Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to express a simple principle: People who are working to bag groceries should not have to rely on government assistance, on nutrition assistance, to be able to buy groceries. Yet, across this country, there are thousands of workers who go and put in a full day's work yet can't afford the basic necessities of food and clothing.

And it is the taxpayers, all of us, that bear the responsibility for the underpayment by large corporations. A Berkeley study has said that this underpayment by large corporations, low wages, is costing the American taxpayers $153 billion a year.

I am proud to introduce the Corporate Responsibility and Taxpayer Protection Act with nine other colleagues that would require companies to be responsible for the underpayment of their employees. The idea is simple: If people are putting in a hard day's work and a full week's work, they deserve wages that will allow them to be part of the middle class. Too often, what happens is corporations, even if they are paying a $15 minimum wage, will adjust an employee's hours so that they don't get more take-home pay for the month.

What this bill will do is say that a corporation that isn't paying a fair wage, where employees are relying on government assistance, the corporation is responsible for that government assistance. It is not the taxpayers who should be paying for that; it is the corporations who should be held responsible for the underpayment of wages.

My hope is that none of the corporations will have to pay this tax. That they will do the right thing by working families in the middle class. That they

will recognize that, in a time of record corporate profits, they can afford to pay a decent wage.

I am hopeful that this bill will receive bipartisan support, because it is the very premise of this country that if you work hard, if you play by the rules, you should be able to be part of the middle class.

Thank you, Congressman Raskin, and thank you for your leadership with the Progressive Caucus and in articulating a positive vision of what the American people need with a budget.

I want to address the issue of manufacturing because this President went around the country campaigning on bringing manufacturing jobs back. And there is a simple philosophical difference in what the Progressive Caucus believes and the President's budget. If you believe, as the Republicans do, that we need to cut taxes and have less spending, you would be for this President's budget.

But if you believe, as we do, that the big issue facing this country is good-paying jobs and higher wages, you would be for the progressive budget.

Let me give you a concrete example. One of the programs that the President cuts in the name of less government and lower taxes is the Manufacturing Extension Partnership. Now, what does this do? What does the Manufacturing Extension Partnership do? It actually works with small- and medium-sized manufacturers across this country, many in the Rust Belt, to help them be competitive, to help them compete against currency manipulation, against unfair trade deals, to help them compete against lower cost labor.

How does the program do this? It partners them with leading technology companies to say, look, if you are a small- or medium-sized manufacturer, maybe you should have cloud technology. Move your technology off the factory floor and use the cloud to be more cost- competitive so that you can compete. Basically, the program helps to bring and keep manufacturing jobs in the United States.

Now, here is the irony. You would think, oh, is this a liberal idea? Is this the idea of Democrat, or a liberal Democrat? The irony is this was Ronald Reagan's idea. It was actually a program instituted by President Reagan in 1988 to help American manufacturers compete for the 21st century, and every administration has supported it.

One would think this President who ran on bringing manufacturing jobs would say, okay, let's quadruple funding for the Manufacturing Extension Partnership. Instead, he zeroed it out, zeroed out the funding for manufacturing programs. The progressive budget says we want to increase our investment in manufacturing. We want to actually help the small- and medium-sized manufacturers create jobs in the United States.

I have one more concrete example before I hand it back over to my colleague, Mr. Raskin.

The Appalachian Regional Commission invests in helping to create jobs across the parts of this country that most need that investment. I was down in Appalachia visiting Hal Rogers' district, a distinguished Republican who chaired the Appropriations Committee, and we saw the Appalachian Regional Commission's investment in helping coal miners' kids get jobs.

This Republican budget, this administration zeros out the funding for the Appalachian Regional Commission. Instead, we ought to be increasing funding in programs that are going to help transition folks from the industrial to the digital economy.

I think my colleague, Congressman Raskin, will explain that the Progressive budget is not just a moral document. It very much is, and it keeps our commitment to seniors and to those in need, but it is also a blueprint for job creation and good wages and for creating jobs in precisely the places that need them most.

This is the big division in this Congress. Do you believe that the big issue is that we need more tax cuts for the investor class, that we need simply to cut government, or do you believe we need government to partner with local leaders, with businesses, to create jobs and better wages?

If you believe the latter, I urge you to take a look at the Progressive budget and see our vision for job creation and higher wages.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee) for her vision in making sure Congress votes on matters of war and peace.

When we were attacked, after 9/11, I, like many Americans, supported strikes on the people who attacked us. But no one in this country would have thought that a resolution would be used for perpetual war.

Madam Speaker, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee) had the courage back then and the foresight to stand up with courage and stand up against a resolution that has provided a blank check for the last 16 years. I do believe that that is the type of political courage that one day will be remembered in history, and I applaud the gentlewoman for that.

We have seen that, since 2001, the terrorists, which were contained on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, have spread. They have spread to the Middle East. They have spread to Africa. And it is about time that we ask: What have all these interventions gotten us?

And this is not a partisan issue, as the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee) has mentioned and as the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Jones) just articulated. It goes back to our founding principles of John Quincy Adams, an early President who said: ``We ought not to go overseas to slay monsters.''

And he said the reason we shouldn't do that is we should give people who seek freedom our voice and our prayers; but if we go out to destroy monsters, we actually will be seen not as a liberating force, but as a dictatorial force because we often won't know who the truly freedom- seeking people are.

I wish every Member of Congress, every Senator would read John Quincy Adams' insight so that we had more restraint.

Consider the issue of Afghanistan, where 40 percent of the country is not under our control. And here is the thing: I know this region. I was born here. But being of South Asian origin, on the Pakistan-India border, where there are 3,000 terrorists, there are 150,000 troops to take care of that.

Does anyone think sending 10,000 troops again and again has accomplished anything?

It has not. All it is doing is further antagonizing people and putting our troops at risk.

Then when we called for regime change in 2011 with Syria and Assad, we made Syria a magnet for terrorist groups. Now in Yemen, where we are aiding the Saudi Arabian Government, which is aligned, ironically, with al-Qaida, and al-Qaida, which has claimed responsibility for the shoe bomber and the underwear bomber in this country, we are aiding and intervening in a place where we are actually supporting groups that are harming us.

All the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee) is saying is we ought to debate these issues, that the American people ought to know what these interventions are getting us; why they are not making us more safe and why we are not having a thoughtful policy.

Madam Speaker, I applaud the gentlewoman from California's (Ms. Lee) vision and I applaud her leadership. I know that history will vindicate her.

Mr. Speaker, I rise out of a concern of this administration's policies to North Korea. I urge the administration to look at recent history.

From 1994 to 2002, North Korea was not developing plutonium and there was no threat of medium- or long-range ballistic missiles. That was under President Clinton's leadership because President Clinton had come up with a deal to buy the medium- and long-range missiles from North Korea.

Then what happened?

President Bush came and disregarded both deals and put North Korea under the axis of evil, even though they had no relationship to 9/11. It was a mistake of foreign policy.

We know the solution to North Korea. We know they have an army of 200,000. They have 15,000 places of nuclear weapons. There is not a militaristic solution. The solution is to go back to the direct diplomacy that President Clinton had and to have South Korea engage in that diplomatic solution.

There is an answer to North Korea. We cannot play games with this issue when President Clinton showed the framework.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to express my deep concern with the recent FCC decision that strips Charter Communications of the requirement to provide broadband in a competitive manner.

When Charter merged with Time Warner, there was a regulatory review, and the requirement was that Charter would actually provide broadband in areas that would improve competition. Just yesterday, the Chairman revoked that regulatory decision and said that Charter doesn't have to provide broadband in an area where some other competitor is providing broadband.

Now, why does this matter? Americans already pay three to four times more for access to the internet than our European counterparts, and that is absurd. We invented the internet. We built the technology that fuels the internet. We should have the cheapest prices.

So why don't we have cheaper prices? It is because four or five monopolies basically provide the internet service for everyone. You have Verizon, AT&T, Comcast.

What is the solution? We need more competition.

But what is this FCC Chairman doing? He is having policies that are going to lead to less competition, basically carving up the map of this country and saying: You can only provide service here. Don't compete with anyone else.

Let's just carve up the map so every ISP provides service in a particular area and you don't have competition. And who suffers? The consumers.

And, by the way, it is not just the consumers in my district in Silicon Valley. It is consumers in rural America who are paying the highest prices for internet service.

Mr. Speaker, we need an FCC that is going to promote competition, that is going to go after monopolies, that is going to put American citizens ahead of corporate profits. If anything, we need a country that is going to have universal broadband, universal internet access.

Just like we talk about having a universal right to health care, just like we talk about a universal right to college, we can't live in a society where everyone can't have access to the internet. The jobs of the future are going to require it, and it ought to be a bipartisan issue to have universal access to the internet at the cheapest prices, cheaper than any other country, not five or six times more expensive than other countries, given that all of the technology was developed here in the United States.

And one final point. Noah Smith and Heather Boushey and others have talked about what really will create the jobs of the future, and they have written about having universities and colleges spread out across this country. Abraham Lincoln did it with the land grants in the 1860s.

We need college towns across America, and if we did that, if we expanded our universities, if we expanded research, if we expanded broadband in a competitive place, we could create the jobs of the future all across this great country.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Polis for yielding and for your leadership on this issue.

This resolution would overturn rules that protect a consumer's privacy, and they would be a handout to internet service providers: Comcast, Verizon, AT&T. Now, as it is, the average American, 80 percent of Americans, don't have a choice about which internet service provider they can use, and they pay six to seven times more than people pay in France, than people pay in Britain. And people wonder: Why is this?

Obviously, the United States did all of the research that invented the internet. Why are Americans paying more? It is because they have monopolistic, anticompetitive practices. So what is the solution? Instead of making the industry more competitive so Americans have more choice and don't have to pay as much, what this bill wants to do is give these four or five internet service providers even more power, allowing them to take an individual's data and sell it to whoever they want.

The fear of Big Brother is so real out there, as it is, people fear that the bureaucracy and big companies are controlling their lives. This bill would allow that to continue and get worse.

What we need is more anticompetitive legislation. What we need is a stronger internet bill of rights that applies to ISPs and other internet service companies not a rollback of the regulations that currently exist.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his leadership and for yielding me the time.

When the President campaigned, he said he wanted more benefits, more coverage, and lower premiums. Since he got to the White House, he said, well, health care is complicated; and they have tried to create a bill with the Republicans cobbling every special interest group and every faction.

But the President knows it doesn't have to be complicated. He knows the solution. In 2000, he wrote that the Canadian plan, single-payer plan, helps Canadians live longer and healthier than Americans. There are fewer medical lawsuits, less loss of labor to sickness, and lower cost to companies paying for medical care for their employees.

He wrote further that, ``We, as a Nation, need to reexamine the single-payer plan;'' and he advocated for a single-payer plan.

Mr. President, what has changed?

You know what the solution is. If you are serious about health care, work with people like Senator Sanders, Congressman Welch, and others, and offer a real solution to the American people.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Congressman Gallagher for his bipartisan leadership on the term limits initiative, and my friend General Bergman for his leadership on this issue.

I don't think term limits are a partisan issue. The Economist had an article that the turnover rate in the people's House is less than European monarchies. European nobility turnover is at a faster rate. Incumbency reelection is 96 percent. When folks say, ``Why can't you just vote people out of office,'' it is not looking at the actual statistics. Ninety-six percent of folks here are reelected, and that is not what our Founders intended.

James Madison and Alexander Hamilton agreed: ``The security intended to the general liberty consists in the frequent election and in the rotation of the Members of Congress.''

They envisioned a place where people would come, serve, and go back home to their communities.

Thomas Jefferson said that people ought to live, lawmakers ought to live under the laws that they pass. The only way we get back to our founding ideals is if we pass some version of term limits so that people do their public service, and then return to the communities where they reside.

This bill on term limits is really a move against political dynasty, and that is one thing that this election showed us people really were not for. They don't like the idea of a few families, or people connected, holding the reins of power.

Let me end with someone who I think summed this up so eloquently, which is Barbara Bush, our former First Lady. She said: ``If we can't find more than two or three families to run for high office, that's silly, because there are great governors and great eligible people to run. And I think that the Kennedys, Clintons, Bushes, there are just more families than that.''

This is from Barbara Bush, who understood the essence of democracy is to have new voices, new families, new ideas. That is why I hope that people across the aisle will support the initiative for term limits.

Mr. Speaker, due to a scheduling miscommunication, I missed Roll Call vote 136 in the House yesterday afternoon of Wednesday, March 8th. Had I been present, I would have voted ``no'' on roll call No. 136, H.R. 1301, the Department of Defense Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2017.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Massachusetts for yielding time.

The issue before us is far more basic than one's view on the Affordable Care Act. I recognize that there is a philosophical difference about the Affordable Care Act: on our side of the aisle, we think it is good legislation; on the opposite side of the aisle, they have concerns. But the issue is whether the American people, whether taxpayers, ought to know the cost of the repeal legislation, whether they have the right to know how much a legislation introduced in this House costs.

Now, here is the irony: the Speaker of the House, the distinguished gentleman from Wisconsin, made his entire career demanding that we know numbers behind legislation. That was his mantra in his time of service in the House.

You talk to Doug Elmendorf, who was the former Congressional Budget Office Director, and he said that the one thing he respected about the Speaker is that he would actually insist on the numbers, that he would want to know how much we are adding to a $20 trillion deficit. That is why it is incomprehensible to me that, in this Congress, under this Speaker, we would ever be asked to vote on legislation without knowing the financial impact of that legislation.

These are basic issues:

How much is the repeal legislation going to add to our deficit?

How much is it going to finance tax cuts for the wealthy?

How many people will it leave out of insurance or how many people would it add to insurance?

There just ought to be a transparent discussion.

Now, it is not just Democrats who want this transparent discussion; actually, a Republican, the gentleman from Ohio, a founder of the Freedom Caucus, has expressed similar concerns. He has expressed concerns that this repeal legislation will balloon the deficit and explode the deficit, and he wants to know the numbers.

We can have as much respectful disagreement about how to cover people and whether the Affordable Care Act is

a good piece of legislation or not, but what we should not be debating is the public's right to transparency. That is why I urge my colleagues to reject the previous question so that we can hold an immediate vote on requiring the Congressional Budget Office to score the repeal legislation and provide the American people with the basic financial costs of the legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to support the freshman initiative on civility. I thank Congressman Johnson for his leadership.

I want to echo the remarks of Congressman Suozzi and Congresswoman Blunt Rochester about getting things done. We have disagreements on many issues. I don't think I voted with the Republicans on almost any issue since I have been in this body. On economic issues, I come from a perspective of economic populism and a very different perspective than Members on the other side.

But we also have areas of common agreement. Congressman Gallagher and Congressman Arrington have talked about term limits, and that is an area of potential agreement. Congressman Rooney has talked about getting PAC money out of politics. Congressman Will Hurd has talked about cybersecurity and tech jobs.

So my view is that, in areas where we disagree, we should disagree with spirit and conviction, but that doesn't mean that there won't be areas where we can agree.

And on a personal note, Congressman Fitzpatrick represents the district where I was born and where my parents are, so I have to be civil, certainly, to him and the other side.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Representative Garamendi for his leadership in the State of California and the country.

I rise today to voice my strong objection and disapproval for FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's decision to roll back a program that would provide internet access to low-income Americans.

I was shocked that this was one of the first decisions that the FCC Chairman made. What he has done is provide few subsidies for low-income Americans who need internet access.

Now, we know that 45 percent of Americans under 30,000 currently don't have internet access. Providing these

folks with internet access is giving their kids a basic shot at digital proficiency and having a job in technology or a chance at the American Dream.

Chairman Ajit Pai has become a poster child with this decision for everything that is wrong with Washington. It is what people complain about. He is writing the rules of modern-day capitalism in a way that privileges these elite telecom companies with concentrated economic power at the expense of low-income Americans.

This Congress must stand united to make sure that an unelected bureaucrat doesn't get to write the rules of our economy in favor of wealthy interests at the expense of ordinary Americans.

Mr. Speaker, I will be circulating a letter to our colleagues that I hope we can send to Chairman Pai, and, hopefully, he will reconsider this decision that is really not in the interest of ordinary Americans.

I have. I appreciate the Congressman's leadership on this.

Net neutrality, as the gentleman knows, is a very simple idea. That means that everyone should have equal access to the internet; that you shouldn't get to pay for faster service or you shouldn't get to pay to have more of your message out.

You would think that if anyone would appreciate the importance of it, it is the President, who uses the tool of the internet with Twitter and Facebook.

You would think we would want a democracy where every citizen has equal access to these tools.

Well, who doesn't want that?

Some of these big companies that have concentrated economic power and have an interest in making money and not for speech.

This Chairman has shown a consistent pattern already, in a few weeks, of basically siding with these large telecommunication companies at the expense of ordinary citizens.

It may sound like a technical issue. Some folks glaze over when you say net neutrality or you talk about the technical issues of the lifeline program, but I think what they have got to know is you have an FCC Chairman who is siding with wealth interests in telecom companies over what would benefit ordinary people.

I thank Congressman Garamendi for his leadership and showing what is really happening with the scale-back of all these regulations.

If I can make one more comment. Everyone says they are not for regulation. That is easy. Every time I get on an airplane, I am very thankful that we have some regulations. Regulations can't just be eliminated with a hatchet, like this administration is doing.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to this bill which will set forth the repeal of ObamaCare. But I also am concerned that the bill doesn't have a basic amendment which would allow for the importation of drugs from Canada.

Senator Sanders courageously, on Wednesday night, went on the floor and introduced an amendment to allow for the importation of drugs from Canada that the overwhelming number of Republicans and Democrats support. It was appalling that 13 Senate Democrats voted against the Sanders amendment, and they did so because the pharmaceutical industry is a cancer on this body; the pharmaceutical companies' contributions are a cancer.

We need to allow for the importation of drugs, we need that to be an amendment to this bill, and we need to take it up as a body.

Mr. Speaker, I want to say what an honor it is to be on this Committee with Chairman Thornberry and Ranking Member Smith and their leadership. When I joined, I was told this was one of the only bipartisan committees in the House. While we had a disagreement--and I associate myself with Ranking Member Smith's remarks--I will say that, to me, the debate seemed civil. It seemed genuine on philosophical and constitutional principles. I am hopeful that, after this debate, we will be able to work in a bipartisan way.

I know General Mattis was out in Silicon Valley. He has tremendous respect in the Valley for dealing with issues of cybersecurity and the future of the military. I think some of those ideas can help our troops. I look forward to working on the Committee to support those initiatives.

Mr. Speaker, I have the great privilege and honor of representing Silicon Valley in the United States Congress. We are living through revolutionary times. If 100 years ago we had the industrial revolution, today we have the software revolution, and the forces of automation and globalization are fundamentally changing our economy.

We first must thank the hardworking Americans who helped build this economy--the steelworkers and the coal miners and those who were machinists who built the economy that made us an exceptional Nation-- that were the foundation of everything that Silicon Valley does today. We need to thank them for the extraordinary hard work and grit that they showed.

We also need to recognize that our economy is changing, and not everyone has participated in the technology revolution. Some folks have benefited, and they are creating jobs and wealth, and others have been left behind. We have an obligation to make sure that every American and their daughters and their sons get to participate in this technology revolution and have technology jobs.

Enrico Moretti, an economist at Berkeley, has shown for every one technology job, it creates four to five other jobs in communities, from the barista to a lawyer, to a construction worker. Tech jobs have a larger multiplier today than manufacturing jobs had in previous eras.

My commitment, my vision is to see how Silicon Valley can help create technology jobs not just in my district, but across America. There is no reason that Des Moines, Iowa, and Wichita, Kansas, and Dayton, Ohio, cannot become centers for technology innovation and have extraordinary technology jobs.

I look forward to working across the aisle with my Republican colleagues and Democratic colleagues to figure out how we create tech jobs across this Nation.