Floor Statements

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

I don't want to put any pressure on you, Mr. Speaker, but it comforts me to see you as the Chair up there today. There are those days where you need particular leaders to be there at a particular time, and I will tell you that I am not telling anybody in this Chamber anything they don't already know: You have made an entire career in this institution reaching out, building unlikely alliances, making it work where other folks said it could not work. And when my friend from Maryland, whom I thank for yielding me the customary 30 minutes, talks about what it is our constituents expect, what it is our citizenry expects, I think they expect that, Mr. Speaker, and we have one of those bills before us today in the intelligence reauthorization act.

There is more in this rule, Mr. Speaker, than I believe I have seen in any rule in my 9 years in Congress and years serving on staff here. We packed it all in there last night, and I don't want to miss the lead on this rule, which is an intelligence bill that is named after two congressional staffers who passed away last year. They spent their lives in service to this institution and to the intelligence community, and we are grateful for that service.

If you have not looked at the intelligence community recently, Mr. Speaker, you will see Devin Nunes on the Republican side of the aisle and Adam Schiff leading it on the Democratic side of the aisle. I can picture those two faces because I usually see them on split screens on FOX or MSNBC, and I can't think of many things they have had to say where they agreed with one another over the past 4, 5 years, and yet we have a bill today in sharp contrast to the partisan nonsense that was the NDAA operation last week.

We have a bill that has come out of the Intelligence Committee with two strident, passionate Republican and Democratic leaders there on the Intelligence Committee, that came out unanimously, that they presented unanimously in front of the Rules Committee last night and we have a chance to pass here on the floor of the House.

You also find in this rule, Mr. Speaker, 31 amendments that have been made in order to that intelligence reauthorization bill. Even though we found bipartisanship in the committee, even though we found unanimity in the committee, the Rules Committee, in its wisdom, last night, decided to make 31 more ideas available to be considered here on the floor of the House.

You see in this rule, Mr. Speaker, the ability for the House to take up Arms Export Control Act measures. These are also measures you are going to find bipartisan support for, also measures that you will find, again, as my friend from Maryland referenced, the House doing what you would expect the House to do, what our bosses back home sent us here to do.

I know, Mr. Speaker, that there are times when folks feel their deeply held beliefs cannot be compromised for the sake of bipartisanship. I find that trying to find a way to get to yes is better than trying to find a way to get to no. There is always a reason to get to no.

Instead of looking for ways to oppose our political rivals, we have to act as the Intelligence Committee did, in a manner where we can find issues on which we agree. It is the only way to move this process forward.

Mr. Speaker, America's national security and that of our allies, which is what the intelligence community helps to protect and support every day, is about more than scoring political points.

I mentioned those split screens on the TV where you do see folks lobbing accusations back and forth. Sometimes it seems to be political sport instead of serious legislating.

The measure we have before us today is not political sport; it is serious legislating. And we are going to have a chance to come together as a House not just to discuss it, not just to improve it, but to implement it.

Mr. Speaker, among the things that you will find in this bill, the foreign influences around the globe, and we have talked about them in all of their various incarnations here on the floor of the House over the last 2 weeks. This bill requires a report on China's influence over Taiwanese elections.

Chinese influence around the globe is at an unparalleled high. We are now rivaled by the Chinese in every single aspect of international influence and policy, but they have outsized influence in Taiwan, and we require that report.

We require a report not just on Russian interference in our elections, Mr. Speaker, but in elections across the globe. It would be naive to suggest that the Russians would limit their influence in elections to trying to manipulate the greatest and freest country in the world. They are working across the globe to influence elections wherever free people live.

Combating Chinese and Russian aggression in elections, Mr. Speaker, is not something, as is so often told in the media, that divides us; it is something that unites us. We saw that in the Intelligence Committee, and we are going to see that here on the floor of the House, and I am very proud of that. I wish we could have continued that effort, Mr. Speaker.

I agree with every word my friend from Maryland said about standing up for Article I. Of all of my frustrations of 9 years in this institution, the deference of the United States Congress to the executive branch has been my greatest frustration. It exists for one reason and one reason only, and that is that men and women, colleagues like my friend from Maryland and I, have been unable to find a way to speak with one voice on issues that are Article I versus Article II issues.

Go down the list in your time in Congress, Mr. Speaker, whether it is the contempt resolution this institution passed for former Attorney General Eric Holder, that contempt resolution that passed on party-line votes in committee and party-line votes here on the floor of the House and went down to the executive branch where absolutely no action was taken on it whatsoever; take production of papers, whether on Fast and Furious or whether on the Census, production of papers, whether from the President's counsel or from the President's press secretary, we have these discussions and we cannot--no, we have not found a way to come together to speak with one voice.

We have an opportunity, a model. You will remember some number of weeks ago--now, months ago, Mr. Speaker--where we were very concerned in this Chamber about anti-Semitic remarks that were broadcast in the public domain. We came together as an institution to speak out against anti-Semitism.

It didn't happen overnight. In fact, my friend from Maryland authored that resolution, to his credit. But he didn't sit down with a pen and put some words on a page and bring it here to the floor for consideration. He had to work it. And I don't mean work it a little bit; I mean work it hard: it was coming; it was not coming; it was coming again; it was not coming. To find a pathway forward so that this House speaks with one voice instead of divided voices was an effort that was put in.

Now, granted, at the end of the day, it was a little more milquetoast than the resolution that I would have drafted, but sometimes that is the trade you make to be able to expand the acceptance of a resolution, Mr. Speaker.

Every single time in this Chamber, as it comes to reining in Article II or reining in the judicial branch, every single time we speak with a divided voice, we weaken this institution.

I have never seen a resolution that tried to hold two Cabinet Secretaries in contempt at the same time. Maybe that has happened historically; I don't know that answer. I have not seen it in my time.

I heard last night from the chairman of the House Oversight Committee and the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, and the ranking member was unwavering in his commitment to Article I and our preeminence in the constitutional model. But he was also unwavering in his commitment to there is more that we could do to work with the administration as opposed to begin to poke that sharp stick, and so this resolution does not have his support.

Well, if we begin our effort to do oversight over the administration and we are already divided before that bill even leaves committee, I tell you, Mr. Speaker, we are not going to have the outcome that we want here on the floor of the House.

And then, of course, this rule in those contempt efforts is targeting a United States citizenship question that would have gone on the Census. We talk about that as if that is an outrageous thing.

I appreciate the kind words my friend from Maryland had to say about President Lincoln. I am going to have to get the Clerk to read them back to me because I am going to use that over and over again about a wonderful Republican President, but I want to use the words that Mr. Raskin used.

But when President Lincoln was presiding over this land, it was common practice to have a citizenship question on the United States Census.

In fact, every single Census from 1820 to 1950 had a citizenship question on it. It was noncontroversial. In 1950, we took it off of the short form; it moved to the long form. And so from 1970 to 2000, that question was on the long form every single Census. And then in 2000, we took it off the long form and we put it onto the American Community Survey, that half-decade measure that goes out to create the data that Mr. Raskin rightly noted is so important to all of our communities back home.

If, for the first time in American history, in the history of the Census, we decide that citizenship is somehow now a forbidden topic, that we can't find a way to discuss it, that it is not important to who we are as a Nation and how it is that we look at ourselves, fair enough.

That is not what the Supreme Court case was about, Mr. Speaker. As we well know, the Supreme Court case simply said: You can put a question about citizenship on the Census if you want to. You just didn't do it the right way, and so we are going to ask you not to do it that way. There are those ways and means of getting that done. You just didn't do it the right way.

I raise that, Mr. Speaker, not because I am a Census guru. I am not. I don't serve on any of those relevant committees. But in this era of outrage, where folks have begun to confuse civility with weakness--and that is a confusion that I think is to all of our detriments--the desire to have a question about citizenship on the Census has nothing to do with this President, this administration, Republicans, Democrats. It has been that way since 1820.

Thoughtful men and women, concerned men and women, serious legislators have been interested in this information for over 100 years.

If we want to have the conversation that somehow citizenship can't be discussed anymore and we should ban it

from all Census documentation forever, I don't think that would succeed, but it is certainly a legitimate topic of debate. But what is not legitimate is to suggest that the only reason that anyone would ask about citizenship is to pursue some sort of nefarious, xenophobic purpose. It is simply not true.

I represent a majority minority constituency, Mr. Speaker. Twenty-six percent of my bosses are first-generation Americans. You want to find folks who love America, come down to where I live, find folks who have waited in line, folks who have paid their money, folks who pinned all their hopes and dreams to, ``If and only if I can get there, my children and my grandchildren will have a better life.''

That is what brought us all here at one generation or another. Whether you came in 1650 or whether you came in 1950 or whether you came yesterday, those are the dreams that bring us here.

There is a lot to be outraged about in today's culture, but I haven't seen any of it get fixed by being more outraged.

I have seen it get fixed by men and women like yourself, Mr. Speaker, who value trust, who value candor, who value honesty, and who value real relationships.

Anything that is hard, I can't solve with someone I don't trust. If one side is good and one side is evil, where do you go from there? What does that negotiation look like? That is not a conversation; that is you have got to now destroy one another. That seems to be the path that folks too often opt for in politics today.

There is more that unites us than divides us in this constitution and in this country, Mr. Speaker. You might not know that by the parts of this rule that are going to get the most attention today.

Adam Schiff, Devin Nunes, there are not two Members in this institution who feel more strongly and differently about the direction of public policy than those two men, and they came together, not to advance themselves, but to advance the Nation. They came together, not because it was easy, but precisely because it was hard and necessary, and brought us this bipartisan package we have today.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Massachusetts, the chairman of the Rules Committee, for bringing that resolution to the floor, and I hope we will have ample time to celebrate those successes.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I might consume.

Mr. Speaker, I think I misunderstood my friend from Massachusetts. I think what my friend said is he does not care whether his words coarsen this institution, he does not care whether or not his positions diminish us as an institution, he does not care about the rules of this institution, which prohibit exactly the kind of words that he knows they prohibit and yet he uses anyway.

Mr. Speaker, I just want to ask my friend if he believes that his cause of admonishing this President is going to be advantaged by diminishing this institution?

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern).

Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time. If the President believes every word that he said, does that excuse his behavior, in the gentleman's mind? Does it excuse his behavior to believe it?

Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time. It is a perfectly legitimate assertion and attestation my friend from Massachusetts makes, and of course we all share that belief.

Mr. Speaker, when I was down here for the rule last week with my friend from Massachusetts, the other side was admonished, not once, but twice for violating the House rules for coarsening our debate, for diminishing our civility, for violating our rules; not a social contract about how we ought to treat each other, but rules where we have committed about how we will treat each other.

Today during 1 minute speeches, Mr. Speaker, not once, but twice the Chair admonished the other side to say: You are breaking our rules of civility. You are violating our standards of decorum. Our children are watching, and your behavior doesn't pass muster.

And now my friend--and he is my friend and I admire his work--he is passionate in the causes for which he advocates, and I believe that it is his passion, not his contempt for this institution, that leads him to say those things that he says. I believe he loves this institution, but he is misguided, when the Chair admonishes him again today now, and he has no apologies for his colleagues, no apologies for this institution.

We do have serious issues. I am not meaning serious like Russia and China, which those are serious, I don't mean serious like the hate that is fomenting in this country, which is serious. I mean all of it that is serious that nobody in this institution can solve unless we solve it together, and I want to find that pathway forward. This isn't it.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to my friend, the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern).

Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time.

Mr. Speaker, does the gentleman remember when Joe Wilson apologized, which is more than what my friend from Massachusetts has done when the House has condemned him from the Chair today?

I remember when my friend Mr. Wilson lost his temper. I do remember it. And I remember him apologizing for it because he didn't want to bring shame on this institution.

I would welcome any time the Chair admonishes either side of the aisle for violating our rules, coarsening our debate, doing those things that we all agree we don't want our children to see on TV, I welcome folks to correct that behavior.

Mr. Speaker, I fear my comments are falling on deaf ears, but I hope I am mistaken.

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

Parliamentary Inquiry

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

While my friend from Texas is sometimes known for running over the gavel at the end of her comments, it is only because it comes from the heart. When I think about Members in this institution who are unhampered by a lack of passion, I think of my friend from Texas. But when I look for an honest broker, who will be true to her word and partner when partnership is required, my friend from Texas embodies that, as well. I appreciate both her words and her restraint here this morning.

I yield to the gentlewoman from Texas.

Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I thank my friend from Texas. I think that is a welcome invitation.

Mr. Speaker, thinking about the policies before us today, if we defeat the previous question, I will amend the rule to bring H.R. 3965 to the floor.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of my amendment in the Record immediately preceding the vote on the previous question.

Mr. Speaker, you have heard a lot about the controversial citizenship question in the Census. Whether or not it should be controversial is a different issue altogether.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Comer).

Mr. Speaker, may I ask how much time is remaining.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Jordan), my good friend and the ranking member on the House Oversight and Reform Committee.

Mr. Speaker, how much time is remaining?

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, again, I regret that there is so much that is packed into this rule. It is one of the reasons I urged defeat of the rule today.

Everyone in this Chamber wants to vote to have this debate on the national intelligence reauthorization bill. Everybody wants to be a part of that. Again, 31 amendments made in order will improve that bill, a bipartisan product coming out of a very contentious committee.

The rest of these issues are more complex. And I don't mean complex because we shouldn't discuss them. We should. I mean complex because we haven't discussed them.

I think I am prepared to yield time if the gentleman needs it. I know my friend from Maryland is not the author of the resolution condemning the President, but the gentleman mentioned my friend from Texas (Mr. Olson) and Mr. Olson's comments on the Republican side of the aisle.

I ask the gentleman, was Mr. Olson consulted to try to create the language that we see before us today?

I yield to the gentleman from Maryland.

Was the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Olson) consulted as we tried to draft this language that is before us today?

I yield to the gentleman.

Reclaiming my time, was Mr. Upton, who the gentleman referenced as having sympathetic words to say, was the gentleman consulted about the drafting of this resolution?

I yield to the gentleman.

Reclaiming my time, so Mr. Kasich was also not consulted and Ms. Murkowski also not consulted.

Mr. Speaker, if we are talking about a serious issue and we are going to craft a serious response and we want to speak with one voice from this institution, might it be a good idea for there to be at least one conversation between Democrats and Republicans about how to proceed?

Might it be a good idea to have more than one conversation?

Might it be a good idea to put partisanship aside and actually do those things that I know my friend from Maryland wants to do and I want to do arm in arm with him?

We keep missing opportunities in this Congress, Mr. Speaker, opportunities to make this institution stronger, opportunities to make this Nation stronger. We are missing them, and we are creating scars along the way.

What could be an operation in building trust has become an operation in building distrust.

What could be an operation designed to heal, I suspect, is going to be an operation that brings more needless pain.

We have a good bill in the intelligence reauthorization, Mr. Speaker. We have a good series of bills in arms export control. We could be down here talking about those because of the bipartisan work that has gone into it already.

Not one conversation has been had between tweets over a weekend and a resolution condemning those on the floor of the House, not one effort made to speak with one voice in the United States House. That tells you just about everything someone needs to know about why this resolution is on the floor with these two contempt resolutions in this place at this time.

Mr. Speaker, I urge defeat of the rule. I urge defeat of the previous question.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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

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

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, I appreciate that admonition. I promise you, you won't have to repeat that again on my time.

I appreciate my friend from Massachusetts yielding the time.

I had a whole wonderful opening statement planned, Madam Speaker. It was going to be our first time down here on the floor together during a rule.

Janet Rossi, on my team, put together all the great stats and statistics, many of which you heard my friend from Massachusetts reference.

And then, as happens to me so often on the Rules Committee, I show up in a good mood, I show up in a great place, and then folks just poke me in that way that gets me going.

For my friend from Massachusetts to close with the Republicans have turned this into a partisan exercise frustrates me to no end.

If there is one thing I have learned in my 9 years in Congress, Madam Speaker, it is that when it comes to American national security, it never gets turned into a partisan exercise.

I don't know how your election went, Madam Speaker, or what it was that your constituents said to you. Mine talked to me a lot about congressional dysfunction.

``Why can't they get anything done, Rob?''

``Why in the world can't you all get together and cooperate?''

And I always respond with the bill that we are looking at today, the National Defense Authorization Act. I say: In six decades of working, depending on who was in the White House, who was leading the House, who was leading the Senate, six decades of working on National Defense Authorization Acts that need to be passed every single year, how many times do you think we have actually successfully gotten that done together?

You know how that conversation goes, Madam Speaker.

``Rob, I think you guys have gotten it done once in 60 years.''

``Rob, I think it has happened 4 times, maybe 12 times.''

Madam Speaker, you know what I know, which is that, over these decades, every single year, without fail--it does not matter who is in the White House; it does not matter who leads the U.S. House; it does not matter who leads the United States Senate--we come together as a Nation to support our men and women who are standing on the frontlines for us.

So, no, this is not a partisan exercise today, nor should it be from the Republican side of the aisle.

But I am mystified, Madam Speaker, as to why we have taken what should have been this continuation of decade upon decade upon decade of bipartisanship and seemingly gone out of our way, as a new Democratic majority, to make it partisan.

I know the policy isn't. I know the policy isn't. I can go right down the line, man after woman, woman after man, on the Democratic side of the aisle and find patriots who love this country and who will do whatever it takes to defend it. That is the conversation we had in the Rules Committee last night.

But I will take you back to my freshman year in Congress, Madam Speaker. I came in with that rabid class of freshman Republicans, that largest freshman class in American history. You would think, if we were going to find partisanship, we would find it in that class.

We all came in on that big Tea Party wave, folks wanting to shake things up, change things. Do you know what the National Defense Authorization Act looked like coming out of committee that year?

It passed 60-1, Republicans and Democrats standing together. The year after that, 56-5. That is what my freshman year looked like: 60-1, 56- 5, Republicans and Democrats standing together on behalf of national security.

I don't know if you have looked at the vote from the Armed Services Committee, Madam Speaker. I know you are familiar. It was 33-24, straight party-line vote, coming out of committee this year.

In the Rules Committee last night up on the third floor, Madam Speaker, we finished up about midnight. I had the chairman and the ranking member of the Armed Services Committee there talking about all the things that they agree on as it comes to national security, yet, to my friend from Massachusetts' point, the marching orders came down from somewhere that prevented them from doing what we have always done, and that is report a bill in a bipartisan fashion.

It has nothing to do with who leads this Congress, Madam Speaker.

About 12 years ago now, when the very first woman to ever hold the Speaker's chair took over--that would be 2007, Madam Speaker--we didn't bring the bill to the floor under a rule in a partisan fashion. We brought the bill to the floor under suspension.

Madam Speaker, that very first bill that was passed in the Pelosi Speakership passed 369-46 on the floor of the House; 369-46. Most of the no votes were Democrats voting against the new

Democratic Speaker of the House and the national security bill; 369-46.

The year after that, the last year of the new Speakership, the year right before I came, it passed 341-48.

Madam Speaker, I go through these big numbers to make the point that it didn't have to be this way. We went out of our way, it seems, as an institution, to divide on national security. I will just give you a few of those examples.

There are 439 amendments made in order, as my friend from Massachusetts pointed out, and I think we should celebrate that. But again, there were 683 amendments offered, so 250 Members were shut out.

Madam Speaker, we had an opportunity, under the new Consensus Calendar that my friend from Massachusetts referenced, to bring bipartisan legislation to the floor.

For folks who haven't been following that, the only way to get to the House floor is to have a committee report your bill. If committees don't report your bill, you can't get to the House floor unless you end up on the suspension calendar.

This new majority, this new Democratic majority, changed the rules in what I think is an amazingly positive and productive way. What they said is, if you bring together enough Democrats and Republicans to support your bill, we are going to have to give you a special pathway to the House floor for those consensus ideas that we want to celebrate together as an institution.

Madam Speaker, my friend, Joe Wilson from South Carolina has such a bill. It is a bill to support the widows and widowers of our fallen servicemen and women. He has worked this bill with my friend from Kentucky, Mr. Yarmuth, and this is the very first bill to have achieved, again, this new level of excellence that the new majority laid out. If you can bring people together we will give you a special pathway to the House floor. You get a vote on your bill.

I might point out that my friend from California, Ms. Lofgren, did this very same thing. She did it on a piece of immigration legislation that I am a cosponsor of. She put together the requisite number of Republicans and Democrats, and her bill is coming to the floor, too.

Now, her bill is coming to the floor today on suspension, stand- alone, up-or-down vote to allow Republicans and Democrats to come together and support that idea.

My friend, Mr. Wilson's bill, without his knowledge, without his consultation, without his input, has been tucked into this rule, this partisan rule, this passed-by-party-line-vote rule, to be self-enacted into the underlying legislation.

I expressed my frustration to the chairman last night; that so often we fail in ways that meet the very low expectations of our constituents. This was a wonderful, positive change that Speaker Pelosi and the new Democratic majority brought to this institution. Madam Speaker, it is a change that I hope will be a lasting change. It is a change that I hope will persist no matter who sits in the Speaker's chair over the next decade upon decade.

But our very first opportunity to use it, we moved it from its design, which was to be an opportunity to celebrate those things that bring us together, those hard nuts that we figured out a way to crack together, and we have turned it into yet another exercise in ``gotcha'' partisan politics.

The men and women who will be served by this legislation deserve better than that. The men and women who serve in this institution deserve better than that. And when the new Democratic majority was sworn in on the first day of this Congress, they promised the American people better than that.

Madam Speaker, today won't be the last word on this issue; but it is the first word, and it is an unfortunate one.

I hope that my colleagues will be cognizant of this mistake that they have made, and I hope that they will correct it before it is too late.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I thank you for that second admonition. I did say you wouldn't have to use it again on my side of the aisle. I can commit to you that you still will not have to issue one on our side of the aisle.

I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Cole), the ranking member of the Rules Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 1 minute to the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Cole).

Mr. Speaker, I have become accustomed to your gentle gavel in the Budget Committee, and I appreciate its gentleness here on the floor, as well.

I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Wilson), whose bill you have been so instrumental in, as well.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

You see the challenges that we are confronted with here. My friend from Massachusetts is telling my friend from South Carolina how my friend from South Carolina should get his bill to the United States Senate. There is no one who has worked harder on this issue than Mr. Wilson has. There is no one whose heart is in this issue more than Mr. Wilson's is.

I hope you listened carefully to his heartfelt words, because the key point that he made is that this really wonderful, bipartisan creation of the new Democratic majority, this Consensus Calendar, if we pass the rule today will be specifically turned off specifically for Mr. Wilson's bill.

The new majority can play whatever partisan games they want to, I wish they wouldn't, but they can, with the underlying bill by stuffing in self-enacting amendments, by adding amendments after the fact, all the games that majorities sometimes play, but the new rules that you voted for, Madam Speaker, that my friend from Massachusetts brags about on his website, rightfully so, because there were important changes in those rules, the very first time we have an opportunity to utilize those rules, Mr. Wilson's bill was ripened for consideration before the House this week, it is not simply that folks have stolen his language and tucked it into this partisan underlying piece of legislation, they have specifically in the rule today prohibited him from availing himself, and by himself, I mean hundreds of our colleagues and thousands of widows that they represent, from availing themselves of the new tool created by the new House majority this year.

I do not value the new majority's use of partisan tools in the NDAA, but I understand that is the right of a new majority.

My friend from Massachusetts is exactly right. When you lose elections, losing elections has consequences, but when you pass rules, passing rules has consequences, too.

I am going to be fascinated by what happens here in about an hour and a half when the members of the new majority are confronted with an opportunity to turn off the new bipartisan reforms they just codified in the House rules 6 months ago.

This should have been a day of celebrating a positive new change from a new administration, and instead, it is a day of playing politics with families that have already given much too much to the United States of America.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, my friend from Massachusetts is right. We have made a lot of amendments in order in this bill today, but in the absence of an open rule, we are never able to consider all of the ideas.

One of the ideas we have not had a chance to consider is whether or not we should be doing business through the Department of Defense with companies that have a direct or indirect subsidiary company that is under the control of the Chinese Government or the Communist Party.

The ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, Mr. Thornberry, has such an amendment. If we defeat the previous question, Madam Speaker, I will offer that amendment, which does exactly that. It prohibits the Department of Defense from contracting with any company that is a direct or indirect subsidiary of a company in which the Chinese Government or the Chinese Communist Party has a controlling interest.

Now, on the list of things I would put on the common bipartisan list of ideas,

not doing business with communist China would be one. We have seen that over and over again. We are in the midst right now of ripping out security cameras all across this country manufactured by the Chinese as a result of a prohibition in last year's National Defense Authorization Act.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that my amendment be included immediately prior to the previous question.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, parliamentary inquiry.

Madam Speaker, I am holding the Rules of the House here that say in rule XV, clause 7, paragraph (c), ``After a measure has maintained at least 290 cosponsors for a cumulative period of 25 legislative days after the presentation of a motion under paragraph (b)(1), the measure shall be placed on the Consensus Calendar. Such measure shall remain on the Consensus Calendar until it is'' either ``considered in the House; or'' . . . ``reported by the committee of primary jurisdiction.''

Does tucking a measure into the underlying bill, as the self-enacting amendment does today, satisfy the (c)(1) requirement that it be considered in the House?

Madam Speaker, the gentleman has only yielded me 30 minutes, but I would be happy to reserve so that the gentleman can respond.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I would say to my friend from Massachusetts, I don't believe I have any further speakers remaining.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, I have enjoyed serving on the gentleman from Massachusetts' Rules Committee; I confess, not as much as I enjoyed serving on the gentleman from Texas' Rules Committee, but it is because when you are on the Rules Committee, there are nine members in the majority and four members in the minority.

Now, we have talked a lot of math, a lot of votes, a lot of numbers today, but you don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out what happens when you serve on a committee where there are nine majority members and four minority members, and the answer is, what happens is you lose, and you lose a lot.

That is the privilege of being in the majority. When the American people send a new Speaker and a new majority here, that new majority gets to craft the process however they want to.

When we crafted the process when I was in the majority, we gave the minority more amendments than we gave the majority, and we did that because majorities have powers as committee chairmen. They don't have to put everything on the amendment calendar. They can tuck it into a bill.

As the roles have been reversed, again my friend from Massachusetts is making in order a record number of amendments today. He is making in order five times more Democratic amendments, folks who already have all the tools of power, than he is minority Republican amendments.

Again, it is the power of the majority. They get to do that if they want to do that. Is it fair? Well, we didn't think so. That is why we did it differently. But if that is what the gentleman wants to do, he can do it.

But to tuck a bipartisan measure--and I don't mean ``bipartisan'' because one Member signed onto it or two Members signed onto it; I mean ``bipartisan'' because hundreds of Members signed onto it--into a measure that intentionally lifts one party up while putting its foot on the throat of amendments of the other party does not constitute bipartisanship by any stretch of the imagination.

When my friend from Massachusetts was talking about the rules package--and he is the author of the rules package. I stipulate, no one knows more about the rules package than he does.

His heart was in the right place when he added this new Consensus Calendar. He said this: ``It unrigs the rules so the people's House actually works for the people again. Americans demanded a new direction, and this rules package will immediately usher in a new era for this Congress.''

We are 6 months later, Madam Speaker, and we heard from the author of the bill that is the subject of contention today. We heard from the author, the one who has gone out to do all the heavy lifting, do all the work to build all the bipartisanship--again, not one Member or two Members, but hundreds of Members. He said he wanted to avail himself of the Consensus Calendar to get a vote on the floor of the House, an unbiased, unrigged vote because, as my friend from Massachusetts said, the new rules package ``unrigs the rules.''

Yet, before we have considered anything else on the Consensus Calendar this entire year--Mr. Wilson's bill is number one on that Consensus Calendar--we are confronted with a rule today that turns off the very provision that my friend from Massachusetts inserted in the House rules package to unrig the process.

I don't question the motives of any Member of this institution, Madam Speaker, and partisan motives are fair game around here. We all wish that they weren't, but occasionally, they are.

When my friend from Massachusetts says that he has done this, this unprecedented use of the Consensus Calendar and turning it off, he says he is doing it so that the bill has the best chance of passage in the Senate and becoming law by being signed on the President's desk. I take him at his word that he means exactly that.

But I ask you, Madam Speaker, when the author of the bill, the one who has done all the work, not just for a week, not for a month, but for years to get this bill to a place where it can be considered by the Senate, why in the world would we not honor his request, his wish, his desire? Even if they are going to tuck it into this provision, why not allow the Consensus Calendar to take its course and get him the vote that he has worked so hard in a bipartisan way to achieve? If this isn't about partisan politics, why not give us two bites at making this the law of the land instead of just one?

If my friend from Massachusetts is right, and when we take a separate vote on this bill on Friday, it just disappears into the ethos, then no harm, no foul. But if my friend is wrong and the partisan game that is being played today exacts a toll--and it is not a toll on us as Members of Congress, but it is a toll on the widows of the members of our Armed Forces--then we all know that is a game that has gone too far.

I urge rejection of this rule. Defeat the previous question, allow our amendment, reject this rule, and allow the bipartisanship that this new majority offered and then enacted to come to fruition for the very first time.

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

Madam Speaker, I have a parliamentary inquiry.

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman yielding. I am a little confused about what has happened, Madam Speaker. Are we about to begin a new hour of debate on a new amendment after we just finished the hour of debate on the underlying rule?

Under the new hour, Madam Speaker?

Well, then I would ask my friend from Massachusetts--I only had 6 minutes to yield before, and I confess I did not yield any of them to my friend. The gentleman now has 60 minutes--could I ask for more than a minute of his time, the customary 30 minutes?

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

Madam Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Madam Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Madam Speaker, I think folks are going to have a tough time containing their emotions today. We met in the House Rules Committee at 8 a.m. this morning, and folks already had fuses that were running short.

I agree with my friend from Massachusetts, enough is enough.

We had an amendment offered in the Rules Committee this morning. I don't think most folks in this body know because folks weren't at the Rules Committee this morning. We had an amendment offered in the Rules Committee this morning that said, if the gentleman wants to do this new bill that has been crafted by the Democratic majority, bring that new bill to the floor, but let's at least consider the bipartisan bill that passed the Senate, resoundingly, 84-8 yesterday.

I agree with my friend from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern), enough is enough, Madam Speaker. We could send a bill to the White House today to start the money going today.

My friend from Massachusetts said: Let the Republicans talk if they want to. We want to talk about the children.

I am tired of talking about the children. Let's serve the children. Let's do it. Let's do it. Let's stop talking about it.

It has been almost 60 days that we have been talking about it, with one tragic picture after another rolling across the national headlines. Let's stop talking about it.

If folks have an alternative view, they can share alternative view as they have, but allow us to vote on what the Senate agreed, 84-8, after roundly rejecting the previously passed House language, was an opportunity to serve the children today.

Madam Speaker, I don't believe the Members of this institution know what happened in the Rules Committee this morning. I don't believe the Members of this institution know we rejected that bipartisan opportunity this morning. With this, under a point of order, we will bring the Members of this institution down here to the House floor where they will hear it themselves.

We have an opportunity to act now, as my friend from Oklahoma (Mr. Cole) has offered. The question is: Are we going to take ``yes'' for an answer or are we just going to continue to talk about the children?

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Will the gentleman yield?

Madam Speaker, the gentleman has mischaracterized my statement.

Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker, I have the honor of hosting the guest chaplain today, and I believe you were feeling his words that we are all going to be held to account at the end, as you recall, in that vote series there. Those are powerful words, and it is not just something he shares in Congress today; it is something he shares with our entire community.

If you recognized his voice in that prayer, Mr. Speaker, it is because he is the host of the Touching Lives Ministry. It can be seen in all 50 States and around the world.

He has his lovely bride of more than four decades, Teresa, with him here in the gallery, and he leads back in my home State, Mr. Speaker, Cross Pointe Church in Duluth.

He left First Baptist Church Snellville and was called to plant a new congregation. It is a powerful ministry, not just with the Word, but with what the Word tells us we should do in deed, and it is lived out there every day.

From 2000 to 2002, Mr. Speaker, he was the president of the Southern Baptist Convention. I told the gentleman earlier that, if he can handle church politics, he can certainly handle the politics that we are involved in here.

But the honor for me, because I have such deep respect for all of my colleagues here, is to share a little bit of back home with each one of you.

Dr. Merritt embodies the Seventh Congressional District values of faith and family and duty, and I am grateful to him, not just for his prayers in ministry to me, not just for his prayers in ministry to our community, but to the entire Nation and to the world.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend on the Rules Committee for yielding.

I love coming down to the House floor during Rules Committee time, Mr. Speaker. It is kind of a one-on-one relationship we have with the gentleman in that chair. It is a one-on-one relationship with our colleagues on the other side of the aisle.

Candidly, I like the members of the Rules Committee. We have men and women up there who fight hard on absolutely everything every day, not because they are trying to be obstinate, but because they really believe in what they are doing.

When my friend from Massachusetts said earlier he takes a backseat to no one when it comes to standing up for children, I believe that is absolutely true.

But the ranking member, the gentleman from Oklahoma, also takes a backseat to no one. I have seen him and his leadership as chair of the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Subcommittee last year. He was taking slings and arrows from all sides, fighting the Republicans, fighting the Democrats, fighting Northerners, Southerners, all folks of all stripes, trying to do the right thing for the right reasons.

My friend from Massachusetts says that the administration is using children for political theater. This isn't a Republican or Democrat problem. This is a House problem we are having.

The Senate, Republicans and Democrats, came together nearly unanimously to move a bill that we could send to the White House today that would fund the problems that the gentleman from Massachusetts referenced immediately, the funding shortfalls immediately, the problems in staffing immediately, and the problems in counseling immediately.

Instead, as the gentleman from Oklahoma pointed out, we tried to move a bill last night at midnight. It fell apart because the Democratic Caucus didn't have enough votes to move it, and in the last 12 hours, instead of coming to Republicans to try to find a bipartisan pathway forward, the Democratic Caucus has been largely insular looking for a pathway to follow alone.

My friend from Massachusetts is 100 percent right. This is an issue that should not be used to score partisan points. It should not be used for political theater. It is an opportunity, one among many, but perhaps the most important for us to come together and unite around things that every man and woman in this Chamber believes in, and that is serving our fellow man.

As the gentleman from Oklahoma said, we can start that road towards conference with the passage of this bill tonight. But if we reject this bill and bring up the Senate bill, we don't have to start the pathway towards conference. We can start the pathway towards progress, towards solution. We can end the talk and begin the action. I think that is what every Member of this Chamber wants to do, and I hope they will take yes for an answer.

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

Mr. Chairman, if you had granted me more than 5 minutes, I would have spent much more of that time talking about how good it was to see you there in the chair, but you will just have to know I am feeling it here, even though I can't belabor that point.

I serve on the Transportation Committee, Mr. Chairman, and my amendment proposes to strike jurisdiction that belongs to the Transportation Committee from the appropriations bill. Now, as you know, clause 2 of the House Rules prohibits legislating on an appropriations bill, but the House Rules Committee waived those rules as this bill came to the floor, so the only alternative I have is to come and try to strike that provision.

The truth is that we have not had a single hearing on this provision in the Transportation Committee, Mr. Chairman. We have not had a single witness testify in the Transportation Committee. We have had bills sitting in the Transportation Committee that purport to deal with this topic since January and have not called a single bit of activity directed in this direction, despite having moved a whole host of bills to the House floor already this year.

I see that my friends, the chairman of the Transportation Committee and the chair of the subcommittee, have put out a Dear Colleague encouraging the defeat of this amendment, surrendering this jurisdiction of the Transportation Committee to the Appropriations Committee.

Mr. Chairman, there are times that we do have to legislate on appropriations bills, those times that we can't have a functioning authorizing process. That is not the case with Chairman DeFazio. It is not the case with Chairwoman Holmes Norton, and I cannot imagine, for the life of me, why this House would choose to tuck into the back of an appropriations bill language that should be heard by the full authorizing committee.

If we strike this language today, my commitment is to work with all my friends in the House to try to move language forward through the regular authorizing process and have that back on the House floor this year.

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

Mr. Chairman, I would have said in the realm of common sense that the authorizing committee should be allowed to authorize.

I would have said the realm of common sense would have been that, if we have a committee that is functioning, we should allow that committee to function.

I would have said in the realm of common sense, if the committee chairman supports it and the subcommittee chairman supports it, that perhaps we should have had a hearing where we at least talked about it.

I ask, Mr. Chairman, when 80 percent of the TIFIA money goes to only 10 States, what impact does this have on smaller States?

I would yield to anyone who knows, but we don't know because this isn't the authorizing committee.

The cardinal is absolutely right: He provided additional money in CIG dollars this year. But when there are projects on the horizon that would, by themselves, as a single project, Mr. Chair, consume not 1- year's worth of funding, not 2-years' worth of funding, but 3-years' worth of funding, leaving nothing for any other projects in the Nation, what is the impact of having a mandatory authorization?

I see my friend, the chairman, at the desk. I love working with my friend, the chairman, in the committee. In his Dear Colleague that he and Eleanor Holmes Norton sent last year, he pointed out exactly what I am concerned about today, Mr. Chair. He said: ``As you know, the CIG program's statutory language is not like a typical discretionary grant program. . . . It is a pipeline program where eligible projects that meet the statutory criteria . . . are funded subject only to continuing appropriations.''

The ``may'' language my friend from North Carolina cited, rather than ``shall'' language, is included specifically because there is no discretion to prevent the large projects from sucking all the money out of the funding stream.

I have that concern, and I would love to be able to share that concern and talk about that concern in the committee of jurisdiction. Again, I commit to working with any Member who wants to move such language forward.

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

Mr. Chair, how much time do I have remaining?

Mr. Chair, I know my friend from Oregon, when he talked about rotten politics and those motivations, wasn't talking about me. I know that he was not. If he had been, we would have taken that conversation a different direction. I know that he was not because my concern is sincere.

The fact that so much of that conversation centered on the White House does make me wonder whether or not politics is at play here.

To have the authorizing chairman say on the floor of the House that there is no statutory difference between the Secretary ``may'' and the Secretary ``shall'' is the most shocking thing I have heard in 2019. It is the definition of a categorical difference.

We put ``may'' in there for a reason, and that is to prevent a perversion of the process, the perversion that I am concerned about, the perversion that my friend from Oregon could dismiss if only we would hold a hearing in the committee and allow me to hear from some experts about it.

My concern is sincere, and the concern of communities in my State is sincere. There is a reason the House rules prohibit doing this on the House floor because our shared concerns are sincere.

Mr. Chair, I urge support of the amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, reserving the right to object, my friend on the Rules Committee has made a commitment this year, which he has been following through on, to try to bring order to an otherwise fairly chaotic process up there.

This is clearly just a clerical error, and it is one that we all worked through together last night, so I have no objection to the gentleman's amendment request.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, I thank my friend from Massachusetts for yielding me the customary 30 minutes. We just came out of a long night in the Rules Committee. I say ``we'' from the Member side. We were out of there by midnight. I have not yet asked the Rules Committee staff when they got out of there last night because I really didn't want to know the answer to that.

When we meet in the Rules Committee on appropriations bills, we are in for long nights. My first year in Congress, Madam Speaker--the gentlewoman may have been following it at the time--it was when the big Republican majority came in as the new Democratic majority has come in now. The appropriations season hadn't been finished, so the first order of business when we came in as a new majority was to take on the appropriations challenge.

It seemed crazy at the time--this is a minibus, a group of four bills together--what we decided to do was to take the entire discretionary account of the entire United States of America, bring it down here to the House floor, and consider it under an open rule.

I brought a copy of that rule down with me, Madam Speaker. It was House Resolution 92. We heard the Reading Clerk read this morning. It took Joseph a while to get through that.

We are only considering a small fraction of the budget today. Back then, we were considering the entire Federal budget, and it was right here in three pages. The truth is, the part that dealt with the appropriations bill is only one of these sections. The other two were housekeeping business.

We allowed the entire body to bring their ideas to the table to see what might stick. I say it was a radical idea because I had just gotten to Congress. I went back and looked at the numbers, historically. It turned out, it didn't use to be a radical idea. We have made it a radical idea to let all the amendments come to the floor.

Again, my friend from Massachusetts has a very hard job as chairman of the Rules Committee. I introduced an amendment last night, Madam Speaker, barely before the committee ended, after I had had a chance to question the cardinals who were responsible for that language, and my friend from Massachusetts made it in order. He is doing everything he can to try to make the process more open than it has been in the most recent past.

But if we go back a little bit further, if we think about how to change the culture in this institution, it hasn't always been this divided.

Do you remember the first year that Speaker Pelosi sat in the chair that you are sitting in right now, Madam Speaker? She was the first, as you recall, Democratic Speaker since 1994 and the first woman to ever lead this institution. When she sat in that chair for the very first time, we had an open appropriations process. There were about 110 Democratic amendments that were offered and about 300 Republican amendments because, when you are in the minority, it is harder to get your agenda in the underlying bill.

When you run the show, as Mr. McGovern does, you are able to get all your good ideas in the bill. I have no doubt that every one of Mr. McGovern's good ideas is contained in the underlying bill. That is the privilege of leadership. When you sit on the outside, as I do and as Mr. Stauber does, it is harder to get your ideas in.

So, historically, as Speaker Pelosi did in 2007, more amendments are made in order for the minority party than are made in order for the majority party because the minority party hasn't gotten a chance to influence the process.

I am proud, over the 8 years that I was a part of the majority party here and had the privilege of sitting on the Rules Committee, more than half of the amendments, on average, across all the bills, were given to the minority party. But in this bill, Madam Speaker, again, despite the chairman's best efforts, the minority party received less than one- quarter of the amendments that are available.

What I am saying is, when Republicans were doing this from their leadership spot and we were giving more amendments to the other side, now the majority party is giving not 100 percent more amendments to their side, not 200 percent more but, more than 200 percent more.

By my statistics, since last time around, we have moved in the right direction. It used to be 300 percent more amendments given to the majority party.

Madam Speaker, I don't say that to grouse about sour grapes. Again, I say it with sincerity when I tell you that what Chairman McGovern is doing on the Rules Committee he is doing out of a real love of this institution, trying to reopen the process, but we have got to find a way to trust ourselves.

Most of what you heard the Reading Clerk read had nothing to do with the amendments of the bill we are talking about. It had to do with closing down the process, in many ways for the very first time in my congressional career, because the minority party, Republicans, are frustrated that we haven't been able to fund humanitarian needs on the border.

Now, I know talking about the border is a dog whistle to many folks in this institution. They think, as you heard the gentleman from Massachusetts mention, that it is about the wall and it is about immigration and it is about all sorts of things that it is not.

What we are talking about are children who are in the custody of the United States of America. Rightly or wrongly, like it or not, that is where we are today. And we can either fund the needs of those children, we can either fund the healthcare of those children, we can either fund the education of those children, or we cannot.

What we have heard from this administration is the same thing we have heard from the Obama administration when we had this very same crisis in 2014, and that is that we don't have enough resources to provide for the flood of folks who have been taken into U.S. custody.

The White House made this request 6 weeks ago, knowing that we were going to run out of money this month, and the House has taken no action on that request.

When we had the very same Rules Committee hearing last week, Madam Speaker, that we had this week, my friend, the chairman, talked about his sincere desire to move this kind of legislation, but it hasn't moved.

My friend from California who sits on the majority side of the Rules Committee and serves on the Appropriations Committee talked about the meeting they had in the Appropriations Committee that day to move this in an expedited way, and yet it has not yet moved.

The reason the rule considers these measures to close down the parliamentary process here is because folks are rightfully frustrated with the flow of the floor. We have serious work that we need to do, and when you are in procedural nonsense, you don't get any of that work done. But that procedural nonsense comes from a very sincere frustration that we have very real needs that are shared needs, very real passions that are shared passions, and that the consequences of failure affect us all. It affects who we are in our individual districts; it affects who we are as a nation; and for the life of me, I cannot understand why it is that this issue is receiving the neglect that it is from the leadership party.

We are going to talk about that in our previous question amendment. If we defeat the previous question, we will bring up an amendment to add to the rule language that will allow us to have this important debate and provide these important funds. I will reserve the time to talk about that, Madam Speaker.

But I do want to say we had ample opportunity in the Rules Committee to make the process wide open, and that decision, candidly, is above the chairman's pay grade, and the process was not allowed to be an open process.

So then we also had ample opportunity to close the process down completely. That is completely within the chairman's pay grade. He rejected that idea and made the effort to take some very important steps forward to returning us to regular order, and for that I am grateful.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Stauber), who is one of our young leaders.

Madam Speaker, I yield the gentleman an additional 1 minute.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute.

I find my friend from Virginia is almost always right about everything, so the fact that he is so wrong on this makes it worthy of commenting.

We are not here night after night voting because the Rules Committee opened up the process. We are here night after night voting because what we would ordinarily have done by voice vote, through the comity that this institution, sadly, is losing some of every day, we are demanding recorded votes, because we can't get a vote on funding the humanitarian crisis that is at the

border, a crisis that my friend from Virginia cares about, my friend from Massachusetts cares about, my friends from Tennessee and Iowa care about. You go right across this institution. It does not matter your ideological position; you care about this issue.

We are voting night after night to draw attention to the fact that we cannot get our voices heard, not because our voices are heard in volumes never before seen.

In fact, an interesting sidebar, Madam Speaker: If you go back to the days of open rules, you will actually find the committee made more amendments in order on almost every division than we would have ordinarily had if we just had an open rule. When we clamp down on the process, that steam drives the amendments up. These conversations should be had in committee, not on the floor of the House.

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Kustoff), my neighbor to the north, a leader on these issues.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself 15 seconds to say to my friend from New York that he is one of the bright spots on the Rules Committee. We are doing a lot of things differently this cycle than we have done them in years past, and he has been a real partner and a leader on that, Madam Speaker.

If you ever think that it is nothing but partisan nonsense--which you could imagine in a 9-to-4 committee, that that kind of thing could break out--I encourage you to come see Mr. McGovern and Mr. Morelle in action. You might be surprised with what you find.

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King), a good friend and a leader.

Madam Speaker, I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Stivers), a classmate of mine and a perennial leader in this institution.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds to remind folks that we can defeat the previous question today and get on with the business of providing for the families and children along the border.

This is something that everyone in this institution cares about. For whatever reason, we can't move legislation forward. Everybody is talking about it. Nobody is doing anything about it.

There is no Member of this institution who is more frustrated with that than the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Roy). If we defeat the previous question, we will bring up H.R. 3056, the bill to fund that crisis management at the border.

Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Roy) to discuss that underlying bill.

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

I want to begin where my friend from Massachusetts left off. I have not enjoyed coming down to vote on things we could have voice-voted either. I have not enjoyed being here until midnight on votes when I knew how they were going to come out, when we could have been working together on issues where I didn't know how they were going to come out and where we were trying to be agents of change.

But when we are in the minority, it is the only tool that we have to draw attention. The reason we have been here night after night is not because Mr. Roy is trying to inconvenience anyone. It is because he went to the Rules Committee and offered an amendment to do something that everybody in this Chamber knows ought to be done, and he didn't even get a vote. Folks wouldn't even let him bring his idea. Here we are, in the people's House, on an issue that is a bipartisan issue, and he did not even get a vote.

He is not here to say it is his way or the highway. He is here to say that he thought this was a place where ideas were debated and agreed to or defeated. On that, I think he is absolutely right. He is absolutely right.

My friend from Massachusetts is right, Madam Speaker, when he says that he has opened up this process more than it was the last cycle under Republicans. It is true.

But we have heard Member after Member who said: ``I have a good bipartisan idea. I have a good bipartisan idea, but the Rules Committee didn't allow it to be heard.''

Madam Speaker, House Resolution 92 from 2011, conveniently offered by Mr. Woodall, me, that was the festival of democracy in February to March 2011, where we didn't just have an open rule on one appropriations bill, or two, three, or four. We opened up the entire Federal budget and allowed every Member's voice to be heard. From the most liberal Republican to the most conservative, from the most conservative Democrat to the most liberal, everybody had a say.

Madam Speaker, the problem we are having, I tell the gentleman from Massachusetts, is not that we are opening up the process and so that is why we are having all of these delays. The problem is that the process is still too closed. That is why we are having delays.

I can understand it if you beat me when I am trying to represent the views of my constituents. But when you shut me down, I think it offends each and every one of us.

Appropriations bills have been that loan vestige of openness in this institution. Democrats shut them down before I got here. Republicans didn't improve much on that model, save this resolution from 2011. There is still much room for improvement on both sides.

Madam Speaker, let's start that improvement, start that improvement by defeating the previous question.

Let's go back to where this whole disagreement started. Let's give the gentleman from Texas an opportunity to be heard on the bill from the gentleman from Alabama. Let's fund this crisis that we all agree needs to be funded.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the text of my amendment be inserted in the Record immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

Madam Speaker, I will close with the words from the chairman of the Rules Committee last week:

I take a back seat to no one on this issue. We will deal

with this issue. We will come up with something quick, and I

look forward to working with you. We need to move this bill

expeditiously.

I believe every word that he said. But it has been 7 days and the sole result of those meaningful words is nothing. We might have the luxury of another day. We might have the luxury of another 2. But that luxury is fast eroding, Madam Speaker.

My friend from Massachusetts does take a back seat to no one when it comes to caring for children, which is why we are all counting on his leadership to move this issue forward with the seriousness that every Member of this institution believes it deserves.

Madam Speaker, I urge my friends: Defeat the previous question. Let's have this conversation today, not tomorrow, not the next day. Let's fix today what we can fix today.

Madam Speaker, success has an amazing way of making people feel better about themselves. Doing things that matter has an amazing way of making people feel better. It turns out, in this institution, Madam Speaker, success is incremental.

We do something well together today, we do something even bigger together tomorrow.

Defeat this previous question. Take up this issue of families and their care, and then we will move on with the rest of the appropriations business exactly, flawed or not, as my friend from Massachusetts has crafted.

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

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak on a topic that I think is important to everyone in this institution. As most of my colleagues know, June is National Alzheimer's and Brain Awareness Month.

Mr. Speaker, if Members have been fortunate enough that they have not had a family member affected, then I hope they remain fortunate in that way because statistics suggest that each and every one of us is going to have a family member who is affected by Alzheimer's or brain health in one way or another.

The bill we are voting on today is our opportunity to fund that research. If Members have been following Alzheimer's research over the past 12 months, then they know it has been a disappointing 12 months not because we haven't been funding it properly--we have--and not because the research has not been going on--it has--but because things we thought were so promising have turned out not to be so. We are starting over again in a lot of different ways.

Mr. Speaker, if there is one thing I believe the American people can count on amidst all the partisan strife is the way that we come together to fund that fundamental health research that only the Federal Government can stand behind and succeed in.

I thank my colleagues on both sides of the aisle for their support of those accounts thus far. I hope that as we continue this appropriations season, that will continue as well.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from California for yielding me the time.

We finished up in the Rules Committee, I think, before 10 p.m. last night. I was optimistic that we finished up that early.

It is not the Members you need to worry about, Mr. Speaker. It is the staff of the Rules Committee you need to worry about, because they had hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of amendments submitted that they were going through all weekend long, trying to sort out what are those amendments that could be made in order, what are those amendments that would need waivers of the rules, what are those amendments that could be considered on the floor and not be repetitive.

It is an amazing burden on the staff to have to go through all those amendments, Mr. Speaker, and it is an unnecessary burden.

You weren't here at the time, Mr. Speaker, but I am looking right down here below me at the gentleman from Kentucky. He used to be the chairman of the Appropriations Committee and was the chairman of the Appropriations Committee the last time we came to the House floor under regular order, as my friend from California suggests, and we allowed every Member of this institution--everyone who had been elected by their constituents back home, everyone who has a voting card--to come and offer any idea that they had to improve upon the underlying bill.

I don't take issue with much of what my friend from California said about many of the good things in this bill. There are many good things in this bill.

But what I love about the Appropriations Committee, Mr. Speaker, different from the Rules Committee, is they come to the House year after year and say we have done an amazing job working together in a bipartisan way in the Appropriations Committee, but the other Members of the House who don't serve on that committee, if they have some expertise that they think can improve the bill, bring it on. Bring it on. Let's go down to that House floor. Let's have that festival of democracy. Let's test those ideas, and let's send the best product that we can to the President's desk.

My friend from California says that this is a good bill and that it should absolutely be signed by the President. She could be right. I would probably disagree with her, Mr. Speaker, but she could be right.

The fact of the matter is, the law of the land, as it exists today, won't let us implement this bill. This bill spends above those caps, the statutory spending caps passed by the Congress and signed by the President.

This bill cannot become law at these levels. If it were to, we would have an automatic sequester that brings the levels down.

That is a terrible way to govern. We have learned that lesson over the past 10 years together.

Mr. Speaker, I wish I didn't have to point to the gentleman from Kentucky and say remember the days when

everybody's voice mattered in this institution. Remember those days. That day should be today. It is not an easy pathway to get back to.

I remember when we were trying to do open rules on the Republican side. My Democratic colleagues would come to the floor and offer amendments that they knew would pass with a minority of Republican votes and a lot of Democratic votes. Then they would vote in favor of that amendment to change the bill, but they would vote against the final bill, knowing it would not be able to pass without their support.

That is a great strategy, and it has been used by both sides, if my colleagues want to be in the business of making a point. It is an awful strategy if my colleagues want to be in the business of making a difference. If Members came to this institution to govern instead of to get the next sound bite, that is a terrible path to be on.

Mr. Speaker, if Members went through those hundreds of amendments the way that the Rules Committee staff went through them over the weekend, they would see good idea after good idea after good idea that has been turned away before it could be considered on the floor of this House. I don't know whether those amendments would have passed or failed. I know some of them would have passed; I know some of them would have failed.

There was a time in this institution when we let the votes decide, when we let the membership decide.

Mr. Speaker, we have changed those rules. It is now 13 men and women who sit on the Rules Committee who decide.

I value my friend from California's suggestion that we get back to regular order, and I know it is not an easy path to follow. This bill is the most open we have had so far this year, and yet, it still denies Member after Member, on both sides of the aisle, an opportunity to have their constituents' voices heard.

Mr. Speaker, we can do better. If we speak with one voice in this body and reject this rule, we will do better. All it takes is the courage of our convictions to do that.

I hope my Members will stand with me in aspiring to do better today than we did yesterday and better still tomorrow.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Stauber), a colleague of mine on the bipartisan Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentleman from Minnesota.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Emmer), a gentleman who offered a germane amendment that was rejected.

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentleman from Minnesota.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Spano).

Mr. Speaker, I would just like to ask my friend if she would like to change her last statement.

Mr. Speaker, I know my colleague well, and I thoroughly enjoy working with her on the Rules Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I am reserving the right to object.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from California. I do not object.

Mr. Speaker, while we have many champions of life in this institution on both sides of the aisle, none is stronger than the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith), a tireless fighter for life.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Roy) for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Stauber) for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Biggs) for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Weber) for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 15 seconds just to remind the Chamber that we tried to offer an amendment last night in committee that would have addressed this funding.

The Rules Committee rejected the consideration by the whole House of a measure that would provide what we all agree is urgently needed funding. We are seeing some of that passion here at this moment.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Gosar) for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Perry) for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Arizona (Mrs. Lesko), one of my colleagues on the Rules Committee, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 15 seconds to say when we had this conversation in the Rules Committee yesterday--again, my friend from California is on the Appropriations Committee--and she said we talked about bringing forward an emergency funding bill that is more comprehensive. We are working on expediting that.

I would say to my friend, agreeing to one of these unanimous consent requests would be the absolute fastest way to expedite that if she would like to reconsider her position.

Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request, I yield to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Johnson).

Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request, I yield to my neighbor from the great State of Georgia (Mr. Hice).

Mr. Speaker, at this time, I yield for the purpose of a unanimous consent request to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Cline).

Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request, I yield to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Duncan).

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

Mr. Speaker. I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I will amend the rule to bring H.R. 3056 immediately to the floor under an open rule.

I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of my amendment in the Record immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

Mr. Speaker, we spent a great deal of time today talking about the humanitarian crisis on the border, and that is because, despite all of the very positive things that are in this bill that my friend from California has mentioned, what is not in this bill is one single penny to go to the border today. There is not a Member of this institution who does not know that we need that money going to the border today.

I am not talking about contentious issues like border security, though that shouldn't be a contentious issue. That should be an issue of agreement, as well. I am talking about an issue on which we are unanimous, which is taking care of those people who are in the

custody of the United States of America.

Mr. Speaker, H.R. 3056 would provide $4.5 billion. Mr. Speaker, as a fiscal conservative, I don't say that lightly--$4.5 billion. That is not $4.5 billion to get us through another year, Mr. Speaker. That is not $4.5 billion to start in October and run us through the next fiscal year. That is $4.5 billion today to address needs that exist today, to fill shortfalls that are happening today, to solve problems that demand solutions today.

There is not one word in this bill to provide a single solution anywhere in America today. But if we defeat the previous question and amend the rule as I have suggested, we can provide those solutions today, and we can do it in a partnership way that will make America proud.

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

I would advise my friend that I do not see any speakers remaining, and when the gentlewoman has exhausted her speakers, I will be prepared to close.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, we are talking about two kinds of issues down here today. When I listen to my friend from California talk about all the wonderful things that are in the underlying bill, I can't tell you how much I wanted to stand up and celebrate with her that appropriations season is often that way.

Mr. Speaker, you haven't seen it in your time, but there was a time in this institution where the way we spent America's money reflected America's priorities, and it turned out--you wouldn't know it by reading the newspaper, Mr. Speaker, but it turned out those priorities didn't hinge on whether you had an R or a D behind your name. It didn't hinge on whether you came from the Deep South or the Northwest.

It turned out, when we started voting on issues one dollar at a time, we began to find that we had agreements with one another that had not yet been explored. We began to find, Mr. Speaker, that we could celebrate achievements together in ways that had not yet been explored.

Mr. Speaker, the year I came to Congress, and many of my other colleagues here came that very same year, you may remember the appropriations process hadn't been finished by the Democrats. When Republicans took over, the young freshman class of which I was a part said we need to get down there, and we need to finish that job. It was a Tuesday, Mr. Speaker. We brought up the entire Federal discretionary budget.

Now, that is a lousy way to do business. It is a lousy way to do business. We used to bring up bills one appropriations bill at a time.

There are 12 bills, Mr. Speaker. We have gotten in a bad habit of omnibus bills. As you know, what we switched to last year and what the Democratic majority is continuing this year is bringing up groups of four or five bills together.

But at that time, in the spring of 2011, Mr. Speaker, we brought them all up. We brought them all up together. And do you know what we said, Mr. Speaker, the brand-new Republican majority?

You know how it is when majorities change, Mr. Speaker. Folks have gotten their feelings hurt. They feel like they were a little wronged by the previous majority. My friend from California knows what I am talking about.

You might have expected the Republican majority to say, ``We are going to jam our priorities through, diversity of ideas be damned,'' but we didn't. It was Speaker John Boehner at that time, Mr. Speaker, and he said we are bringing up the entire Federal discretionary budget, and any Member, Mr. Speaker, any Member from either side of the aisle who has an idea about how to make it better, their ideas are welcome here on the floor of the House.

Oh, you want to talk about a festival of democracy, Mr. Speaker? We started on a Tuesday. We thought we were going to be done by a Thursday. We ended up going 24 hours a day, finishing in the early hours of Saturday morning.

And by ``finishing,'' Mr. Speaker, I mean we allowed every single Member's voice in this body be heard on every single issue that their constituents sent them here to address. Every Member of this institution left tired, Mr. Speaker, but every Member of this institution left feeling like they had had a chance to represent their constituents the way the United States Constitution intended.

It doesn't always work that way, Mr. Speaker. I sit on the Rules Committee. We decide what amendments are made in order and what amendments aren't.

In the last Congress, when the Republicans controlled this institution, we didn't make every amendment in order. We did not make every amendment in order, Mr. Speaker.

But what we did do is we made more Democratic amendments in order than Republican amendments. We did. But because, for obvious reasons, when you are in the leadership, it is easier to push your agenda. When you have opportunity not to be in the leadership, it is harder to push your agenda. We made more Democratic amendments in order last Congress, Mr. Speaker, than Republican amendments in an effort to bring a diversity of ideas.

This Congress, Mr. Speaker, when Republicans are in the minority and the Democratic majority is writing the rules, 70 percent of all amendments that have been made in order have been Democratic amendments. Eighteen percent of the amendments have come to Republicans. Five times more amendments were given to the majority than to the minority. Again, we gave more to the minority than the majority.

I see my friends from Minnesota down here saying, ``I had an amendment. It was a good idea. My constituents asked me to offer it. It is germane to the underlying bill. I just want my day on the floor to vote.'' That day has been denied, Mr. Speaker, for amendment after amendment after amendment after amendment. Hundreds of amendments. Good ideas, bipartisan ideas.

My friend from Illinois, Mr. Shimkus, had an amendment, Mr. Speaker, that required that we fund nuclear waste disposal licensing. Nuclear waste is

spread out all across this country. I don't know if it is in your district, Mr. Speaker, but I have got it right next door to me. It is stored as best we can across the Nation. We are trying to license a national repository. We have spent billions as a nation preparing for that. All he wanted was a vote on an amendment that has wide and deep bipartisan support. I think it would have won, but we will never know because the powers that be denied him even the chance to discuss it.

The question isn't, is there something good in this underlying bill? The question is, do you believe any of the rest of us have anything to add to make it better?

My friends made in order some Republican amendments. I told you that so far this year there have been five times more Democratic amendments made in order than Republican amendments. This bill today is better. It is only twice as many Democratic amendments than Republican amendments. It is still nowhere close to fair, it is still not representative, but this is where we are.

There is not one dollar, Mr. Speaker, for the humanitarian crisis on the border. The New York Times in an editorial on Sunday said, ``The financial reality is that this agency is overwhelmed.'' Talking about the Office of Refugee Resettlement.

``So far this fiscal year, it has taken charge of nearly 41,000 unaccompanied children, a 57 percent increase over last year. The entire program could run out of funding by the end of June.''

There is not one dollar in this bill for that. That is what my colleagues came to ask unanimous consent to do. That is what defeating the previous question would do.

We all agree there is a crisis at the border.

The editorial goes on for the New York Times, Mr. Speaker.

``There should be no ambivalence about the urgency of addressing the humanitarian needs. While lawmakers wring their hands and drag their feet, tens of thousands of migrant children are suffering.

``Congress needs to get serious about dealing with that suffering.''

There is no bill on its way to the floor, Mr. Speaker, except for the one you heard my colleague ask Member after Member after Member for unanimous consent to bring. And you heard my colleagues on the other side of the aisle deny that. I understand. We don't usually get unanimous consent requests to prove during Rules Committee debate.

I don't fault my colleague for objecting. But if we defeat the previous question as I am proposing, Mr. Speaker, and we add an amendment to the rule, we will continue to consider the bill that my friend from California is so proud of. But we will also consider the bill that provides immediate funding to the men and women serving us on the border as they seek to address this humanitarian crisis.

It gives me no pleasure to bring it up during Rules Committee debate, Mr. Speaker, because I don't think we disagree on this. I think we are together on this. I cannot, for the life of me, understand why the leadership on the Democratic side of the aisle is saying no and no and no and no to doing something that they know needs to be done. I do not understand it.

But I know this. Here, on Wednesday, we have got one shot to fix it: one. Not two, not three. There aren't a dozen different options. We have got one shot to fix it.

Defeat this previous question, add an amendment to the rule, and bring up this emergency funding supplemental. Do what we all know needs to be done. If it stretches from the editorial page of the New York Times to a conservative Republican from the deep south, Mr. Speaker, you know it has broad bipartisan appeal.

We get so used to saying no in this Chamber. We get so used to running each other out in politics. Let's take yes for an answer. Let's do something we all know needs to be done. Let's take a shot at doing better today than we did yesterday. Maybe we will come back and do better still tomorrow.

Defeat the previous question. Add this amendment to the bill. In the absence of that, I will have to ask that we oppose that rule, Mr. Speaker, and give us a chance to go back to the drawing board one more time.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend on the Rules Committee for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I have been listening to the debate intently. I don't disagree with much of what my friend from Tennessee had to say. It is a bad habit that both parties have gotten into over the decades of my lifetime putting party above Article in terms of judicial oversight, executive branch oversight, and even our responsibilities here, such as declaring war.

But what you have not heard here today, Mr. Speaker, and what you will not hear is why the passage of this resolution advantages us in any way. There is not one piece of information that the Speaker of our House--our Speaker--just came and asked for that we are not empowered to request today.

The difference, Mr. Speaker, is if we pass this resolution, rather than the House requesting this information--as has historically been true--we would begin to request information one committee chairman at a time.

Does that advantage us in Article I, going to court one committee chairman at a time, or are we advantaged when the Speaker speaks on behalf of us all?

I don't know the answer, Mr. Speaker. I am not a legal scholar, and in the Rules Committee where we had original jurisdiction on this, we did not call any legal scholars to help us answer that question. In the Judiciary Committee they did not call any legal scholars to help to answer this question.

Mr. Speaker, I tell you there is not a Member of this institution on either side of the aisle who cares more about Article I and our exerting the responsibilities the Constitution gives to us and our constituents expect us to do than I do. Perhaps there is someone in here who cares as much, but there is no one who cares more.

Are we disadvantaging the institution for life by taking what has traditionally been the responsibility of our Speaker to do on behalf of all of us and putting it in the hands of committee chairmen?

We don't know, and anyone who tells you that they do isn't telling you the truth. We are going to continue to argue about the White House and what they have turned over and what they didn't turn over and what they ought to turn over, Mr. Speaker. That is not what this bill does today. There is not one piece of information that is requested that we do not have the authority to request today. Let's not move in ways that disadvantage us for generations to come.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Arizona (Mrs. Lesko), my colleague on the Rules Committee, for yielding.

Madam Speaker, you heard my colleague's passion from this microphone just seconds ago.

Lest anyone thinks this is about money, this rule today combines two bills: one, CBO estimates to cost $8 billion, not a penny for border security; another, the CBO estimates to cost $26 billion, not a penny for border security.

Lest anyone thinks this conversation today is about helping those young people here under DACA protections, remember, the Republican majority brought two bills to the floor last year that would do exactly that, got not one Democratic vote on either one of them.

If anyone thinks this bill is about protecting folks who are trying to strive for the American Dream, Madam Speaker, I would encourage you to read from page 3 of the bill. It says:

This bill applies to an alien who is inadmissible or

deportable from the United States, and those aliens only.

I tell you that, Madam Speaker, because I represent a constituency that is 25 percent first-generation Americans. I represent a constituency that has played by the rules, done everything right, come to this country legally. Their children are unprotected today, and this bill does not one thing to protect those children. In order to qualify for the protections in this bill, Madam Speaker, people had to have come to America the wrong way.

If people came to America the right way and have been waiting in line for 5 years or 10 years or, in the case of my constituents--and you know this well, Madam Speaker--15 years, 20 years for a green card while their children are aging out of the system, this bill does not one thing to protect them. Only if people came the wrong way are there protections in this system.

To be in the DACA program, people had to get here before 2007. President Obama's crisis on the border came in 2014. This bill today not only grandfathers all the DACA kids, it grandfathers all of those kids. In the meantime, we have spent not one penny on border security.

Madam Speaker, I am grateful to my colleague for yielding the time.

Madam Speaker, we could be doing something together today. My friend, the chairwoman of the Immigration and Citizenship Subcommittee of the Committee on the Judiciary, has a bill that has been cosponsored by more than half of the Democrats and by more than half of the Republicans that would go directly to this issue of folks who have been standing in line for decades and cannot get a green card. We could be bringing that bill today. It has not even gotten a hearing in the committee or the subcommittee so far.

This is not beyond our control. The rabbi who prayed for us this morning, Madam Speaker, said we can achieve the unachievable. We absolutely can come together and do that. This is not a serious effort to do that today, Madam Speaker, but it doesn't have to be the last word.

If we defeat this rule, we can come back together with bills that have been cosponsored by a majority of the Republicans, a majority of the Democrats, and move forward on this issue together. I know that is what the Speaker wants to do. I know that is what the chairwoman of the Immigration and Citizenship Subcommittee wants to do. I know that is what most of us in this Chamber want to do, and we can.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume, and I want to thank my friend from Colorado for yielding me the customary 30 minutes.

It is a close-knit bunch of folks up there on the Rules Committee, Madam Speaker. If you have not been by recently, you ought to come by. There are only 13 of us there. It is easy to remember everybody's name, but you don't go to the Rules Committee when you have important bipartisan legislation to bring to the House floor. You go to the suspension calendar for that.

You go to the Rules Committee when you have contentious pieces of legislation to bring to the floor. I regret that we are here today on things that are absolutely contentious that could have been absolutely partnership bills.

I want to reference first H.R. 1500. That is the bill my friend from Colorado spoke about as it relates to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. He is absolutely right. The way this Congress set up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau when Democrats were running this institution and President Obama was in the White House was to make it a completely administration-driven agency with no accountability to Congress whatsoever. That was a mistake.

But the folks who set it up liked the team that was running it at the time, and so our efforts in the minority to stop that from happening were rebuffed. Now we are here today, Madam Speaker, and you might think that we have a list of legislative fixes to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Not so.

I encourage you to pick up a copy of H.R. 1500 just to see what those fixes

might be. It is a 40-page bill. You have to get to page 21 before accusations and assertions against former Director Mick Mulvaney end, and the important work, like changing the way we reference the agency by name, begins.

I don't have any language today. No amendments were offered in the Rules Committee last night, Madam Speaker, to talk about all of the things that former Director Cordray did while he was there. The list of things that he did that I don't like are long. The list of things that he did that I thought violated the actual text of the law is pretty long.

But he is gone, and we have the ability to fix anything we want to fix that he did. So no amendments were offered to impugn the integrity of the former director. Well, not the former director, Mr. Cordray; but the former director, Mick Mulvaney, yes, acting director. There are 21 pages of a 40-page bill dedicated to personal attacks on the former director.

Madam Speaker, if we wanted to do something about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that brought its authority out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and right back here to where it belongs in Article I, we would make this agency subject to congressional appropriations. This is a bipartisan issue.

If you want to find something that we agree on as an institution, let's talk about making Article I the lawmaker in this country, rather than Article II. Let's talk about taking it out of the White House's hands and putting it back into the people's hands on Capitol Hill. You will not find that idea in these pages.

It is a disappointment because we could be doing something in partnership. Standing for consumers is a shared value, not a divisive one.

I go now to the bill coming out of the Ways and Means Committee, H.R. 1994. Madam Speaker, as my friend from Colorado referenced, this bill passed unanimously out of the Ways and Means Committee. Unanimously.

Take a look at the men and women on the Ways and Means Committee. I think there are 42 of them. These are not shrinking violets on the Ways and Means Committee. I see a couple of them out here. I won't call anybody out by name--Mr. Panetta--but they are not shrinking violets on this committee. These are serious public policy advocates who represent very diverse parts of the country and who fight hard for the values that their constituents represent.

Unanimously, they came together as a committee, Madam Speaker, to change the rules for retirement, to make it easier for families to save; to change the rules around college savings plans so that families who ran into challenges in secondary years, families whose kids develop special needs and might not be going on to college, but who have very real needs today, to allow those dollars to be tapped by those families to serve the educational needs of their children.

Unanimously it passed the committee. In fact, I will read from the committee report. This is not something that was done lightly in committee, Madam Speaker. We are talking about hundreds of pages of legislation, hundreds of pages of a committee report. This was a thoughtfully designed and crafted piece of legislation.

The committee said this:

The committee believes that expanding 529 plans will help

families save for education expenses that meet each family's

unique needs.

We run into that problem often, Madam Speaker. We try to do something that is good for America, and it turns out that 330 million Americans have different needs and priorities. So the Ways and Means avoided a one-size-fits-all solution, recognizing those unique needs. I will read on.

The committee says:

By allowing tax-free distributions for apprenticeship

expenses, homeschooling expenses, student loan repayments,

elementary and secondary expenses, in addition to tuition,

families can customize the use of their education savings to

make education more affordable.

We didn't read that on the headline of any major newspaper when the Ways and Means passed that unanimously. I am sure there was something in the headlines of that major newspaper about wars in foreign lands. I am sure there was something in the newspaper that day about partisan politics and how folks were poking each other with sharp rhetorical sticks.

There was not a word about how the men and women of the people's House on the Ways and Means Committee came together unanimously, not because it wasn't hard to craft solutions. It is hard to craft solutions, but they came together unanimously on consensus language to move out of committee.

It sounds like I am going to tell a story with a happy ending, Madam Speaker, and I should be. This should be a story about how we get things done, but what happened last night that you also won't see on the front page of the paper is, we took this consensus product that was passed unanimously by Republicans and Democrats, and we took it up there to the Rules Committee.

On a straight party-line vote, we ripped out all of the language protecting families who were trying to help their children at home; children who may not be getting everything they need through the public schools and so they get additional education at home; families that may have opted out of the public school system because they couldn't get what their children need, and they are homeschooling their children.

This language that was agreed upon unanimously in a bipartisan way, was ripped out in a party-line vote in the Rules Committee last night. We will never vote on it in this Chamber, Madam Speaker.

The Ways and Means Committee in a long committee report, long committee language, they deliberated over this language and concluded that the right thing to do was to help all American families. But somewhere between that unanimous vote in committee and late last night in the Rules Committee, the decision came down from on high--and by on high I do mean your side of the aisle, Madam Speaker, because when you sit in the Speaker's chair, you have that kind of authority. The Rules Committee is, in fact, the Speaker's committee--that said we are going to rip this language out.

We offered an amendment last night. And I think it is only right that folks come to sit here to watch the people's business. They think that we are going to operate a transparent building here, and we work very hard to do that.

We offered an amendment last night in the Rules Committee to allow a simple vote of the people's House on this provision. If you don't like parents supplementing their students' education at home, so be it. I don't understand it, but so be it. But let's have a vote on it here just like they did in the Ways and Means Committee. On a party-line basis, the amendment to allow the people's House to have a vote on this provision was defeated.

You might not have noticed it when the Reading Clerk was reading, Madam Speaker. I don't want to tell you how long that took to read. We have a lot of things packaged in this bill. You will have to go all the way down to the 12th section of the rule, and the important words are: modified by the amendment printed in part B of the Rules Committee report, modified by part B of the amendment printed in the Rules Committee report.

I will translate that for you, Madam Speaker. That means with no vote of this institution whatsoever and with no consultation or input from the Ways and Means Committee that crafted this legislation, we are going to revoke all benefits that would have gone to families who cannot find the services they need outside the home and, thus, are paying for those services inside the home.

Representative Mitchell came to the Rules Committee to testify on this amendment last night, Madam Speaker. He said that his family is blessed enough to have the financial resources to take care of their special needs family member. But he talked about all the American families who he has met in his district--the Speaker has them in her district; the gentleman from Colorado has them in his district; and I have them in my district--who don't have the financial means and who don't have that sense of security.

The Ways and Means Committee in its wisdom unanimously said let's provide that security to American families. The Rules Committee in an error

in judgment repealed it because six Members voted ``yes'' last night. That is all it took. All it took to silence an institution of 435, Madam Speaker, was six Members voting to include this one seemingly innocuous line that disadvantages families and children all across this Nation.

It is another missed opportunity, Madam Speaker. We could have been here today celebrating the things that we do here together. We could have been here celebrating shared values. We could have been here today making a difference that your constituents have asked of you and my constituents have asked of me.

From the start of this process, for the weeks in committee, and for the weeks since the committee has passed it, we were doing exactly that. In about 6 minutes of voting last night, we erased it all. It took weeks to build bipartisan consensus, Madam Speaker. It took moments to erase it all.

We have choices in this institution, Madam Speaker. We made the wrong one in the Rules Committee last night.

Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to defeat this rule and give us a chance to make a right one. But we only get so many bites at this apple. The trust of the American people in us as an institution and in us as individuals is not infinite. If we betray that trust often enough, it will disappear forever.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, you heard the earnestness with which Mr. Panetta just described the committee's work. You can go through every line of the committee's work, and you are going to find a story similar to the one that Mr. Panetta has told about his family that applies to hundreds of thousands of families across the country.

That is what this work product was. That is what the committee spent weeks and weeks putting together. That is, candidly, what my constituents think we do up here every day: find problems, find partners, craft solutions, and bring them to the floor.

My friend from Colorado said that we shouldn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good, and I think he is exactly right. I haven't voted on the perfect bill since I have been here, Madam Speaker. You may have had that opportunity; I have not. I vote on bills that move the ball in the right direction. Even had I been king for a day, I couldn't have done it better.

But the flip side of ``don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good'' is that this bill passed out of the Ways and Means Committee unanimously. It was perfect if bipartisanship was your goal. It is now good legislation. But with this change, it is perfectly partisan.

I would advise my colleagues that we spent a lot of time when we were in control--and I had the pleasure of leading the rule, as my friend from Colorado does today--protecting our Members from tough votes. You may not know, Madam Speaker, but the way the Rules Committee works, we could have offered waivers. If you wanted to strike protections for homeschooling families, if you wanted to strike protections from families who need to buy more than what they can find in their public school system for their special needs child, you could have brought an amendment to the floor of this House and said: I don't like those protections for those families. I want to strike them.

But then you would have had to have stood up and said that whatever your ax was that you were grinding that day took priority over those families. No Member in this institution wants to do that, which is why it comes to the Rules Committee as a seemingly innocuous line in a committee report and why it only takes six members to vote ``yes'' on it up there to make it a part of the underlying bill. It pretends that the committee voted on it when, in fact, they did not.

If we want to vote on these issues, then let's vote on these issues. But I will just tell my friends here in their fifth month of leadership that they will begin to rue the day that they told their new Members they could come to Capitol Hill, be a United States Congressperson, and not have to take tough votes.

We began to rue that day when we started down that road, and you only get one chance to start again.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, I want to associate myself with everything my friend from Massachusetts just said. Every line of this bill, as crafted by the Ways and Means Committee, was designed to make a difference in a family's life, a difference that every single one of us can be proud of, and no one has a single bit of concern about that language.

The concern is that, instead of being down here celebrating this bipartisan product, in the dark of night it was converted.

My friend from Colorado is absolutely right. Not only was the home- schooling provision stripped out; a provision for Gold Star families was put in.

Now, I will just tell you, if you have any concerns, Madam Speaker, let me speak on behalf of the Republican Conference. If you want to stand up for Gold Star families, I have got Members who want to stand with you. I don't have some; I have them all.

To be fair, that has nothing to do with being a Republican. If I go to the Democratic side of the aisle and look for folks to stand with Gold Star families, I won't find one; I will find them all.

That is yet another thing that unites us, and kudos to Richard Neal, as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, for taking an opportunity to make the bill better in that way.

I happen to have his manager's amendment here, Madam Speaker. This is the language that was taken up by the Rules Committee last night and, again, stuck in because only six people voted ``yes.'' And page after page is dealing with those Gold Star families and trying to right that clerical error in drafting.

It is in the middle of page 3, with looks like seven words: ``In section 302, strike subsections (b) and (d).'' You might not know what section 302 is and what sections (b) and (d) are, Madam Speaker. I will read some of that to you, again, from the Democratic chairman's committee report, from the unanimous legislation that was passed.

The provision allows tax-free treatment to apply to distributions made for certain additional qualifying expenses on behalf of designated beneficiaries attending elementary and secondary schools.

This is the offensive language that my friend referenced that some Members of his caucus had problems with that needed to be taken out. Here it comes. And I don't mean to offend you by reading these words, Madam Speaker, but I am just going to read them directly because I feel the burden to do it.

In addition to tuition, tax-free treatment would apply to a distribution made for expenses for fees, tutoring, special-needs services, books, supplies, and other equipment incurred in connection with the attendance of elementary school.

I am aghast. I am aghast that that is what the Ways and Means Committee decided to do. I am just going to tell you again, Madam Speaker.

The committee, in its wisdom, unanimously decided that we should speak up for families who have problems with expenses for fees, academic tutoring, special-needs services, books, supplies, and other equipment incurred in connection with their child's attendance in elementary school.

That is what this big to-do was about today. If you want to have a vote on the floor of the House that says, ``I don't want children in elementary school to have any help,'' we can have that vote. I think it would lose, and so do my friends on the other side of the aisle.

That is why we are not going to have that vote. We are going to sneak it in, in the rule, and never be able to speak on it.

I appreciate my friend raising the Gold Star issue because that is yet another area of agreement, like the issue my friend from Massachusetts spoke about, like the issue my friend from California spoke about.

Madam Speaker, when you are in the majority in this Chamber, it is easy to get legislation passed. You control the Rules Committee. You control the votes on the board. You get to jam everything through.

I know. I spent 8 years in the majority, and that is the way every day is when you are in the majority.

But you don't have to jam everything through. Occasionally--just occasionally--there are bills, like this bill from the Ways and Means Committee, where every single line is dedicated to solving problems, problems that affect your district and problems that affect my district.

Occasionally--just occasionally--we find Members on both sides of the aisle sitting down, rolling up their sleeves, looking for solutions instead of talking

points. And, when that happens, you produce good legislation like the bill Chairman Neal brought before us today.

We could have been down here celebrating that legislation, Madam Speaker. Instead, we are talking about the efforts to unwind it. And, for the life of me, I just don't understand why that is the path we have chosen.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I don't have any speakers remaining. I have a powerful previous question vote that I would like to describe, and I am prepared to do that at this time.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

We can't always get exercised about every single line in every single bill. We would never get anything done.

We have an amendment process so that, if you get exercised about a particular line in a particular bill, you can bring your amendment to the floor and we vote on it.

We are going to get into the appropriations process soon. When we spend money, it turns out to be one of those issues that people feel strongly about. We are going to entertain hundreds of amendments-- Republican amendments, Democratic amendments.

Some Republican amendments are going to pass; some are going to fail. Some Democrat amendments are going to pass; some are going to fail.

But we are going to work the will of the body, and we are going to do the best we can to get to a final package that we move across the street to the Senate.

My frustration in this moment, Madam Speaker, isn't that we have the inability of moving things forward and discussing ideas. We do have the ability to do that, and we did that well in the Ways and Means Committee.

My frustration is that, when people don't like the way the committee unanimously, in a bipartisan way, did something because they have bipartisan concerns--and, to be clear, the concerns about this language are not Republican concerns. This language was not stricken because Republicans objected. This language was not stricken to satisfy any bipartisan concern of any kind.

This was purely a partisan exercise. And if you want to have a partisan exercise, I know 435 Members who are here all day, who will come down here to the House floor and vote on it, and we can do that.

So I want to offer that opportunity, Madam Speaker. For folks who think this is about public policy, as it was when the committee considered it in a bipartisan way, I want to offer an amendment to this bill.

If we defeat the previous question, Madam Speaker, I will offer an amendment that strikes this offending section. What that means in layman's terms is the bill would contain the Gold Star family language that is very important to every Member of this Chamber. It would contain the pension language that is very important to every Member of this Chamber.

It would contain every line designed in a bipartisan fashion by the Ways and Means Committee to make a difference in families' lives, but it would strike the majority's effort, with only six votes on the Rules Committee, to eliminate protections for home-schooling families altogether.

Vote against the previous question, defeat the previous question, and we can restore the bipartisan consensus language the Ways and Means Committee crafted, and we will add the Gold Star family language that my friend from Colorado and I agree on.

I don't serve in the Ways and Means Committee, Madam Speaker. They have got big ideas they have to work on over there. I don't serve on the Financial Services Committee. They have got big ideas they have to work on over there.

I serve in the Rules Committee. My job is to get bills to the House floor and to make sure that voices are heard on perfecting that language.

If we defeat the previous question, we can achieve exactly the partisan goal that the majority wants, but we can achieve it by actually having a vote of the House on that goal.

I think the American people are tired of things being done in secret. I think they are tired of things being done without the full story being told.

I talk to my friends on the other side of the aisle regularly, daily, hourly, Madam Speaker. I know the hunger from your side of the aisle to deliver on behalf of the American people. I know that hunger. I know the hunger on your side of the aisle to roll up sleeves and do the hard things. Because the easy things somebody else has already taken care of. All that is left for you and me are the hard things.

Going to the well of partisanship, pulling your sharp stick out of your quiver and poking the other team, those aren't the hard things. Those are the easy things. And, candidly, those aren't the surprising things. They have become all too commonplace.

I don't get to run this institution, but I do get a vote in it. I see opportunities for partnership, not because everybody wants it, but because it has to happen. Republican President, Republican Senate, Democratic House: The only way we succeed, Madam Speaker, is to succeed together. That is the only pathway forward.

If anybody in this Chamber ran for their seat because they wanted to stand up here and talk about it for 2 years, we have got a great pathway for you. But if you ran for this seat because you actually wanted to get it done, these bills today aren't doing it.

The Senate won't consider them. The President is not going to sign them. But there are ideas in these bills, Madam Speaker, as expressed unanimously by the Ways and Means Committee, that America is hungry for and you and I can deliver.

Let's exceed expectations today. Defeat the previous question, and let's restore this bill to the bipartisan compromise that the Ways and Means Committee created.

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

Will the gentleman yield?

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the amendment be printed in the Record immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

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