractors.

This amendment is thoughtful. It says what we know about the future.

If a private corporation lost track of hundreds of millions of dollars, its shareholders would find that completely unacceptable. The reality is that we need to make sure we are thoughtful, and we should pass this amendment.

Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I thank the chairman for his leadership on this package.

My amendment in this package would help curb the corrupt influence of foreign money in our politics.

The Emoluments Clause of the Constitution already requires retired military officers who want to work for a foreign government to first receive permission from their service in the State Department and to disclose the nature of their work. My amendment would make the approved activities available to Congress and to the public.

We still have a long way to go to constrain foreign influence peddling and corruption in Washington. We saw this with General Flynn, who concealed his work lobbying for the Turkish Government in a dispute with the United States in the 2016 Presidential election.

We trust our retired military officials to speak in the best interest of the United States, and when they are being paid to further another country's agenda, we deserve to know.

Mr. Chair, I urge my colleagues to support this amendment package.

Mr. Speaker, let me first thank our wonderful Immigration and Citizenship Subcommittee chair for her tremendous work over the years on all issues related to immigration and for her leadership on this particular issue.

I am very proud to rise in strong support of H.R. 1044, the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act, to provide relief to thousands of families that have been waiting for decades in employment visa backlogs. Among Indian nationals, the wait is upwards of 70 years.

I also want to thank the ranking member of the Immigration and Citizenship Subcommittee for his support, as well.

This is a truly bipartisan bill because these long backlogs are a result of our broken, outdated immigration system, and they are affecting States across the country. Despite the high demand for employment-based green cards, the system hasn't been updated in nearly 30 years.

This bill solves one piece, by making sure that our colleagues and our neighbors who have been working in our tech sector and our hospitals, innovating in our communities can stay with a roadmap to citizenship.

But, Mr. Speaker, our work is not done. We cannot tolerate the fact that we have no orderly functioning process for people to come to America, whether it be for family unity, to bring their talents to our economy, to serve the needs of our economy, or to seek safety.

This bill, and the fact that we have 300 cosponsors on it, reminds me of another time when there were 68 bipartisan votes in the United States Senate in 2013 for a comprehensive immigration reform bill, and I deeply hope that, as we pass this bill off the floor with bipartisan support, that we can get back to the place where we can once again agree on a bipartisan basis that comprehensive immigration reform benefits our country, benefits our future, and is absolutely necessary.

So I thank so much, again, Chairwoman Lofgren for her fierce determination and her years of service, and I look forward to passing this bill off the floor of the House.

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

Mr. Chairman, let me first thank our Appropriations Committee chair, Mr. Price, as well as the members of the Rules Committee for making this amendment in order.

This is a budget-neutral amendment that would increase the funds dedicated to Federal homeless assistance grants by $1 million. These grants fund programs that have been shown to play key roles in addressing homelessness. In my hometown, for example, these funds support providers like Catholic Housing Services, which supports people who are formerly homeless, and like Plymouth Housing, which offers housing using the highly effective evidence-based permanent supportive housing model.

In my district, Mr. Chairman, we have 11,000 homeless folks, people who are experiencing homelessness, and they need help. We need more of these programs across the country.

Across the country, neighbors are experiencing homelessness and housing instability, and that instability can take many forms. It can be the veteran sleeping under an overpass, the child whose family is staying with friends and relatives, the low-wage worker who just can't even earn enough to leave the shelter, or the former foster youth who bounces in and out of cheap motels.

Some of these forms of homelessness are highly visible, others, like the housing instability experienced by families and by people living in rural areas, are often much harder to see, but every form of homelessness is deeply harmful.

That housing instability harms children's health. Kids and families facing housing instability had an almost 20 percent increased risk of hospitalization. Being homeless exacerbates physical and mental health issues and causes illness where, before, people had been healthy. And women who are unstably housed face high rates of rape and sexual and physical violence.

This suffering is cruel and unnecessary, and it is preventable. We all lose a piece of our humanity when we leave our unhoused neighborhoods behind. I hope we can do better with this amendment.

Mr. Chair, I yield to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Price), our distinguished subcommittee chairman.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Madam Chair, I thank Chairman Visclosky for his leadership on the Defense appropriations bill, as well as Mr. McGovern, our Rules Committee chair, for making this amendment in order.

My amendment deals with one particular piece of the administration's escalation of our nuclear warfighting capability, and that is the long- range standoff weapon, or LRSO. This new nuclear-armed cruise missile does not add to our country's already strong strategic deterrent. Instead, it performs a redundant purpose that can already be accomplished with the standoff capability of other weapons systems.

The CBO estimates that, over 10 years, canceling the production of this weapon would save us about $13 billion. That is $13 billion that could go into education or infrastructure or healthcare or housing or even investments in foreign assistance and diplomacy that would actually keep us safer.

I am deeply concerned, Madam Chair, that continuing to pour more and more money into building up our nuclear arsenal puts us down a dangerous course. Just this past weekend, we found ourselves in yet another escalation of tensions with Iran, with the Secretary of State saying that the administration is ``considering a full range of options,'' including military options in response to the attack on two tankers in the Gulf of Oman. And just last night, President Trump announced that he is sending another 1,000 American troops to the Middle East.

Meanwhile, let me remind my colleagues that this administration has recklessly torn up former President Reagan's Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces, or INF, Treaty with Russia, pulled out of President Obama's historic nonproliferation accord with Iran, and escalated inflammatory tensions and rhetoric with some of the world's most powerful nuclear- armed states.

The President's agenda outlined in his 2018 nuclear posture review would also resurrect former nuclear capabilities that bipartisan administrations have wisely eliminated. According to many expert observers, some of the upgrades made to our nuclear program in the past few years could be interpreted as plans for a ``first strike.''

Let me be clear, the Trump administration's plan to develop the LRSO cruise missile is not only wasteful, but potentially dangerous. It will make our country, in my opinion, less safe. The weapon is expected to be significantly more capable than the cruising system it is replacing. It will be likely harder to detect, have a longer range, fly faster, and be more accurate. The weapon will also be deployed on advancing penetrating bombers, which are less detectable and designed to infiltrate enemy air defenses.

In contrast, the system that the LRSO is replacing is only carried by the B-52, which flies relatively slowly and is easily spotted by radar. As a result, the new cruise missile and bomber could allow attacks on an array of targets without being detected first, and that could lead to devastating miscalculation and, potentially, to accidental nuclear war.

Madam Chair, don't just take may word for it. Let me tell you that former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis stated that he is not sold on the LRSO. Why are we appropriating money to something that the former Secretary of Defense for the Republican administration is not sold on?

In a Washington Post op-ed in 2015, William Perry, Secretary of Defense from 1994 to 1997, and Andy Weber, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Defense

Programs from 2009 to 2014, wrote about the LRSO: ``Some have argued that a new nuclear-capable air-launched cruise missile is necessary to allow future Presidents the `flexibility' to engage Russia or China in limited nuclear war. That is Cold War thinking, and it is dangerous. Such `tactical' use of nuclear weapons would be a grave mistake.''

Our nuclear weapons arsenal is about deterrent capabilities, not warfighting. It is troubling, then, that proponents of the LRSO, including the Defense Department, have said that the missile is needed for capabilities ``beyond deterrence.''

The Pentagon argues that the LRSO could be used to respond ``proportionately to a limited nuclear attack.'' I would argue that this is dangerous Cold War thinking and that there is no such thing as a limited nuclear war.

My amendment is specifically focused on halting development of the LRSO, which wouldn't be deployed until the early 2030s, but we also have to look at this weapon and the message that it is sending as part of this administration's dangerous escalation of our nuclear posture. This President has joked about his nuclear button being ``bigger and more powerful'' than Kim Jong-un's. This is terrifying, unacceptable, and it is our duty to exert congressional oversight on this issue.

By canceling this weapon, we can send a signal that there is no such thing as limited nuclear annihilation, and instead of promoting weapons that enable nuclear warfighting, we can affirm that a nuclear war can never be won.

Madam Chair, I urge my colleagues to support this, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Madam Speaker, I am so very proud to rise in strong support of H.R. 6, the American Dream and Promise Act.

At the heart and the core of this bill are 2.5 million people who are American in every single way but paper. Dreamers, and those with temporary protective status and DED, are integral parts of our communities and families; a community of strivers who have given and will continue to contribute to America in the finest of our traditions as a Nation.

Over 400,000 U.S. citizens live in a household with TPS holders. They own homes in our communities and fill critical workforce gaps central to our economic and community development, including in construction, food service and landscaping.

And Dreamers, too, have long-called the United States their home. One of those Dreamers is Esther, who interned in my office last year.

Esther came to the United States on a visa when she was 3 years old from South Korea. Her parents sought to obtain more permanent legal status. They gave an immigration lawyer most of their money, and he ran away with all of it. Esther's parents' visas expired.

They pushed their kids around in a shopping cart because a stroller was too expensive. But they started over and they built their lives here, raising a smart, passionate daughter who went to Harvard.

The DACA status that Esther obtained in 2013 helped her to pursue her own American dream. And this bill would give her, and so many millions more, true freedom.

At the core of this bill, Madam Speaker, is the dignity and respect that we accord to human beings, the way in which we see people and exercise our own compassion.

We have a rare opportunity today to provide permanent protections for Dreamers and TPS and DED holders, not just for them, but also for the approximately 1 million U.S.-born children whose parents would get permanent protection.

This is a first step, not a last. We must stop criminalizing immigrants at every turn, even as we willingly accept their labor and contributions.

We cannot allow xenophobia and racism to permeate our country from its top ranks. We must continue the work to pass germane and just, comprehensive immigration reform that provides a roadmap to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants, strengthens family-based immigration, and protects workers' rights on the job.

But today, Madam Speaker, we have a chance to right real wrongs for these young people and TPS and DED holders. And I thank Chairman Nadler, the incredible Immigration and Citizenship Subcommittee Chairwoman, Zoe Lofgren, and my colleagues, Representatives Roybal- Allard, Velazquez, and Clarke for their hard work to bring this forward.

I also thank our staffers--including mine--Jennifer Chan in my office, but most of all, Madam Speaker, I thank the Dreamers, TPS and DED holders, families, friends, and advocates, many of whom are here in this Chamber.

Madam Speaker, I thank the Dreamers, TPS and DED holders, the families, friends and advocates, many of whom are right here in this Chamber with us.

Thank you for your courage in speaking out.

Thank you for demanding a different and more just future for our country.

Thank you for knowing that we always make the road by walking and for never giving up.

Madam Speaker, we have a chance to affirm the hope and promise of America. I urge a ``yes'' vote on this bill.

Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

Madam Speaker, I rise in strong support of my colleague Representative Schrier's Stronger Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, which increases funding for under-resourced child protection agencies.

I am particularly proud that we could reach bipartisan agreement on a top priority of mine in this bill, which is ensuring that State plans of safe care for infants exposed to substances in utero do not unfairly target pregnant women who need to remain on medication in order to stay healthy.

Prior to 2016, States only developed plans of safe care for infants exposed to illegal substances in utero. It became clear during the opioid crisis that we needed to look at the abuse of legal drugs during pregnancy.

In 2016, Congress updated the law to ensure that all infants and families impacted by substance abuse could get the care they need. Unfortunately, as an unintended consequence, some States are now referring all infants exposed to substances in utero to child protective services and opening CPS investigations even if the mom was using the substance in a treatment plan that was prescribed by a doctor.

In some States, new mothers using antidepressants during pregnancy are being referred automatically to CPS for investigation. This is not only unjust but also a waste of limited resources.

Untreated depression during pregnancy is linked to premature birth, low birth weight, and developmental problems, not to mention increased risk of postpartum depression and poor health for pregnant mothers.

There is already incredible stigma that prevents people from seeking treatment for mental illness, with communities of color facing greater barriers to that treatment.

What is more, mothers who made a safe choice to transition to medication-assisted treatment for opioid withdrawal shouldn't automatically be investigated by CPS.

I am so grateful to Representative Guthrie on the other side of the aisle, the chair and ranking member, and experts in pediatric medicine for finding a solution. This bill clarifies that CPS will only undertake an investigation when the findings of a family assessment warrant it, not when moms are simply following their doctors' advice to stay healthy.

Stronger CAPTA will prevent unnecessary trauma to families.

Madam Speaker, I thank Representative Schakowsky for her incredible leadership in the Congressional Progressive Caucus on so many issues, including bringing truth to the Mueller investigation and making sure people understand exactly what is going on.

Madam Speaker, for the rest of the Special Order hour, which is the Congressional Progressive Caucus' Special Order hour that we do each week, we are focusing on the 1-year anniversary of the family separation crisis. Any of our Members here who would like to speak are welcome to do so.

Let me start by saying, 1 year ago, I became the first Member of Congress to go into a Federal prison where hundreds of men and women, mothers and fathers, had been separated from their children and were being held in the prison system, in the Federal prison just south of my district.

I cannot, even today, 365 days later, forget the stories that these mothers and fathers told me. They told me about how immigration agents said to them, ``Your families don't exist anymore,'' and that they would never see their children again.

At the time that I saw them, it was already 3 to 4 weeks after they had been separated, and the majority of those parents had no idea where their children were.

In fact, that morning, some of them had been handed slips that supposedly

had the names of their children written on those slips of paper. One woman came over to me crying and she said: These are not my children.

That slip that supposedly had the names of her children did not match her actual children.

Can you imagine? I just think, as a mother, and for all the mothers and fathers out there, as a parent, can you imagine being separated from your child, in some cases children as young as 6 months, later we found out 3 months old, babies, who were torn off the breasts of their mothers?

These moms described immigration agents tearing them from their children without the opportunity to say good-bye. Some of them told me that when they went to go to the bathroom, they were told their children would still be there. When they came back, their children were gone. But they could hear them in the very next room crying for them, screaming for their parents, and these mothers were not able to go.

They told me how immigration agents put them in line with their children, and they would send the parents in one direction and the children in another direction.

One of the mothers told me how she left Guatemala with her 8- and 12- year-old children. Her husband is in prison. He was put in prison for raping a young child around the same age as her daughter. He was just about to come out of prison, and she was afraid that he would come out of prison and then go after their child, rape her daughter.

Another woman from El Salvador told me how she got a protection order against her ex-husband, who is a police officer, but the protection order was meaningless. He continued to antagonize her family, so she left.

Many of these mothers told me how they had left one or two of their children behind because they wanted to try to save one. It was too difficult to bring small children on the long journey that they were taking--the incredible sacrifice as a parent of trying to save one child.

One mother told me that she had three children. The first was shot and killed by gang members. The second was shot and paralyzed by gang members. She left the paralyzed child at home because she knew that he would not be able to make the journey. She took the final child. She tried to bring that child to safety.

After everything these mothers experienced--the trauma in their home countries, the cruel separation from their children--the treatment that they experienced in immigration custody was just outrageous.

Immigration agents told them that they were ``filthy.'' They used that word. Immigration agents laughed at these mothers when they cried about losing their children. And these mothers told me how they were detained in cells that were so cold that they called them ``the ice box'' because it was so cold.

Many of these mothers described being put there after crossing the Rio Grande River; and they were still wet, and they were put into these freezer boxes, these ice boxes, without blankets, without sleeping mats. Some mothers described how they went without water for 5 days.

After public outcry and pressure from elected officials, the government set up a number for parents to call to get information on their children, but some of the parents that I spoke to in Texas said that the number didn't work or that ICE wouldn't allow them to speak to their children.

One mother mentioned that she repeatedly tried to call her child to try to locate her child, but the number would not go through.

One mother told me that, when she requested to talk to her child, the ICE agents would get mad; and agents mentioned that, in some instances, families would have to pay for these phone calls.

And this isn't just anecdotal. The DHS inspector general's September 2018 report found mixed results among parents attempting to call their children and that important information about how to contact separated children was not always available.

Just this week, 2 days ago, Members of Congress had hoped to do the Special Order hour on the day of the anniversary. We had to do it today because this is our scheduled time. But the group Families Belong Together, a coalition of groups working on this issue, did an installation on our Capitol lawn with the shoes of tiny children all throughout and then an incredible 3-D statue of a mother reaching out to her child, and the child was in a cage.

I cannot imagine that this is the country that we call the greatest country in the world. I cannot imagine that my country that I am proud of, that I serve here as a Member of Congress for would do this to children.

And this administration has consistently demonized and vilified immigrants, but this policy of cruel family separation is hard to even describe, hard to imagine that it is happening in our borders.

I was privileged to co-chair, with Congresswoman Lucille Roybal- Allard, the Women's Working Group on Immigration Reform, and we led a trip to the border. I see my good friend Representative Jan Schakowsky, who was on that trip, and I just want to ask the gentlewoman, Representative Schakowsky, who has been so eloquent on this issue, I want to see if she wants to say a few words.

And then I know my friend Barbara Lee is here, as well, about this crisis and about our commitment, as Democrats, to refuse to allow this to continue.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky).

Madam Speaker, I thank Representative Schakowsky for her comments.

My colleague, the gentlewoman from California, Barbara Lee, has been such a champion for families, for children,

for people of color, for low-income families across this country and knows the history of this country. This is not the first time that we have separated children from their parents.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee) to say a few words on this, as well.

Madam Speaker, I thank Congresswoman Lee for her work, for her leadership. I was thinking about what she said about children and the impact on them, even within 24 hours.

We had the then-Director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, Scott Lloyd, who was in to testify before us in the Judiciary Committee.

We also had other career child welfare experts that were there on the panel, including one who testified to us on the committee that he warned the director and those above him about the increasing family separations and the incredibly significant, and potentially lifelong risks to those children; not only the ones that weren't reunited-- because at that point there was still, as there are today, over 300 families today that still aren't reunited--but not only to the ones that weren't reunited, but he said even the ones who were reunited with their families, but they spent 3 months or even a week, or even 3 weeks--most of them spent months separated from their parents--that lifelong--and he used that--lifelong damage to those children would be intense.

I asked Scott Lloyd as the then-director of the Refugee Resettlement Program: Did you do anything? Did you take that information that you got, that this was going to be lifelong, irreversible--he used the word irreversible, the witness who testified about the damage to children-- did you do anything with that information about the lifelong, irreversible damage to thousands of children that you, this administration, has caused?

And he said: No, didn't share it with anybody. Didn't do anything about it.

On the same day that the Trump administration said that it would reunite thousands of children--because this is not a Democrat or a Republican issue--people across this country were outraged by what they saw.

I remember First Lady Laura Bush wrote an amazing op-ed talking about this is not us, this is not America. Independents, Republicans, and Democrats knew that the Trump zero-humanity policy was wrong, it was cruel, and it was un-American.

The same day that the Trump administration said: Okay, we hear the outrage. We will reunite thousands of children that it had separated through a central database, a government official admitted in an email that the Trump administration only had enough information at that point to reconnect 60 parents with their kids; 60 parents out of nearly 3,000 children that we know of.

Because later, we also found out that there were more children that we didn't know about in a ``pilot project'' that was even before the scrutiny came.

Let me remind people that at the time that this was happening, DHS Secretary, then-DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and other Trump officials claimed repeatedly--not just once, not just twice--but repeatedly in testimony, in hearings, that they were keeping track of separations, and that claim had simply no basis in reality.

The truth is that DHS has better systems in place to track the property that people who were in custody left, but not the children. Trump's Department of Homeland Security did not see fit to track children, including infants and toddlers.

A Federal judge recently ordered the Trump administration to locate the children that were still remaining, potentially numbering in the thousands, over the next 6 months as opposed to the 2 years that the Trump administration requested. Just imagine, the Trump administration said give us 2 years to try to reunite these kids with their parents.

But the truth is, Congresswoman Lee and everybody that is watching, we may never know the number of children who were separated by the Trump administration. There are children who may never ever be reunited with their parents.

We are, of course, trying to get to the bottom of this. We are trying to get accountability on this, but we know that DHS is still separating families. We see the relentless efforts of this administration to cut people off from seeking asylum, which is, by the way, a lawful act, not only by our own domestic laws. We are signatory to human rights treaties, international treaties, which require us to allow people to seek asylum.

Last week I reintroduced my Dignity for Detained Immigrants Act with my colleagues, Congressman Adam Smith, and Senator Booker introduced it in the Senate. Last cycle, this bill had over half of the Democratic Caucus. I think it was like 167 cosponsors. We intend to get more of our Democratic Caucus. My office spent 8 months working on this bill in the last Congress with stakeholders from across the country.

I am proud to say that as we reintroduce it, we have also made sure-- and, frankly, it would have addressed the humanitarian crisis that we saw through family separation. Last year already made it extremely difficult to detain children and families. This year, what we did is, we added explicit language that bars Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials from detaining children under 18 years.

We actually had the provision of not allowing for pregnant women to be shackled. Why do we need provisions saying pregnant women can't be shackled?

What this bill is about is denying this administration and any administration in the future--Democratic or Republican--from using detention to facilitate the cruel separation of families.

I am hoping--I know the gentlewoman is either on the bill or is going to be on the bill--but I am hoping that every single one of my colleagues joins me in transforming a cruel, abusive system; a detention system that takes these children and puts them--we should call them jails because that is what they are. They are not detention facilities. Most of the actual facilities, as the gentlewoman saw, are just like jails.

And, in fact, they are using more and more jails. But that system is now detaining 52,000 people a day, which is why we need to make sure that we address this in appropriations. We need to make sure that we address this through legislation.

So I am still astounded by the profound cruelty of this administration and this policy of family separation, of zero humanity that was imposed on children and families seeking asylum.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from California.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for pointing that out. The head of the American Academy of Pediatrics has come. We have had a number of forums where people have been able to ask questions. Our Members have been able to ask questions, and I am very grateful to many of the Members who have taken it upon themselves to go and visit these detention facilities, go to the border with us and on other trips as well, and see exactly what is happening. Because I don't think you can really imagine it unless you see it.

I don't think you can imagine what it is like to go into a giant facility where children are being held, 6, 7, 8 years old, being held in cages with no place to sleep.

Yes, begging for help. And I think about the children, the parents that I talked to, and some of the reunifications that we saw when I led that trip to the border and thinking about these parents who had to experience their children not wanting to come to them.

Representative Schakowsky talked about one mom that we met who was reunited with her 8-year-old daughter. The daughter had been told that the mother had abandoned her, and for months, she thought the mother had abandoned her and that she was going to go into a shelter, or a foster home because her mother had abandoned her.

So you can imagine when the mother came to be reunited with the child, the mother was so happy that she finally was getting to see her child, and the child did not want to go to her mother. She didn't want to go to her mother. It took some time for them to actually be reunited and for the mother to say: No, I did not abandon you. But if you are

an 8-year-old child, how do you understand that?

How do you process it? And I think that in the end, I continue to think about the ways in which we are criminalizing migrants, criminalizing people who are fleeing violence, tremendous violence in their countries.

Just the other day there was an article in The New York Times, I think, that talked about in Honduras, which is where many of the parents that I met with that were in that Federal prison separated from their children, many of them were from Honduras. This article described how you have two choices: You either get killed by the gangs or you leave. That is the only choice you have.

I also went to Tijuana. I think I was the first Member to go to Tijuana, and I met with a 15-year-old boy who had been shot in both knees. And he had a phone message on his cell phone from his mother who said: Please do not come back here. Just go. Just go. Get to the United States. Get to a place of safety. Seek asylum. I will be devastated to have you leave me, but I just want you to stay alive.

What parent doesn't want their child to stay alive? And this young man who talked to me was a strong young man, but he started weeping, talking about how he had to leave his mother and come to the United States as an unaccompanied child. It was devastating to hear, absolutely devastating to hear.

As we celebrate this 1-year anniversary--not celebrate, memorialize, I should say--this 1-year anniversary of this cruel, zero-humanity policy of family separation, I urge all of my colleagues to sign on to my Dignity for Detained Immigrants bill, to work in appropriations in every committee that we have, to remember that we still have children who are separated from their parents, still to this day.

We still have families that are being separated from their parents as we speak. We still do not know how many thousands more children were separated from their parents as a result of this administration's cruel policies that undermine who we are.

I see I have been joined by an incredible colleague, a leader on the Judiciary Committee, a leader in the Progressive Caucus, and also somebody who was on our trip to Texas, to the border, but also is from Texas.

I yield to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee), my colleague, for her comments on this.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Texas for her leadership, for her words, and for her work on this issue.

I would just say that, as we get ready to close, here, this Special Order hour, we are thinking, keeping in our minds and in our hearts the thousands of families across this country and across the world that have been separated from their children, and we will do everything we can to continue to fight for justice.

Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I claim the time in opposition to the amendment, even though I am not opposed to it.

Madam Chair, I am very proud to cosponsor this bipartisan amendment with my colleague from Minnesota to provide access to training on trauma-informed techniques for law enforcement and other agencies that respond to survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault.

Unfortunately, as you well know, despite our best efforts, rape and sexual assault continue to be underreported, and the statistic tells us that, out of every 1,000 rapes, 995 perpetrators will walk free.

One thing we can do to address this is to make sure that investigators have training on trauma-informed techniques to work with the survivors of sexual violence so that investigators don't further harm survivors. This is not just in the best interest of the survivor, but it is also to make sure that law enforcement can hold perpetrators accountable.

I am particularly moved by the courage and the determination of Abby Honold, the namesake of this amendment, and many, many women across my State and across the country who have suffered the same situation as she has.

Ms. Honold endured a brutal attack, and then she did something truly courageous. And let me just say, Madam Chair, that it is courageous to continue to submit yourself to investigation after a brutal assault. She took action to call attention to the importance of the trauma- informed services she received that helped her to pursue justice, and today, her work has resulted in this amendment to ensure that others will be able to provide the same kind of assistance that she received.

So as we recognize Sexual Assault Awareness Month, I hope that my colleagues will support this amendment to the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, traditionally a bipartisan act in this Chamber.

When Congress passed VAWA 25 years ago, it was a landmark achievement that sent a very clear message to people living in abusive or violent situations that we saw them, that we would stand with them. With each reauthorization, we continue to expand critical protections and make improvements like this amendment to better serve survivors.

Madam Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Minnesota (Ms. Omar), my colleague on this side of the aisle.

Madam Chair, we look forward to everyone supporting this amendment. We hope that we continue to operate in a bipartisan fashion in this Chamber to pass not only this amendment, but the full reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act.

Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I rise as the designee for Congresswoman Waters to offer her amendment.

Mr. Chairman, what a moment of tremendous pride it is to be here in the 116th Congress under a Democratic majority as we finally pass the Paycheck Fairness Act.

I rise in strong support of this bill, and I thank Chairman Scott for his tremendous leadership in shepherding this bill to the floor.

I also thank the author of H.R. 7, Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, who has been a champion for women's rights her entire career. The Paycheck Fairness Act is a testament to her tireless dedication to the eradication of the gender pay gap, and it is by her leadership that we are here today on the verge of obtaining a more equitable workforce.

I also thank Congresswoman Waters, who has long advocated for and fought for pay equity and been a beacon of courage for women across this country.

We passed the Equal Pay Act in 1963, which made it illegal to discriminate based on sex when men and women are performing jobs that require substantially equal effort, skill, and responsibility. We followed that up with title 7 of the Civil Rights Act, which, among other things, made it illegal to discriminate based on sex. And then 10 years ago, we passed the Lilly Ledbetter Act, which made it clear that every single inadequate paycheck a woman receives is a new act of discrimination. And yet, inequality persisted.

Today, women are paid, on average, only 80 cents for every dollar paid to men, resulting in a gap of $10,169 per woman, per year. And that pay gap doesn't discriminate. It exists in all occupations, locales, and regardless of education or work history.

The Paycheck Fairness Act seeks to eliminate this gap by picking up where the Equal Pay Act of 1963 left off and strengthening protections for women in the workplace against retaliation, discriminatory screening, and legal obstacles to justice. This amendment to H.R. 7 will ensure that the data collected on behalf of the legislation will be inclusive of all races and ethnicities.

Pursuant to section 6 of H.R. 7, the Secretary of Labor must conduct studies as well as provide information to employers and the general public concerning the means by which gender pay disparities can be eliminated. These studies are a critical step forward towards closing the pay gap.

This amendment would clarify that these Department of Labor studies mandated by section 6 of the underlying bill must include not just information regarding pay disparities between men and women generally, but specifically for women of every racial and ethnic background.

Mr. Chairman, in order to empower all women, we must continue to highlight the specific barriers faced by and the needs of women of color in the workforce.

In 2017, the gender wage gap widened for women of color. While research found that women made 80 cents for every dollar paid to White, non-Hispanic men, women of color fared much worse than average: Black women were paid only 61 cents for every dollar paid to White men; Native American women were paid 58 cents; and Latina women were paid only 53 cents.

That means that this year, Equal Pay Day, the date that marks how long women have to work into the year to earn what their White male counterparts earned in the previous calendar year, falls on April 2. But for Black women, Equal Pay Day isn't until August 22. Native American women's Equal Pay Day falls on September 23, and Latinas have to work nearly 11 full months into 2019 before they will see their Equal Pay Day on November 20. That is true economic injustice.

Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, better information allows us to develop better policy solutions, and that is all this amendment does: collects more information to address an unacceptable inequality. By mandating that the studies conducted by the Department of Labor explicitly address and include women of color in particular, we can ensure that no one is left behind.

I urge all of my colleagues to support the gathering of this valuable information and vote ``yes'' on this amendment.

Mr. Chairman, it has been a long road to get here, but today, women across the country of every race and ethnicity can stand tall and know that we value their work equally.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H. Con. Res. 24, to express the sense of Congress that Special Counsel Mueller's report be made available to the American people and to Congress. We cannot impugn the integrity of the American people by keeping this report silenced.

For nearly 2 years, Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his team have investigated serious and credible allegations about obstruction of justice and collusion at the highest levels of our government. To date, Mr. Speaker, the investigation has led to the public indictment of three companies and 34 individuals, including the indictment of President Trump's former campaign manager and personal lawyer, seven guilty pleas, and one conviction following a jury trial. The allegations range from election interference, to lying to the FBI, to conspiracy to defraud the United States.

Mr. Speaker, this should not be a Republican or a Democratic issue. I hope that my colleagues on the other side will understand that there should be nothing to hide from the American people about this investigation, a special counsel's investigation into whether there was interference in our elections.

If my Republican colleagues have nothing to fear from this report, if they are willing to stand up for the Constitution, if they are willing to stand up for the American people and put that Constitution over party, over any individual, including the one that sits in the White House, then they, too, will join us in voting unanimously for this resolution.

It is a big deal for the American people to maintain trust in our democracy and in our government. They have to know the results of the special counsel's report. This is, again, an American issue. It is about doing our constitutional duty to protect our democracy.

I look forward, Mr. Speaker, to having a unanimous vote on this resolution, passing it through and making it clear that we have nothing to hide. It is our duty to the American people.

Madam Speaker, let me say how pleased I am to be with Ms. Tlaib today, leading the Special Order hour, and, Madam Speaker, how pleased I am to see you at the podium.

This is a fantastic group of individuals who have joined us here in Congress, and I couldn't be prouder to serve with both of you and with others who are here as well.

The topic of this Special Order hour is so important. It has been important to me, of course, but also to Members of Congress in general and to communities across the country, and that is the topic of healthcare.

I wanted to break this down a little bit, in terms of where we are on this issue for people who are watching, because this is one of the beauties of the Special Order hour, that we get to talk about the issues that matter; we get to explain things; and we get to put forward our proposals and our ideas.

I am so proud to say that, on February 27, I and my colleague, Representative Debbie Dingell, introduced the Medicare for All Act of 2019, and we had 107 original cosponsors. Those are the folks who sign on right as it is getting introduced.

Of course, a bill gets introduced, and we always add people on after that. But this is 107 original cosponsors for this act that would build upon, improve, and expand Medicare so that it covers every single person in this country--universal healthcare, the idea that healthcare is a right and not a privilege.

Let me start by saying that we Democrats are absolutely united around the need to shore up the Affordable Care Act. There is no question that there is work to do immediately on some of the things that were done to take away access to those with preexisting conditions, to strip away the benefits of the Affordable Care Act. We are 100 percent united around continuing to do that.

However, we have to have a bold vision that addresses the healthcare crisis in this country that leaves 30 million people uninsured and 40 million people underinsured, without access to healthcare.

We have to understand, in doing that, in the United States today, we spend, depending on what estimate you look at, about $32 trillion to $39 trillion on healthcare costs over 10 years. That is going up to about $50 trillion over the next 10 years on healthcare. That is about 18\1/2\ percent of GDP.

If you look at every other major industrialized country in the world, what you see is that they provide healthcare, comprehensive care, to everybody in their country, and they do it at about half the cost, or less, of what the United States spends.

You might think that you could look at costs of healthcare in this country and you could say: Well, America has the best healthcare system in the world, and that is why we spend so much. We have the best healthcare outcomes.

Well, let's talk about that for a second. In the United States, we spend 18\1/2\ percent of our GDP on healthcare costs, yet we have the worst health outcomes of any peer country in the world.

Today in the United States, we have the highest maternal mortality rate. We know what that is; that is moms dying in childbirth.

We have the highest infant mortality rate. That is kids dying at young ages.

We have the lowest life expectancy rate of any of our peer countries. In fact, we are the only industrialized country in the world where life expectancy is going down and not up.

So we don't even have good health outcomes to show for our healthcare system.

That is why Representative Dingell and I and our 105 additional cosponsors of the bill, and Representative Tlaib and many others who are part of this effort, have introduced the improved Medicare for All Act of 2019.

What this bill does is it offers, first of all, comprehensive coverage to everyone in the country. We say that that includes primary care; it includes vision, dental, hearing; it includes mental health and substance abuse; it includes long-term services and supports, maternal healthcare, and more.

Everybody in the country will have access to healthcare when you get sick, not when you need an emergency room, not when you simply can't take your illness anymore, but when you actually get sick.

This bill is the first time that we will actually have long-term care supports and services included in this coverage. This is very, very important because it covers seniors, obviously, our elderly, as they get toward the end of their life, and it includes people with disabilities who have, traditionally, been left out of this entire sphere.

What we do is we say that, instead of the current system where you have to get so poor that you have to be on Medicaid--you have to have a low level of income, be on Medicaid--if you want long-term supports and services, and the automatic default is institutional care instead of home care, we flip that on its head and we say you get to stay at home with the people you love. You get to be in your home as you are dealing with these incredible challenges that you may have.

Our bill says no premiums, copays, and deductibles. We don't want you to have to think about that as you go to the doctor.

This is very important, because you will hear this is a government takeover of healthcare. That is what opponents of my bill are already trying to tell you.

I want you to hear this really clearly, if you are listening: We use the same network of doctors and hospitals that is already here.

In fact, I bet, if we had a roomful here and I were to ask people how many of you have been told, or have a family member or a relative who has been told, that you can't go to a certain hospital or doctor because it is out of network, or you only get a certain coverage if you go, I bet everybody would raise their hands. I see people raising their hands right now. Good for you. I feel like I have an audience here.

What our plan says is that you can go to any doctor or hospital. The government isn't taking over those services. It is not going to be a different government service. It is just the same as what you have right now.

The only thing that changes is, instead of having to argue with five insurance companies--because maybe you have Medicare and you have Medicare Advantage; maybe you don't have anything at all; maybe you have a combination of things put together. Instead of having to argue with five insurance companies, you get to just say:

This is a government insurance program. This is covered by one insurance program, a single payer.

If you have heard that statement, that is what that means. This is the way that almost every industrialized country in the world does it.

I think that we have to think about what the problem is here, why have we not been able to do this. We have, increasingly, seen our healthcare system, unfortunately, being moved more and more to a for- profit system that puts those profits over patients.

If you look at, for example, the cost of pharmaceutical drugs in our country today, it is so much more expensive to get insulin treatment or cancer treatments or even an MRI in the United States. I have clients and constituents who drive to Canada, who go to other places, because they can't afford the drugs here, and they can buy the exact same thing across the border for significantly cheaper.

We are having a crisis, Madam Speaker, where people are going to bed at night thinking about how they are going to pay their rent and pay for their cancer treatment, how they are going to afford to get the insulin treatments that they want. People are foreclosing on homes.

In fact, two-thirds of all the bankruptcies today in the United States are due to medical issues, medical costs. GoFundMe has become one of the most popular insurance plans around, where people are just banking on the goodness of people to take care of their healthcare costs. That is simply not acceptable.

If we want to take on this question of universal healthcare coverage, which, by the way, Teddy Roosevelt talked about in 1910, Harry Truman in 1945, President Johnson--this is not a radical idea. It is actually something that has been tried and tested.

But here in the United States, the idea that we could provide universal healthcare for everybody, make sure that people get the healthcare access that they need, this is the time for it. Seventy percent of the American people actually agree with us. You might hear that that support goes down if you say some other things, but let's be really clear that the fearmongering out there is driven by for-profit industries that, unfortunately, have a lot to lose if a plan like this were to pass, because we would actually make sure that we are not only providing universal coverage but that we also have cost containment built into our system.

That is what my bill does. We build in cost containment measures so that we can actually bring down the overall cost of healthcare in this country to what is standard in other countries around the world.

This is incredibly important to us, and as we think about who gains and who loses in this, I believe that it is actually a win-win for everybody who is concerned about putting patients over profits.

It is a win-win for doctors who have been trained to take care of patients but, instead, spend 25 to 30 percent of their time dealing with insurance companies and trying to do all the paperwork that needs to be there, trying to argue for a patient of theirs to be able to get the care they need.

It is a win for hospitals that want to make sure that they know what kind of budgets they are going to have and that they can work within that. We have something built into our plan called global budgeting, which is actually the standard in other countries but is being tested in Maryland to great effect, where hospitals get an overall amount of money, and they get a global budget. We have that built in as well.

It is a win for patients. This is the thing that is so important to emphasize again and again.

Actually, before I get to the patients, let me say it is also a win for our businesses, particularly our small- and medium-sized businesses. I have a lot of business owners who might disagree with me on a few other issues, many of them are across the aisle--they are Republicans; they are independents. They come up to me and they say: Representative, I don't agree with you on this or this or this, but please, can you get the Medicare for All bill passed, because we cannot, as small businesses and even medium-sized businesses and, by the way, even large-sized businesses, deal with the growing cost of these insurance premiums that we are paying that are really just going to line the pockets of top CEOs.

The CEO of UnitedHealth took home $82 million, even as people are not able to afford treatments and are dying. The other CEOs have taken in $52 million, $29 million.

We have to make sure that the balance of something like healthcare, which is an essential, I believe, a common good in this country, that we are able to provide that to people.

There are lots of other places where markets can work, but in this marketplace where you need to make sure that healthcare is provided to everybody regardless of whether you are rich or poor, regardless of where you live, regardless of the color of your skin, this is where the government comes in to try to help make sure that that is actually possible.

This is a really important bill for us, and I am absolutely honored to have so many of my colleagues who are so smart on these issues, not only in liberal districts like mine but also in frontline districts, places that were held by Republicans for a very long time.

My Democratic colleagues flipped those districts, and they ran on this issue. They ran on this issue, and they won on this issue, because they know, and their constituents know, that it is time to take profit out of this system and make sure that it once again gets focused on the healthcare of people.

We also have an incredible coalition of labor unions that have come on board for the first time ever. Our teachers are on board, our machinists, our steelworkers. We have so many different unions that are on board this time.

Our disability rights community is on board.

Our women's organizations are on board, because for the first time, we make sure that everybody gets the care they need, whether they are a woman or a man, and we make sure that people have control over their reproductive choices.

We are absolutely thrilled about this.

I want to be clear about one thing, as I turn this back over to my incredible colleague from Michigan. This is not a messaging bill. I want to be clear about that.

For the first time in the House of Representatives, this bill is over 120 pages long. It is a detailed analysis and layout of exactly how this would work. It ensures that everybody gets healthcare. It keeps the existing system of delivery that we have. We are not changing the system of delivery.

It does not in any way say that insurance companies can't continue to operate. They just can't provide the same benefits that we are providing through the government insurance plan. That is actually the way Medicare works right now.

You can't provide the same benefits because we don't want a two- tiered system.

Now, if they want to provide benefits outside of what we provide, they are welcome to do so. That is how Medicare Advantage originally came in to being. Medicare Advantage plans, the benefits that are offered under those, would be included in our plan, so we wouldn't need those plans. But insurance companies are free to continue to innovate as they need to; and we have built in 1 percent of the cost of the bill for the first 5 years actually goes to a fund that ensures transition and appropriate support for workers in the insurance industries who may actually end up having to lose their jobs or to eventually transition into this new system that we have.

We will, for the first time, thanks to Speaker Pelosi's support, and others' support, we will have hearings on this bill. And whether you agree or you disagree with the premise, what I would ask is that you understand how critical it is to address and finally get to universal healthcare in this country.

This is a debate that should have been had on the House floor and in our committees a long time ago. We are finally going to have that with a number of different committees; and I am looking forward to continuing to help lead with all of my colleagues on ensuring that healthcare is a right and not a privilege; that you don't have to be wealthy to get basic healthcare; and

that we improve the ultimate competitiveness of our businesses, our families, our communities, and the health, the basic health, the right to live with dignity and respect for all of our people.

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

Mr. Chairman, I come to the floor today to speak on this amendment that simply requires unpaid government employees to comply with the same ethics rules as paid employees.

President Trump has exploited this ethics loophole for his daughter Ivanka Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who both work in the White House.

Requiring your daughter and your son-in-law to be subject to the same

ethics rules as everyone else is simply basic common sense. It is not a Democratic issue or a Republican issue, but it is core to our democracy and our national security.

The purpose of ethics rules, Mr. Chairman, is to ensure that conflicts of interest do not interfere in the operations of our government. This is critical so that the American people trust that the people guiding our country's laws and policies are acting with the best interests of our country and the American people at heart and not foreign or business interests. But President Trump's hiring of his daughter Ivanka Trump, and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, as unpaid advisers has raised serious concerns.

Shortly after the 2016 elections, Ivanka Trump participated in her dad's meeting with the Japanese Prime Minister as her namesake clothing brand, Ivanka Trump Marks LLC, was simultaneously negotiating a licensing deal with Sanei International, a company whose largest shareholder is the Japanese Government.

In addition, her company received preliminary approvals for 16 new trademarks from China during the President's trade war with China. In one case, Ivanka Trump and Chinese President Xi dined together at Mar- a-Lago the same day that China approved the three trademarks for the First Daughter.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the incredible gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Sarbanes), who has been leading this effort.

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

Mr. Chairman, once again, I just reiterate that what we are saying is whether you are paid or unpaid, you have to go through the same security clearances; and whether you are paid or unpaid, you have to deal with the same ethics regulations. Particularly when unpaid employees are put into serious positions where national security clearances are required and where they have access to top secret information, we need to make sure that those ethics rules apply to everybody.

Now, frankly, we didn't see this as a loophole in the past because it hasn't been exploited in the same way, but, unfortunately, that is what is happening now.

Mr. Chairman, I think that this should raise serious concerns for anybody. We need to make sure that the people who are in our government are facing the same transparent ethics rules whether you are a relative of the person in the Oval Office or not.

We have ethics laws for a reason. The United States is not a despotic country built on nepotism, and we need to make sure that it is in everyone's best interest when all of these employees are subject to ethics laws, including laws that prohibit employees from participating in matters in which they have a financial interest or from misusing their official positions.

Mr. Chairman, I strongly urge my colleagues to support this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Chairman, this amendment would stop lobbyists from working on behalf of foreign governments with gross human rights violations.

Countries with human rights abuses should use the diplomatic process to express their views and not try to influence the American Government when hiding behind highly paid K Street lobbyists.

H.R. 1, the For the People Act, is a historic bill that aims to restore the promise of our Nation's democracy and the culture of corruption in Washington, reduce the role of money in politics, and return power back to the American people. My amendment furthers this goal by limiting the role of dark money in our foreign policy.

Take, for instance, Mr. Chairman, Saudi Arabia. After 9/11, Saudi Arabia was implicated in the most destructive attack on American soil in our history. Yet 15 years later, the country was the leading recipient of U.S. arms sales.

For nearly 4 years, Saudi Arabia has perpetrated the worst humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen, with U.S. military participation in its bombings and complicity in a blockade that has deprived millions of food and medicine. Despite the Saudis' indiscriminate killing of civilians, Secretary of State

Mike Pompeo has certified that the country has been protecting civilians just last year.

Most recently, Saudi Arabia murdered U.S.-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi while President Trump rejected the evidence from his own intelligence agencies that Saudi Arabia's crown prince ordered the murder.

How does Saudi Arabia maintain its relationship with the United States? It shouldn't surprise anyone that Saudi Arabia spent about $27 million on U.S. lobbying and public relations in 2017 alone.

Individuals affiliated with the Trump administration like Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn have also taken substantial sums of money from foreign countries to lobby the American Government.

Paul Manafort lobbied on behalf of pro-Russian forces in Ukraine in 2005, and prosecutors allege that Mr. Manafort was working on Ukrainian politics well into 2018, even after Special Counsel Mueller indicted him. He didn't even report the payments he was receiving for his lobbying efforts, in flagrant violation of current law.

Though not charged with lobbying illegally, Manafort has still had a long history of lobbying on behalf of the world's most brutal dictators, including Mobutu Sese Seko, Ferdinand Marcos, and Jonas Savimbi. He is rumored to have accepted a briefcase from a Marcos affiliate with $10 million in cash to give to the Reagan campaign.

Finally, Michael Flynn, President Trump's former National Security Advisor, worked on a $15 million plan to kidnap a political enemy of Turkish President Erdogan and fly him to an island prison. Mr. Flynn was paid at least $530,000 for lobbying on behalf of the Turkish Government between August and November of 2016. Mr. Chairman, he did not retroactively register as a foreign agent with the Justice Department until March 7, 2017.

This is a commonsense amendment that brings transparency and ensures that we protect our system from this type of lobbying from those countries that have gross human rights violations.

Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I hope my colleagues on the other side who are just quoting the ACLU tonight are with us on everything else that the ACLU supports. I look forward to seeing that.

I got a little distracted in the last speech, so I wanted to remind people what we are talking about in this amendment, which is that we would not allow lobbyists that are working on behalf of foreign governments with gross human rights violations to actually pay a bunch of lobbyists and hide behind highly paid K Street lobbyists to get their agenda.

They should just use the diplomatic process. It is not like they are not going to have a voice. They can use their diplomatic process.

That is all this amendment is. It is a smart amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Chair, this amendment cleans up the so-called legal defense funds.

Many Americans don't know this, but it is perfectly legal for government employees to set up a fund to help them pay their legal bills when they are in trouble with the law. Amazingly, they can pack this slush fund with unlimited donations from wealthy individuals and large corporations.

In other words, employees in the White House can fund their legal defenses with contributions from the President's campaign backers or people who want to influence the President's decisions.

Not surprisingly, this President's team has set up a legal defense fund, the Patriot Fund, to help staffers pay for their legal fees related to the Russia investigation. The Patriot Fund was cleared by the Office of Government Ethics under the Acting Director, David Apol, who was appointed by--you guessed it--President Trump.

Former Trump campaign staffer Rick Gates and former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn have also set up legal defense funds.

According to a political report from a month ago, Sheldon Adelson, who is the single largest donor to the Trump campaign, and his wife, Miriam, have each contributed $250,000 to the Patriot Fund, for a total of half a million dollars.

The fund is flush, Mr. Chair. It is no wonder that one of Trump's former campaign staffers who has been interviewed by the House Intelligence Committee referred to the Patriot Fund as ``a real blessing.''

Trump lawyers have said that decisions about which staffers' legal funds are paid out of the Patriot Fund will not be related to whether the individual in question defends the President. But since the fund manager has sole discretion over who will benefit from the fund, it is almost impossible to know whether access to Patriot Fund dollars will be used to reward those who might be loyal to the President. That creates an extraordinary conflict of interest for any President, not just this one.

It is time to put a stop to this in perpetuity. That is why I have offered this amendment to direct the Office of Government Ethics to promulgate regulations on basic requirements to ensure transparency of donations to legal defense funds in the executive branch and to ensure that Federal employees cannot obtain money from prohibited sources. These regulations will be similar to rules that are already established for Members of Congress, and I think that that is just common sense.

My amendment closes loopholes and eliminates conflicts of interest in these legal defense funds in several ways.

First, it limits the gifts and donations that can be made to legal defense funds to no more than $5,000 per person per year.

Second, it prohibits registered lobbyists, foreign governments, and individuals involved in activities that are regulated by the agency that is employing the individual who will receive the legal defense fund dollars from contributing to their legal defense fund.

Third, it clarifies that employees may not accept gifts and donations outside of legal defense funds to pay for

legal fees and expenses from civil or criminal proceedings.

And, fourth, it makes legal defense funds public by requiring that the source of contributions and the amount of those contributions be publicly disclosed.

Mr. Chair, this is a sensible amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, in conclusion, I would say this bill, H.R. 1, is about reclaiming our democracy, ensuring transparency and accountability for the American people. For evidence of obstruction of justice, public corruption, and abuses of power for any President and the people surrounding him, we believe that this bill is essential, and this amendment is essential.

Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Madam Chair, my amendment would simply make clear to the Department of Homeland Security that these funds, which Congress is specifically dedicating to the Coast Guard's environmental remediation efforts as a result of hurricane damage, cannot be reprogrammed to increase DHS's detention capacity.

Madam Chair, this amendment is critical. Just a few months ago, we learned that DHS transferred $169 million from other agencies to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain and remove people.

Madam Chair, $10 million of that money came from FEMA, diverting funds from the disaster relief agency at the start of the hurricane season when Hurricane Florence was heading toward the East Coast; $1.8 million of that diverted money came from the Domestic Nuclear Detention Office; $29 million was taken out from the Coast Guard's budget; and over $34 million came from several TSA programs. That is simply unacceptable.

ICE continues to spend far above its appropriated funding to detain people, but these funds are being transferred from other critical agencies, in clear violation of congressionally mandated funding.

As of January 1, more than 48,000 people were being held in ICE custody, even though they only have funding appropriated by Congress to detain 40,520 people. In the last appropriations act passed by this Chamber, we provided funding to ICE with the understanding that the funding amount would, ``require ICE to reduce the number of detention beds,'' in use before the end of the year.

We clearly stated our intent to ICE, yet ICE has chosen to ignore the mandates of the United States Congress again and again.

Moreover, the Government Accountability Office has found a number of inconsistencies and errors in ICE's own calculations for its congressional budget justifications. While ICE officials stated their budget documents undergo multiple reviews to ensure accuracy, ICE was not able to provide any documentation of such reviews, and the GAO concluded that ``ICE is not positioned to ensure the credibility of its budget requests.''

If the GAO concludes that ICE is not positioned to ensure the credibility of its own requests, then we need to be doing a better job of checking for accuracy and exercising oversight.

And, most of all, we need to make sure that these funds that are being appropriated for disaster relief stay for disaster relief.

Madam Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I am going to yield to my colleague in just a second. But this should be easy to vote for because you yourself said there is nothing in here that provides funding for detentions. So I look forward to seeing the gentleman vote for my amendment because, actually, then you are saying there is no problem here, we are going to make sure that these funds actually go where they are supposed to, to disaster relief.

That is all I am saying in this amendment is let's make sure that the funds we appropriate go to disaster relief, which is necessary, and States across the country--certainly in my part of the country-- wildfires, hurricanes--we have lots of issues we have got to deal with here.

So, given that the gentleman just started his remarks with multiple statements saying there is nothing in this bill that would allow for this, I look forward to seeing your yes vote on my amendment.

Madam Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Espaillat).

Madam Chair, let me just say how pleased I am that we are on the same page, that disaster relief funding should go to disaster relief; it should not go to expanding detention beds, which are already oversubscribed.

So I hope that the other side will be happy to vote yes on this amendment. And I would just say we are happy to have a discussion about immigration and all of the things we need to do to reform our immigration system at the right time.

Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.