Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 280 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern), 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 have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks.

Mr. Speaker, I have a confession to make to you. In fact, I have two confessions to make.

The first is I have got a big group up in the Rules Committee right now. It is my Gwinnett County Chamber of Commerce. It is an amazing county, tremendous diversity, tremendous record of success in solving problems. They have been up there visiting with leaders all day long.

I first met with them this morning while Mr. McGovern was down here on the floor during 5 minutes. I said: Well, this is a 5-minute time. You can step right through the doors there, if you would like to see it.

They said: Who is on the floor?

I said: Well, it is this fellow right here. His name tag is there in the Rules Committee. He is down there, #endhunger.

I said: The gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern) and I can disagree on all sorts of issues, all sorts of public policy, but there is nobody in this institution who has a heart for service on the issue of hunger more than Jim McGovern does.

I said: Here he is. He is representing Massachusetts, of all places, and he has chosen to serve on the Agriculture Committee. If you are a Georgian, you serve on the Agriculture Committee because you grow cotton and peanuts and row crop after row crop after row crop. When you are from Massachusetts and you sit on the Agriculture Committee, you want to end childhood hunger, you want to feed people.

I tell you that as a confession, Mr. Speaker, because I am not going to confess to sharing my admiration for Jim McGovern all that often on the House floor, but I was with folks up there today who really do commit themselves to making a difference in our county. It was nice to have a colleague on the floor--again, with whom I disagree about much-- who was putting everything he had, as he does every day, into an issue that he cares a lot about.

That is all my constituents back home want, Mr. Speaker, is to believe that we have sincere, earnest folks working on sincere and difficult issues. So I thank the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern) for that.

My second confession, Mr. Speaker, is that ordinarily I really enjoy listening to the Reading Clerk read the rule. It gets me all wound up about how the process is. Of course, today she was talking about all the amendments we are going to make in order. We are making every single amendment offered by both sides of the aisle in order on this underlying bill.

I found myself thinking back to the days when I was a young man and I came up here with my class. I was sitting up here in the gallery, and I walked into the floor at a time when the Reading Clerk was just standing up there reading. There was no cheat sheet that they give you in the gallery, Mr. Speaker. You don't have any idea whether they are going to read for 20 seconds or 20 minutes. For all you know, they are going to read for the rest of the afternoon, and it was hard to follow.

I get a cheat sheet here that my staff gives me before each rule. I didn't enjoy it as much today as I ordinarily do, Mr. Speaker, because there is a lot of procedural work in this rule.

We are coming up on a bunch of big deadlines. So there is the ability to bring up suspensions. These are commonsense bills that two-thirds of the House agree on. You can bring those up at any time. That provision is made in this rule.

There is the ability to bring things up the same day. If the Rules Committee goes up and passes a new rule, we can bring that bill to the floor immediately. Ordinarily that would lay over for 24 hours. But because there are so many things we are trying to get done, we waived that.

All of those procedural issues, Mr. Speaker, get in the way of my favorite part of the rule, which is that every single Member of this body had a chance to come up to the Rules Committee, offer their ideas for how we can make this bill better, and the Rules Committee made every single one of them in order. Let me tell you more about that.

This House Resolution 280, Mr. Speaker, is the structured rule for the consideration of H.R. 1694. If you happen to tune into our Rules Committee web feed, Mr. Speaker, you can see it at rules.house.gov if you are not able to get up there with us as we meet sometimes late at night.

This House Resolution 280 is for the consideration of H.R. 1694, the Fannie and Freddie Open Records Act of 2017. Now, folks know a lot about open records, Mr. Speaker. It is that procedure--it is called FOIA, the Freedom of Information Act--where any member of the United States community board of directors--that would be any United States citizen--can write and say: this is my government, and I want some information about what is going on. That has been a very fundamental part of who we are as a people for as long as you and I have been alive.

What is unusual, though, is the way the Federal Government has gotten involved in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to the tune of about $187 billion--billion with a B, Mr. Speaker. The American taxpayer bailed out these two private institutions making the American taxpayer, making the U.S. Government the largest shareholder in both of these institutions.

So we found ourselves in a unique situation of having the American taxpayers in charge of an institution with no ability, through the Freedom of Information Act, to request information from that entity. It just hadn't come up that often. Thank goodness we haven't had to bail out folks that way in the past.

Mr. Speaker, these entities that Fannie and Freddie are a part--we called them government-sponsored enterprises--they just haven't historically been the subject of that kind of taxpayer scrutiny, but times are changing.

This bill, Mr. Speaker, went through the regular order process. Hearings were held. Markups were held. It came out of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. If you have not looked into government reform, Mr. Speaker, it is not often that the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is moving unanimous legislation.

The Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is a tough committee to serve on. I served there in my first term here, Mr. Speaker. It is the hardest things about our government, how we hold each other accountable. Of course, where you stand sometimes depends on where you sit here. If you sit on the left or you sit on the right, you might feel differently about government reform and accountability.

This bill passed out of this committee on a voice vote, Mr. Speaker. The most collaborative of efforts moved this bill to the floor.

Then when we got it in the Rules Committee, we had several Members say: I think we can make this bill better. I think we can make this bill even better.

These were Members who may not have had a chance to fix those issues on the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Again, as I said, we made all amendments in order from both sides of the aisle. I believe that totals three today, Mr. Speaker. But the take-home message for me is, if you had an idea about how to fix this bill, the folks in the Rules Committee made that opportunity available to you.

Mr. Speaker, we can't do the big things every single day of the week. Every piece of legislation we pass, unless we stuff everything into it, can't do everything for everyone. Candidly, I am opposed to stuffing everything into a piece of legislation. I am glad when we have an opportunity to move one issue, one subject, one topic at a time and deliver on behalf of the American people.

Mr. Speaker, this structured rule, House Resolution 280, is a good bill. It

is a good resolution that, if passed, will provide for the consideration of the underlying legislation, H.R. 1694, which, if passed, will provide the American taxpayer, for the first time, the accountability that they deserve for the $187 billion in taxpayer support that Fannie and Freddie have received. I am proud to be associated with that.

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

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

I would tell my friend that I think this is exactly the right way to be moving legislation, and I am proud that we are doing it. Big bills are hard and big

bills are sloppy. Can we do better on big bills? Of course we can. Of course we can.

But you and I have been on the Rules Committee together, Mr. Speaker. The Rules Committee process, you have seen it happen. If I am down here talking about a small bill that everybody agrees on, folks want to know why it is we are not doing something bigger. And when I bring a big bill down here tomorrow, folks are going to want to know why I have rushed it to the floor and we are not doing something that has more bipartisan agreement on it instead.

These issues are hard, and that is why they have sent serious men and women here to try to solve them. I want to do everything that my friend from Massachusetts has talked about, Mr. Speaker. I want to see a healthcare bill go across the floor. I want to see a full-year funding bill go across the floor. Shoot, I don't stop there. I want to see the budget go across the floor. I want to see a transportation and infrastructure bill go across the floor. I have got a tax bill I want to see go across the floor. The list is long.

And while my friend from Massachusetts and I are down here working on this, I have got 433 other colleagues out there working on that, and my great hope is that we are going to deliver on those things in the very near future, too.

But today, Mr. Speaker, today isn't a day for recriminations. Today is a day for celebrations, in that what we have here is a bill that we have worked through the regular order process.

You are not going to hear one person, Mr. Speaker, not one, come down to the floor and say this bill wasn't moved through the process in the right way. You are not going to hear one person come down to the floor and say their voice was silenced on this bill. You are not going to hear one person come down to the floor and say their input was turned away on this bill.

We do so much that we wish we could do better, Mr. Speaker. When we have these opportunities to celebrate those things we are doing right, I sometimes wish we would take a little more time to focus on our successes. There will always be time to turn our attention back to our failures.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I would say to my friends on the other side of the aisle that they had me at hello. When they said this was a great bill underlying this resolution and they didn't see any controversy, they thought we ought to pass this and they thought this was a good step forward for the American people, yet you had me. I would like to do that.

I remember, Mr. Speaker, a friend of mine, his name was Jay Pierson. He served in this institution for over four decades. His job was not to be particularly partisan one way or the other. His job was to make sure this place functioned. I wonder what goes on over the 40 years of changes in the way that we treat each other on the House floor and the way that we work with each other on the House floor.

My friends have a perfectly legitimate concern. In fact, they brought it up as a privileged resolution already this year. It has been tabled. I recognize that my friends and I have disagreements--vast disagreements--in numerous areas of public policy, but today we have a chance to talk about one of the agreements that we have. I wonder, Mr. Speaker, what folks back home watching think. Do they think, just like the media loves to report, that, golly, those guys can't even agree on what time to start in the morning?

For Pete's sake, we have worked a bill through the process, just like we learned about in civics class. Don't make me sing ``I'm just a bill, and I'm sitting here on Capitol Hill,'' Mr. Speaker, because that is exactly the process that we all want bills to go through, and we have done that here today.

We can't even take a moment to talk about how successfully we have worked together, not even a moment to talk about how the process worked, not even a moment to talk about how we delivered for folks. We have to shift gears to something that is not even the topic of the bill today. We will have time to talk about every controversy we want. If folks want to go fisticuffs with one another, I am certain we will make time for that, but right now we have a chance to talk about those things that unite us.

In the spirit of dispelling those myths, Mr. Speaker, dispelling those

myths that things don't get done around here, dispelling those myths that we don't respect each other, and dispelling those myths that we can't work together, I want to dispel the myth that what this underlying rule does is it provides Republicans with a pathway for doing whatever it is they want to do whenever it is they want to do it, because that doesn't really sound like fair play. I wouldn't want to support such a bill either.

What this rule does do is, contrary to the rules, allow us to bring up suspension bills at any time. Now, what a suspension bill is, Mr. Speaker, as you know, it is a bill that can pass not with a simple majority, but with a two-thirds majority. So this rule says, forbid the thought, should bipartisanship break out in the next 72 hours, you all should be able to bring those bills to the floor and deliver it for the American people.

Well, dag gum it, I support that. I don't look at that as a way of Republicans to manipulate the system. I look at it as a way for the United States Congress to deliver on behalf of the system, and I am glad we are doing it.

Number two, the bill says, if the Rules Committee, in its wisdom, passes a rule to bring a bill to the floor rather than have that bill lay over for a night, you can bring that bill to the floor directly. So my friend is absolutely right when he says that passing this rule would allow us to rush legislation to the floor. It would rush that commonsense, bipartisan legislation that two-thirds of us would agree on, we can rush those results across the finish line for the American people; and, if the Rules Committee acts and we pass that rule on the floor of the House, it will allow us to consider the legislation that that rule would bring to the floor on the same day instead of waiting 24 hours.

Now, what my friend says about having an opportunity to read the bills is critically important--critically important. I want to point out because, again, folks have so many concerns about what goes on in this institution, I got lots of things I can gripe about, but when we are getting it right, I want to make sure that we are telling folks that we are getting it right.

This tradition of self-flagellation in this institution drives me crazy because, when we tear ourselves down, Mr. Speaker, it is not us who bears the cost of that. It is our constituents. It is the board of directors of the United States of America. It is the folks who come beyond us.

We have a responsibility to lead this institution, and when we are doing it right, we ought to tell the American people that we are doing it right. For example, there might be a healthcare vote that comes to the floor of this House in the next 24, 48 hours. I don't want to get my expectations high for that, Mr. Speaker, but I sure would be enthusiastic if that happened. If that were to happen, my friend is exactly right: we will go to the Rules Committee; we will pass a rule; we will bring it to the floor; and we will bring it up the same day. But the language was posted yesterday, and the vote wouldn't happen until tomorrow. So when folks say let's leave the language out there for folks to have a chance to read it, let's not rush something through, we have got 3 days built into the system.

That is not a rule of the House. I want to make that clear. There is no rule in this institution that says you have got to present a bill before you can pass a bill to read it and find out what is in it. This is not a rule of this House. It is a policy of ours. It is a policy of who we are and of let's do this; let's make this our commitment to make this happen. Mr. Speaker, it does not always happen, but most of the time it does. I celebrate that success.

Again, thinking about those things that unite us instead of divide us, I just listened to my friend, Ms. Clark of Massachusetts, make an incredibly eloquent plea for her bill. She said, if we defeat the previous question--that vote is coming up very soon--we will take up her piece of legislation, which was just handed to me about 3\1/2\ minutes ago.

Mr. Speaker, I get it that sometimes people think that they have such urgent ideas that those ideas need to come to the floor in a hurry. I will settle for either outcome: that it is okay that we bring ideas to the floor in a hurry and that it is okay if you hand somebody a bill 3\1/2\ minutes ago and tell them you want to bring it to the floor 30 minutes from now. If that is okay, then let that be okay. If what we need is for bills to lay overnight, then let that be okay.

We have a process here that is built on mutual respect, that is built on years of tradition that men and women paid a tremendous price for, that they provided tremendous leadership for. In the name of short-term political gains, I want to make sure that we don't tear down those long-term policy successes.

This institution should be a source of pride for the American people. I don't believe that it is today. The responsibility of making it that source of pride falls on you and me. We are the only ones who can get that job done. We have an opportunity today to do just a little bit of that, and I hope we take advantage of that.

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

Mr. Speaker, I have no further speakers, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, I heard a group of constituents ask one of our freshman Members what they found to be the most surprising part of this institution, having served here for about 100 days, and it was with no small amount of joy that they gave exactly the same answer that I would have given after my first 100 days. They said to their constituents: What really surprised me is how earnest, hardworking, conscientious, dedicated, and how committed each and every Member of this institution is.

There are a couple of bad apples that don't follow under that perspective, but, by and large, the surprise when you get elected to Congress is about the high quality of the people who you get to work with, the commitment of the people you get to work with, the conviction of the people who you get to work with.

What you have heard from my friend from Massachusetts, Mr. Speaker, I will tell you, is 100 percent authentic. There is no one down here playing for the cameras today. I could make a powerful case that while cameras provide a great deal of sunlight, they create a great deal of unnecessary heat, as well. Folks sometimes are performing for cameras in this institution, but not my friend from Massachusetts.

What you heard from my friend from Massachusetts was absolutely sincere concern about public policy. I agree with him. I believe we should have an open and deliberative process in this institution.

You and I and my friend from Massachusetts don't work for the leadership. The leadership works for us. There is not one Member of the leadership team who votes for me. I vote for them.

We have an opportunity to direct the way this institution is led. Candidly, I couldn't be more proud than I am of the way that Paul Ryan leads this institution. He is not the Republican Speaker. We have a Republican leader. The Democrats have a Democratic leader. Paul Ryan is the Speaker of the House. I am incredibly proud of the way he leads this institution.

The way to make it even better, Mr. Speaker, is not to cite every single thing that we do as a failure. It is just not so. Let's find those things that we do that we can do better, and let's identify them and work together, but let's celebrate those successes.

For example, my friend pointed to the number of closed rules that have come to the floor. For folks who don't follow the process closely, a closed rule means there were no amendments allowed.

Well, many of those bills, Mr. Speaker, were bills that the Rules Committee sent out an email to all of Capitol Hill and said: We are bringing this piece of legislation to the floor. Here it is for you to read it and digest it. And if you have any ideas about how to make this bill better, you send them to us, and we will take a look.

When we did that, Mr. Speaker, not one single idea came back from the Republican or the Democratic side of the aisle for improving the bill.

So, yes, the bill came to the floor. The rule was closed not because we are trying to silence the minority, not because we are trying to silence elements of the majority, but because we had a completely open process, and it turned out that regular order got it right the first time. We don't need to identify that as a failure. That is an unmitigated success.

Some of those closed rules, Mr. Speaker, came because we were bringing legislation under the Congressional Review Act. Now, for folks who don't know the Congressional Review Act, that is that act that was passed so that Congress could go back and review regulations that had been passed by the administration to make sure those regulations followed congressional intent.

By definition, those bills have to be narrow and targeted. We can't have an amendment about healthcare legislation added to our waters of the U.S. Congressional Review Act bill. We can't have folks go and add a pay raise for our military men and women to that Congressional Review Act bill. We want a pay raise for our men and women in uniform. We passed it out of the House. It is sitting in the United States Senate, but it can't be on a CRA piece of legislation. So, yes, every single one of those bills came to the floor under a closed rule not because someone was trying to silence the minority, not because someone wanted to silence elements of the majority, but because that is the process that we have to work through together, and, by golly, we are doing it right.

My friend from Massachusetts talked about what has gone on in this body. I will tell you, this body has moved more legislation to the President's desk for his signature in these first 100 days than any President since Truman. We have had Republicans running the show, we have had Democrats running the show, but it is only when we collaboratively have been running the show that we have moved more bills to the President's desk than any other Congress in modern American history. I am proud of that. Some of those votes went my way, some of those votes didn't go my way, but we worked each one of those through the process, and we did each one of those things together.

Mr. Speaker, I would love to tell you what is going to happen over the next 18 months. I have no idea. But I know that to the extent that this body is full of accusations, to the extent that this body is full of mistrust, to the extent that this body is full of frustration and condemnation, we are going to go down one path.

To the extent that this body isn't afraid to tell folks back home when we are working hard together, to the extent that this body isn't ashamed that we rolled up our sleeves together and got some things done that folks thought we wouldn't be able to get done, to the extent that this body isn't afraid to confront the fact that we are always going to have disagreements, but from time to time bipartisanship breaks out and bills move a little more quickly than they do at other times. If folks are willing to accept our successes with the same zeal that they celebrate our failures, Mr. Speaker, I tell you, we are going to create a different institution over these next 18 months. Again, not under Democratic leadership, not under Republican leadership, but under Paul Ryan's leadership as Speaker of this entire House of Representatives.

We have one such opportunity today. I encourage folks to go to the web page of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. I believe it is oversight.house.gov. Those folks are working on some of the toughest issues in this town, and often they are bitterly divided along partisan lines. They are working on those issues that tend to separate Americans rather than unite them. They have sent us a bill today that was so widely supported, it passed by a voice vote unanimously out of that committee. It then went to the Committee on Rules, where every single Member of Congress was invited to improve it. Three Members of Congress took us up on the invitation, and every single one of their amendments was made in order by this rule.

Mr. Speaker, we have lots of things that are going to bring my friend from Massachusetts and I back down to this floor, and we are going to disagree heartily about those. Today we have an example of something that brings us together. I urge all of my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on this rule that brings our OGR unanimously passed bill to the floor, and vote ``yes'' on that underlying bill, just as our Republican and Democratic colleagues on the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform did.

Mr. Speaker, there are lots of challenges ahead of us. This is one we can put in the books as a success for our constituents back home. I ask for a ``yes'' vote.

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

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate you yielding and being willing to stick around with me this afternoon. I have a great pleasure this afternoon, and that is to talk about successes that we have had together.

I was down on the floor earlier when we were debating the rule, and I was talking to my Democratic colleagues on the Rules Committee about the good work that was going on in the Rules Committee; the good work that was going on on the House floor. In fact, we brought the bill--it was a raucous debate, Mr. Speaker. You will remember it. We argued for an hour about all sorts of extraneous things, then we brought the bill down, and it passed, I believe unanimously, here on the floor of the House just a few minutes ago.

I don't understand that. I just don't understand what those drivers are in politics, Mr. Speaker, that encourages us to tear folks down instead of build folks up. And that is why I want to talk about some successes today. You can't see my slides, Mr. Speaker, but I have got some numbers written down to the left in red, and those are the numbers that are worth paying attention to.

Twenty-eight. Twenty-eight is the number of bills President Trump has signed into law in his first 100 days; 28. That is more bills signed into law than any other American President since Harry Truman.

More bills. Now, I read the same newspapers you read, Mr. Speaker. I listen to the same news broadcasts you listen to. I hear folks talk about inaction. I hear folks talk about confusion. I hear folks talk about division. I don't

hear folks talking about success, and success is what marks these first 100 days.

Again, there has been more legislative activity than any other President and Congress--collaboratively Congress, House, Senate, Republicans, Democrats--more legislative success than we have had in any Congress and White House combination since Harry Truman.

Mr. Speaker, we had the first Supreme Court confirmation in the first 100 days since 1881--since 1881. Now, it is with no joy that I share with you that the Supreme Court is such a powerful institution, Mr. Speaker. I think too often we fail to get the job done legislatively, and the Court steps in and legislates from right across the street. That wasn't the job the Constitution envisioned. That wasn't the job assigned in Article III, but it is the job that has been taken on by default. So it has become increasingly important that we make sure the Court is staffed.

I supported the Senate having hearings on the Garland nomination last cycle. I supported the Senate having hearings on the Gorsuch nomination this cycle. Decision after decision in the last session went 4-4, which meant we could sustain the underlying Court's decision, but we couldn't decide these important questions that were still a source of confusion across this country. We now have a fully staffed Supreme Court again-- the first time since 1881. We have seen a Supreme Court confirmation in the first 100 days of a new administration.

Seventeen, Mr. Speaker. It has been 17 years since illegal border crossings reached this low level. I am going to come back to that. But what I am saying is that words matter. And what the President has said is: we are going to grow the most robust economy the world has ever seen, but we are going to do it with a legal visa program that makes sure folks are coming and going in accordance with U.S. law. And simply that change in attitude, Mr. Speaker, simply that change in attitude from ``we are going to ignore the law'' to ``the law matters'' has brought illegal crossings down to a 17-year low.

Mr. Speaker, 728; that is the number of millions of dollars saved with the President's first foray into cutting Federal budgets. His first foray into cutting Federal budgets, he started taking a look at Federal contracts. Can you imagine, Mr. Speaker, what it is like to be a new President of the United States, particularly one that doesn't come out of a legislative or government tradition? Everything is new as it comes to the content, but what is not new is so much of the process.

The President has been looking at contracts his entire life, Mr. Speaker. The President has been negotiating contracts his entire life. He took a look at the beginnings of the Pentagon contracts and said, by golly, we can do better for the American people; $728 million on project number one saved for the American taxpayer.

That brings us to number 16, Mr. Speaker, and that is 16 years since consumer confidence in this country has been as high as it is today. I enjoy traveling across the district, Mr. Speaker, and I am talking to folks. We are a divided community, like every community is in the country. Some folks believe one thing; some folks believe another. Generally, we are united on issues, but sometimes we are divided on issues. And voter after voter after voter says: Rob, I am not sure what is going to happen, but I feel like we are going to have opportunity. It has been 16 years since consumer confidence has reached this high of a level.

Now, with that increase in confidence, Mr. Speaker, comes an incredible obligation on the 435 of us to deliver. This isn't confidence that is based on nothing happening. This is confidence based on something happening. We have real obligations to fulfill those promises, those commitments that we all made during the last election cycle. I think we have the men and women in this Chamber who can do it, but it has been 16 years since the American people believed that we could.

I want to put those border crossings in perspective, Mr. Speaker. There has been a 61 percent decline in border crossings in President Trump's first 100 days.

Now, I come from Georgia. We have got a robust agricultural economy in Georgia. And I tell my constituents day in and day out, if you are not going to raise your son or daughter to pick carrots in south Georgia; if you don't aspire for your son or daughter to be the very best cabbage picker that we have in the State of Georgia; if you are not aspiring to be part of that agricultural economy and help us get crops out of the field, we are going to need somebody who is aspiring to do that hard work. And it is hard work, Mr. Speaker.

Well, if we can agree that these aren't jobs that American citizens are losing, these are jobs that are adding to the American economy, then we need a legal visa program to let folks come in and to let folks go out. I went on a bipartisan codel, Mr. Speaker--a bipartisan codel, Republicans and Democrats, traveling together to El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras talking with families.

You remember the women and children crisis there: unaccompanied minors coming across the border? I talked to family after family, and they said: Rob, listen, I don't want to be an American citizen. I don't want to go to America. I don't want to be in America. I am happy here at home. But dad, or my husband, he generally travels to America during the growing season, during the construction season, and turns around and comes back home when that season is over.

Well, you all are getting so tough on your border security, you are not handing out legal visas to do this work, that now my husband or my dad can't come back home when the growing season is over. So now we are all picking up, and we are trying to get into America, too, so the family can stay together.

Well, it makes perfectly good sense to me if you were that family. It makes no sense if you are the American taxpayer. You recognize that you have jobs that need to be filled. You recognize you have skills that you are not training your children to fulfill, and you don't want to change the visa program to make that happen.

The President has committed to growing the economy. We know that is going to mean legal access in and out of the country. There was a 61 percent drop in illegal border crossings in the first 100 days.

I will tell you what else that means, Mr. Speaker. That means, instead of our border patrol men and women working that border under very difficult conditions, instead of our law enforcement, instead of all of the instruments of homeland security that we have in this country being focused on families crossing the border, with a 61 percent decline in this human traffic crossing the border, law enforcement can now focus on the real security issues to this country: to the drugs crossing the border, to the weapons crossing the border; forbid the thought to weapons of mass destruction crossing the border.

There have been tremendously important accomplishments here in the first 100 days; so much more that we will be able to do together.

Mr. Speaker, there were 25 Iranian entities sanctioned by the Trump administration in the first 100 days. That is what we did together in this Chamber. You will remember, Mr. Speaker, we passed the Iranian sanctions language in a bipartisan way to send the word to the leaders of Iran that while we have great respect for your citizenry, we cannot tolerate a nuclear Iran. We do not trust you to be a member of the league of nations with nuclear capabilities, and the answer is no as you pursue those very dangerous dreams.

Well, you will remember, President Obama negotiated a deal with the international community and with the Iranians. I wish he hadn't, but he did. We had sanctions. Those sanctions are now gone. Iran is pursuing very much the same path that I would have expected them to pursue, given the deal that was negotiated. And the world continues to be a dangerous place.

Well, we have rules on the books today, laws on the books today that allow the government, in consultation with Congress, in cooperation with Congress, based on statutes passed by Congress, to get involved unilaterally as the United States of America in trying to prevent a nuclear Iran.

There were 25 different entities identified by this administration as helping the Iranian Government to pursue those dangerous and illegal nuclear goals sanctioned and reined in. It is going to make a difference. It is going to make a difference to national security. It is going to make a difference to international security.

Mr. Speaker, $18 billion--you can't see this slide, but already in 4 months on the job, 4 months in cooperation with this Congress, we have seen $18 billion saved through the elimination of red tape. I don't mean $18 billion that is a one-time deal, Mr. Speaker. I mean $18 billion annually in wasteful compliance costs erased by this administration, again, often in cooperation and consultation with Congress.

When I go back and tell you that this President has signed more bills into law than any President since Harry Truman in cooperation with this Congress, I am talking about many of the bills that did exactly this: cutting red tape, saving the American taxpayer money. Those bills, very often, were brought through the Congressional Review Act process. That is a process, as you know, Mr. Speaker, that allows the Congress to take a look at the regulations that the administration promulgates.

We pass the laws; the administration writes the regs; we get to go back and look at the regs to make sure they represent the true intent of the legislation.

Well, in many instances so far this year, Mr. Speaker--in fact, in more instances than any other time in American history, we have decided that those regulations do not reflect the intent of Congress. In fact, often they are running directly contrary to the intent of Congress. We have eliminated those $18 billion annually in savings to the American taxpayer.

Remember the Keystone pipeline, Mr. Speaker. This administration approved the Dakota Access pipeline. Think back, Mr. Speaker. We are going to disagree on things. I am perfectly comfortable with the disagreements that this body has. But when the application for the Keystone pipeline was delivered to the administration, it took longer for the past two administrations to approve the Keystone pipeline--and by approve it, I mean ultimately they rejected it. It took longer for them to consider and reject the Keystone pipeline than it took for Americans to build the Hoover Dam from start to finish.

I want you to think about that. When we are talking about jobs; when we are talking about the economy; when we are talking about America being that beacon of hope, and freedom, and opportunity across the country; when we are talking about the tremendous need for public works projects in this country, and the amazing things the American people can do when they put their shoulder into it, it took longer in the 21st century to get an answer to whether or not you are allowed to build a pipeline than it took to build the Hoover Dam from start to finish. That is bad for all of us.

That is bad for every Republican, every Democrat, every Independent. Every single American citizen needs economic opportunity. Every single American citizen needs a job. Every single American citizen needs the certainty of knowing if the pipeline is bad, let's cancel it and let's move on. But let's not sit and wait and delay. Let's not debate and debate. Let's get to an answer.

In the first 100 days on the job, President Trump got to an answer. President Bush and President Obama, combined, again, over 8 years of delay. President Trump, first 100 days, approved this.

What does this mean? Well, it means that the oil coming out of Canada is going to come to America to be refined. Remember, the Keystone Pipeline debate, Mr. Speaker, was never about the environment and whether or not the Canadians were going to harvest this oil. It was never about that. The Canadians were loud and clear: We are going to get this oil out of the ground. We are either going to get it out of the ground and send it to America to be processed, or we are going to get it out of the ground and send it to China to be processed. You pick.

Well, Mr. Speaker, that is an easy choice. If I get to be king of Canada, I can make different decisions about their environment. But while Canada has sovereignty and gets to make its own decisions about its natural resources, we get to decide: Are American citizens going to profit from the processing of this oil or is China going to profit from the processing of this oil?

When this oil gets processed, who do you think is doing it in the most environmentally sensitive manner, Mr. Speaker? You tell me. If there's a single colleague in this body that believes the Chinese are better stewards of the environment than the Americans are, then you needed to vote ``no'' on the Keystone pipeline. But if you believe that we care more about Mother Earth than the Chinese do, if you believe that American rules and regulations protect the environment more than Chinese rules and regulations do, then you needed to be a supporter of the Keystone pipeline.

In his first 100 days, President Trump took this source of indecision and confusion and provided certainty. That is not academic, Mr. Speaker. That certainty is directly connected to jobs.

You can't see it from where you sit, Mr. Speaker, but I am talking about over 500,000 new jobs not connected to the pipeline, individually. There are going to be a lot of jobs on the pipeline. Not this number. I am talking about this approach to governing that says people deserve a ``yes'' or a ``no'' answer. People deserve certainty. People deserve fast responses. People don't need to hang in the lurch.

Every single Member of this body, Mr. Speaker, has seen it in their constituency back home where a small-business owner said: You know what? I wanted to hire a few more people, but I wasn't really sure what was about to happen and so I have been putting it off. I wanted to open a new franchise, but I wasn't entirely sure of what the economic situation was going to be so I have been putting it off.

When we talk about the economic growth over the past 100 days, when we talk about the stock markets moving, when we talk about consumer confidence rising, when we talk about new jobs being created, we are talking about a change in attitude. And I have seen it on both sides of this body.

It is a shame, Mr. Speaker, there is that underlying current that maybe voters reward fighting with each other more than they reward working together. I don't believe it, but I certainly see people posit that theory. I believe folks reward cooperation and getting things done. I don't think people pay us to agree with each other. I think people pay us to make progress together--500,000 new jobs.

I will read from The Wall Street Journal. It says: ``The Trump order is a promise in the bank for the voters who elected the President because he promised to focus on jobs and revving up the economy.''

I believe it is 12 congressional districts, Mr. Speaker, that have Democrats representing them in Congress, but those districts voted for President Trump in the Presidential election. These are not conservative men and women out across the district pursuing some sort of ideological agenda. These are hardworking American families who identify more with the Democratic Party and Democratic values but who began to lose hope in what was going on with regulation across the country and job creation across the country, and they cast their vote for President Trump.

Over 500,000 new jobs, Mr. Speaker.

What are we talking about? We are talking about the Keystone pipeline. We are talking about the Clean Power Plan, which, alone, threatened to put about 286,000 jobs out to pasture. We are talking about new investments in infrastructure.

I am not just talking about roads and bridges, Mr. Speaker. I am talking about the FAA and air transportation. I am talking about ports like the Port of Savannah in Georgia, the fastest growing container port in the Nation, and sea transportation. I am talking about railroads. I am talking about water infrastructure to make sure every family has access to clean and healthy drinking water.

These are job-creating proposals, and they are job-creating proposals that have been kept off the books for so long because of regulatory uncertainty.

Today we have an opportunity to do that for the very first time.

Mr. Speaker, I am going to take you back to where I began, and that is that we have a choice in this country. We can focus on the things that divide us all day every day. We can do it. I still believe there is more that unites us as a nation than divides us as a nation, but if you choose to spend your time talking about those things that divide us, you can fill up a day.

If you choose to spend your time talking about those things that are broken yet proffering no solutions to fix them, you can fill up a day. If you choose to spend your day talking about why everybody else is a lazy son of a gun and only you have access to the truth, you can fill up a day, and then a week, and then a month, and then a year, and then a Presidential cycle, and then a decade, and then a generation.

But, Mr. Speaker, if you will recognize that working together we have already passed more laws in 2017 than any other Congress and President working together since Harry Truman, if you will recognize that we have taken the uncertainty out of the Supreme Court--we fully staffed the Supreme Court so that uncertainty in the legal arena will exist no longer--if you recognize that a thorny issue like illegal immigration that has been made so difficult to solve because we haven't been able to figure out how to deal with the border security aspect so that we can go on and deal with the other thorny issues, those border crossings are down, which means our opportunity has increased for dealing with these problems that have plagued our Nation for so long.

I can give you one example of that, Mr. Speaker. I am going to digress.

I have got a family in my district trying to bring a relative into the country from Haiti. They have been working on it for 11 years--11 years. All the talk that goes on in this body about immigration, nobody is taking about helping my constituents from Haiti. Nobody is talking about passing a law to make it easier to get your family member in from Haiti. Nobody is talking about those families that have been separated while trying to follow the law of the land. Nobody is talking about those families that have paid out of pocket to go through the legal process--all the time, all the money, all the delay to do it the right way. Nobody is talking about fixing it for those families.

Let's fix it for those families because we all agree there is a better way. If you want to get your adult child in from Mexico, Mr. Speaker, you needed to file your paperwork in 1993 for their number to be coming up today--1993, to do it the right way and have their number to come up today.

Who believes a 25-year process to bring a family member into this country is the right answer? Of course folks are going to do it the wrong way.

If you want to bring your adult brother or sister in from the Philippines, you had to file in 1994 for their number to be coming up legally today. Who believes that is the right system?

The system is broken. We don't have enough trust together to repair the system. By eliminating the illegal border crossing's immediate challenge, the President has created the headroom for us to work together on issues that we can absolutely solve.

728, Mr. Speaker, the number of millions of dollars saved in contract negotiations thus far--in fact, not even thus far, but contract negotiations on one single Pentagon project that the President has inserted himself in.

For all the things you may think the President knows, doesn't know, you agree with, you disagree with, you have to know that he knows how to drive a hard bargain. You have to know that he knows how to negotiate big contracts.

The American taxpayer is not satisfied with the way we have been doing it, with the way former White Houses have been doing it. We have an opportunity to come together and do it better, and the President is leading us in that way.

And that all culminates, Mr. Speaker, in 16. That is the number of years since consumer confidence in this country was at its current levels. You can do that math if you would like, Mr. Speaker. It will take you back through an entire 8 years of Democratic control of the White House, and it will take you back through an entire 8 years of Republican control of the White House.

The American consumer does not care whether you are a Republican or a Democrat. The American consumer cares whether or not they think their job is secure.

The American consumer does not care if you are a Republican or a Democrat. The American consumer cares whether prices are higher tomorrow or lower tomorrow.

The American consumer does not care about our petty, silly, inside- the-beltway Washington arguments. They care about whether America is going to be stronger for their children and grandchildren a generation from now. And it has been 16 years since American consumers have the optimism that they have today.

I will say it again, Mr. Speaker. We can consume every second of every day in this body fussing, griping, complaining--there are lots of things that are wrong and lots of folks to blame for it--or we can recognize the big hopes and dreams that the American people have placed on this President and this Congress and this time in our history. We can recognize that there is still more that unites us in this country than divides us in this country. We can still recognize that folks care very little about us and our families and care so very much about their community and their families.

With that as our touchstone, Mr. Speaker, call me an irrational optimist, but I think there is absolutely nothing that we can't do together, and I look forward to playing a role in that.

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

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 229 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to my friend from Colorado (Mr. Polis), 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 have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks.

Mr. Speaker, I hold in my hand House Resolution 229. You heard the Clerk read it moments ago. Page 1 and page 2. Folks can find it on rules.house.gov if they haven't had a chance to see it already. It provides a closed rule for consideration of H.R. 1430, Honest and Open New EPA Science Treatment Act of 2017.

If you work through that title, Mr. Speaker, the Honest and Open New EPA Science Treatment Act, you will find that ``honest'' is what those letters spell out. It is the HONEST Act.

In the past, the Rules Committee has reported structured rules for consideration of this very bill. In this case, Mr. Speaker, there were no amendments offered in committee. There were no amendments presented in the Rules Committee last night. We have reported a closed rule for consideration of this bill.

Science is, Mr. Speaker, in the EPA's own words, the backbone of EPA's decisionmaking. President Obama, in 2011, issued an executive order about how agencies should go about making the regulatory process more effective. He said, and I quote: ``Each agency shall ensure the objectivity of any scientific and technological information and processes used to support the agency's regulatory actions.''

We talk so much about what divides us in this institution, in this town, sometimes even in this country, Mr. Speaker, I think that point is worth dwelling on.

Again, quoting from former President Barack Obama: ``Each agency shall ensure the objectivity of any scientific and technological information and processes used to support the agency's regulatory actions.''

It is what the HONEST Act aims to do, Mr. Speaker. It aims to provide the American public with the data that the EPA uses in each of its regulatory actions.

It would come as a surprise to many Americans, Mr. Speaker, to learn that there are Agency actions that take place based entirely on undisclosed data sets, that the regulatory arm of government can be at work based on secret data that will never be released to the American public to verify, to confirm in this what is often, in scientific communities, referred to as peer-reviewed literature.

We believe that, if we are making the rules, we should be able to expose the data on which those rules are based to scrutiny and, in fact, to challenge, Mr. Speaker.

One thing I have learned in this job is sometimes I am not as smart as I think I am. I don't know if that has ever happened to you, Mr. Speaker. I am sure it has never happened to my friend from Colorado. But sometimes we are not as smart as we think we are. Sometimes being challenged makes us better.

The HONEST Act, Mr. Speaker, aims to provide the opportunity simply by looking at the data for any American citizen to understand the regulatory actions being taken at the EPA, and, yes, if necessary, to challenge those actions if they believe they are not based on sound science.

Mr. Speaker, I know what you are thinking. You are thinking: Is this bill necessary? The EPA's mission is to protect the environment and public health, so, of course, it is going to use the best science.

The answer should be yes. The answer should be yes that in every set of circumstances we are always using the very best data. But as you know, time and time again, you can bring an expert into your office. A scientist on one side of the issue will tell you one thing; a scientist on the other will bring an equally compelling compendium of information to tell you the next. It is left to us, to the American people, to decide who is right and who is wrong.

This is nothing to be feared. This is something to be embraced. It has certainly been a characteristic of our great country for over 200 years.

But in these days of information pouring out of the administration at the speed of the internet, it is more critical than ever that we make that information available to the public. With the ability today to understand that information, to process that information, to compile that information, to inspect that information in details never before imagined, it is incumbent upon us to make sure that America has that opportunity.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I would encourage my colleagues to support this rule to bring the bill to the floor and then to support the underlying legislation so that we can pass the HONEST Act, bringing clarity and transparency to the EPA rulemaking process.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, you know that I consider the gentleman from Colorado to be a good friend of mine. I find myself, after that presentation, though, wondering if that was a cloud of smog over Denver or if it was another cloud of smoke over Denver in these days.

That is just not true. It is just not true. I will start with what I am proud about because I think we do focus too often on divisions.

Mr. Speaker, you know that we wanted to hold the Obama administration accountable for sound science. And now that there is a Republican in the White House, we want to hold a Republican administration accountable for sound science.

So often in this town, we see one set of rules when you agree with the person in office and another set of rules when you disagree with the person in office. I don't think that is the right way to govern a country. I am proud that we are not falling into that trap. If it is good for the Obama administration, it is good for the Trump administration.

Number two, there is no smoke-filled backroom deal here. Number one, there is no smoke-filled room anywhere on Capitol Hill. Speaker Boehner is gone, and smoking is banned from all of our spaces. This bill went through a full committee hearing, the full committee process. So often, Mr. Speaker, you know at the beginning of a year like this one, we are trying to move legislation to the floor quickly. Some things that we have already had hearings and debate on, like this bill, from last Congress, we bring to the floor outside of regular order, and we skip the committee hearing process. Not so with this bill. It went through the Science, Space, and Technology Committee for a full hearing.

Mr. Speaker, we talk about transparency as if it exists at the EPA. I will remind my friend from Colorado, Mr. Speaker, we have to issue subpoenas from the United States Congress to get the EPA to share its data with us, notwithstanding to get them to share it with the University of Georgia or Georgia Tech or Caltech, or wherever the best scientific minds of the day are. We have to issue subpoenas to get them to share that information. Clearly, transparency is not the norm, it is the exception.

We talk about costs. My friend references $1 billion in costs from some study, apparently, not a peer-review study. I have not seen the data backing up this study. But the good news is I don't actually need the study. I have the bill itself, Mr. Speaker, and I will turn to the relevant part here. Paragraph 5, clarify that the administrator shall implement this section in a matter that does not exceed $1 million per year from the amounts otherwise authorized to be appropriated. Now, you don't have to spend the entire million dollars, Mr. Speaker, but in the name of transparency, to make sure that folks have access to the data, we have said it is worth investing resources but not to exceed $1 million.

Finally, Mr. Speaker, we talk about the burden of red tape. I don't know if you have had to deal with the EPA or the DOT or the DOD or the DOE--insert DO acronym here--red tape is abundant in this Federal Government, and asking the Federal Government to be transparent is the antithesis of red tape. Since when did it become a burden on the institutions of government to be transparent with the American people? Since when, when you are making rules and regulations that affect the lives of every single American, did it become a burden to share the data on which those regulations are based?

I will say to you, Mr. Speaker, we get wrapped around the axle so often here that we end up getting further and further from our goals. Sharing data, getting peer-reviewed comments on that data, and having folks come out in support of the conclusions reached on that data are going to make us stronger as a nation not weaker. If you are proud of your underlying data, you should be proud to share that data. If you are embarrassed of your underlying data, I understand why you might want to keep it a secret.

We have an opportunity not to hide from science but to embrace science, we have an opportunity not to reach political conclusions but scientific conclusions, and we have an opportunity to restore the American people's trust in the institutions of government that are issuing these regulations. This is a small step in the right direction with the HONEST Act, Mr. Speaker, but it is an important step in the right direction. I hope my colleagues will support it.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert).

Mr. Speaker, I have no further speakers, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Will the gentleman yield?

I would say to the gentleman, as he may know, the language is different in this section.

When the CBO scored the bill last year, they presumed that the EPA would have the obligation of compiling all the data and making it all public themselves. In this bill, it presumes the EPA will only make use of publicly available data. I would refer the gentleman to the committee report.

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

Mr. Speaker, I often wonder what it is like to be in your position there, a distinguished career as a judge, and you come down here to talk about the EPA and whether or not the rules and regulations should be based on sound science or not, and you end up with a discussion over the Russians. There is no objection that can be lodged here for going outside of the scope of the bill.

I can always tell, when I come down for Rules Committee debate, whether or not we are really talking about something that divides us or whether we are just talking. If we are talking about something that divides us, we spend every moment of the hours that we have debating the nitty-gritty of the issue before us--talking about how quickly should that data be disclosed; how many folks should have access to it. Are there going to be episodes where the data needs to be kept super secret and folks can't be trusted with it? What should we do about new and emerging business practices, propriety technologies? How do we deal with those questions?

I enjoy those rules, Mr. Speaker, because we are doing exactly what we came here to do, and that is to delve into the details and get it right for the American people.

What I am led to believe on a day like today is that we are pretty close to getting it right for the American people because we are not talking about the nitty-gritty of the legislation. We are talking about the Clean Power Plan that the past administration put forward. We are not talking about the details of the legislation; we are talking about the Russians today. I think that is because there aren't many things much more common sense than sharing with the American people that data on which the laws of the land are made.

Mr. Speaker, there is no doubt that the EPA is involved in a complicated line of work, a critically important line of work.

I can't find a single constituent in the great State of Georgia that doesn't believe in clean water and clean air. I can find a whole lot of them who think that they believe more in clean water and clean air than does any institution in Washington, D.C. I promise you, no one cares more about the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area than those of us who live along the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area.

Nobody cares more about protecting the Earth in the great State of Georgia than those farmers who are creating the largest export we have in the great State of Georgia, which are our agriculture products.

We are in this together, which is why, when this bill came before the House last Congress, it passed with a bipartisan vote. These are commonsense ideas that bring us together more than they divide us.

Mr. Speaker, I think the real surprise is that folks believe the EPA to be transparent, and learn that it is not. Folks would not believe that this Congress has to subpoena information in order to get its hands on it.

What this bill would say is not only should Congress be able to access the information, but any reputable scientist should be able to access the information.

What my friend says about privacy concerns, they are a shared concern in this institution. There is absolutely nothing in this underlying legislation that threatens those privacy concerns. In fact, it requires that all private information be redacted before the information be utilized.

Concerns over cost, again, are absolutely important, but I will read from the committee report: ``This bill does not contain any new budget authority, spending authority, credit authority, or an increase or decrease in revenues or tax expenditures.''

That it is a pretty simple bill and a pretty simple rule. It asks that we lift the curtain of secrecy around the regulations that protect our health and safety. It asks that we make health and safety issues not things that divide us around process, but things that unite us around results.

Candidly, I came to this institution to achieve those results, Mr. Speaker, and I am proud to be carrying this rule to the floor today. I encourage all of my colleagues to please support this bill, and with its passage we can get to the underlying legislation, end the shroud of secrecy, and restore public confidence in the laws that protect all of our health and safety.

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

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate all the hard work the Rules Committee chairman has done in this bill. Mr. Speaker, I have the great pleasure of serving on the Rules Committee, but I am the designee to the Budget Committee.

This whole process that we are going through is a Budget Committee process. It is called reconciliation. And as folks have talked about it, they have talked about what the Ways and Means Committee has done and what the Energy and Commerce Committee did. But then those two bills come together in the Budget Committee, and we move the process forward.

I can't help but notice my colleagues' frustration with the amendments that have been made to this bill along the way. Generally, we celebrate amendments that are made along the way because they improve the work product. We do them together.

I point here, Mr. Speaker, to a tweet that the President sent out the day the healthcare bill was introduced. The President said:

``Our wonderful new HealthCare Bill is now out for review and negotiation.''

And that was true. It was out for review so everyone could read it, and it was out for negotiation so that everyone could improve it.

We did that in the Budget Committee. We had four motions to instruct that passed in the Budget Committee to provide Medicaid flexibility, to make sure the tax credits were targeted to the right populations, to ensure that able-bodied, working Americans had those incentives to both get health care and be able to go back to work.

Now, every committee didn't have that experience. As my colleagues have asked for a bipartisan process, you will remember that the Energy and Commerce Committee spent 10 hours debating the title of the bill. They spent 10 hours debating Democratic amendments to change the title of the bill. Folks, we have opportunity after opportunity to make things better, but it is incumbent upon us to choose that opportunity to make things better.

So often we get wrapped around the partisan action. Folks let that opportunity slip away. I am glad that we didn't do that.

Mr. Speaker, when I talk about what we did in the Budget Committee to make it better, I am talking about focusing on the real problems. There is not a member in this body that doesn't understand that what is contributing to the ObamaCare death spiral is that young people are not enrolling. Young people are not enrolling.

More Americans rejected ObamaCare and filed for an exemption or agreed to pay the penalty than enrolled in ObamaCare. I don't care how big your heart was when you passed the bill, you have to concede that wasn't what you intended. And we can do better.

My friends are talking about the essential health benefits plan today. Young people are particularly sensitive to that. They are price sensitive in that way. We are talking in the Budget Committee about how to preserve that flexibility for States to design plans that are right for them.

How many times today have we heard folks say that prices are going to increase for Americans between the age of 54 and 64?

I have heard it at least a dozen times. At the same time, my friends are demanding that every healthcare plan in the State of Georgia cover maternity benefits for those women between the age of 54 and 64. At the same time, my friends are demanding that every plan in Georgia cover pediatric benefits for those empty nesters between 54 and 64. That doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense. We in Georgia know it doesn't make sense, and we can do better.

Mr. Speaker, 45 percent of the almost 20 million people who rejected the Affordable Care Act and agreed to pay the fine or file an exemption instead were under the age of 35. There is not a serious thinker in this room who believes we can solve the insurance crisis in this country without getting these folks back into the marketplace. And that is what we did in the Budget Committee. That is what we have done throughout this entire amendment process, and that is what the amendments we considered in the Rules Committee this morning did as well.

Mr. Speaker, since the passage of the Affordable Care Act, many States have had to pass a lot of legislation in order to conform their plans to new one-size-fits-all Federal mandates. But that is not the story. The story is that, at the same time, States were passing their own benefit mandates to serve their constituency better.

Mr. Speaker, Chairman Session's State of Texas passed a mandate that orally administered anticancer medication be covered. The gentleman from Texas has seen those groups in his office. He has seen those families struggling. And what Texas said is: To respond to our people, we are going to require every plan sold in the State of Texas cover these issues.

In my home State, Mr. Speaker, we created a commission to look at annually how to add more benefits, change those benefits, make sure we are being responsive to folks in the best way that we can.

The gentleman from Colorado, his State did the very same thing. They required coverage for acupuncture services. They required the selling of child-only plans. They required coverage for fetal alcohol syndrome. We do these things collaboratively, and we do these things together.

Mr. Speaker, I urge passage of the rule and passage of the underlying legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate your agreeing to be down here with me tonight. I came down to talk about health care, but I actually have a personal story I want to tell before that begins, right there in the middle of the realm of health care, a friend of mine back home in Georgia. His name is Jon Richards.

Mr. Speaker, you have folks like Jon Richards in your district, people who just believe that, if only they work hard enough and long enough, they can make things better for their entire community. Jon is one of those folks. And what I love most about Jon is he looks for those things that other folks aren't doing.

You know, there are those folks back home. Everybody wants that glamorous job. Everybody wants to do that thing that comes with the perks or the fringe benefits. Jon Richards was attracted to those jobs that he knew would matter, that he knew needed to get done but other folks weren't filling those shoes.

Mr. Speaker, I tell you this about Jon because Jon was diagnosed with liver cancer; and as is always true when you have a friend get diagnosed with cancer, you believe that they are going to be better. I learned this week that Jon has been moved to hospice and isn't getting better.

Mr. Speaker, Jon was one of the first folks to give me even the time of day when I thought about seeking this opportunity to serve. Jon was the first person there every Saturday morning when breakfast was getting started for the Gwinnett County Republican Party, and he was the last one to leave when the Young Republicans down at the University of Georgia were finishing up.

It was young people that were his passion, Mr. Speaker. Jon saw a Republican Party that he worried was going to become more closed. He worked to open it up. Jon saw a Republican Party that was getting grayer. He was working with young people who were our future. Jon saw a Republican Party that had an opportunity to make a difference, and he seized that opportunity every single day.

In 2014, Mr. Speaker, the entire State of Georgia, Georgia Republican Party, named Jon Richards the Volunteer of the Year. Truth be told, he would have won that honor every single year, you just can't give it to somebody over and over again. I think Jon appreciated that.

If you go back and try to look for pictures of Jon so you can put a name with a face, Mr. Speaker, you are likely not to see too many. He was also the guy who had the camera around his neck taking pictures of everybody else, making sure that everybody else had something to remember the day by, making sure that everybody else was involved and appreciated, making sure everybody else was served.

I have known Jon Richards for a long time. I have never known him to do a single thing to benefit himself. Time and time and time again, he did the things that others wouldn't do. Time and time and time again, he would pull me aside and say: Rob, I know how we can be better together.

There is no replacement for Jon Richards--not in our county, not in our State, not in my life.

Mr. Speaker, I haven't had much experience saying good-bye to folks over the years. I have been extremely blessed in that way. But I hope that you will join me as you say your prayers tonight in praying for my friend in hospice, Jon Richards, and for his family as he enters what will be a very long weekend for him.

Mr. Speaker, Jon would be the first one to be standing outside these doors pushing us forward on healthcare reform, and he would be doing it because he sees the human condition that is affected by health care. He sees the families that have expectations, families to whom promises have been made, families to whom promises have been broken. And he knows that we can do better.

Mr. Speaker, what he and I would often sit and talk about is that there are challenges in this country that absolutely, positively have to be addressed. I have friends on the right, I have friends on the left, and I often believe that if we could just sit down in a room together, we would solve them if we could agree on what the problem was.

Mr. Speaker, I have a chart here. You can't see it from where you sit, but it shows you where America gets its healthcare coverage. I bring this up because that is the crux of the healthcare debate that we are having here. About 46 percent of Americans, Mr. Speaker, get their coverage from their employer. When the President was pushing the Affordable Care Act in 2009 and 2010, he was talking about the uninsured Americans, and surely we can do more for those families who don't have access to health care. But 46 percent of Americans had access to health care, had it through their employer, were not seeking help or improvement, but in an effort to make a difference for the small percentage of Americans who are uninsured, the President and my friends on the Democratic side of the aisle chose to reregulate all health care across the country.

It wasn't just the lie of the year, as the newspaper PolitiFact called it, Pinocchios--if you like your doctor, you can keep it; if you like your doctor, you can keep it. It wasn't just that that promise was broken; it is that folks who weren't seeking any help at all got caught up in this net of a new Federal regulatory scheme.

Mr. Speaker, about 46 percent of Americans get their health insurance from their employer. About 17 percent of Americans are on Medicare. We have got another 17 percent of Americans that are on Medicaid or CHIP or those safety net programs. Even here today, after the passage of the Affordable Care Act, 8 percent of Americans are uninsured. Now, we have folks who are in the exchanges--they are represented here--that is about 12.4 percent of the population. We have folks who are on Medicaid represented here; that is about 11.3 percent of the population. And we have folks who don't have any insurance at all.

Mr. Speaker, if we would come together to solve the problem for folks

who didn't have access to health care, I believe we could have found a solution together. Instead, what we tried to do was reregulate the entire healthcare system, even for all of the Americans who were perfectly happy with their care. And it didn't work.

You don't have to take my word for it, Mr. Speaker. I can quote from my big newspaper back home in my district, The Atlanta Journal- Constitution: ``Aetna to pull out of Georgia's ObamaCare insurance marketplace.''

Many counties in Georgia now, Mr. Speaker, only have one insurer to choose from. Humana has announced it is pulling out.

Union Leader in New Hampshire: ``Another ACA failure Bad idea keeps getting worse.''

Over in Kaiser Health News in Arkansas: ``Largest U.S. Health Insurer Pulls Out of Health Exchanges in Georgia, Arkansas.''

From The Washington Post: ``Aetna chief executive says ObamaCare is in a `death spiral.' ''

And from the Courier-Tribune in North Carolina: ``Blue Cross projects $400 million loss in NC on ACA in just two years.''

Mr. Speaker, while we can argue about whether we correctly identified the problem to begin with, while we can argue about whether or not we crafted the right solution to begin with, what is undisputed is that the Affordable Care Act is failing, and it is taking American families down with it. That is not just the newspapers talking, Mr. Speaker.

I will quote from former President Barack Obama. In August of last year, he says: ``Despite this progress''--he is talking about the progress of the ACA--``too many Americans still strain to pay for their physician visits and prescriptions, cover their deductibles, or pay their monthly insurance bills; struggle to navigate a complex, sometimes bewildering system; and remain uninsured.''

Twenty million Americans remain uninsured. After all of the President's efforts, he still recognized in August of last year there was much more to be done because the efforts that he tried failed.

Governor Mark Dayton, a Democrat from Minnesota, in October of last year, he says: ``The reality is the Affordable Care Act is no longer affordable. . . . ''

The aspiration was that premiums would come down by $2,500, but the reality is that premiums were going up by double digits, and in some cases triple digits. The Affordable Care Act is no longer affordable.

And former President Bill Clinton, in October of last year, Mr. Speaker, he said: ``So you've got this crazy system where all of a sudden 25 million more people have health care and then the people who are out there busting it, sometimes 60 hours a week, wind up with their premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half. It's the craziest thing in the world.''

There is a group of people, mostly small-business owners and employees, who make just a little too much money to qualify for Medicaid expansion or for the tax incentives who can't get affordable health insurance premiums in a lot of places.

Mr. Speaker, I don't believe health care is a partisan issue. Regulation and how we use it may be a partisan issue. Federal control of whether we should use it may be a partisan issue, but providing Americans access to health care is an American issue, and every one of these Democrats I have just cited recognize the failures of the current system. I don't say that, Mr. Speaker, to try to point the finger of blame. I say it because either we believe that everything is working just great and we should all pack our bags and head back home to the district, or we believe that there are American families in crisis that are calling on us to serve them.

You can't see this map, Mr. Speaker, but it shows some of that crisis. In just 1 year, from 2016 to 2017, Mr. Speaker, the number of counties in America that only have one insurer to choose from quintupled. I will say that again. In just 1 year, from 2016 to 2017, so severe is the death spiral of the exchanges across the country, the number of American counties that no longer have choices and are limited to a single insurer has increased 500 percent.

Mr. Speaker, the number of counties that only have one insurer is represented here in the color of orange. You see it in 2016, you see it in 2017. Five entire States, Mr. Speaker, in a healthcare system that was designed to provide consumers with choices, have no choice of insurer whatsoever. I say that because we have gotten wrapped around the political axle here, Mr. Speaker, as if somehow if you are on the Republican side of the aisle, you cannot recognize that the Affordable Care Act achieved any successes whatsoever, and if you are on the Democratic side of the aisle, you can't recognize that the Affordable Care Act has failed anyone in any way whatsoever. Both of those positions are nonsense.

I tell you that if you have spent a trillion dollars on this program--and you have--I hope a family has been helped. I know some families that have been helped. But I also know families that have been crushed. We need to repeal the Affordable Care Act for those families that have been crushed, and we need to replace the Affordable Care Act for those families that have been helped because that help is rapidly eroding.

Mr. Speaker, I want you to think about the thought, the idea that is the Affordable Care Act. The idea is we are going to provide these choices, and then we are going to provide these government subsidies, and folks are going to have access to health care for the very first time. It is a wonderful idea: provide choice, provide support, provide access. The reality is, though, Mr. Speaker, with those choices, with those subsidies, with that offer of access, almost 20 million Americans said: Forget it, I am out.

Now, you remember this whole plan was put together where the IRS comes and fines you if you are out. So what began as an idea that said, ``We are going to provide you with choice, we are going to provide you with support, and that is going to get you your access,'' 20 million Americans have decided that plan has so failed them, they would rather pay the IRS a penalty to the tune of $4 billion last year--rather, pay the IRS a penalty than access the Affordable Care Act. That is a failure. It is a failure.

Who is it failing most, Mr. Speaker?

If you look at those folks who are in this almost 20 million pool, 45 percent of them are age 35 or younger. I don't fall under the age category of 35 and under, Mr. Speaker, but I can tell you that folks who are 35 and under cost less to take care of than folks who are my age bracket and older. So if you are going to try to craft a national insurance system, you need these people who are 35 and under to be involved--enthusiastically involved. Rather than getting involved with the choices and with the subsidies to get the access, 20 million Americans have said: It is not for me. I will pay the fine instead.

Most of them young people. If we can't agree that that is a failure, Mr. Speaker, if we can't agree that the system can't stand in that way, we are going to have a tough time finding a solution.

What you heard so often today about the solution that is being proposed in this body is that older Americans are getting the toughest end of the deal. There is a little truth to that, Mr. Speaker.

What the Affordable Care Act did is it said you have young, healthy people; you have older people who are likely to be sicker. The law of the land at the time was that the cost spread between the youngest and the oldest could be 500 percent, 5 times more for the oldest, highest risk people than the youngest, lowest risk people.

Sure, it is insurance, right?

Older cars, different pricing than newer cars. Houses with sprinkler systems, different prices than houses without sprinkler systems. It is just actuarial experience.

But the Affordable Care Act says we are going to compress that from one to five, a 500 percent spread, down to one to three, a 300 percent spread. What that did was lower rates below the actuarial experience for older Americans--that was great for older Americans--and, at the same time, raise rates for younger Americans, which forced all the younger Americans out of the marketplace, which then raised rates for all Americans.

I will quote from Grace-Marie Turner. She is the president of the Galen Institute. She testified in front of the Committee on the Budget this year on

this issue. She said this, Mr. Speaker: `` . . . young people purchasing individual policies in or out of the exchanges are required to pay much more for their policies than their actuarially-expected costs because of the law's required 3:1 age rating band. Forcing the young to pay more drives costs up for everyone.

``The average 64-year-old consumes six times as much health care, in dollar value, as the average 21-year-old.''

Insurance is about experience. There is a 1 in 100 chance of something bad happening to you, you pay 1 one-hundredth of the price of that bad episode, 100 of you get in the pool together, you share the risk.

Actuarially, a 64-year-old consumes six times more health care than a young person. But we compressed that to three times in terms of the billing.

Dr. Turner goes on to say this: ``Under the ACA's age-rating requirements, insurers cannot charge their oldest policyholders more than three times the price they charge their youngest customers.''

If every customer were to remain in the insurance market, this would have the net effect of increasing premiums for 21-year-olds by 75 percent, and reducing them for 64-year-olds by 13 percent. Now, think about this. This is the system that we have created.

If you can get the young people to stay in the system--which you cannot--the young people are paying rates 75 percent higher than they should so that older Americans can pay premiums 13 percent lower than they should. But we are losing all the young people because 77 percent is forcing these folks out. They are not dumb folks. They are making good choices about their own self-interests. If their insurance prices are too high, they reject the insurance.

An individual in my district, Mr. Speaker, from Buford, Georgia, wrote to me and said: Rob, I am a full-time student with a part-time job that doesn't offer health or dental insurance. I can't get health insurance through my parents because they are on Medicare. I shop for health plans, but most are out of my budget. I shouldn't have to pay a fine if a healthcare plan is not in my budget. There should be alternatives to this plan. Please help.

Say young people don't want insurance. I don't believe that is true. I do think young people believe they are going to live forever and they are never going to get sick. But they do worry about that rainy day, forbid the thought, should something bad happen. But you can't buy a policy you can't afford, and we have priced these young people out of the marketplace.

When we price young people out of the marketplace, rates go up for everybody. When rates go up for everybody, more young people drop out of the marketplace. And that death spiral that Aetna's CEO recognized, grows faster and faster. Which brings us to the solution that we are working on here together.

I don't know what you thought of President Trump when you first met him, Mr. Speaker. I don't know what you thought of the campaign and how things were going to transpire in these first 60 days of a new administration. But I think a lot of folks in my district imagined the President as a take-it-or-leave-it kind of guy, my-way-or-the-highway kind of guy. I think you would agree with me that nothing could be further from the truth in our experience.

This is what he tweeted out. As you know, that is our new method of communication here in Washington, D.C. This is what he tweeted out when this House dropped its healthcare bill. He said: ``Our wonderful new healthcare bill is now out for review and negotiation. ObamaCare is a complete and total disaster--is imploding fast.''

It is out for review and negotiation. And those weren't just words, Mr. Speaker. You have seen it. You have seen it going on this week. You have seen it going on even to the eleventh hour. The President has never said: My way or the highway. He has brought people in from every end of the political spectrum to work with them on their ideas, to work to see what we could do more for children, more for the near elderly, more for families, how do we get the incentives in the right place. Day in and day out, 16, 17, 20 hours a day, the President has been working to make this better.

I could not feel better about the process. I don't believe any particular party has a monopoly on good ideas. I don't believe any particular Member has a monopoly on good ideas. I believe we work best when we work collaboratively. And I am so proud of our President for embracing exactly that--the art of a deal.

Mr. Speaker, there are four main parts of our replacement plan, four main parts.

Number one, Medicaid reforms to allow States the freedom to run their own Medicaid programs.

I serve on the Rules Committee with Liz Cheney from Wyoming. I promise you, the rural nature in the low-population area of Wyoming means she needs a very different Medicaid program than the high- density, high-population area of metro Atlanta that I serve.

So often, the State programs dictated by the Federal Government lock States in to a one-size-fits-all solution. Or the States can come begging to Washington, D.C., for an exception or an exemption or a waiver. You shouldn't have to come beg Washington, D.C., to best serve your constituents, Mr. Speaker. We give folks the flexibility to run these State-based programs to serve the most vulnerable of State populations.

Number two, a patient and State stability fund.

Mr. Speaker, the challenge at any insurance pool is what do you do with the sickest of the individuals in that pool. If I buy insurance today and I am not yet sick, well, now I am in the insurance pool and I am paying for whatever my actuarial risk is. But forbid the thought if somebody has already gotten sick, they have been fighting illness their entire life, they are trying to run their small business, and they show up to buy a new insurance policy, they have struggled mightily throughout my lifetime to get access to coverage.

Now, in 1996, President Bill Clinton and Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, right here on this very floor of the House, passed a bill that abolished preexisting conditions for every federally regulated plan. Those are the plans that the big companies use, like Coca-Cola, Home Depot, or Walmart. All of those plans, those big employer-based plans, the Federal Government abolished preexisting conditions in those plans decades ago.

But States have moved a little bit slower. And the mechanism that many States are trying to use as high-risk pools to say that when folks find themselves ailing and trying to find insurance for the first time, perhaps they need a different kind of medical home, perhaps they need a different incentivize to get into the insurance pool. These high-risk pools are funded in order to make insurance available, accessible, and affordable for folks who have preexisting conditions and are outside the insurance pool today. We have got to get them on the inside. We provide money to do that.

Personal tax credits, Mr. Speaker. Refundable, advanceable personal tax credits. What we say in this bill is, you don't have to pick a plan off of an ObamaCare exchange that isn't right for you and your family. You don't have to wait for the government to approve what your choices are. You can pick any plan, anywhere that serves your needs that you believe is best for your family. And if you are a middle-income or low- income American, we will help you defray the cost of that insurance policy.

Now, everybody has got skin in the game. There is no free lunch here, Mr. Speaker. Everybody has to have skin in the game. We are putting people in charge of their own choices. But if you are a 63-year-old couple and your kids have left the house, we ask: Do you need to buy a policy that covers maternity care? Is it important to you that you have a policy that covers pediatric care? Or, because you are in that older American status, you are in that age bracket where the actuaries say you are likely to consume six times more health care dollarwise than young people do should you be able to pick and choose those benefits so that you get the policy that provides the best value for you and your family. These personal tax credits go to the individual, so the individual can make choices about what is best for them.

And it creates health savings accounts. Oh, Mr. Speaker, I did not understand the economics of health care until I got my first medical savings account. I thought health care costs $50 a visit, because that is what my copay was.

When I got my first medical savings account, my insurer sent me a list. And they said: Rob, if you want to go to the doctor for a CT scan, you can go to this one down the road that charges $200, or you can go to this one down the road that charges $2,000. You just do whatever you think is best.

I went and looked last night, Mr. Speaker. If you want to go in for a CT scan in Washington, D.C.--we have fabulous hospitals here--you can go to George Washington University right down the street here in Foggy Bottom, and if you have a United plan, the cost is going to be $1,500 for your CT scan. If instead of driving west to George Washington University, you drive north to Howard University, you can go to Howard University hospital and get the same CT scan for $200.

Mr. Speaker, I can't bring down health insurance costs unless I bring down healthcare costs. And I can't bring down healthcare costs unless we have transparency in healthcare pricing so that you and I and 300 million Americans become more active consumers of these products. Health savings accounts give us that opportunity.

But I can't solve all of our healthcare problems in one bill. And shame on this Congress for having created the expectations across a decade of stuffing giant bills through this body at one time, that we have come to set expectations that we can do everything for everybody in a single bill. We can't. And even if we could, we shouldn't. Taking issues one at a time leads to better legislating.

So we have a three-phase approach here, Mr. Speaker.

First, we are going to pass the American Health Care Act, which repeals the Affordable Care Act taxes and penalties, it replaces the mandates with policies that will stabilize markets and increase individual choices. We are going to do that tomorrow morning.

Then comes the administrative action: What can we do through the White House?

You will remember when they passed the Affordable Care Act, they delegated much of that authority to the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Today, that Secretary is my good friend from across the river in Georgia, Dr. Tom Price. So the second phase is for Dr. Tom Price to grab ahold of those dials that he has at Health and Human Services and make those changes that will encourage choice and lower prices, stabilize markets.

And then third, we are going to come back to this body, back to this floor, back to the United States Senate and pass stand-alone legislation that authorizes association health plans, that promotes competition in insurance, that deals with the IPAB repeal, and on and on. In fact, we have begun that this week, Mr. Speaker.

There are two legislative processes. There is the process where you can pass something in the Senate with 51 votes. That is called reconciliation. And there is the process where you have to deal with the filibuster in the Senate. That is for everything else.

Mr. Speaker, right now, we are still getting the rust out of the gears here in this body. There are lots of new Members here. We have got a chance to pass a bill tomorrow morning that can move through the Senate with 51 votes. But then we are going to be back.

Like I say, we have started this week. We have already passed, in a bipartisan way, legislation to increase competition in the insurance market and legislation to allow small businesses to band together so that they can provide better plans at lower costs to their constituents.

Mr. Speaker, there is some suggestion that fixing a failing ObamaCare, an ObamaCare that is in a death spiral, is somehow a partisan issue. Again, as I began, I said there are folks on the Republican side who sometimes say nothing good ever happened in ObamaCare and folks on the Democratic side who sometimes say nothing bad ever happened.

But the truth is, 20 different times, this Republican-controlled House passed bills that President Obama signed into law to fix problems in the Affordable Care Act--20 different times. One of the first bills I voted on when I came to Congress was one of those bills. The President signed it into law.

The Affordable Care Act--I don't need to go through the whole history with you, Mr. Speaker. You remember. It was jammed through the Senate on Christmas Eve. It moved through the House on a Sunday night at midnight with no amendments and no changes. It was not ready for prime time. It needed these fixes. And even with these fixes, the death spiral continues.

But we needn't say to one another that collaborating to solve a failing ObamaCare system is anathema to what anyone believes. We have done it not once, not twice, but 20 times during the Obama Presidency alone.

Mr. Speaker, I will close with this tonight. It is a Kaiser Family Foundation study. They went to folks who have policies in the Affordable Care Act exchange system, and they said: Are you better off today than you were before the passage of the Affordable Care Act?

Again, these are folks who have enrolled in the Affordable Care Act.

What they found is it is about 50/50. It is just this small red and green sliver, Mr. Speaker, of the entire healthcare market in this country, just this small sliver that enrolled in the Affordable Care Act. Again, almost twice as many people rejected the Affordable Care Act, are paying penalties to the IRS, and are staying out of the system as got into the system. But of those people who got into the system, about 80 percent of which are receiving Federal subsidies to stay in the system, only about half said that they are better off today than they were before.

That is $1 trillion that we have spent--borrowed from our children and spent--to reform health care for 300 million Americans even though most Americans valued the plan they had, created a system where more Americans opted out and decided to pay a penalty than agreed to take the free health care that was being offered. And of those who agreed to take the health care, more than half of them believe things were better before.

Mr. Speaker, I will stipulate, if it is valuable, that folks who passed the Affordable Care Act before you and I got here were trying to do the best they could to serve their constituency the best they know how, but it didn't work. Insurers are leaving the plan. Families are losing their policies. Premiums are skyrocketing double and even triple digits annually.

We can do better. We can do better, and we have an opportunity to start that process tomorrow. I regret that even the word ``ObamaCare'' has become so toxic that it divides people even upon its mention. But families are being caught in that divide. Families are being caught in the political crossfire as we discuss this.

The President has said: Send me a bill because I want to put a stop to that uncertainty. I want to put a stop to that insecurity. I want to put the American healthcare system back on track.

We can do it together tomorrow.

America needs us to do it together tomorrow, and I hope that we will.

Mr. Speaker, thank you so much for agreeing to be here with me during this time tonight, and thank you for agreeing to keep my friend Jon Richards in your prayers as you lay your head down this evening.

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

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 9 o'clock and 47 minutes p.m.), the House adjourned until tomorrow, Friday, March 24, 2017, at 9 a.m.

Mr. Speaker, I rarely come down during the 1-minute time of the day, and I am glad I came down this morning for Father Conroy's prayer because there really is a lot of anxiety in this country as it relates to health care. Every family in this country has health care on their mind.

The gentleman from Rhode Island is exactly right. We have an opportunity to work together to fix it because we all know the ObamaCare system is failing. That is why we talk about how to fix it because we know that it is failing.

President Trump said on Monday that the Republican alternative is now open for review and negotiation. He didn't say take it or leave it. He didn't say pass it before you can read it. He said open for review and negotiation.

I challenge my colleagues to think about our opportunity to serve not just one constituent, but all of our constituents. Think about our opportunity to come together and put this healthcare discord behind us for a generation.

I thank Father Conroy for that admonition this morning. I hope we will rise to that challenge.

Mr. Speaker, we see so much on TV. I was watching the President's press conference a little while ago. We see so much discord out there, and this opportunity that we have in the afternoon to really delve deep into the issues is so valuable to me. It is one of the only opportunities that the American people get to see us delving deeply into the issues.

You and I know that we are in the committee room, we are behind closed doors in a bipartisan way grappling with all of the hardest issues that face American families, but folks don't see it and they don't feel it. Why it is we celebrate the discord instead of celebrating the discourse is a mystery to me.

I bring, Mr. Speaker, today some stories about the Affordable Care Act from my district at home. It is not going to be a surprise to you that these are stories of challenges.

In Cumming, Georgia--it is up in Forsyth County, Georgia, just north of

Atlanta--I heard from a single mom. She has two kids, ages 11 and 13. They have a family physician that they want to hang on to.

She says: I work part-time as a paralegal. I earn $25,000 a year, and I also receive child support payments.

She said that she was encouraged by a health insurance company to go out and enroll in Medicaid instead, but neither of her children's doctors accept Medicaid.

How often do we hear that?

The solution for everything is to dump everyone into Medicaid. Medicaid is not a healthcare system. It is a healthcare payment system. You have to find a doctor who will accept a payment. This young woman's doctors do not.

She said she went on healthcare.gov, filled out an application, and was offered a plan for $464 a month with a $12,600 deductible. She makes $25,000 a year, and what we have offered her is a $500-a-month policy, $464 a month, with a $12,000 deductible. That is not affordable, she said. She called an insurance broker and looked for a similar policy. They were priced the same way.

She said: I have decided to pay the ObamaCare fines instead.

Mr. Speaker, I tell this story because I know that every single Member of this body wants to serve the constituency that sent them here. Every single Member of this body wants to find solutions for folks back home.

As we look at the numbers across the country, we find that more Americans that we purported to help with the Affordable Care Act have decided to pay a fine instead of join the exchange system.

Mr. Speaker, we have more Americans opting out of the system than opting into the system because we have failed those very people we purported to help.

From Buford, Georgia, Mr. Speaker: I'm a full-time student with a part-time job that doesn't offer health or dental insurance. I can't get health insurance through my parents because they are on Medicare. I shopped for health plans, but all of the ones on the exchange are out of my budget. I shouldn't have to pay a fine because I can't afford health care.

Now, think about that, Mr. Speaker. This young student says: I shouldn't have to pay a fine because I can't afford the health care. If I can't afford the health care, I certainly can't afford the fine.

These are the people that we purported to help with the Affordable Care Act, and they are not being served.

Back in Cumming, Georgia, Mr. Speaker: Today I have been in my office for hours trying to find affordable health care that accommodates my primary care physician. Prices start for me at $750-plus. Before ObamaCare, I was paying $365 with more access to doctors.

It is not just about the money, Mr. Speaker. These networks, as you know, are closing. More than one-third of the counties in America have no choice of insurance whatsoever. The networks are narrowing. Folks are not just finding it hard to pay for care, but they are finding it hard to choose their physician.

A retired couple in Peachtree Corners, Mr. Speaker: I retired last year, and my husband retired this year. Both of us are in our sixties. We knew we would have to pay a lot for health insurance, but I was stunned when we signed up for the Affordable Care Act to the tune of more than $1,200 per month. I recently received a notice from our insurer that premiums for 2017 will go to over $2,000 per month.

This family played by the rules their entire life, Mr. Speaker. They retired, needed access to health care, and went to the exchanges that were purported to help people find affordable health care. They found a $1,200-a-month policy that this year rises to $2,000 a month.

I say this to the young people planning for their retirement and thinking about putting something away for a rainy day: This couple pays $2,000 a month simply for their premium.

Another family in Cumming, Georgia, Mr. Speaker: Six years ago, we had a perfectly acceptable high-deductible plan with an HSA for $300 a month. As ObamaCare has been implemented, it has gone from $300 to $450 to $950 per month, and our only remaining option is a $1,450-per-month plan that provides effectively the same coverage.

Mr. Speaker, I added that one because these folks weren't looking for help. These folks weren't uninsured. These folks didn't have a problem finding insurance. They had it under control themselves. In the name of helping the uninsured, the Affordable Care Act came in, re-regulated the entire insurance industry, even for people who already had health care, and drove this family's premiums from $300 a month to $1,400 a month.

Mr. Speaker, who defends these things? Who defends these things?

I tell you, I will not have a colleague from the Democratic side or the Republican side who would say that any of these consequences were intended when the Affordable Care Act was passed. They might have been inevitable, but they were not intended.

So we can agree there is a problem. We can agree there is a problem. And if you don't think that we can agree, let me refer first to former President Barack Obama. Just last fall, he said this: Despite this progress, too many Americans still strain to pay for their physician visits and prescriptions, cover their deductibles or pay their monthly insurance bills. They struggle to navigate a complex, sometimes bewildering system, and they remain uninsured.

That's right. They remain uninsured. The trillion-plus dollars that we spent to solve the issue of the uninsured solved nothing. We continue to have a problem with the uninsured, yet we have added problems to those who are insured.

Democratic Governor Mark Dayton from Minnesota in October of last year, Mr. Speaker: The reality is the Affordable Care Act is no longer affordable.

The reality is the Affordable Care Act is no longer affordable--these are words of folks who supported the Affordable Care Act.

Former President Bill Clinton: ``So you've got this crazy system where all of a sudden 25 million more people have health care and then the people who are out there busting it, sometimes 60 hours a week, wind up with their premiums doubled with their coverage cut in half. It's the craziest thing in the world.''

There is a group of people, mostly small-business owners and employees, who make just a little too much to qualify for Medicaid expansion or for the tax incentives who can't get Affordable Care Act premiums in a lot of places.

Former President Bill Clinton says that there are guys out there busting 60 hours a week trying to make it work for their families, and we have failed them.

It is not that they had a problem to begin with. Many of these folks had insurance that they liked to begin with. We failed them when we re- regulated them into problems instead of solving problems.

Mr. Speaker, the broken promises began right away. You will remember the fact check organization that named ``If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan'' as the Lie of the Year.

Overpromising and underdelivering has been the nature of ObamaCare. We were promised premiums would decline by $2,500. The average family premium has increased by $4,300. We were promised the cost of health care would go down, but deductibles have risen more than 60 percent. We were promised you can keep your doctor, but 70 percent of us find ourselves in narrower networks today than we did before. Middle class Americans were promised we wouldn't see a tax increase, but as we just heard from this young student, when you can't find a plan that meets your needs, then you are fined by the IRS. You are paying taxes right then.

Now, Mr. Speaker, I am not blaming these systemic problems on President Obama. I am not blaming these systemic problems on the Affordable Care Act. What I am doing is pointing out that we passed the Affordable Care Act with $1 trillion in new tax increases and with a re-regulation of all of the insurance plans that people liked before in the name of solving these problems, which we did not solve.

I will take you to my home State of Georgia, Mr. Speaker. On average, 32 percent is the increase that we are seeing in premiums on our exchange--32 percent this year alone. Of the folks

who are participating in the exchange, Mr. Speaker, 80 percent of them receive a government subsidy.

Let me say that again: Of the folks who participate in the $1 trillion Affordable Care Act exchange program in the State of Georgia, 80 percent of them do so because the government is paying for their health care. That is a pretty good incentive to get in the system. If you're going to get a subsidy payment, folks are in the system. Eighty percent require that subsidy in order to be enticed into the system.

As you know, Mr. Speaker, more people rejected going into the system opting instead for no health care than went into the system with the Affordable Care Act.

The average wage earner in Georgia, Mr. Speaker, gets no subsidy from the government. Four hundred percent of the poverty line, as you know, is where that subsidy kicks in. That is about $48,000 a year in the State of Georgia. I am telling you, if you earn $48,000 a year, you have bills, obligations, and responsibilities, and you find yourself in one of these $2,000-a-month premium situations that this retired couple in Georgia did, you cannot afford health insurance--or at least you cannot afford the health insurance that the government today is requiring that you have.

Let's think about those requirements, Mr. Speaker. The government, in its wisdom, decided it was going to force folks into plans that it deemed appropriate. Many of those came in the form of healthcare CO- OPs. It was certainly a reasonable idea: let's allow folks in States back home to join together and provide health insurance.

We sucked folks into those CO-OPs, Mr. Speaker. Again, an unsustainable system, this death spiral of ObamaCare. One million folks were sucked into CO-OPs that went belly up, Mr. Speaker. They lost their insurance once when ObamaCare came into business, and they lost their insurance again when these CO-OPs failed.

As you can see on this map, the orange CO-OPs have failed. Only a few remain in business today. It remains to be seen if they will make it through the year.

When we talk about choice, Mr. Speaker, five States have only one insurer in the exchange. That was the whole point of the exchange. That is why we spent literally billions upon billions to set up these exchanges so that consumers could compare and choose.

Now, two things went wrong. Number one, we set up this list of mandates that every insurance plan had to comply with, which disincentivized folks to join those plans to begin with. Then, number two, by setting up what you had to have in a plan, you, by definition, restricted the choice of individuals to choose what they want. So you end up with five States with only one insurer under ObamaCare.

Now, that is before the announcement this week from Humana that it is withdrawing from all of the ObamaCare plans at the end of 2017. That was before the announcement this week from the Aetna CEO that he sees the death spiral that ObamaCare is involved in--his words--and it remains to be seen whether they will participate next year or not.

I don't need to find consensus among 218 Members or even 435 Members about whether or not ObamaCare is succeeding or failing.

What I need is for folks to look at the 19 million uninsured Americans who had an opportunity to go into this trillion-dollar system; an opportunity to reach for the golden ring, as it was described by its authors and its proponents, and they said: No. They said: It doesn't work for me. They said: It is not the right thing for me. They said: It doesn't fit into my families' needs and desires and expectations.

Of these 19 million, Mr. Speaker, 6.5 million paid a tax penalty. That is 6.5 million Americans failed by their government in a trillion- dollar healthcare regulation, failed by their government in an expansion through ObamaCare and Medicaid, and failed by their government yet again when they received a bill because the trillion- dollar program we put together didn't work for them and their families.

Can't we agree that if our goal was to solve the problem of the uninsured American, having 19 million Americans who would rather stay uninsured than participate in the Affordable Care Act is the definition of failure?

We can do better. There is a better way, Mr. Speaker, let there be no mistake about that.

I know there is a lot of anxiety out there. I don't want to minimize that. Fear is a corrosive emotion to have. I want to do my very best to allay the fear of anyone in America, Mr. Speaker, who is benefiting from the Affordable Care Act. As these numbers have demonstrated, there are not many. But if you spend a trillion dollars and re-regulate an entire industry, I certainly hope there is at least one family out there who got something out of it. I know that there are.

I quote Greg Walden, the chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, Mr. Speaker, who, as you know, has wide jurisdiction for re- regulating health care. He says this in January of this year: ``We want to make sure that people with pre-existing conditions continue to get covered.''

Mr. Speaker, it is a myth that Congress didn't care about preexisting conditions. It was Republicans in Congress, led by Republican Newt Gingrich of the great State of Georgia, who abolished preexisting conditions in every federally regulated plan back in 1996. He did that in partnership with Bill Clinton.

What you have heard from our chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee is that we are committed to dealing with preexisting conditions. Take that anxiety off your list.

From Tom Price, now the Secretary of Health and Human Services: ``Nobody is interested in pulling the rug out from anybody.''

We believe that it is absolutely imperative that individuals who have health care be able to keep health coverage and move, hopefully, to greater choices and opportunity for them to gain the kind of coverage that they want for themselves and their families.

There has been a lot of talk about individuals losing health care. That is not our goal, nor is it our desire, nor is it our plan. The new Secretary of Health and Human Services said that this year.

Now, Mr. Speaker, I don't want to overpromise and underdeliver. ObamaCare is failing. The exchanges are failing. Insurance companies are leaving. Plans are being canceled.

I am not saying that if you like your plan, you can keep it. Your plan may be one of the overly regulated, overly priced plans that is collapsing across this country. What I am saying to you is, our commitment is to help and not hurt in that area.

I cannot prevent ObamaCare from failing. I cannot prevent your plan from going away, but I can provide an off ramp for you and your family so that you can find, as Secretary Price says, better choices and better opportunities.

From the United States Senate, Mr. Speaker, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell: ``There will be a stable transition period, and once repeal is passed we will turn to replacement policies that cost less and work better than what we have now.''

Some contend that, by fulfilling our promise to the American people, we are somehow going to go back to the way things were before ObamaCare, which we all know is untrue.

If your family grappled with preexisting conditions because your State didn't address it the same way the Federal Government did back in 1996--folks are committed, if you are playing by the rules, to stick with you and your family through this transition.

If your family benefits from the raising of the lifetime caps that was a part of the Affordable Care Act, you have won that debate. You needn't worry as we go through this transition.

If you like the fact that your kids are unemployed and staying on your policy until they are 26 years old, I think you have won that debate. I think that is absolutely going to be a part of that conversation in this transition.

If you have a fear, if you have a worry, if you have a concern, I don't want to minimize it. I want to allay it. But come and share it with your Member of Congress, share it with your United States Senator. We have a group of leaders committed to addressing those concerns.

Finally, Paul Ryan, our Speaker of the House: ``We can and should have a

system in this country where everybody can have access to affordable health care, including people with pre-existing conditions.''

There are things that unite us in this body, and one of those things is caring for people, caring about people, wanting folks to get a fair shake. If you have played by the rules, you deserve a fair shake. That brings us all together in this institution.

I don't want any family to find themselves in fear that they are being forgotten in this transition, but there is a very real fear that, if you are in an Affordable Care Act plan today, that plan will fail.

Mr. Speaker, there are two things we can do. We can pretend that failure is not imminent. You can look at all the insurers withdrawing from ObamaCare, you can look at all of the rate increases going up in double digits, you can look at all of the folks who are opting out because it has gotten too expensive and doesn't serve their families' needs.

You can see the failure of ObamaCare. But the number of options that we have, the number of plans under discussion to replace it is numerous, Mr. Speaker. We have got the Better Way healthcare plan, we have got the American Health Care Reform Act, we have got the Empowering Patients First, we have got our Rules Committee chairman's The World's Great Healthcare Plan Act, the Patient Freedom Act, the ObamaCare Replacement Act.

Mr. Speaker, we have options. To begin to get to those options, we need to be honest with ourselves, whether we opposed ObamaCare from the beginning or whether we hoped it was going to be the best thing since sliced bread, that ObamaCare has failed.

With that recognition, we can repeal those costly mandates, we can repeal those constrictive agreements, we can repeal those things that have isolated us from choice, that have separated us from our doctors, and we can begin to restore a patient-centered, family first system.

Mr. Speaker, I have no doubt that you are a smart man. I have no doubt that you work hard from dawn to dusk every day. But no matter how hard you work, I promise you that you will not know better than the families in my district which healthcare plan is best for them, and I appreciate you not trying to second guess them.

I cannot make everybody in America happy, Mr. Speaker, but I can give everybody in America the choice to make themselves happy. I can't empower families in America to make their own choices, their own decisions about what works best for them.

Put your mind at ease. For folks who have concerns, we hear you. For folks who have been hurt, we are coming for you. And for folks who know there is a better way, we stand with you.

It is going to be a long spring and summer, Mr. Speaker, because this is only heavy lifting, but it is the right thing to do, and we have got the right group of men and women here to do it.

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

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to clause 1, rule I, I demand a vote on agreeing to the Speaker's approval of the Journal.

Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 48 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern), my good friend, 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, House Resolution 48 provides for consideration of S. Con. Res. 3, the FY17 budget resolution, as well as consideration of a bill to move forward on the process of confirming our civilian Secretary of Defense, former General Mattis.

Mr. Speaker, the rule is a structured rule today to move expeditiously on both of these measures, and in the time we have gotten to spend together, Mr. Speaker, you know I am a fan of the festival of democracy that can be the Committee on Rules process, particularly the appropriations process. But there are times where moving expeditiously is required, and today is one of those days.

You are not going to see a rule like this come very often because we are considering the FY17 budget resolution today. Historically, as you know, in this Chamber, when we get ready to consider budget resolutions, Mr. Speaker, we are considering every single one that any Member of Congress would have an opportunity to write. That process takes place every spring to meet the statutory deadline of passing budgets by April. This is not that budget today, Mr. Speaker.

This is a budget, as you know, to move us forward on a reconciliation process to finish up the FY17 budget process, and rather than considering all the amendments that one might have to offer, we have made in order just one. It is the Democratic substitute. It is offered by my good friend, the ranking member on the Committee on the Budget, Mr. Yarmuth, and it is absolutely worthy of the Membership's consideration. But it is not going to be a vote-a-rama on every budget known to mankind. It will be the underlying budget from the House Committee on the Budget as well as one substitute from the ranking member.

Mr. Speaker, when it comes to consideration of the measure to waive a statutory prohibition on naming a civilian Secretary of Defense who has been out of the military for less than 7 years, we are also offering that under a closed rule today. No amendments are going to be made in order. You may not know, Mr. Speaker, but that is the

only statutory change that has passed the United States Senate in 2017.

When we talk about having to move expeditiously, when we talk about whether or not we are going to have an open process or a closed process, understand that while this body has passed dozens of statutory changes in just these first 9 days of legislative activity, the Senate has passed but one. This is in anticipation of an inauguration of a President on January 20. This is in anticipation of trying to fill out a Cabinet. This is in anticipation of trying to make sure that civilian leadership is in place on day one to lead and to serve the men and women of the United States military.

This is not the time to have that vote-a-rama. This is the time to move expeditiously, again, with a bill that has passed in a bipartisan way in the other Chamber. I look forward to getting back into the business of leading the Senate, not following the Senate. I look forward to getting back in the business of voting on absolutely every idea that Members bring to this floor.

Today, Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this rule so that we can move expeditiously on two of our priorities: passing that FY17 budget resolution and ensuring the speedy confirmation of the civilian leader of the Department of Defense.

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

Mr. Speaker, it is my great pleasure to yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Cole), who probably knows more about the Health and Human Services Appropriations bill than anyone else in this Congress, the cardinal from that committee in the 114th Congress.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds to thank my colleague for her admonition to reject divisive and self-serving rhetoric because I think that is absolutely something we should take to heart.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Newhouse), a member of the Rules Committee and a new member of the Appropriations Committee.

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

Reluctantly I recognize that we are, apparently, not going to have an end to divisive, self-serving rhetoric. I am still optimistic, as it is a long year ahead of us.

What the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Pocan) is suggesting, Mr. Speaker, is that we ensure the failure of Social Security going forward. The only guaranteed benefit in Social Security is that it is guaranteed to fail. Those are not my words. These are the words of the actuaries who are in charge of protecting Social Security. The nonpartisan actuaries who govern Social Security say that there is not enough money today to pay the benefits that folks are expecting. The law of the land, as it exists today, requires that, when that day comes, benefits will get cut dramatically. Only a 75 percent realization of benefits is what the law requires that befalls our senior citizens. If we pass the amendment that is suggested by my friend, we would be prohibited from considering any solutions to that problem. Means testing, which my colleagues have advocated for years, is off the table under that scenario.

Mr. Speaker, to suggest that anyone on this side of the aisle wants to undermine the commitment that this country has made to our seniors is ludicrous; but to suggest that I go to a 22-year-old, whose polling today suggests he or she believes they are more likely to see a UFO in their lifetime than a Social Security check in their lifetime--to suggest that going to that 22-year-old and my thinking that maybe his retirement age would be a year or two higher than his great- grandparents' since he is now living decades longer--I will remind my colleagues we came together in a bipartisan way to raise the retirement age from 65 to 67 in 1983, not because one of us hated seniors and one of us loved seniors, but because we all believed in our commitment to seniors.

Mr. Speaker, don't let the Record reflect anything other than that this budget resolution provides the framework to begin this discussion, to begin the discussion of what comes next. There is not a single line of authorizing language in this budget resolution. Any suggestion that the law will change tomorrow because of this budget resolution is false. The law will be the same tomorrow as it was yesterday. The difference is we have begun a path--we will have created a framework; we will have provided the tools--to have a discussion about how to solve very real problems in this country.

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

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

The gentleman from Massachusetts said in his opening statement that he didn't come to Congress to hurt people; that he came to help people. I want to stipulate that that is 100 percent true. There is no one in this Chamber who I believe has a bigger heart for men and

women than the gentleman from Massachusetts, which is why I know that he does not support what I see happening to my constituency.

He says people are paying less for their health care today. I dispute those numbers writ large, but I know it is true in my district because the free healthcare clinic has doubled since the passage of ObamaCare. Folks once had access to small plans that they chose for their families. Those plans were outlawed. Now they have high deductible plans that are worthless to them, so they seek care at the free clinics. I know that ripping the plans out from under those men and women in my district was not the gentleman's intention when he passed the Affordable Care Act, but it is absolutely the result.

I know that when the gentleman set up those exchanges, which all Americans were supposed to be able to go to to buy their healthcare plans, he did not intend for those plans to get canceled year after year after year after year, because they were unsustainable. We all know, of the constituents in our districts who did what the government told them to do, they lost the plans their employers used to provide; they went to the exchanges to buy a plan; and, 1 year later, those plans were canceled. They went through the process again: they picked out other plans; they went through the exchanges and paid their money; and, 1 year later, those plans were canceled again and again.

We all know those constituents; so to suggest that the only reason someone would come to the floor today would be to solve a nonexistent problem is ridiculous. We all know that there are problems. What is ridiculous are the folks who would come and defend the status quo. The status quo is indefensible, Mr. Speaker.

When we get together, we can do amazing things. There are vast experiences of the Members in this Chamber, Mr. Speaker, and our bringing those to the table leads to better solutions. We have spent 6 years being stuck in the status quo, and this bill represents an opportunity to turn the page on that status quo, and I know every single Member has constituents in his district who will welcome it.

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

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

I was not in Congress at the time the Affordable Care Act passed, but I remember it, watching from home. We talk about this as if it was some sort of thoughtfully crafted piece of legislation that folks are so tremendously proud of. I happen to have the numbers here, Mr. Speaker.

It was H.R. 4872 that moved through the House, that was the authorizing part. We had three votes in the U.S. House of Representatives on that bill. We had a motion to recommit, as it was not actually a healthcare bill to begin with, and a vote on final passage.

Then it went over to the U.S. Senate where they worked their will on it. They had 43 votes on it, amendments offered, ideas, and changes.

Then it came back to the House where we changed it not at all. There was one straight partisan vote on the Affordable Care Act. Not one idea from the U.S. House of Representatives added, not one change from the U.S. House of Representatives, not one alteration of any kind.

As you recall, Mr. Speaker, they had a filibuster-proof majority in the United States Senate, so Democrats could work their will any way they wanted. When they lost that filibuster-proof majority--they only had 59 votes out of 100 instead of 60--they ended debate, they ended discussion, they ended collaboration and jammed what they had passed at midnight on Christmas Eve right on through the U.S. House of Representatives. I can't imagine who defends that as the proper outcome of the legislative process. We have a chance to change that, Mr. Speaker.

I am glad that my friend from Connecticut has some constituents that have benefited. I have some constituents that have benefited. But I have constituents who are being failed, and I know my friend from Connecticut does, too.

I am glad that my friends on the other side of the aisle are talking about all of their success stories, but I want my friends to join me and grapple with all of the failures.

I will not deny the way the conversation about health care has changed since the passage of the Affordable Care Act--folks talking about preexisting conditions, folks talking about lifetime caps, folks talking about keeping young kids on their policies until they are 26.

I just don't understand why my colleagues would deny that folks who used to have care, now don't. Folks who used to have affordable plans, now don't. Folks who used to be able to take care of their employees through their small business plans, now can't. This is undisputed, and we have an opportunity to do better. I hope my colleagues will join me in doing that.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume to share with my friend from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern) that one is not entitled to their own facts, but one is also not entitled to share just half the story and leave it as if it is the entire story.

Everything the gentleman from Massachusetts said was true, until the U.S. House abdicated any responsibility whatsoever and passed exactly what the Senate did with no amendment whatsoever. All of the work product the gentleman talked about, all of the work that the gentleman talked about went for naught in this U.S. House of Representatives.

To deny that this is not the bill that folks wanted to have crafted is to deny reality. To deny that this is not the bill that folks wanted to have crafted is to deny the nine different times the Republican House and Senate sent to the President repeals of ObamaCare, things that were so broken even the President couldn't live with it and he signed those repeals into law.

Mr. Speaker, I am not trying to denigrate any of the motives of my friends on the other side of the aisle. I just can't understand, for the life of me, why they don't want to try to do better.

That pride of authorship, that arrogance, it has a real impact on the men and women that I serve, and I am asking my friends to partner with me to help me fix it. But if they won't partner with me, I am going to move forward and fix it anyway.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Shimkus).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds just to say absolutely none of that is true. Absolutely not one word of that is true. This bill does not one of those things. This bill does, in fact, nothing to change the law at all in any way, shape, or form. It is not true. This bill provides a process for debating the law, and I certainly hope we will pass it so we can have that debate.

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

Mr. Speaker, I advise my friend from Massachusetts I do not have any further speakers and would be happy to close when he is prepared.

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

I am fond of telling folks back home, Mr. Speaker, when they tell me they know exactly what is going to happen over the next 2 years, that I don't think they are telling me the truth. Because I confess to you, I have absolutely no idea what is coming over these next 2 years. I think these next 2 years are going to be unlike any we have seen in the history of self-governance in this land; and, candidly, I am excited about that because the status quo isn't working for the 700,000 people that I represent.

I don't know what's going to happen over these next 2 years, but I believe that, for the first time, we are going to grapple with some really, really, really hard problems that folks on both sides of the aisle have been ignoring for too long.

Mr. Speaker, I don't question the commitment of my friends on the other side of the aisle to the American people. I question the legislation that they use to deliver it. You heard my friend from Oklahoma talk about premiums going up 67 percent for his constituents. That is indefensible. It is not okay. We can do better, and, with the passage of this budget resolution, we will have the tools to do that. I say again, the law will be the same tomorrow as it is today, but we will have the tools to grapple with these problems.

Eight million Americans were so failed by the Affordable Care Act that they paid a tax penalty instead of accessing care. That is not okay. I don't believe a single Member on the other side of the aisle decided they just wanted to tax young people instead of provide young people with quality care. This budget will give us the opportunity to have the tools to fix that problem.

Billions of dollars, Mr. Speaker, have gone into State-based co-ops that have failed, gone bankrupt, and terminated all of their plans which not only ripped health care out from under the American people, Mr. Speaker, but threw billions of dollars away in administrative costs at the same time. That is not okay. That is indefensible. We can do better. Passing this budget resolution will give us those tools.

Mr. Speaker, I made a commitment in the Rules Committee last night to do everything I could to stop poisoning the well of public discourse. Then I re-

upped for the Rules Committee, and I realized that is going to be a tough promise to fulfill. We have difficult work to do, and we are passionate about the quality of that work.

But, Mr. Speaker, we all know the status quo has failed. We all know that we have the opportunity to deliver, and we all know that a vote of ``yes'' on this budget resolution will give us more tools to deliver that success than we have today. We need to do this. We need to celebrate doing this.

Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to support the rule and support the two underlying measures that it will bring to the floor.

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

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 8 o'clock and 29 minutes p.m.), the House adjourned until tomorrow, Friday, January 13, 2017, at 9 a.m.

Amendment XXVII:

``No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.''

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the time.

I would like to begin by yielding to my friend from the Georgia delegation, Mr. Loudermilk.

Paying Tribute to Timothy F. Johnson

I thank my friend from Georgia.

This is a country that is about individuals. It is about individual leadership, and it is about individual opportunity. The story you tell of Tim and the impact that he had on people's lives is going to be known long, long after he has gone to be with our Lord.

I want to talk about opportunity at a much smaller level than what my friend from Georgia was talking about, Mr. Speaker. I want to talk about it in the context of the Keystone pipeline that we passed this week.

At the end of the day, America is about opportunity. And if opportunity doesn't live here anymore, I am not sure what the point of America is. If freedom doesn't live here anymore, I am not sure what the point of America is. If families can't raise their children and believe that their children, if they play by the rules, if they work hard, can create a better life for themselves than their parents had, if you don't believe that anymore, the promise that is the American Dream is lost. And I think with one minor Federal regulation at a time, followed by a couple of major Federal regulations, followed by more minor regulations, we are eroding the ability of our young people to succeed and for their families to succeed.

The Keystone pipeline we voted on this week, Mr. Speaker, it is about employment opportunities. It is a job-creating program. We have dozens upon dozens of pipelines across this country. Why in the world the President has chosen the Keystone pipeline to use as a political football is a mystery to me.

Building pipelines is honorable work. It is hard work. It is often dangerous work. But it is important work that goes to the price of energy in every single one of our homes back home.

Having passed it in the Senate, having passed it in the House, it now goes to the President's desk. He could create jobs tomorrow.

It is about energy security, Mr. Speaker. It is energy from our friends in Canada, one of our most loyal partners across the globe. We need North American energy security. I don't want to rely on folks across the oceans who oftentimes wish us harm. I want to use those resources here.

Creating this partnership with Canada gives us that energy security. It is enhanced safety, Mr. Speaker. You don't think about it. But if we are not moving oil through a pipeline, we are moving it on trains, we are moving it in trucks. Trains and trucks and their safety record, Mr. Speaker, are much less reliable than pipelines, not just in terms of spills but in terms of lives.

I heard the gentleman from North Dakota down here earlier this week, Mr. Speaker. Of course those trucks and trains are moving through his district. He said if we put in the pipeline instead of using those trucks, lives would be saved. Traffic accidents would be avoided. Lives would be saved, not just oil spills but real human consequences.

We talk about environmental protection, Mr. Speaker. This is going to be the most advanced pipeline ever constructed in the United States of America. Now that is just the environmental protection of the pipeline.

We go on to talk about, where would that oil be refined if we don't do it here under U.S. safety and environmental standards? Well, the answer is we are going to ship that overseas. It is going to get shipped to China. It is going to get processed in a much less environmentally friendly way. We have an opportunity to take that step.

Finally, Mr. Speaker, we are talking about an exchange with our friends in Canada. Can you imagine if we had a product we were trying to get to market, and the only way to get it there or the simplest way to get it there was to move it through Canada, and the Canadians said: No, I don't care about your economy, America; I don't care about jobs in America; I don't care about your resources; the answer is, no, we won't partner with you.

If you read the comments coming out of the government in Canada, they are just flabbergasted that all they are asking is for this minor connection into the U.S. pipeline system, and the country they thought was their great friend--America--has been so resistant. For 7 years, we have been waiting on this solution, Mr. Speaker, and finally it has passed in this Congress this week.

I want to talk about what is happening in this Congress because when you slow down things like the pipeline, Mr. Speaker, you are slowing down America. You are slowing down economic growth. You are slowing down job creation.

I have here from Atlanta's own CNN a headline titled: ``Harry Reid: Dems won't engage in `obstruction.' '' This is from November 12, 2014.

He is making the point as the former--at that time, he was the majority leader in the Senate. He is now the former majority leader in the Senate. He is making the point that America is not helped when the Senate engages in obstructionism. He says this: ``I am ready to work with'' Mitch McConnell--now the Senate majority leader--``in good faith to make this institution function for the American people.'' In good faith to make this institution function. He says: ``I saw firsthand how a strategy of obstruction was debilitating to our system. I have no desire to engage in that manner.''

I am grateful to Harry Reid for that wisdom. I think he is absolutely right about that. There is a right way and a wrong way to run this institution. He has observed the wrong way to do it. Unfortunately, that was back in November.

Fast forward to this month, Mr. Speaker. Look at the headlines from across the country. Washington Post: ``Senate Democrats should be careful about their filibuster strategy.'' As you know, the filibuster is the definition of obstruction. It is in full force in the Senate as we sit here today.

February 4, from The Atlantic: ``The new Democratic obstructionists.'' That is the headline of the article, Mr. Speaker. It was just 3 months ago when Majority Leader Harry Reid said: This is not the right path for America; this is bad for America. And he was right when he said it. It has taken 3 months for him to change his mind and go in the other direction.

Politico: ``Democrats learn to love the filibuster; party leaders change tune now that they are in minority.'' Change tune now that they are in the minority.

Mr. Speaker, America's needs are no less great today. Job creation is no less important today. The American economy is no less fragile today. But the Senate Democratic leaders have changed their tune.

Finally, back to CNN: ``Democrats block funding for DHS to protect Obama immigration orders.'' What that means, Mr. Speaker, is they have blocked debating the bill to fund DHS, that they are so intent on protecting the President and what he alone has done from the White House, they refuse to even allow the Senate to debate the merits of those issues.

If this institution is not about debate, Mr. Speaker, I don't know what it is about.

I begin with that to get us into the economy, Mr. Speaker. And I have to tell you, I have the vice chairman of the House Budget Committee down here today, the gentleman from Indiana, Todd Rokita.

The Budget Committee right now is involved in the gargantuan task of trying to balance the Federal budget and present that budget to this House before April. But their task is complicated, Mr. Speaker. You can't see the chart that I have, but their task is complicated because economic growth

in America is slowing. The obstructionism in the Senate, the obstructionism from the White House can't build simple things like the Keystone pipeline.

Do you know, Mr. Speaker, one of the greatest public works projects in the history of our Nation, the Hoover Dam? The Hoover Dam was built in less time than it has taken the White House to consider the application for this short pipeline connecting America and Canada. We built the Hoover Dam more quickly than we can sign off on the paperwork for a pipeline.

Let me show you what the impact of that is. Economic growth--in 2013, Mr. Speaker, CBO projected that GDP would be growing about 3 percent a year, 2.9 to be precise. By last year, in February, when they gave us their projections, they lowered it to 2.5 percent. Today, January 2015, they have lowered it to 2.3 percent.

Mr. Speaker, that is not just 2.9 to 2.3 percent. That is trillions of dollars in economic activity. It looks small on this page, but it is giant on the Federal budget, and it is even bigger when you talk about the job creation that hasn't occurred. It is even bigger when you talk about Americans who are trapped in part-time work. It is even bigger when you talk about young people graduating from college who cannot find a job. That is the impact of obstructionism. That is the impact of inaction. That is the impact of having a former majority leader, now minority leader, in the Senate who, as the newspaper headlines say, has changed his tune.

I have heard folks say--I laugh, Mr. Speaker. It is not funny. It is sad. But I have heard folks say, Well, what are you complaining about, Rob? Deficits have come down by half in President Obama's administration. They have come down by half.

Well, that is true. When I showed up here 4 years ago, Mr. Speaker, deficits were at their single highest rate in the history of the Nation. And by ``single highest rate,'' I mean they were four times higher than they had ever before been. So they have dropped from being four times higher than ever before down to just higher than ever before. You can call that progress, but I don't.

I have it charted here as a percentage of the size of the economy, Mr. Speaker. I go all the way back to 1965. We have had Republicans. We have had Democrats. We have had Republicans in Congress, Democrats in Congress; Republicans in the White House, Democrats in the White House. This isn't about the parties. For Pete's sake, if we look here for the only surpluses in our Nation's history, it comes at a time when we had--much like we do today--Republicans here in this institution, Republicans in the United States Senate, and Democrats leading from the White House. It was a bipartisan way we created some economic growth.

But what I want you to see, Mr. Speaker, is that we come here into the current administration, deficits dramatically higher than ever before in American history, dramatically higher. Coming down to the dotted line I have on the chart, Mr. Speaker, is the historical average, from 1965 to 2014.

Now it is embarrassing for the both of us that we have to talk about our Nation's finances by the historical deficit. Neither one of us came here to be involved in deficit spending. We came here to stop borrowing from our children and from our grandchildren, to start being responsible by paying the bills today, to improve opportunity in the future, not to diminish and borrow from opportunity in the future. But that has been the historical average.

What you would see if you could see this chart, Mr. Speaker, is that even as the White House is preaching the good news of declining deficits, they have only declined from those record highs. They have declined to a level where they are going to continue to rise again at levels higher than the historical average.

The President just sent his budget--2 weeks ago now, Mr. Speaker, he sent that budget. It arrived here on time for the first time in his administration. I applaud him for that. But it never balances--never, ever. Not this year, not next year, not 10 years from now, not 20 years from now, not 100 years from now.

The idea of the United States of America and the budget that should control it, from the President's point of view, is a budget that should never, ever balance and, thus, a balance that should continue year after year to borrow from the prosperity of future generations so that we can spend it on ourselves. That is selfish in ways that I can't be a part of.

What is the nature of the problem, Mr. Speaker? We are talking about this in the Budget Committee right now. Total spending in this country is about $3.5 trillion this year. The little part that Congress has control over, it is the defense and the nondefense discretionary--this little corner of the pie. We are able to control that.

In fact, Mr. Rokita, the vice chairman of the Budget Committee, arrived here in 2010, as I did. Every single year since you have been here, leading at the Budget Committee, I would say to the gentleman from Indiana, we have reduced that discretionary spending every single year. It hasn't been easy. It has been hard, deliberate, bipartisan work. But you have done it because it was the right thing to do. $3.5 trillion is a lot of money. But the small part that you have had control over, you have made a difference in. It is the rest of this pot that continues to grow.

I yield to my friend from Indiana.

I thank the vice chairman of the Budget Committee.

Mr. Speaker, people think these things happen in a vacuum. They don't. They happen because folks like Mr. Rokita take time away from their family and away from their constituents back home sometimes to work the long nights and the early mornings it takes to get a budget like this done.

Just to give you an example, Mr. Speaker, I don't know if you have ever thought about it--$3.5 trillion is the size of our annual spending--annual spending. People often characterize--and I would tell you mischaracterize--Republicans as folks who want to shut down government. That is nonsense.

You heard the gentleman from Indiana's heart as he was up here talking about his love for people, the needs that people have, and our opportunity to aid people and their families as they struggle with some of those challenges. We spend $3.5 trillion a year in that effort.

It is not that we don't want to spend the money. It is that we want to spend it effectively, efficiently, and accountably. That is all folks ask for back home. They don't say, Shut the government down. They say, Spend my tax money effectively, efficiently, and accountably--$3.5 trillion, Mr. Speaker.

If any of the young people who are coming to Congress to watch what goes on here on the floor of the House, Mr. Speaker, if any of those young people were born the day that Jesus Christ was born and, beginning on that day, they spent $1 million every day, $1 million every day, 7 days a week, Mr. Speaker, from the day that Jesus Christ was born until today, they would have to continue spending $1 million a day, every day, 7 days a week, for another 732 years, to spend their first trillion dollars.

As a Federal Government, we are spending $3.5 trillion every year, and we borrowed from those same young people $18 trillion that they are going to have to pay back one day. These numbers are mind-boggling, and sometimes, I wonder if we as a Chamber, Mr. Speaker, are taking this crisis as seriously as we must.

It is, at its core, a spending crisis. It is not a revenue crisis. It is not that $3.5 trillion isn't enough to handle the needs of this country; it is. This chart, Mr. Speaker, you can't see it, but it is a historical chart of spending, which is in the red, and revenues, which is in the green.

Now, when we have had this big economic downturn here, so many families out of work, so many families in part-time work, and so many young people who couldn't find jobs, revenues absolutely went down.

They went down because there were no jobs, and if folks don't have jobs, they don't have incomes, and if they don't have incomes, they can't pay taxes. We want people to go to work. You can't pay taxes if you don't have a job.

Historically, Americans have been willing to pay about 18 percent of GDP in tax revenue, so I draw that line on out for the foreseeable future.

The red line represents spending in this town, Mr. Speaker. The red line represents if we did nothing, if we adjourned the Congress this afternoon, we went down to Pennsylvania Avenue, we picked up the President, and we all left Washington forever--I was wondering if there was going to be a loud group of cheers and applause that broke out when I said that, Mr. Speaker, I am not actually advocating for that--but if that were to happen, the laws that are already on the books have made promises to people that spend the money on this red line, going into historical debt territory, the likes of which we have never seen, and we cannot survive as a nation.

Spending is the problem. The red line is the problem. The green line is what we take from American families in taxes. It has been constant over time--not constant in actual dollars, but constant as a percent of the economy. It is the red line that is growing ever faster.

Now, if you will permit me to scare you just a little bit further, Mr. Speaker, let me talk about interest rates in this country--interest rates in this country.

This chart right here, you can't see it, again, Mr. Speaker, but it is charting the interest rates that America is paying on its debt. We borrow in all sorts of different instruments from short-term, week-long instruments, all the way up to 30-year instruments. I put on the 3- month bills and our 10-year notes on this chart.

This chart covers most of my lifetime, Mr. Speaker. In fact, it goes a little further than my lifetime. What you are going to see, Mr. Speaker, going all the way back to 1965, it is charting the 3-month bills and the 10-year notes.

This is where we are today. This is where we are today, and what you see here, Mr. Speaker, is that we are at the lowest level of interest in the history of our country. In the history of our country, we have never paid less on Federal debt than we are paying today; yet we have never had more of it.

What do you think is going to happen, Mr. Speaker, when these low interest rates that we have today return to these historically high levels? In fact, The Economist, as I pointed out here in blue, projects that interest rates will return.

By return, I mean that our 10-year notes are going to more than double, I mean the 3-month bills are going to more than sextuple. We are talking about an interest rate explosion around the corner, Mr. Speaker, that we are not going to be able to sustain.

Now, let me take you back to what we are spending here today. As we sit here today, we are spending $229 billion in interest on our national debt--$229 billion--while we are at the lowest interest rates in American history.

Now, if the rates on those 10-year notes are going to double, if the rates on those 3-month bills are going to sextuple, what do you think 229 billion changes into within the next 3 or 4 years, Mr. Speaker?

It doesn't change into 300 billion. It doesn't change into 400 billion. It goes northward to $500 billion in interest. In fact, as the President lays out his budget, we are looking at almost $1 trillion a year in interest payments within the next 10 years, in a single year, at year 10.

One trillion dollars, Mr. Speaker--enough money to pay for all of our national security, enough money to pay for all of the Medicaid program and the Medicare program, enough money to pay for the entire Social Security Program for a year, we are going to throw it away in interest payments because we didn't have the discipline to control spending in this bipartisan Congress that we have.

The lowest interest rates in American history, Mr. Speaker, every economist projects a rise, doubling to sextupling in the next 10 years.

We are only borrowing money, Mr. Speaker, because we have lots of spending going on. There are those who believe that the more we spend, the better results we are going to get. I want to tell you that is nonsense.

If this Chamber were full to capacity today, Mr. Speaker, and we asked folks to have a show of hands of when was that great time in the American economy they remember, when were the cares of whether or not you could afford to pay your house note, whether you could afford to pay your car note, whether you could afford to take care of your children, when was the time that those cares were the least?

I daresay most of the hands would think back to the 1990s. Whoo, the economy was on fire. You remember that. The stockmarket was on fire, you had to hide under a rook to keep from finding a good job--again, Republicans controlling this institution, Democrats in the White House. We were working together to constrain spending to grow the economy.

This chart that I have here, Mr. Speaker, shows per capita spending. It is not really meaningful to talk about spending in the abstract. It all distills down to an individual man, an individual woman, an individual family, what are we spending on individuals here in this country?

This is Federal outlays per individual. You will see a constant increase going back to the Truman administration. This is World War II, where we

were really fighting for the future of not just the Republic, but of the world, going through the Truman administration and the Eisenhower administration. This is per capita spending. You see that it increases as inflation does, as government does. It just naturally rises little by little, year after year.

What you will see, Mr. Speaker, if you look here at the Clinton years in blue, that in those years that Americans would look back on with fondness and contentment, those years where the cares of the world seemed just a little bit lighter on their shoulders, we weren't spending more from Washington, D.C. It didn't require more spending from Washington, D.C.

The stimulation of the economy is not dependent on spending from Washington, D.C. In fact, arguably, it is the opposite. The more Washington sucks out of America, the less that individual Americans have to grow their families, grow their businesses, and expand their opportunities.

It is meaningful to me, again, you think about the Reagan years, you think about the first Bush years, and you think about the Clinton years, the economy was on fire and spending from the Federal Government held constant.

Fast forward to today, Mr. Speaker, you see spending begin to grow out of control. It happened in the Bush years. Again, this is not a partisan problem, this is an American problem.

Spending began to grow. We are fighting a war on terror. Folks are beginning to worry about their families and worry about their jobs. Spending today continuing on that rise--well, continuing until I arrived here in 2010, until you arrived here in 2014, when the cavalry arrived here to say, Wait a minute, I know the challenges are vast, but we can't just push the can down the road; we can't pass our problems on to the next generation; we have to confront those problems together.

That is what we have been doing in this budget.

Mr. Speaker, this chart shows if we do nothing, if we do nothing, if we never make another promise--and the budget the President just sent us is full of new promises to the tune of about $2 trillion over the next 10 years--if we never make another promise, if all we do is keep the promises we already made, if we never pass a new law or a new bill to do something else, simply by the force of the laws already on the books, debt grows to levels higher than we borrowed as a nation to defeat the Nazis in World War II.

Think about that, Mr. Speaker. I was down in front of the White House. I had some friends in town. I took them down to see the White House. All Americans ought to make that journey. It is the center of the executive branch here in Washington, D.C.

We walked over to the Old Executive Office Building because that is a fabulous, fabulous building. On the front steps of the Old Executive Office Building, they have two cannons from the Spanish-American War, 1898, and they have a little plaque there on the fence.

Of course, you can't get through the fence. In fact, they pushed you back a little further now with the new Secret Service regulations, but you can see the plaque hanging there on the fence. It says that we used to have more than 20 of these historic cannons around town, dating back to the Revolutionary War, but during World War II, we melted most of them down to be a part of the war effort.

Think about that. In World War II, the situation was so dire, Mr. Speaker, we were going around to our national monuments, we were going around to our Nation's history, and we were finding anything made of iron or steel, and we were melting it down. Because World War II wasn't a fight; it was the fight for freedom on the planet.

And amidst that terror, ration stamps across the land, folks standing in lines for food at the end of the Great Depression, amidst all of that turmoil, all of that crisis, arguably the greatest crisis not just this Nation has known but that the world has ever known, America borrowed about 100 percent of the size of its economy. That is a heavy load, but it was for an important cause.

As we sit here today, Mr. Speaker, we have borrowed about three- quarters of that same load. And if we change no law and if we make no new promises, we will borrow not one time, not two times, not three times, but four times more than we borrowed to defeat the greatest evil the world has ever known, just to keep the lights on in the United States of America. That is dangerous and it is irresponsible.

Mr. Speaker, you can count on a budget coming to the floor of this House. It is going to be here. I would guess it is going to be here on the floor by the end of March, because certainly we will have it here by April. It is going to be a budget that brings us back to balance, and it is going to be a budget that makes the hard decisions that have to be made.

No one is saying don't invest in America. What they are saying is don't let growing interest payments on irresponsible borrowing push out the room in the budget to invest in America. Do you know we are investing less in America today, Mr. Speaker, than any other time in my lifetime? We are investing less. Now, we are spending more, but we are investing less because, as I showed you on that pie chart earlier, Mr. Speaker, what we are spending on isn't investments in America. It is income maintenance programs.

If we do nothing, revenues continue and debt grows out of control. 2046, Mr. Speaker, about the time you are entering your retirement, dead at 250 percent of GDP.

Spending $3.5 trillion today--today--at the lowest rate of interest the country has ever known, and today, in that most favorable of environments, Mr. Speaker, we are almost spending more on interest than we are on our Medicaid program, the health care program that covers children and the poor across this land. We are spending more to pay our creditors than we are to protect our children's health--and that is at the lowest rates of interest the country has ever known.

It only grows, and that is if the only thing that changes are the interest rates, Mr. Speaker. That is if we stop borrowing more money. But the President projects to borrow half trillion after half trillion after half trillion after half trillion. In fact, as I said, the budget he presented never ever, ever comes to balance. It borrows year after year after year after year, as far as the eye can see.

I don't argue that that is not the easier decision to make today, Mr. Speaker. It is. Doing nothing is always easier than doing the heavy lifting. Spending and borrowing more, always easier than tightening your belt and making the tough calls. Sacrificing our children's future so that we don't have to make those tough decisions today, that may be the easy call, but it is immoral. It is immoral, Mr. Speaker.

We have been able to cut budgets, as the gentleman from Indiana said, 4 years in a row for the first time, for the first time in my lifetime. We are moving the needle, but there is more to do. And it can't be done alone. It can't be done with just Republicans, it can't be done with just Democrats, and it can't be done with just the Congress. It requires the House Republicans and Democrats, it requires the Senate Republicans and Democrats, and it requires the President of the United States to come together to make those decisions that matter.

Mr. Speaker, we will be talking a lot more about this in the coming weeks. I want to make sure that every American has all the answers they need about how we are trying to prioritize in this budget.

But I want to be clear: the days of kicking the can down the road ended when Republicans took over this Chamber in 2011. The trust and confidence that we have earned in a bipartisan way over the last 4 years, we are going to continue today, and Senate willing--going back to the obstructionist provisions I noted at the very beginning of this hour, Mr. Speaker--Senate willing, we will conference the first budget, agree on the first budget, have the first American budget in my entire tenure in Congress.

The House has always done its job. This year, we have an opportunity to have the Congress do its job collectively, and I look forward to that conclusion.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I am grateful to you for being down here with me this afternoon, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 12 o'clock and 22 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until Tuesday, February 17, 2015, at 2 p.m.

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 100 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman 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.

Mr. Speaker, we are here today to talk about House Resolution 100, which provides a closed rule for consideration of S. 1, the Keystone XL Pipeline Approval Act. Folks might find that a little unusual to talk about a bill that begins with the title S. 1, but there is a new day in Washington, D.C., that excites me, and it is that the ``open for business'' sign is there on the Senate side. It is not a function of Republicans doing this or Democrats doing that. It is a function of the process working the way that it should.

The first vote I took on the Keystone pipeline, Mr. Speaker, was back in 2011 when I was first elected to Congress. It passed the House by a wide bipartisan margin. It was never given the time of day in the United States Senate.

As we come here today, we are not just talking about approval of the Keystone XL pipeline in S. 1. We are talking about the inclusion of another bill that has passed time and time again, the Better Buildings Act. Mr. McKinley from West Virginia has language that would promote energy conservation across this land, a bill that has passed time and time again in this House but has never been passed by the Senate.

It is an opportunity here today, Mr. Speaker. It is an opportunity to do those things that the American people sent us here to do: bipartisan votes, commonsense legislation for the first time in a long time, Mr. Speaker, and what I hope will be the beginning of a long trend here in the U.S. House of Representatives.

As you listened to the Clerk read, Mr. Speaker, you heard that there are a lot of different points in this bill. It is not just a bill for consideration of S. 1. It is also a bill so that when the House is not in session in D.C. next week, the Speaker will have the ability to call the House back into session to continue to conduct business because the business must continue to go on. I am glad the Rules Committee was able to include that provision as well.

Seven years ago is when the permit process started on the Keystone XL pipeline, Mr. Speaker. Since seven years ago, longer than it took to build the Hoover Dam, we have been trying to approve a small section of pipeline. I say ``trying to approve'' somewhat loosely. I think if we had been committed to getting it done, we could have absolutely gotten it done. Again, it is a commonsense piece of legislation that decides rather than building a pipeline across Canada to carry oil to Canadian refineries, which will provide lots of jobs for Canadians, if our partner to the north is willing, we will build that pipeline through America to deliver that oil to American refineries to create Americans jobs.

This is not a bill that mandates that, Mr. Speaker. The marketplace is going to control this construction decision. The marketplace is going to control where the oil is refined, and the marketplace is going to control whether or not the oil comes out of the ground to begin with.

Too often, I think we have been treating the Keystone XL pipeline approval process as if it were an environmental decision. There are those who wish the United States would reduce its reliance on fossil fuels. I am one of those. I don't think there is any advantage to be had by putting all your eggs in one energy basket. I am in favor of an all-of-the-above strategy that makes sure that America's energy security--North America's energy security--is based on multiple-- multiple--avenues for energy production. But we do not get to decide in this Chamber whether or not the Canadians bring oil out of the ground. We only get to decide whether or not, once that oil comes out of the ground, it is moved with U.S. jobs and U.S. construction to U.S. refineries, or whether or not those jobs go elsewhere.

Mr. Speaker, time and time again folks come to the floor and they say: Where are the jobs? Where is the jobs legislation? I am thrilled to be carrying this rule for the Rules Committee today, Mr. Speaker, because this is one of those jobs bills--bipartisan, common sense. And if we pass it here in the House today, Mr. Speaker, headed to the President's desk, that signature will change the lives of those hardworking Americans looking for jobs today.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume to thank my friend for his well wishes and to tell him I am sympathetic to the hamster wheel scenario that he describes.

I don't particularly enjoy these opening weeks of a new Congress, Mr. Speaker, because committees haven't gotten organized, legislation hasn't started to flow, and it puts the committee in the very unfortunate situation of having to act as the legislator, as the authorizer, to begin moving pieces of legislation to the floor.

That is unfortunate. But that is not the situation we are talking about today, Mr. Speaker. What we are talking about today is a bill that not only passed the floor of the House but went to the Senate, a bill that not just went to the Senate but went through that wonderful open debate process that my friend from Florida described and has now come back to us today.

Four years we have been trying to move this bill forward, Mr. Speaker. It is a closed rule here today so that we can act on the same legislation that the Senate has passed, so we can send this bill to the President's desk, so we can get off the hamster wheel of futility that my friend from Florida describes.

I am optimistic, Mr. Speaker. But it doesn't happen by itself. It happens with years and years of work.

So with that, Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from North Dakota (Mr. Cramer), whose advocacy and leadership have made having this bill on the floor today possible.

Mr. Speaker, I yield the gentleman an additional 5 minutes.

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

I was just reading an article from the AP, which is doing a fact check on whether or not a conversation about

the Department of Homeland Security is a fair and honest conversation. They say, in reality, most people will see little change if the Department's flow is halted, and some of the warnings of doom are as exaggerated as they are striking. They go on to list word after word of folks announcing those warnings.

What is striking to me, Madam Speaker, is that, if we had the same open process going on in the Senate right now that the gentleman from Florida described--the great process that brought S. 1 to the floor--we would be bringing the Department of Homeland Security bill to the floor of the Senate as well; but, as you know, the Senate minority leader today is filibustering any effort to even bring this conversation to the floor, going back to the hamster wheel my friend from Florida described earlier.

How often do we hear that? How often do we hear about the procedural stunts that get in the way of doing the business that every single one of us knows our constituents sent us here to do?

This bill, though, is one about which we can be proud. This bill, though, is one that gets to the heart of what our constituents have asked us to do. This bill, though, has been done right from the start in a bipartisan way, in an open way, and it can make a difference for people tomorrow if we pass it on the floor of the House today and send it on to the President.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, at this time I would like to take the gentleman from Florida's advice and yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Harris), an expert on the appropriations process.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume to say to the gentleman from Texas, my heart sits where his hearts sits--with American workers and American products. We build the best products in the world. There is absolutely no reason not to purchase the best products in the world to build something particularly as important as our pipeline.

The box we find ourselves in is that, candidly, some of us--in fact, I dare say all of us--are a little surprised the Senate was even able to move through this bill. I have not seen the Senate move like it has moved in this open process, in this expedient process. In the entire 4 years I have served in this institution, I have never seen it happen before.

It is a good bill. I don't take issue with the work the Senate did. It looks substantially similar to what we passed here in the House. We may never get a chance to send this bill to the desk.

Again, we are just trying to debate a small part of the appropriations process and the Senate right now can't even move into debate because of filibusters in the Senate.

So I say to my friend from Texas, I am absolutely sympathetic to his amendment. I would like to have an opportunity to debate more amendments on the floor of this House.

I think back to my early days here 4 years ago. We had a 3\1/2\-day what I call festival of democracy. We came down here and worked night and day on H.R. 1 until every Member had a chance to be heard. That is the way it ought to be done. And I regret that in this situation we did not have a chance to make the gentleman's amendment in order because it was a good amendment and it would absolutely be worthy of debate and consideration here on the floor of the House.

Madam Speaker, with that, I reserve the balance of my time.

I also have no further speakers.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous materials.

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

I may be an unnatural optimist, but I believe these 2 years that we are about to have in this institution are going to be the finest that I have seen in my lifetime. The reason I believe that is exactly because we are responding to the plea that my friend from Florida has made to get on about the business of the people.

It is hard being in the minority around here. It is hard. My friends on the other side of the aisle may feel like they are in the minority today. For the last 4 years, we had the Speakership in this Chamber, but I sure felt like I was in the minority.

The Senate, held by the party on the other side; the White House, the party on the other side--and things got to be about party, day in and day out, and it wore on me, wore on me.

That is not why I ran for Congress, Madam Speaker. It is not why you ran for Congress. It is not why any of my colleagues here ran for Congress. They ran for Congress to get about the business of the people.

We are 1 month and a week into this new session of Congress, and the Senate has already managed to do what it hasn't been able to do for 4 years, and that is hold an open debate and move legislation where Members had a chance to have their voice heard.

We have that measure in front of us today. The only thing standing between us and considering that measure, Madam Speaker, is passing this rule. I am excited about it. I am excited about it.

I am proud of what is in this underlying legislation. I am proud of the process that produced this legislation. I am proud of the leadership of folks like Mr. Cramer who moved it through the House first.

Now, this is the Senate version, but this is the process that folks have worked in tandem. This is a process that folks back home can be proud of.

Now, that is not to say every Member of this Chamber supports this legislation, Madam Speaker. They don't, and they have myriad reasons for choosing not to support this legislation, but the majority is going to work its will.

I don't mean the majority, the Republican majority. I mean the majority--let's have a show of hands, see where people stand--and Republicans and Democrats are going to stand together and say, I support these American jobs. They are going to say, I support our largest trading partner, which is Canada. They are going to say, I support finality on a process that began 7 years ago.

I long for the debate we will have on this House floor, and I hope the gentleman from Florida and I get to manage the rule when we bring the surface transportation bill to the floor of this House because America needs that surface transportation bill. We need to build America, Madam Speaker.

What does it say when getting approval for this pipeline consumed more time than the entire construction of the Hoover Dam? Have we so hamstrung ourselves with bureaucracy that we can no longer do those great building projects as a Nation?

I hope that the answer is no, but if the answer is yes, we have the ability in this Chamber to change it to no. We are a society that does great, great things. We do have responsibilities that are great, great responsibilities, and we cannot accomplish those in a partisan way. We cannot accomplish those without partnership and cooperation.

For the next 2 years, Madam Speaker, we have an opportunity to move bills out of a Republican-led Congress that get signed by a Democratic- led White House. That is kind of the way the Founding Fathers envisioned it, and I am pleased to be a small part of it today.

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