Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 7 o'clock and 12 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Thursday, December 12, 2013, at 10 a.m. for morning-hour debate.

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 403 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield 30 minutes to my friend from Florida (Mr. Hastings), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only.

General Leave

Mr. Speaker, I also ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks.

Mr. Speaker, I think back to a time when I was a teenager and I came into the gallery, and I am convinced that I came in during a rule because the reading clerk was standing there, reading line after line after line of material I didn't understand at all, and I thought, Why in the world is line by line by line the legislation being read? Haven't the Members already looked at that legislation? Haven't they already had time to study it?

What I know now, Mr. Speaker, 3 years with the voting card of the people of the Seventh District of Georgia, is that the rule is the only piece of legislation in this entire body that has to be read word for word here on the floor of the House.

My colleague from Florida and I spend a lot of hours up there in the Rules Committee sorting those things out, but the rules matter. The process matters.

I will be able to confess to you, Mr. Speaker--and I think sometimes we get that process done a little better, sometimes we get that process not done quite so well, but today we have a rule that brings two very important pieces of legislation to the floor. This structured rule provides for H.R. 982, which is the Furthering Asbestos Claim Transparency Act, the FACT Act; and it brings a closed rule for H.R. 2655, the Lawsuit Abuse Reduction Act of 2013.

I want to say, Mr. Speaker, I was just talking with a group about what the Rules Committee does, and I have talked about the importance of an open process and how closed rules don't give folks as much opportunity to express their views on the floor.

It is going to be a closed rule on the Lawsuit Abuse Reduction Act, H.R. 2655, because for 11 days, Mr. Speaker, the Rules Committee solicited amendments from the entire body. It asked anyone who had any ideas about how to improve this legislation to submit those amendments so that we could consider them in the Rules Committee, and over that period of 11 days, Mr. Speaker, not one Member of this body offered any ideas about how to improve this bill. We would have liked to have made amendments in order for this bill, but none were submitted. So while we say this is a closed rule on H.R. 2655, it is only because no amendments were submitted to improve upon it.

Now on H.R. 982, the FACT Act, Mr. Speaker, we had five amendments submitted, all Democrat amendments. One was withdrawn. So there were only four that were in order for our meeting last night. One was confessed to actually just try to eliminate the effectiveness of the bill altogether. So we excluded that one because if folks don't like the bill, they can just vote ``no.'' They don't have to destroy the bill from within; they can just vote ``no'' on final passage. But all of the other amendments that were submitted we made in order. Now these are not amendments that I intend to support on the floor, Mr. Speaker, but I do think it is important that people's voices be heard.

So, again, three amendments are made in order. That is 75 percent of all the amendments that were submitted, and they are all amendments offered by my friends on the Democratic side of the aisle. The Rules Committee thought it was important to make those amendments in order.

Now we will talk a lot, Mr. Speaker, in the debate that comes after the rule about the content of these bills. One deals with frivolous litigation and whether or not judges will be required to allow folks who had to defend against frivolous lawsuits to recover the costs of those suits.

Today, Mr. Speaker, if someone files a frivolous lawsuit against you, you can have that lawsuit tossed out, but you have to go back to the court a second time to recover all of the costs that it took you to have the frivolous lawsuit tossed out. It is a tremendous burden on small businesses in our Nation. This bill seeks to solve that.

The FACT Act, our asbestos litigation act, aims to provide some transparency to the asbestos trust funds. I don't know if you are familiar, Mr. Speaker, but when it was discovered all of the health damage done by asbestos, the lawsuits began immediately and would have driven every one of those companies that either used asbestos or produced asbestos into bankruptcy, leaving no money at all for victims who had health problems that they then sought compensation for.

So federally we created, within Federal bankruptcy courts, these asbestos trust funds that allowed these companies, these manufacturers of asbestos, these folks who utilized processes that included asbestos, to deposit money into a trust fund and not go out of business but to provide certainty that victims would be able to recover from those funds in the future.

There is some concern, Mr. Speaker, that the process, as it exists today, does not allow for folks to see who is getting those dollars and whether or not the victims who have the most urgent needs are receiving those dollars first. Our great concern, Mr. Speaker, is that when those trust funds are depleted, they are gone forever. As you know, asbestos- related illnesses often don't present themselves for years down the road, so we have a stewardship obligation to these trust funds to keep them protected for future claimants.

This bill requires a degree of transparency, a quarterly report from the trustees of these trust funds to see who is making claims on these funds, who is receiving claims out of these funds, again, just so we can be good stewards of those trust funds and ensure they are available for future years.

I don't sit on the Judiciary Committee, Mr. Speaker, but I heard from the ranking member of the Constitution Subcommittee last night. I heard from the chairman of the full committee last night in the Rules Committee as we held a hearing on both of these bills. I am glad that we are able to bring them to the floor today, Mr. Speaker. Two bills, a structured rule. One rule is closed because no amendments were provided. The other bill is receiving 75 percent of all of the amendments that were submitted. Just one amendment was excluded by that rule.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

I say to my friend that I absolutely share his passion for privacy protection. In fact, I had to leave a hearing we were having in the Oversight and Government Reform Committee today, Mr. Speaker, where we were looking at the ObamaCare Web site and talking to the chief information officers and the chief technology officers about how this Web site had gone live without having been fully vetted for security protections; talking about how, even as we sit here today, we have not fully run through those security processes.

I share the gentleman's concern. The gentleman is an attorney as well. I remember when I was in law school and they gave you access to the LexisNexis database when you showed up to law school. You could dial up anybody in the country. It is giving you a credit report and showing you Social Security numbers.

We really do have to have a national conversation, Mr. Speaker, about where we are headed. Those last four digits that were once my private knowledge are out there all over the Internet today. My birthday is broadcast everywhere on the Internet. My mother's maiden name is out there. All of those things that folks used to ask me to protect me have now become part of the public domain. And what the gentleman says about a need to focus on that and protect folks is absolutely right, and we absolutely need to do that.

There was only one amendment last night that was offered to deal with privacy. It was going to give a unique identifier to folks, instead of listing names, so that we could have the transparency to see if folks were trying to game the system and take opportunities away from future victims. That amendment was withdrawn. We didn't have an opportunity to talk about that.

But my great hope is that this bill will pass the House today and that we will be able to have a similar bill come out of the Senate. If regular order has a chance to prevail on Capitol Hill, conference committees will give us another chance to take a bite at that apple.

I think the gentleman brings up very real concerns; and, again, we will have an opportunity to talk about those today.

The gentleman says, Mr. Speaker, there are some bills that are just so bad, nobody wants to fix them. I want to say to the gentleman that I am sympathetic to that sentiment. There are a few that I could rattle off right now that are so bad, I wonder if it is even possible to fix them.

But the bill the gentleman was talking about was the bill to eliminate frivolous lawsuits, Mr. Speaker. When we had these penalties in place back for 10 years between 1983 and 1993, more than 70 percent of judges said that they utilized this procedure and that they awarded damages in frivolous lawsuits. Seventy percent of judges, Mr. Speaker, utilize this provision that we are trying to bring back into being to punish filers of frivolous lawsuits.

This is not a bill for Big Business, Mr. Speaker. This is a bill that has been key voted by the National Federation of Independent Businesses. If you know NFIB--and I know most of my colleagues do--this is the trade association that represents the mom-and-pop shops, Mr. Speaker. These aren't the big, working-out-of-a-glass-building-downtown folks that you think are out to get the consumer. These are our friends and neighbors. These are folks who are employing our sons and daughters. These are folks who create most of the jobs in this country.

And they don't key vote a lot of bills, Mr. Speaker. You can go to their Web site--NFIB--and see the number of bills that they key vote. But they have picked this one out.

My colleague from Florida says that some people believe it is so bad that it can't be fixed. They have heard from lawyer association, after lawyer association, after lawyer association which says it doesn't like it, but we are hearing from the mom-and-pop shops which can't defend against it.

Understand, Mr. Speaker, that today, if a frivolous lawsuit is filed against you--and I don't mean ``frivolous'' because I think it is silly. There are lots of those out there. That is going to be a much higher number. I mean ``frivolous'' because the judge in the case says it has absolutely no merit on either the facts or the law. When the judge says it has no merit whatsoever, but you have had to pay to defend yourself against it, this bill says the fellow who filed it ought to make you whole.

Punitive damages are something we often hear about from the trial lawyer bar. This bill doesn't have punitive damages. This bill doesn't say, if you try to bankrupt the mom-and-pop company that is down the street from me, we are going to punish you. I think probably it should, but they didn't want to go that far. They said, if you are trying to destroy, with a frivolous lawsuit, the mom-and-pop company down the street, you have to make it whole. If a judge decides that your case has no merit--not a possibly of merit, but no merit--on either the facts or the law, the poor small business owner who is being harassed by that lawsuit should at least have the chance to be made whole at the end of that process. The National Federation of Independent Business-- small mom-and-pop shops--is who cares about this legislation.

Again, folks are going to vote ``yes,'' and folks are going to vote ``no,'' but I

think it is important that we say, Mr. Speaker, that this is the purview, those things that are important. The gentleman from Florida says, hey, there are more important things we could be working on. I happen to agree with him. There really are important things that we need to have on the floor of this House, but if you are the small business owner who is about to lose your entire lifetime of work because someone has filed a frivolous lawsuit against you, I promise you there is no more important bill in your life than the one that is before us today.

I also have to say, Mr. Speaker, to my friend who talks about sequester that I think that is an important thing. I happen to be the Rules Committee designee to the Budget Committee, and I happen to be the chairman of the Republican Study Committee Budget and Spending Task Force. In fact, we are having a meeting with Maya MacGuineas on the Fix the Debt campaign next Monday afternoon to talk about what those options are for dealing with long-term problems. The Budget Committee right now is in conference with the Senate, trying to find a way to restore funding to discretionary spending programs that we all believe have been ham-handedly reduced. Instead, they are trying to find savings on which we can agree on those long-term mandatory spending programs that rarely, Mr. Speaker, have an opportunity to see aggressive oversight, to see the things that can improve them, to see the things that can preserve their long-term fiscal viability.

I would say, finally, Mr. Speaker, to my friend from Florida that, as the designee to the Budget Committee and as the chairman of the Budget and Spending Task Force, I don't believe it is the failure to raise the debt ceiling that threatens America's credit rating. I think it is out- of-control spending that threatens America's credit rating. It only takes a stroke of a pen here for us to raise the credit limit to infinity, but I promise you that that is not in the best interests of the American economy.

We all know we have spending challenges in this country. We all know that we have made promises to veterans, to seniors, to the infirm, to the poor that we don't have the money to keep. I think that is immoral. If you don't want to help somebody, then say you don't want to help somebody, but do not promise someone that you will be there for him in his time of need and pull the rug out from under him when he needs the promise to be fulfilled the most. We can do better. This body has done better.

In 1983, Republicans and Democrats came together and extended the fiscal lifetime of Social Security by not doing things that hurt seniors in that day but by doing things that raised the retirement age for me--I was 13 at the time--from 65 to 67. That is a pretty modest step that made a big impact in the life of the Social Security trust fund.

There are big issues that we need to discuss here on the floor. I hope we will bring those issues to the floor. Our committees in the House moved things in a responsible way, step by step, throughout the summer. We could use a little partnership from the other side of the Hill, but I hope we will focus on what we have before us here today, Mr. Speaker--an opportunity to make a difference for future victims who are applying to the trust fund and an opportunity to make a difference today for small businesses which are being victimized by frivolous litigation.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume to say to my colleague that I very much appreciate her concern about the family members of veterans.

So often, we craft a one-size-fits-all solution in this body, and if you want to care for your loved one at home, there is very little help for you. Now, if you want to institutionalize your loved one--if you want to dump your loved one off on the State--then we have a program for you, but if you want to nurture your loved one but you just need a little help, if you want to keep your loved one by your side but you just can't do it alone, there are very few opportunities that you have within our Federal system today. One exception to that is the PACE program, which was championed by Bob Dole back in the day, that allows you to bridge some of the different Federal programs that are available to you and to utilize those within your home, within your family, rather than having to institutionalize your loved one.

I don't think there is a man or a woman in this body, Mr. Speaker, who does not both have a tremendous amount of respect and admiration for our veterans but who also feels a debt of service to our veterans. I will point out that we always talk about the hyperpartisan U.S. House of Representatives. We moved our Veterans Affairs' spending bill in this House back on June 4. On June 4, we passed it in this House with only four Members voting ``no.'' Talk about things that bring you together, Mr. Speaker, as opposed to divide you. That is the kind of commitment that this institution has to our veterans.

I can't tell you why we haven't been able to get that signed into law. I know the Senate has not yet acted on that bill. I think it would be something that would bring them together, too, and I would recommend that to them, but of the 435 Members of this body, only four Members voted ``no'' on our bill to try to fulfill that commitment in order to make sure our veterans--our returning men and women--have the kinds of resources that not just they deserve but that we have committed to them.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

I am prepared to close.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume to say to this body there are actually more that my friend from Florida and I agree on than what we disagree on. I might not say that at a townhall meeting back home, but I will say that to you here, because at its core we all share a vision of what this Nation can be, what this Nation should be; but we do get mired in the rhetoric.

It is interesting that we have a bill today that those folks who represent mom-and-pop businesses say is so important to them they are going to make sure that every single Member of this House knows that they are keeping score on this and they want a ``yes'' vote on that legislation. Yet we have other bills here that the trial lawyers are saying are so important to them that they are going to write letter after letter after letter saying this is not in the best interest of the country, we should move in a different direction.

I will tell you, those are exactly the kinds of bills that we ought to be working on. Now, are there bigger-picture bills out there? Absolutely there are. I would like to see a bill that solves Social Security forever, where we end this business about Social Security is going to go bankrupt, and once and for all we solve that issue so no senior is ever concerned about that again.

We don't have that bill on the floor today. We have an opportunity to stop frivolous lawsuits.

I would like to see a bill on the floor that balances the Federal budget. I am old fashioned that way, Mr. Speaker. I think if you want to spend it, you ought to raise it. If you don't want to raise it, then don't spend it.

But we don't have that bill on the floor today. We have a bill to make sure that trust funds intended to protect victims of a horrible, horrible perpetration by industry have an opportunity to collect what little money there is left from those businesses that perpetrated those harms. I think we should support that bill today.

Mr. Speaker, one step at a time we really can make a difference. I have been reading with great dismay that some of the colleagues that I was elected with 3 years ago have decided they

are not going to run for reelection. They have been here 3 years, and they have found that while they came here to make America a better place, while they came here to serve the men and women back home, while they came here to make sure their children grew up with the same freedoms and opportunities that they grew up with, they have decided that it might not be happening.

We can and we must do better. In fact, we had a committee hearing last night. My colleague from Florida (Mr. Webster) said, I think ``comprehensive'' ought to be a dirty word. Comprehensive ought to be a dirty word, because when I hear ``comprehensive,'' Mr. Speaker, what I hear is we are throwing everything in, and the kitchen sink, and I want you to pass all or nothing on the House floor.

It doesn't have to be that way. I promise you if you put together a 2,000-page bill, Mr. Speaker, there are going to be parts of it that my constituency does not believe are in the best interest of America. But if we pass bills 10 pages at a time, 20 pages at a time, maybe even 30 pages at a time, Mr. Speaker, if we move one idea at a time, we get a ``yes'' or ``no'' vote from both sides of the aisle, we send it to the Senate, we pass it in the Senate, and the President puts a signature on it, we can make a difference.

I believe that that momentum matters. I hope we get a ``yes'' vote on the rule. I hope we get a ``yes'' vote on these underlying bills. I hope we get bills coming out of the farm bill conference. I hope we get bills coming out of the budget conference. I hope we get bills coming out of the Water Resources and Reform Development Act conference. I hope we move these things before we begin to build that momentum.

We are at a stumbling place, Mr. Speaker. There is an impediment in our way. I read some White House sources this week that said they recognize that we have not come through on the promise of ``if you like your insurance, you can keep it.'' They were looking for solutions, but they weren't going to come to Congress to look for solutions. They were going to look for administrative solutions, and they were going to try to fix it on their own.

As we have heard on this floor many times, the Affordable Care Act is the law of the land; ObamaCare is the law of the land. An administrative branch shouldn't just be able to unilaterally change the law of the land. The Constitution gives that responsibility to us. We have got to step up and take responsibility for those things that the Constitution invests in us, and article III courts are one of those things. We are taking that responsibility up today.

Mr. Speaker, we have an opportunity not to be Republicans and Democrats, but to be representatives of Americans in the greatest body in this entire land, the closest to the American people--the U.S. House of Representatives. We have a chance to announce our position, the House position, and move that to the Senate and then, lo and bold, we have an opportunity to work with the Senate not to adopt a Republican position or a Democrat position, but a congressional opinion, an article I constitutional opinion that we then march down Pennsylvania Avenue and say to the Executive, be he or she a Republican or a Democrat, this is what the people have to say; we need your signature on that. They can say ``yes'' or ``no.''

We have set up these roadblocks, Mr. Speaker, where it is not House and Senate; it is Republican and Democrat. It does not serve this institution well. It does not serve America well.

I hope we are going to have bipartisan votes on these two bills today, Mr. Speaker. We are exercising a constitutional responsibility to direct the courts. We can vote ``yes,'' we can vote ``no,'' but it is not something that is peripheral to what we are about. It is something that is essential to the responsibilities that the Constitution has placed with us.

I promise my colleagues this institution will be a better institution if we pull out that rule book called the United States Constitution more often and start with those priorities that it has invested in us, not the priorities that some interest group has invested in us, not the priorities that the news media has invested in us, not the priorities that a Republican Party or a Democratic Party have invested in us, but the priorities the United States Constitution invests in us, we will restore the faith of the American people in this institution.

These two bills do that, Mr. Speaker. I encourage a strong ``yes'' vote on the rule that has made in order all of the amendments that were offered, save one. Let this body work its will. Support this rule. Support the underlying bill. Vote your conscience on the amendments to make the bills better if you want to, but let's get our constitutional responsibilities done.

With that, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution.

Mr. Speaker, I send to the desk a privileged concurrent resolution and ask for its immediate consideration.

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

This is a big bill for Georgia. It is a big bill for all of America. Mr. Speaker, it is so often that we hear about conflict in this body. We all know that jobs are important to absolutely everyone's constituency; and when we all know that 99 percent of our imports and exports travel through our ports, it is easy to come together and get excited about doing things that matter.

We have got the Panama Canal opening for newer and wider and bigger ships, but my own home port in Savannah is not ready, through no fault of our own. We began that process back in the 1990s to begin to expand the Port of Savannah, and it has taken 15 years to get through that permitting process. This bill says: Who benefits from that? Whose constituency is it that benefits from jobs being slowed or delayed for 15 years? No one's does. So we are able to come together and say let's do it; let's do it right, but let's do it in an efficient manner.

Three years is what we have given, 36 months, to study each and every aspect in the permitting process, and to do those things concurrently. Today, Mr. Speaker, as you know, you have to do one study first and then a second one and then a third one and then a fourth one, and you can't start the next one until the first one is finished. Today we say, if we know we have six studies to do, let's do them simultaneously. Let's go ahead and get all the work done. We all benefit from that, Mr. Speaker.

The reforms in this bill go into those projects that are authorized, Mr. Speaker, that represent spending on our books that we know we are not going to do. We say that if we have any new projects we are interested in doing, let's take those old projects off that are no longer a priority for America. Let's set our priorities. We know we have to spend money in this government, but we ought to spend it on the best projects, not the least of these; and this bill recognizes, in a budget-neutral way, a way to authorize those projects that are most important to us while we are moving those that are the least.

Mr. Speaker, I live in a county that relies on a Corps of Engineers' lake. Working with the Corps of Engineers in partnership is critical to my community for our drinking water, for our recreation, for our economy. The Corps has been a good partner, but the Corps is often hamstrung by the laws that this Congress has put in place and by the implementation of those laws by administrations, both Republican and Democrat.

Mr. Speaker, this bill reclaims to this House, for both sides of the aisle, the authority to direct the projects of the Corps of Engineers. We direct these not through earmarks, Mr. Speaker, but by recognizing that constitutional responsibility that we have to our constituents back home to decide where those dollars are spent, how those projects are prioritized. Rather than punting on that issue, this bill reserves those powers rightfully to this House and to this Congress.

Mr. Speaker, this bill is not everything that I would like for it to be. Candidly, in 3 years of serving in this Congress, I have yet to see a bill that is everything that I would like for it to be. What I know is that this bill is a step in the right direction, a step that we can take and a step that we must take.

I thank my friend from Florida for his leadership on the issue, for his leadership on the Rules Committee, and for yielding me the time today.

Madam Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 7 o'clock p.m.), the House adjourned until tomorrow, Friday, October 11, 2013, at 9 a.m.

I thank my chairman for yielding me the time.

Mr. Speaker, I have to say I saw my chairman get on his feet when the gentleman from Michigan began to speak. It's not often that the dean of the House comes down to speak. It's a treat for me, too. I've been here 2\1/2\ years, but I've been watching the process a lot longer than that. I do think there's a lot that we can learn from history and a lot that we can learn, as Chris Matthews put it on his show the other day, from when politics worked.

There is no shortage of shrill voices in Washington, D.C., and when I get back home to the folks in the suburbs of metro Atlanta, rarely do I hear somebody say, Rob, I wish there were more angry people in Washington. I wish there were more folks pounding their fists and yelling and screaming, because I really think that's how solutions can be brought about.

That's not how solutions are brought about anywhere. It's not how they're brought about in business. It's not how they're brought about in politics. It's not how they're brought about in kindergartens around the country.

I have a chart here, Mr. Speaker, that says that the Democrat Speaker of the House, Tip O'Neill, who presided over some of the most trying times in our Nation and some of the biggest deals in our Nation, was often in conflict with the President of a different party. While Tip O'Neill was Speaker of the House, the government shut down 12 times.

I say that, Mr. Speaker, not to say that a government shutdown is okay. It's not. I didn't want it to happen. It doesn't need to happen. I'm glad we're bringing more bills to the floor to reopen the government--we are already more than 50 percent of the way there with the bills that have come to the floor. But it is happening, and it's not happening because Republican this and Republican that.

I commented earlier to some of my Democratic friends about what great party discipline they have displayed in never talking about a government shutdown but in always making sure it's a ``Republican government shutdown.'' I suppose you get points for that in terms of party unity, but it's just not true; nor has it ever been true in the history of our Republic that when legitimate policy differences come about, driven by our constituents back home, that the best way forward to solve those is to make sure you demonize the other guy and make sure folks know who to blame for it.

In these 12 times that the Democratic Speaker of the House, Tip O'Neill, was leading this institution--the people's House--and the government shut down, it wasn't because Tip O'Neill was a bad man. It wasn't because he lost control of some liberal faction within his party. It was because the House of Representatives, the closest voice to the American people in our Republic, had legitimate policy differences with the President of the United States, and that's where we sit today.

What's surprising is not that we have legitimate policy differences with the President of the United States. What's surprising is that we bring a bill to the floor to fund Head Start, and that becomes complicated. What's surprising is that we bring a bill to the floor to make sure that our men and women are getting paid, and that creates the controversy. What's surprising is we bring a bill to the floor to fund nuclear security across the country, and that's what brings controversy.

There is so much that we agree on, and I am certain we're going to find the pathway forward; but I am equally certain that that pathway forward is not going to be found more quickly in depending on how much we can embarrass and marginalize our political opponents. It's going to be found when we agree that there is more that unites us than divides us, and it's okay that we have some serious policy differences.

I thank my chairman.

Mr. Speaker, the chairman is actually the one who appointed me as the rules designee to the Budget Committee, and I'm grateful to him for that because it really gives me an opportunity to express what, for my constituents, is commonsense budget reform, Mr. Speaker. They know you just can't keep spending and spending and spending and never have to pay the bills. The bills have to get paid.

But I would say that the funding level that the United States Senate has agreed on is absolutely in no way a compromise. It's the law of the land. The law of the land, if this Congress were to dissolve itself tomorrow, is that for fiscal year 2014 we're only going to be able to spend $967 billion. The Senate wants to spend $986 billion. The law of the land is not going to let them spend that much. That's just the law of the land.

Now, we don't have to like it. We can try to change that, but to characterize that as somehow moving to the middle is to misrepresent, Mr. Speaker, what the facts of our budget are.

As my colleague from North Carolina said so well, the House has adopted a position, and the Senate rejected it. So we moved to the middle and adopted a position, and the Senate rejected it. So we moved further to the middle, adopted a position, and the Senate rejected it. Then we said, Let's just sit down and talk about it to find that pathway forward.

My friends on the other side of the aisle, Mr. Speaker, are talking a lot about a budget conference. I suspect we'll continue to hear that. I even read about it in the National Journal--apparently, that message is being sold well--but as my friends on both sides of the aisle know, a budget conference has absolutely no force of law whatsoever. Zero. We can conference a budget until we're blue in the face, Mr. Speaker, and we will never change one penny of Federal spending.

Now that's different from the conference that this House moved to go to with the Senate. The conference that this House moved to have with the Senate--where we could actually change the law, where we could fund the government, where we could deal with the debt ceiling, where we could focus on priorities that each one of us has for our families back home--the conference this House moved to create, Mr. Speaker, can change the law.

Let's do something that matters. Let's do it today.

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

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to what my friend, the minority whip, just said. He said, There are things that we agree on, why can't we get those things done? I would say that every single Member that the majority whip pointed out that said, I know they're going to vote for that, I know they're going to vote for that, I know they're going to vote for that--we have an opportunity today to vote to reopen parts of the Department of Homeland Security. I know we agree on that. Let's do that. We have the opportunity under this rule to go ahead and fund the WIC program. I know we agree on that. Let's do that.

I didn't come to that conclusion on my own, Mr. Speaker. I sit in the Rules Committee, and I listen to my colleagues. This happens to be a statement from the minority whip in a Rules Committee hearing. He said this: ``The American people are obviously deeply distressed. They are distressed that when they see agreement, that that agreement is not made into law. We don't have an agreement on everything, but we do have an agreement. Let's move forward on that which we agree.''

I agree. Every single provision that we are bringing to the floor today, I say, Mr. Speaker, is something on which we agree.

I would be happy to yield if I have time remaining. The gentleman knows I would be happy to yield, and I absolutely will.

Let us move forward on that with which we agree. There is not one provision in this rule on which we disagree. And Mr. Speaker, you will not hear anyone on this floor say otherwise.

But it's not just the minority whip, who I would very much like to yield to if I have time remaining; it's the minority leader. The same Rules Committee hearing: ``Here is a place where we are all in agreement. Whatever else we have, we can continue that conversation later.''

``We can continue that conversation later.'' Let's do what we all agree on.

I agree with my friend, the minority whip. I agree with the minority leader.

As I have said to my friend very respectfully, if I have time remaining at the end, I would be happy to yield. But at the moment, I do not. Very respectfully to my friend.

And it's not just my friend, the minority whip. It's not just the minority leader. It's President Barack Obama: ``I want the American people to urge Congress soon to begin the work we have by doing what we all agree on. We already all agree on making sure middle class taxes don't go up. So let's get that done.''

We did. Now some Republicans voted ``no,'' and some Democrats voted ``no.'' But the Chamber came together, and we got that done. We're in the same place today, Mr. Speaker.

If one of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle disagrees with any one of these provisions, believes any one of these provisions is not worthy of their vote, if they do not affirmatively want to see these programs reopen, I would like to hear that from my friends. But Mr. Speaker, they do.

I thank my friend for yielding.

I now yield to my friend from Maryland, the minority whip.

Reclaiming my time, I will say to my friend, I spent the entire month of August at every town hall meeting I could find, telling folks that government shutdowns were not the right plan for this Nation.

Reclaiming my time, Mr. Speaker, I would say to the gentleman that, no, we do not agree because the gentleman wants to continue to support those programs that are putting workers in my district out of work. They want to continue to support those programs that are taking health insurance away from families in my district. They want to continue to support those programs that we know are broken.

Folks, my constituency wants to do away with preexisting conditions. My constituency wants to ensure that every child has access to health coverage. But my constituency does not understand why we had to re- regulate the entire health care industry, destroying the 40-hour workweek, as my union friends have said, destroying quality health care plans that folks in my district have had but have now lost, breaking the promise the President made that if you like your health insurance, you can keep it. There's not a man or woman in this room that believes that promise has been kept. We were duped, Mr. Speaker, by that promise.

Today, however, we have straightforward, narrow bills. Not 2,400 pages of legislation, Mr. Speaker, but one idea at a time. Stand up, Mr. Speaker. Who doesn't believe that the Department of Homeland Security, focused on our Nation's security, should be funded? Stand up, and vote ``no.'' But you believe that it should be, and you're going to vote ``no'' anyway.

Who doesn't believe that the Impact Aid Program from the Department of Education which helps children not just in my district but in every district, Mr. Speaker, who doesn't believe that ought to be funded? The truth is, everyone believes that ought to be funded. And yet they are going to stand up today and vote ``no'' anyway. They are encouraged to vote ``no'' by leadership. It's disappointing to me, Mr. Speaker.

I'm disappointed we can't agree on everything, but I recognize that we can't. I know that we agree on most things. Let's do those things on which we agree. Don't take my word for it. Take President Obama's word for it. Let's begin the work we have by doing what we all agree on. Take Nancy Pelosi's word for it--let's do what we all agree on. We can continue the rest of that conversation later. Let's do what my good friend, the minority whip, who just left the floor, said: We don't have an agreement on everything, but we do have an agreement. Let's move forward on that with which we agree. I could not agree more, Mr. Speaker.

I urge a strong ``yes'' vote for this rule and a strong ``yes'' vote for every single underlying provision.

Will the gentlelady yield?

Mr. Speaker, could the Chair tell me how much time the gentlewoman from New York has remaining?

Mr. Speaker, I have a heavy heart about this issue, as I know many of my colleagues do. In fact, I haven't bumped into one of the 432 of us who is enthusiastic about the situation that we are in.

I will tell you, Mr. Speaker, one of the things that is most troubling to me is the decision to define success as passing a CR that the Senate is dictating. I don't say that because it is the Senate. My constituency back home doesn't care about CRs. A CR is a continuing resolution, as you know, Mr. Speaker.

The only time--the only time--a continuing resolution comes to the floor of this House is when the House has already failed to do the job it was supposed to do. That is passing appropriations bills, Mr. Speaker. That is appropriating through 12 different bills, one step at a time, making those decisions about spending priorities for the Nation.

It is fascinating to me, Mr. Speaker, because it has been years-- years--since this House has gone through that process not through any fault of this House, but because we have absolutely no activity on the Senate side. Again, it somehow is getting defined today as if you do things ``piecemeal'' that you are somehow doing something wrong. Again, that is regular order. Doing things one bill at a time is normal. That is what is supposed to happen. You are supposed to make individual decisions on individual bills.

Last year, the House passed seven different appropriations bills, Mr. Speaker, one step at a time the way the government is supposed to be funded. The Senate passed one and, thus, the process broke down. No appropriations bills were passed. We have been funding the government through these continuing resolutions. Well, here we are again: this year, Mr. Speaker, the House has worked on five appropriations bills; the Senate has passed zero--zero.

So we are here where we are today because the Senate hasn't been able to move anything at all. It is with a heavy heart that I hear my colleagues say we could reopen services for veterans, but we are not going to do it because we have a better plan that we ought to do everything at once. If we can't help everybody, we don't want to help anybody.

I don't believe that is actually the sentiment of my friends on the other side of the aisle. In fact, Mr. Speaker, in June of this year, we came together--we came together--in this House, only four votes against a Veterans Affairs appropriations bill. Four votes in this entire House of Representatives voted ``no.'' Everyone else voted ``yes.'' That bill, which fully funds all of our veterans services, in fact, pluses up the funding for our veterans services not for 3 months, not for 3 weeks, but for the entire fiscal year. We passed that in June, Mr. Speaker, and it sits in the Senate dusty today having received no attention since June.

I don't know about your constituents, Mr. Speaker, but my constituents want us to get something done. They understand there are things that we disagree about, but isn't there more that unites us than divides us? I tell you that there is. I am absolutely certain that there is. If the only way we can find it is to move one small piece of legislation at a time, that may not be the most efficient way to do it, but if that gets the job done, let's get the job done.

Mr. Speaker, I am tired of excuses and I am tired of the blame. The Rules Committee is going to report out a rule today that is going to bring these provisions back to the House for an opportunity to open up those parks that my colleague was talking about just a few minutes ago, an opportunity to serve our veterans, an opportunity to deal with the important research at NIH, and on and on.

Let's find those things we agree on. Let's get something done. We can do it, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 370 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to my friend from New York (Ms. Slaughter), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only.

General Leave

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks.

Mr. Speaker, we're here today because we don't have a ``my way or the highway'' system of government. We have a system of government that requires that the people's representatives come together and build consensus, find a common path forward. And that path has been illusive, Mr. Speaker.

Oftentimes, as the reading clerk is reading a bill, you'll see someone ask to waive the reading of the bill, ask unanimous consent that the bill not be read. I'm so pleased that today we had every single word of this resolution read, Mr. Speaker, because the words matter.

I open up a newspaper, it talks about all the division in Washington, D.C. It talks about all the things on which we cannot agree. And what we have before us today, Mr. Speaker, is a bill about things on which we agree.

I hear it from my constituents all the time. They say, Rob, why in the world can't you all get something done? I understand there are things that you legitimately disagree about, ideas about which different parts of the country have different paths forward. But what about those things on which you agree?

That's what we have here today, Mr. Speaker. There's not a Member in this body that is celebrating a government shutdown. What we can celebrate, though, is a path out of the government shutdown. This rule allows for that today.

I want to read those titles again, Mr. Speaker. H.J. Res. 70, to reopen our national parks and museums, common ground on which this body agrees.

H.J. Res. 71, to provide local funding for the District of Columbia. A lot of folks don't realize, but because the District of Columbia is a Federal district, the Federal Government provides a little money, but most of the money comes from the District of Columbia itself. But the District of Columbia is not allowed to spend its local funds without a Federal authorization. This does that.

And then, so important, Mr. Speaker, honoring our promise to America's veterans. I don't believe there's a man or woman in this Chamber that doesn't believe our veterans deserve the very best service that we can provide. I don't think there's a man or a woman in this Chamber who wants to see our VA services halted or curtailed. We solve that today, Mr. Speaker.

Research for Lifesaving Cures Act, Mr. Speaker, H.J. Res. 73, to continue funding at the NIH. NIH makes us all so proud. We do so many first-in-human trials at the Winship Cancer Institute down just outside of my district in Georgia.

Mr. Speaker, lifesaving research, lifesaving opportunities caught up in this government shutdown, not one of those things on which we disagree; one of those things on which we agree. We have an opportunity to get that done today.

And, Mr. Speaker, H.R. 3230, Pay Our Guard and Reserve Act.

Again, there's a lot to be frustrated about here today. And I know folks back home, Mr. Speaker, in your district and in mine, they have a lot to be frustrated about too. But one bright moment in this debate came late on Saturday night when we came together unanimously and said, whatever our disagreements here, our men and women in uniform should not get caught up in it. Pay our troops first. It brought us together.

Not just in this House, Mr. Speaker, we have the ability to come together, but also in the Senate, where, by unanimous consent, they passed that bill. It went to the President's desk.

But what that bill did not include, and what I believe we all believe it should have included, was funding for our National Guard and our Reserve. This bill gives us the opportunity to solve that today.

Mr. Speaker, we tried to bring up three of these five bills yesterday under a process they call suspension of the rules. It requires two- thirds of the House to support it. But because we unanimously supported our troops last week, we assumed that we would be able to unanimously support our veterans, unanimously support our folks here in the District of Columbia, using their local forums, unanimously support our parks and our monuments, and we were wrong.

I'll say to my friends, I don't know if they looked at the numbers-- 80 percent of my friends on the other side of the aisle said no. They said yes, this is something on which we agree, but no, we are not going to participate in solving that problem. We want that problem to persist until you solve all the problems.

Mr. Speaker, I'll close with this. One of our great patriots during the American Revolution, Edmund Burke, said, No man does worse than he who does nothing because he can only do a little.

Mr. Speaker, I concede that some of the things we're working on today might seem like a little. But we have the opportunity to help people. We have an opportunity to make a difference, and shame on us if we do nothing because we can only do a little.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds just to say to my friend that we have an opportunity to do something today. There's been a lot of talk on this floor. We have an opportunity to actually do something, and I don't think there's going to be a single Member on the other side of the aisle that challenges the notion that, if we pass these bills, we will make a difference for American veterans, we will make a difference for American families, and we will make a difference for American Guardsmen and Reservists.

And I do not believe that the heart of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle is that, because we can only do a little, we should do nothing.

At this time, Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Roe), a good friend and great leader in this institution,

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 60 seconds to say to my friend that there's a little revisionist history in that recitation.

You will remember, Mr. Speaker, that the House passed its package, and the Senate said, No, it's our way or the highway. So the House said, Well, let me give you a different package--one that is a little closer to that position. The Senate said, No, it's my way or the highway.

Then the House said, Let me give you a third position that's a little closer to you. And the Senate said a third time, No, it's my way or the highway. And then the House said, Well, come and sit down with me at the table so that we can find a way through our differences. And the Senate said, No, it's my way or the highway.

The American people know who's looking for common ground and consensus in this body.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Michigan (Mrs. Miller), a real supporter of finding that pathway forward, the chairwoman of the House Administration Committee.

Mr. Speaker, it's clear we're going to hear more ``it's my way or the highway'' from the other side throughout today.

I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Indiana (Mrs. Walorski), a freshman Member of this body who believes that there is a pathway forward and that we can make a difference.

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

I would say to my friend from Virginia, before he leaves the floor, that I'm grateful to his nephew for his service. I, too, represent a part of the world where service is not an opportunity but an obligation.

I would say, as my friend knows very well, this body, this United States House, in June, passed our Veterans and Military Construction appropriations bill. This whole idea that you're supposed to fund the government in one giant bill is more of that revisionist history. That's exactly the wrong way to fund the government.

The way the government is supposed to be funded, as you know, Mr. Speaker, is that we're supposed to fund it one piece at a time--that's the way it always has been, the way it always should be--because you end up looking to see where those funding priorities are.

So this House, Mr. Speaker, in June, with only four dissenting votes, passed a bill affirming the financial commitment that this Nation should have to our veterans, and it has been sitting, gathering dust, in the United States Senate since June.

Funding for all veterans ran out on September 30. We all knew that. We knew it last September 30 that funding was going to run out this September 30, which is why this House has moved forward on appropriations bills. The Senate has moved forward on zero, Mr. Speaker. That's why it's my way or the highway.

There's a right way to get this done, and we've been trying to do it here. The Senate won't do it the right way. They want to do it their way--and a way that doesn't serve folks back home the way you and I, Mr. Speaker, know that they are entitled to be served.

You have not heard one voice on this floor today dispute that the bills we have before us would make a difference in the lives of American families. You've had folks say it doesn't do enough, but you haven't had folks say it doesn't do what it's intended to do. We have an opportunity to do some good. Let's do it.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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

My colleague in the Rules Committee earlier said if we could just get a few of us together around the table we could sort this out. I believe that. I absolutely believe that. If we could just sit down around the table and talk to each other, get together on the facts, we could sort this out. But we're not even together on the facts, Mr. Speaker.

My colleague just talked about how we're taking away 250 years of American governance with this government shutdown. I don't celebrate this shutdown. I wish the Senate would have come to the table so we wouldn't have had a shutdown. But the truth is, Mr. Speaker, in the 16 years that Republicans have controlled this body, this is the third shutdown that has the great misfortune of occurring.

I came along in the Carter administration. I'm from the State of Georgia; President Carter is from the State of Georgia. You go back to the Carter administration, come 16 years forward, Democrats controlled this institution, shut the government down 15 times. In the Carter administration, Mr. Speaker, it was all Democrats--Democrats in the White House, Democrats running the U.S. House, Democrats running the U.S. Senate, shut down the government five times for more than 50 days. I don't celebrate that, but I do recognize that when people refuse to sit down and talk to each other that is sometimes the outcome. It didn't have to be the outcome this time, but here we are.

So we can either throw up our hands in disgust or we can start pointing the fingers of blame or we can do something about it. Again, Mr. Speaker, not one Member of this body has come to

the floor to attest that the passage of this rule and the passage of these underlying bills wouldn't make a difference for American families--and the reason they haven't is because they would.

I understand we're going to continue to disagree, but let's do those things on which we agree. These five bills contain the first of those ideas. And I commit to my colleagues, if we can begin this process today, we can be right back here tomorrow doing more of it.

Wonder of wonders, Mr. Speaker, if we start working together and doing those things that we know our constituents want us to do, we might just find a way out. We might just make constituents back home proud. We can and we should.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 60 seconds to ask my friend from Texas whose words had an impact on me.

My friend from Texas who was talking about the bill we passed in June, I happen to share his commitment to that legislation. It is my understanding that that legislation is sitting today, as it has been since June, in the Senate, and they could take it up and pass it and not fund veterans just for a week or 10 days, but fund those programs at those levels for the entire year.

I would ask my friend if he would join with me in calling on the Senate to do exactly that.

I would be happy to yield to my friend from Texas.

Reclaiming my time, I say to my friend that the clean CR that he is advocating so passionately for cuts the exact same $6 billion that he said is a problem. I agree with him that that's a problem. I hope we won't do that. I hope the Senate will take up that bill.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Radel), a new Member of this body, but one who brings commonsense idea after commonsense idea, bipartisan idea after bipartisan idea to the Rules Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 60 seconds to agree with my friend that folks are not entitled to their own facts. The fact is that the law of the land is the budget number that the Senate is proposing. There is no set of circumstances you can spend a penny more than that. In fact, as all of my colleagues know, beginning on January 1 that number is going to drop another $19 billion.

To suggest that the Senate is compromising by agreeing to follow the law of the land says a lot about where we are in this town, but it says absolutely nothing about genuine compromise.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, at this time, it gives me great pleasure to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Holding), a new Member of this body, but a growing leader in this body.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 60 seconds to say to my friend I know he has a lot of Federal employees in his district, as do I--certainly not as many as he does. I know he speaks from the heart in terms of the struggles that those families are going through.

But I would say to my friend that while that might be his goal, we could have taken a step towards it yesterday and all of your VA employees would have been back and all of your park service employees would have been back and all of your folks who are in the D.C. Government would have been protected.

We could have done it yesterday, and the Democrats defeated it. Now we are bringing it back today, but we could have made a difference yesterday, and we didn't.

I would just say to the gentleman that I know his concern for everyone is heartfelt, but I wish that he would join me in helping at least someone today. We might get all the way there. I believe that we can, but we have got to get started. These bills today get us started in that direction. Again, I appreciate the gentleman's commitment.

I yield myself an additional 30 seconds, and I yield to the gentleman from Virginia.

I yield myself an additional 30 seconds to say that it encourages me that what I hear from my friend is that he doesn't like our proposal because he thinks it's a policy of divisiveness, and he would like to move toward those things that unite us. I happen to feel the same way about these proposals before us.

I think where the Senate is pushing us is a place that divides us, but that these ideas are common-ground ideas that unite us. While we may disagree on that, it does give me great encouragement, as I know it does my constituents back home, that the goal is to find those things that unite us, to focus on those and to move America forward.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, at this time, it gives me great pleasure to yield 1 minute to a leader from the great State of South Carolina (Mr. Rice), a good friend of mine and a new Member of this body.

I very much thank my friend. I do not have any speakers remaining.

I thank my friend from New York for joining me on the floor today.

Mr. Speaker, in closing, it is sad for the House that we have come to define a CR as any sort of success whatsoever. Every Member of this body knows that, when we talk about CRs, we are just talking about varying degrees of failure, because there was a better way that the House was obligated to do that we didn't do.

I want to say to my friends again that no one has said this bill won't help. Absolutely, everyone knows this bill will help, but I want to reach out my hand once again, Mr. Speaker, and say what my friend from South Carolina said moments ago: take your pick. I will meet you on your terms. Either let's take these things that we agree on in government, and let's fund them--let's pick and choose those things we agree on, and let's fund them--or let's fund it all, and let's stop the picking and choosing in ObamaCare of what we like. If it's all good, let's fund all of the government, and let's obey all of ObamaCare, giving those waivers to individuals that Big Business got. If it's not good, then let's focus on these things that we unanimously agree are good.

There is a path forward, Mr. Speaker. We can find it together. I believe the rule and the bill we have before us today begin to take us down that path.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution.

Mr. Speaker, I take no pleasure in coming down to the House floor to talk about the government shutting down today.

I represent the metro Atlanta suburbs, Mr. Speaker; and we got a lot of CDC employees in my district. I know everybody has got important Federal functions going on in their district; but I will tell you what the CDC does is honest to goodness life and death business--serious, serious business. I want to see the CDC open, I want to see the CDC funded, I want to see the CDC making America proud, as it has year after year.

We have to look at how we got here today, Mr. Speaker. I have been in Congress 2\1/2\ years and the sad fact is in those 2\1/2\ years there has only been one time that I felt like the White House gave two hoots what my constituents cared about, just one time. That was in the debt ceiling debate in August of 2011. One time. It was a crisis circumstance, a crisis like a government shutdown--the only time the President came to knock on the door to say how do you think we ought to handle it, how do your 700,000 constituents believe we ought to handle it, how can we come together and make something happen? And we did. We came together, and we made a difference.

Mr. Speaker, I remember coming to this Chamber as a young man. I sat over there, I sat right over there in the gallery, Mr. Speaker. I looked over there on the House floor and there was absolutely no one here. I don't mean not many people here, I mean absolutely no one here. I happened to have the misfortune of being here coming to see the Congress on a day when the Congress was not in session. There wasn't a thing going on.

Mr. Speaker, where we are now in 2013, where the President's new position is, I will never negotiate, period, never, ever; where the Senate's new position is we do not need to have conversations with the House, we have the President of the United States on our team and so we never need to negotiate, ever--Mr. Speaker, if that is what we are going to have here in America, not only should I take my Constitution and toss it out the door, we should just go ahead and turn the lights off altogether. We shouldn't have to have a young man sitting in the balcony wondering why the place is closed down. We should just go ahead and confess that the reason the House no longer meets is because the President no longer cares what the people's House has to say.

Mr. Speaker, I hear it over and over again: it's the law of the land; we should follow it. Now, I happened to hear it in the context of the President's health care bill. I don't hear it in the context of immigration law, for example, where the President just decides what it is that he wants to do, and he just goes out and implements it on his own. I don't hear it in the context of Federal drug law where the President decides, do you know what, these laws aren't as important as those laws so I'm just not going to enforce those anymore. And I don't hear it in the context of the President's health care bill, Mr. Speaker, for the literally thousands of exemptions he has already given to the law because he knows parts of it are unworkable.

Now, we have to confess, Mr. Speaker: America moves in fits and starts. The pendulum swings back and forth. I have to give the President credit for bringing the discussion of health care in this country to a new place. He absolutely did. He brought attention to folks who are uninsured who can't find insurance. Not only did he bring attention to it, Mr. Speaker, really we have created a majority of America that believes we ought to do something and solve that problem.

But instead of solving that problem, the President re-regulated America's entire health care industry. There is not a man or woman in this Chamber, Mr. Speaker, there is not a man or woman representing Americans in the U.S. House of Representatives who doesn't have someone in their district who has lost their health insurance because of the President's health care bill.

If you like your health insurance, you can keep it, was the promise. Do you remember the promise, Mr. Speaker? If you like your health insurance, you can keep it. That promise hasn't just been broken, that promise has been virtually erased from America's

memory because tens of thousands of Americans are losing their health insurance. There is a headline in the paper every day, Mr. Speaker.

All we are asking is for the Senate to sit down with us and let's try to solve real problems that real American families are really having today. For all the knowledge that my colleagues have of these citizens in their districts losing their health insurance, they've proffered nothing, nothing.

We have an opportunity, Mr. Speaker, right now before it gets any worse to do better. We should seize that opportunity. We should come together as our constituents expect us to. We have offered that hand to the Senate, Mr. Speaker. I hope they will take it.

I thank my chairman for yielding me the time. I thank him for his leadership in the Rules Committee.

Mr. Speaker, we've been here night after night after night, I say to my chairman, trying to keep the government open. And to my colleagues on the Democratic side of the aisle, we have an opportunity to work together.

I'm a hardcore, right-wing Georgia Republican, and I'm here to tell you I want to keep the government open. And I don't think there's one of you over there who questions my word that I'm here today to keep the government open, not to bring the government to a halt.

But there are also other concerns. And the biggest frustration I've had, Mr. Speaker, in my 2\1/2\ years here in the House is that the President doesn't want to talk with me and my 700,000 constituents about our priorities for America.

I carry a copy of the Constitution in my pocket, Mr. Speaker, and it lays out clearly our bicameral system here in Congress: our article I, the Congress; our article II, the White House; and our article III, the courts.

The President has been saying over and over and over again as we come upon this brink of a government shutdown, I will not negotiate. Over and over again, Mr. Speaker. I will not negotiate.

So often it's so easy for my friends to characterize Republicans as being folks who are just looking for a fight. I've been down here with my Republican colleagues as they have passed a bill to fund the government and completely repeal ObamaCare. I've been down here with my Republican colleagues when they came back and they passed a bill to fund the government but just delay the most troublesome parts for a year. And now I'm back down here again with my Republican colleagues with a bill that will fund the government but simply prevent the individual mandate from compelling individuals to engage in behavior they didn't want to engage in and to ensure that all Americans have access to the same set of rules that are applying to Congress. I don't know how to be any more fair than that.

Harry Reid said, We don't need to have any more conversations. Folks, we have more serious problems than keeping the government open if the rule book for how this place is to operate no longer means anything.

Mr. Speaker, if the President just gets to decide how it's going to be and that's going to be the way America runs, we no longer have a constitutional Republic. We have something very, very different.

We're here on the floor today to keep the government open. We're here on the floor today to continue to try to negotiate.

I'm very proud of what my chairman has done in the Rules Committee in terms of bringing us together and trying to build a program that unites people rather than divides people. You have to be seeing the same headlines I'm seeing. Delta Air Lines is dropping employees, Home Depot is dropping employees, UPS is dropping, Kroger is dropping employees. You have to be seeing that. And it has to hurt you in the same way it hurts me.

Let's come together and solve that problem. This is a step in that direction. There is much more negotiation to be done, and I hope we'll do it over the next few weeks.

Support this rule, support this bill.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for yielding me the time and thank you for your leadership on the Rules Committee because when I signed up for Rules Committee, I knew I was going to get a lesson in rhetoric up there. I look at some of my colleagues from the Rules Committee on the other side. We have some long days and some long nights up there. But 9 times out of 10, it's about things that matter. It's about substance. And that's what it's about today.

To talk about a Republican bill to shut down the government is obviously nonsense, Mr. Speaker. I know there's not a point of order here against nonsense on the House floor. If there was, I would have brought it up. Because that's nonsense.

This is a bill to keep the government open. It uses the exact same funding level that the Senate just sent back to us. I've got a lot of colleagues on my side of the aisle who would like for that funding level to be lower. I promise you, if we could get the group together who wanted to lower that funding level, we could do that here, too. But we didn't. This is a bill that brings exactly the same funding level that the Senate sent over to us.

What else does this bill do? This bill empowers the government to continue to pay our men and women in uniform if, by some outside chance, our colleagues in the Senate abdicate responsibility and can't pass a bill. I think we all agree on that. I don't think there's a man or woman in this Chamber that thinks military families ought to have to worry because we can't come together on a bill.

We are going to come together. But that worry is in their hearts and their minds today. We have an opportunity to take it away, and we should.

In terms of bringing people together, Mr. Speaker, you know, something else that's in this bill is the repeal of the medical device tax. We talk about jobs bills here on the floor of the House regularly. If you have a medical device

manufacturer in your district, let them talk to you about the impact this tax is having on their business. It is killing jobs. It is destroying American leadership in this area.

This is not a divisive issue. We agree on this issue here. Our friends in the Senate, Mr. Speaker, voted 79-20 in favor of this very same issue.

I understand folks are worn out, Mr. Speaker. It's been a long weekend. It's been a long couple of weeks. But the American people deserve to know the truth of what's going on here on the floor tonight.

The truth is the passage of this rule and this underlying legislation keeps the doors of the government open; repeals the job-killing medical device tax that both the House and Senate have said they wanted to repeal; protects changes of the Affordable Care Act that American families have come to depend on, like keeping children on their policies; but eliminates all of the uncertainty of all of the broken portions of the Affordable Care Act, all of the broken portions of ObamaCare, all of the portions that have already seen 1,200 waivers-- and waivers again just yesterday. It doesn't ask to repeal it, Mr. Speaker. It asks to delay it for 1 year so all the uncertainty that's happened can be explored.

Every Member in this Chamber has someone in his district who has lost their insurance policy, Mr. Speaker. Everyone in this Chamber has a person in their district who heard from the President of the United States: If you like your insurance policy, you can keep it. And every single one of you know, Mr. Speaker, that someone in your district has had that promise broken for them.

Let's keep what's working. Let's stop what's broken. Let's come together. Let's get this passed. We owe it to the American people.

Mr. Speaker, I serve on the Budget Committee. Yesterday, we had a hearing with the Director of the Congressional Budget Office. That's the nonpartisan group that does the scoring and that talks about what the impact of the decisions we make here will have on Americans, on taxpayers, on future generations.

We all know that the largest costs we have in the Federal budget are driven by health care. That's why we are focused so much on bringing health care costs down. In the midst of that, we are developing an entirely new Federal health care benefit in this country, and the Congressional Budget Office, Mr. Speaker, said this: that of all the Federal health care costs that will be paid over the next 10 years, more than half will be brand new costs from ObamaCare.

This is already the biggest expense we have, and we are going to double it. That's why this is a budget issue. That's why we are talking about it in the time of funding the government and funding the national debt.

Mr. Speaker, this bill will bankrupt us. We must take care of families in our districts. We must address preexisting conditions. We must cover children--but we must do it in a way that does not bankrupt America.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume to talk about an amendment that recognizes that knowledge is power.

So often today, we've talked about what we can do to make the government more accountable to the people. One of those things is entailed in the underlying bill that says, for these big rules that make a big difference, tell us what it is that you did. How did you come to this decision that this is the rule that you want to implement? My amendment goes one step further and asks for the underlying data on which that decision was made. We want to know what those calculations were.

It's going to be a good step forward if we can get agencies to share with us their modeling, but one step further would be those calculations that went into the modeling and came out of the modeling. What about the underlying data, Mr. Chairman? How in the world can we be in a conversation with the American people as the Congress with the agencies if we don't have access to the underlying data?

This is not a trade secret. This is not private information. This is the information that the agency uses to promulgate these rules that will then govern the entire United States of America. We simply say, if the disclosure of that data won't violate any laws, if it won't violate any trade secrets, if it's not going to be in violation of any applicable Federal laws, share that with America, post that on your Web page so that anyone who is interested in understanding how it is that these decisions that often go on behind closed doors, that often go on without the oversight of the public, not just what did you decide, but how did you decide it.

It's very difficult, whether you're a Republican or whether you're a Democrat, to hold the considered experts at these agencies accountable if you can't see the underlying data that went into their calculations. It's a simple amendment that says please share that with us. We're not questioning your expertise. We simply want to be a part of that process.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 15 seconds to say nothing can be further from the truth. There is a specific provision in this amendment that says you shall not disclose anything for which the disclosure would violate your commitments under Federal law. All we're asking is for whatever EPA saw, whatever the agency saw to make their decision. If it was good enough for the agency, shouldn't it be good enough for Congress as well?

With that, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Cassidy).

Mr. Chairman, how much time remains?

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time to say that I think I speak for most of America that says I understand the government has to make decisions, but since the government is making those decisions on my behalf, shouldn't the government share with me the data that it uses to make those decisions?

The gentleman says this is going to hold EPA to a higher standard than the other agencies. I would say to the gentleman, you can look forward to me being back with this same amendment for absolutely every agency.

All we're saying is if you've seen the data, if you've utilized the data, if you believe this is sound enough science on which to base a regulation that is going to cost not $1, not $100, not $1,000, not $1 million, but more than $1 billion, isn't it worth sharing with the American people how you reached that conclusion?

Mr. Chairman, the work that we do here, we should be proud enough of to share with absolutely anyone who asks. This is about transparency. And even if you don't support the underlying bill--I'm a strong supporter, but even if you don't--you should support in the context of transparency providing the underlying materials to the American public that went into this decisionmaking process.

Mr. Chairman, this is a great step forward as a transparency tool for the American public to restore that faith in government that has been lost.

I rise in strong support of the underlying bill and ask my colleagues to support the amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I ask that the gentlewoman's words be taken down.

Mr. Speaker, I withdraw my demand.