Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, our tax system is broken and in desperate need of comprehensive reform. I am ready to get to work on a simpler Tax Code that is fiscally responsible, makes our businesses more competitive, and gives relief to our working families. But President Trump's plan, if you can call it that, is not the answer.

According to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, Trump's tax plan will cost $5.5 trillion over the next 10 years. Instead of targeting relief to the deserving middle class, President Trump wants to give big breaks to the wealthiest Americans. It is time to stop pretending that tax cuts that favor the wealthy somehow pay for themselves. They don't.

Conservative economist Gregory Mankiw has said that only one-third of the cost of tax costs is recouped from growth. So Trump's tax plan would actually be paid for by blowing up the national debt. That will crowd out investment and hurt economic growth, which is the opposite of what we want.

We have to do better for working Americans, and I express my interest in working with Members on both sides of the aisle to do just that.

Mr. Speaker, I have seen this bill every step of the way over the short month we have considered it. I was there for the 26-hour meeting we had at the Energy and Commerce Committee. We didn't have an analysis from the Congressional Budget Office then either. If you want to accuse us of not wanting to know the facts, that is something that is very basic to know. We would like to have that here. Here we are again on the floor without that analysis.

Through all of that time, the sad thing is that we have not heard one real argument for how this bill would make health care more affordable and accessible for families in my district in San Diego or anywhere in the country.

Now, the healthcare system isn't perfect. There are problems with some insurance markets because they are not providing the choice they should. So let's fix them. But that is not what we are doing. What we are doing is we are on the cusp of passing a bill that is opposed by doctors, nurses, hospitals, patients, seniors, and just about everybody because it would make the problems in our healthcare system worse, not better.

This is a bill that, if it were to become law, would rip health insurance coverage away from at least 24 million Americans. That is the Congressional Budget Office. That is not fake news. That is the truth.

The bill would leave many Americans with preexisting conditions with premiums they can't afford or without any coverage at all.

Today's votes take us one step closer to a system where families go bankrupt over an unexpected illness and our emergency rooms are filled with mothers once again seeking basic care for their children.

I refuse to accept that is the best we can do for the American people, and I am voting ``no.''

Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Garamendi so much for organizing this discussion of a really important topic.

In San Diego, we are a center of genomics, a center of life sciences, and a center of collaborative scientific research that makes groundbreaking discoveries and improves people's lives. In 2015, our research institutions received $768 million in NIH research funding, the most of any metro area in the United States. We are home to places like the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute, the J. Craig Venter Institute, and the Scripps Research Institute, where world-class scientists are making discoveries that save and improve millions of lives.

At the University of California San Diego, UCSD, the Shiley-Marcos Alzheimer's Disease Research Center is part of a collaborative national effort to better diagnose, prevent, treat, and ultimately to cure Alzheimer's. More than 5 million Americans are living with that disease. Alzheimer's kills more Americans every year than breast cancer and prostate cancer combined. It puts a tremendous burden on the family and the loved ones of those battling the disease because for every Alzheimer's patient, there are three people providing unpaid care.

Thanks to organizations like Alzheimer's San Diego, there are services to support families that are providing care for their loved ones. We are grateful for that, but we need to do more.

Alzheimer's also puts a tremendous burden on our healthcare system, as some of the speakers have mentioned. This year, Alzheimer's and other dementias will cost the Nation $259 billion. As our population ages, those numbers will only go up. It costs on average $1,150 more per month for a senior with Alzheimer's to reside in assisted living. That puts a financial strain on Medicaid, Medicare, and millions of families.

The research being done at UCSD and around the country is fueled by the National Institutes of Health and the National Institute on Aging. The investments we make in basic scientific research to better understand the disease are our best chance at developing new therapies and ultimately a cure.

One of the most bipartisan victories we have had in Congress since I have been here--this is my third term--was to increase NIH funding and to make a $6.3 billion investment in scientific research, which we did last year. Members of both parties came together with the understanding that NIH funding creates high-paying jobs, grows our economy, and unlocks discovery that changes lives. In his joint address to Congress this year, right here in this room, President Trump said he wanted to find cures to ``free the Earth from the miseries of disease.''

Unfortunately, then he turned around and sent a budget to Congress that slashed funding for NIH, clawing back the progress that we made last year. Our efforts to find cures to diseases like Alzheimer's would be completely undermined by the President's budget. We just can't allow that to happen.

I really, again, appreciate Mr. Garamendi for hosting this conversation. I want to let him know that I would be happy to sign on to Ms. Waters and Mr. Smith's letter, which he is also a leader of. I look forward to working with Mr. Garamendi and all of our other colleagues to defend the investment we have made in scientific research last year and to push for even more so that we can begin to win the battle against Alzheimer's and other diseases. That is what it is about, it is about winning. That is what I have been hearing. We want to win this battle.

I am very conscious that the United States has written the playbook for how to lead the world in science, and it is by funding basic scientific research, by letting the best scientists in the world compete for those grants that

are peer-reviewed--not decided by politicians, but by scientists. That system has worked marvelously well. Let's not kill it. Let's feed it.

Will the gentleman yield?

I want to leave time for Mr. Raskin, but we talk about this peer-review concept. Maybe people don't understand what that is. What happens is these top scientists from around the world file these grants. They are reviewed not by government employees, not by bureaucrats, not by politicians, but by real scientists, the best in their field, to determine which would win. In the good times, about 25 percent of those grants will be funded by NIH when there is robust funding. Seventy-five percent of them are turned down. That is how selective it is.

Unfortunately, now we are looking at 7 to 10 percent funding. That means we are not discovering a lot. We are also turning a lot of our young people off of science. We can't let that happen.

Again, we could talk about this all day, but I want to turn to my colleagues. Again, I thank Mr. Garamendi for setting up this discussion.

Mr. Speaker, I came to Congress ready to help improve our healthcare system. And as our colleagues on Chairman Walden's side have pointed out, there are some insurance markets that aren't providing the choice and the low cost that consumers want, so let's fix them.

But that is not what this bill does. This bill takes away health insurance from 24 million Americans, including 37,000 people in my district in San Diego. And the last-minute changes made will cost the Federal Government even more money, without increasing coverage or reducing premiums. Is that really the best we can do?

The only reason we are in this mess is because the Speaker of the House only ever sought 218 Republican votes. That is why we are left with a bill that is opposed by doctors, nurses, hospitals, and just about everyone because it makes the problems in our healthcare systems worse, not better. That is what happens when you never even reach out to the other side.

Whether this bill dies today, or in the Senate, I hope we can get to work together, Republicans and Democrats, to do better for the American people.

I thank Mr. O'Rourke for putting together this Special Order to talk about what is really an important issue and, with all of the things going on, something that has even got a little bit lost.

Madam Speaker, for the region that I represent in San Diego, the border is an economic engine--it is a job creator. Home to the Otay Mesa, San Ysidro, and Tecate ports of entry, San Diego-Baja is the busiest border crossing in the world. From life sciences to electronics, San Diego is an attractive place to start a business and to manufacture goods, in part, because of our proximity to border crossings and international trade.

Last month, Mr. O'Rourke and other members of the Congressional Border Caucus and I held a hearing with local leaders from chambers of commerce from around our districts to discuss real pragmatic solutions and issues around the border. I was joined by Jerry Sanders, who San Diegans well know as the former mayor. He is also the former police chief of San Diego and is now the current president of the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce. During that hearing, Mayor Sanders said that an efficient border is a safe border, and he knows something about safety from his time as a police chief. We also know that 99 percent of what gets screened at border crossings is safe and that there is no need to worry about its coming into the country. What we need is to get more efficient at approving the 99 percent of safe cargo and travelers and better at stopping the 1 percent that we don't want to come in.

One of the big challenges that we faced when I first came to Congress was in border delays. We saw that delays at the border crossing were costing us, at that point, $7.2 billion of economic activity in our county and 35,000 jobs annually--numbers so big that they are almost unbelievable, but those numbers came from independent assessments.

One of the great successes I have had in Congress, in working with my colleagues within our congressional delegation, is to have worked together to secure more than $500 million to finish the expansion and the improvements at the San Ysidro border crossing. We did that in working with Democrats Juan Vargas and Susan Davis and with Republicans Duncan Hunter and Darrell Issa because we all understood how important the United States-Mexico border is to our regional economy.

By investing in infrastructure and innovation in San Diego, Tijuana, and across the border, we are keeping Americans safe and supporting the export of goods made in America by American workers. In San Diego and in other communities, we are embracing this forward-looking approach of opportunity and job creation.

Now President Trump wants to put us in reverse by building a wall, which we have assessed at $15 billion. I mean, I have heard estimates of its being from $18 billion to $20 billion. By any count, it is a waste of money. Let's say, for purposes of argument, it is $15 billion. It took Congress more than a year to approve $170 million to help Flint, Michigan, recover from a crisis that has poisoned children and left an entire city without clean water--$170 million compared to $15 billion for a wall that nobody needs. We are talking about spending 100 times the money for Flint to build a wall that will do nothing to make us more secure, to make our children safer, or to make us more prosperous.

$15 billion is exactly how much the American Society of Civil Engineers says we will need to fill the funding gap for infrastructure needs at all of our Nation's ports for the next decade. So, if you took the money you were going to spend on this wall, you could cover all of the investment we would need at our ports around the country for the next decade. We are going to spend it on a wall.

$15 billion is also three times as much money as the Federal Government spends to help the homeless every year. For the cost of this wall, we could build the Navy the 11th aircraft carrier that it needs. For 60 times less--or 1-60th--we could finish the modernization of the Otay Mesa border crossing, which is the third busiest commercial port of entry along our southern border and which facilitates $35 billion in trade every year.

What are we doing here?

Unlike President Trump's wall, this investment will support long-term job creation and increase revenues and is a much more responsible way to spend American taxpayer dollars. Let's be clear. American taxpayers are going to foot the bill for this wall, not Mexico. It is the leader of the Senate and Speaker Ryan who have committed they are going to spend $15 billion on this wall. That is American taxpayers. That is not Mexico.

Instead of trying to turn his campaign rhetoric into policy, we would prefer that President Trump listen to those who understand what business is like at the border, to those who understand that border cities are safe, like El Paso, like San Diego, and that the border is an opportunity for America, not a threat. We don't need a wall. We need to hire more Customs officers. We need newer screening technologies. We need to modernize and expand our infrastructure at other border crossings like we are already doing at San Ysidro. That is how you would create jobs in America. That is how you would keep us safe.

I thank my friend Beto O'Rourke for his leadership and for his hosting this conversation today. I look forward to working with the gentleman in diverting this money from this silly proposal--this dangerous proposal--to the kinds of things and investments that our country needs from Texas to California.

Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Madam Chair, my amendment is very straightforward and has a singular goal of making sure that we are not making our Active Duty servicemembers more vulnerable to predatory lending.

Members of our Armed Services make sacrifices every day to protect our country from harm and to defend our freedoms, and it is our responsibility here in Congress to ensure that these men and women are protected from scams and predatory lenders that seek to exploit their service.

Sadly, it has become clear that the nature of military service makes our men and women in uniform the ideal targets for predatory loans that carry exorbitant interest rates.

San Diego, part of which I represent, is home to the largest concentration of military forces in the world. More than 100,000 Active Duty servicemembers call the region home. Predatory lending is an acute problem in my district and in the region and continues to hurt too many families.

Despite passage of the Military Lending Act of 2007 to eliminate this type of predatory lending, which too often leaves servicemembers and their families with crippling amounts of debt, there are a number of loopholes that these bad-acting lenders have continued to exploit.

These reprehensible predators are trapping servicemembers and their families in a cycle of debt that can be extremely difficult to overcome, and it is our responsibility, and we are able to act.

A bipartisan and bicameral effort has been made to call on the Department of Defense to issue rules that close the loopholes and ensure our Active Duty personnel do not fall victim to predatory practices that leave them financially strapped.

This amendment would keep regulations on predatory lenders so that we are maintaining a watchful eye on those companies that are exploiting those who have sacrificed so much for our safety, even as we move to reform and streamline the regulatory processes on businesses that are playing by the rules.

I want to thank Chairman Goodlatte of the Judiciary Committee and Chairman Chabot of the Small Business Committee for working with me over the past few days on this amendment, and for their commitment to working on a bipartisan basis to protect our servicemembers.

I hope my colleagues will join me in supporting this amendment.

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

Mr. Speaker, today I rise to highlight San Diegan Brian Fennessy, assistant fire chief of the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department, who is here in D.C. sharing his expertise fighting wildfires so that communities across the country can be better prepared.

This morning, Chief Fennessy testified before the House Transportation Committee's Economic Development Subcommittee on ways to speed up disaster recovery and save taxpayer dollars by lessening the harm of disasters.

In San Diego, we have learned many lessons from the numerous firestorms of the last decade, including the importance of increasing preparedness and emergency planning, and the need for coordination among various levels of government.

As extreme weather becomes more prevalent, sharing information from local experiences on what does work and doesn't work will only become more important.

So thank you to Chief Fennessy for sharing your experience, and I thank all of the brave men and women of the San Diego Fire Department.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

I rise today to support my legislation, H.R. 1378, to designate the Federal Courthouse on West Broadway in downtown San Diego as the James M. Carter and Judith N. Keep United States Courthouse, and to designate the Federal Judicial Center in San Diego as the John Rhoades Federal Judicial Center.

In San Diego's collaborative spirit, in order to find a name for the new building, the San Diego legal community reached out to find ideas, and through this process some prominent jurists clearly emerged.

These jurists were enthusiastically touted by a bipartisan coalition, including the San Diego County Bar Association, our district's Federal judges, and both Republican and Democratic community leaders across San Diego.

Judge Carter was the moving force behind the creation of the Southern District of California. After its creation, he became the first Chief Judge of the District Court, serving in that position until he was appointed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Judge Keep was instrumental in opening up the San Diego legal field to women. She graduated from the University of San Diego School of Law as its valedictorian and went on to become the first female judge for the District Court of the Southern District of California, and later the District Court's first female Chief Judge.

This bill also honors Judge John Rhoades, who served as a Federal judge in San Diego for 22 years and was widely respected and beloved throughout the region's legal community.

Judges Carter, Keep, and Rhoades all served the public with distinction and reflected the San Diego legal community's shared values of excellence and integrity. I am proud to honor their legacy with this legislation.

I want to thank two of my colleagues in particular, Congresswoman Susan Davis, who represented this area before I did and led this effort for the past several years, and Congressman Darrell Issa for his support and great amendments to the bill. It is better because of his work.

I am proud to have worked with them both in this Congress to move it forward.

Mr. Speaker, many laws are intended to ensure efficiency in Federal agencies but often have unintended consequences, preventing agencies from serving the public and costing taxpayer money. Currently, the Department of Housing and Urban Development's Continuum of Care Program spends too much time fulfilling administrative obligations instead of helping individuals and families transition out of homelessness and putting them on a path to independent living.

Twice a fiscal year, HUD has to reallocate emergency solutions grant program funds that are unused, returned, or otherwise become available in the program, but because almost no funds are unused or become available under the program, the reallocation of funds takes a lot of time and unwarranted human capital to complete.

It is administratively more efficient to reallocate funds only once a year. This frees up HUD employees to provide more human resources toward providing better service to constituents, and we shouldn't saddle HUD with more administrative work that isn't helping anyone.

In addition to mandatory fund allocations, HUD also faces a mountain of paperwork when it comes to administering rental assistance. Prior to 2009, private nonprofits could administer rental assistance through HUD's Continuum of Care. The HEARTH Act, however, obfuscated rental assistance laws, and private nonprofits were left off the list of entities allowed to administer rental assistance.

Currently, only States, units of general local government, or public housing agencies can dispense housing assistance despite nonprofits' substantial experience and their ability to reach vulnerable populations. Private nonprofits can still execute other homelessness programs, but they have to go through public housing agencies or another layer of bureaucracy to get rental assistance to their clients or the landlord. This creates more bureaucratic burdens when individuals and families really need the help quickly to stay in their homes.

H.R. 2790, the Housing Assistance Efficiency Act, would remedy both these problems, would make HUD a more efficient agency and get homelessness assistance to those that need it more quickly. This is important in particular to San Diego. We have the third largest homeless population, and it is widely supported in my district and across the country.

I thank the gentleman from New Mexico.

In their statement supporting this legislation, the San Diego Housing Federation said this bill removes barriers to helping get important resources to those who need it the most, and that is what it is all about.

So I urge my colleagues to help pass this legislation to take substantive action to improve government efficiency and help fight chronic homelessness in our country.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to highlight the valuable and lifesaving contributions of America's clinical research efforts and to urge my colleagues to support my resolution to make September clinical research innovation month.

Innovation and scientific research are critical to ensuring America's future competitiveness. San Diego understands this and has become a hub for innovation and technology.

Clinical research organizations are components of our leading innovation sector in San Diego and across the country. They are fundamental to the development of drugs, biologics, and medical devices that are changing the face of health care in America.

Mr. Speaker, last year alone, clinical research efforts led to over 85 new drugs approved by the FDA, aiding in the fights against cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's, and many other ailments.

Clinical research connected to the veterans hospital in San Diego is looking for the best ways to treat our brave men and women as they return home.

The lifesaving innovations coming out of clinical research are helping people across the country live longer and healthier lives, and I encourage my colleagues to join me in establishing clinical research innovation month.

Thank you, Congressman Garamendi, for helping to raise awareness about the pressing need to change the way the Federal Government deals with funding wildfire response and prevention.

As you well know, the devastating effect of wildfires in 2003 and 2007--we had massive, massive loss of property and dislocations in Scripps Ranch, Tierrasanta, Rancho Bernardo, and Poway.

Right now, as I am speaking--and you mentioned this as well-- firefighters in Yosemite National Park continue to battle a wildfire that has burned more than 2,600 acres and required 120 firefighters and 11 aircraft to combat.

It is no secret, in addition, that California is facing a prolonged drought that places us at increased risk for wildfires. So we are in the midst of what is expected to be one of the longest and hardest wildfire seasons in recent memory, certainly in any of our memories.

Wildfires are extremely expensive for States and localities to fight. There is an urgent need for Congress to pass a solution that funds firefighting without stealing from prevention, which is a crazy thing to do. I think we all acknowledge that.

Earlier this summer, as you mentioned, I led the discharge petition with 196 signers to demand a vote on the Wildfire Disaster Funding Act of 2014. That bill has real bipartisan support in both the House and the Senate--71 Democrats and 60 Republicans have cosponsored in the House--and that is very unusual around here. It was also included by the President in his budget request.

So you have both parties in the House and the President of the United States all on the same page on this issue. It seems like an area where we ought be able to make some progress, and we ought to have a vote.

The bill allows firefighting agencies to access funds from the natural disaster contingency fund while fighting catastrophic fires, not take money from prevention because, of course, what that does is it makes the following year's fires even more severe and even more costly and dangerous.

So it is fiscally responsible to treat wildfires like the natural disasters that they are, like an earthquake, flood, or hurricane. Instead of stealing funds from prevention efforts to pay for immediate responses, we should be adequately funding both.

I join my colleagues here tonight to call on the Speaker to bring this truly bipartisan bill to a vote immediately so that fire-prone regions like the two we are dealing with in California--mine in San Diego--don't suffer from Washington's dysfunction.

Ladies and gentlemen, we started this fire season this year in May. We are used to having fire seasons. It is natural to have fire seasons in September or October, but the fact that we started in May just underscores what we are up against. We do not want to leave for our October election activities without having dealt with that and exposing these communities to risk.

I thank my colleague, Mr. Garamendi, for helping to raise awareness about this. Thank you for your continued commitment and leadership on the issue. We look forward to bringing it home.

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to state my support for this agreement, the Veterans' Access to Care through Choice, Accountability, and Transparency Act of 2014, and thank both Chairman Miller and Ranking Member Michaud for their leadership on bringing this issue to a resolution.

Last week, I offered a motion to instruct as a way to spur a bipartisan solution and to ensure that vets on the GI Bill could pay lower instate college tuition. I am happy that that provision has been included.

Enacting the measures offered in this plan will go a long way toward improving veterans health care though, as everyone noted, there is much more work to be done. The more than 200,000 veterans who live in San Diego County deserve access to the medical care and benefits America has promised them and they have earned.

It is my hope that our action today will give new hope to the many vets who felt despair and disappointment at the way they have been treated by the VA after all they have sacrificed. Today, we send a bipartisan message to them: America keeps its promises to our veterans.

Mr. Speaker, I have a motion at the desk.

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

I rise today in strong support of the Veterans' Access to Care through Choice, Accountability, and Transparency Act of 2014, which the Senate passed on a bipartisan 93-3 vote last month.

It is no secret that the Department of Veterans Affairs is failing to keep our Nation's promise to our veterans and their families.

Ensuring that our veterans have access to the medical care and benefits that they have earned is one of the most important jobs of Congress and a top priority of mine, given the more than 200,000 veterans who live in San Diego County.

In recent months, failures at the Phoenix VA and other facilities across the country demonstrated a culture of complacency and ineptitude that is unacceptable and must change.

At this time, Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to my colleague from Phoenix, Kyrsten Sinema.

I thank my colleague, Ms. Sinema.

While San Diego's VA centers have performed better than most, and the backlog of benefits claims has been reduced significantly in my region, we can't ignore the larger structural reforms that the entire VA system clearly needs.

In San Diego, my district office staff has been working to help veterans and their families who have experienced the bureaucratic red tape at the VA firsthand. Since coming to Congress last year, we have handled more than 400 veterans' cases and have recovered more than $750,000 in benefits to which these veterans were entitled.

I have also focused on ways to make the transition from Active Duty service back to civilian life an easier one for veterans and their families. Last year, I engaged with military commanders, nonprofits, and veterans' advocacy organizations to launch the Military Transition Support Project. This collaborative community effort will provide a central hub of information for servicemembers as they become veterans and search for housing, employment, and benefits. It is on its way to being a national model and doesn't cost the Federal Government or taxpayers a dime.

The experience of Dr. Howard and Jean Somers, constituents of mine from Coronado, has only added to my urgency in addressing reform at the VA. The Somers' son Daniel served our country in Operation Iraqi Freedom. As the Somers testified in the House Veterans Affairs Committee 2 weeks ago, their son made several attempts after returning home from combat to seek help and counseling for posttraumatic stress but was ultimately unsuccessful, and eventually he took his own life. The VA system failed Daniel Somers; it failed his parents; and that is unacceptable.

Both the Senate and the House have taken action to make real, substantive changes at the VA. I voted for many of these measures in the House, but the Senate's plan is comprehensive, bipartisan, and is the best opportunity for the quick action that our veterans deserve.

It will benefit thousands of veterans by increasing their access to care by allowing the VA to lease more facilities, hire doctors and nurses to fill their most pressing staff shortages, and by allowing veterans to see non-VA providers if they have been forced to wait for an appointment or live too far from the closest facility.

It would increase accountability on those responsibile for the recent failures by allowing the VA Secretary to fire complacent employees, and through changes to the scheduling, staffing, and administrative processes in each facility.

Part of my motion also has to do with ensuring that our veterans and their spouses are able to access a high-quality education after their time of Active Duty has ended.

Veterans are advancing themselves at colleges and universities across my

district, across San Diego, and across the country. Expanding instate tuition to our veterans, regardless of where they live, would expand their educational opportunities significantly and potentially reduce the financial burden that many of them face.

As of today, only 24 States offer instate tuition benefits for veterans who have not yet met the standard residency requirements of that State. My home State of California is one of those that does not offer it.

In the University of California system, one of the premier public university systems in the entire world, more than 1,600 veterans are currently enrolled. The instate tuition at a UC school averages $13,200 per year. For nonresidents, it is $36,000. That is a difference of $23,000 that veterans must pay out of pocket.

UC San Diego, part of which is in my district, enrolls 324 veterans, and nearby San Diego State has 1,127 veterans. In the California State University system, being a non-California resident costs nearly double the tuition, to the tune of more than $4,000 per year.

By forcing veterans who fought not just for one State or for their home State but for the entire United States, to fit into the standard residency requirements, in many instances we are forcing them to delay their education or vocational training they need for career advancement. Instead of making it more difficult to use their earned GI Bill benefits, we should be making it easier and more financially feasible.

A recent national investigation called ``Back Home: The Enduring Battle Facing Post-9/11 Veterans,'' noted the example of Marine Corps Corporal veteran Brian Oller, a student at UC San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography, who is paying out of pocket to cover part of the $22,000 tuition, which his GI benefits don't fully pay.

Fifteen thousand veterans are discharged in the San Diego region each year, and about half decide to stay in the area to restart their civilian lives. Many of them are not from California, but they should have access immediately to the instate tuition rate.

Giving veterans the instate tuition rate is a bipartisan idea that I know our chairman, Mr. Miller, supports. The House passed a bill 390-0 to provide this benefit. The comprehensive Senate bill I want us to vote on also includes that language.

Mr. Speaker, I hope we can pass the Veterans Access to Care through Choice, Accountability, and Transparency Act in its entirety and provide the necessary relief and support to our veterans and show the American people that Congress is capable of passing comprehensive reforms to what is clearly a broken system.

I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support this motion to instruct. Let's actually get the needed reforms in place and expand educational opportunities and our support for our veterans.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I am prepared to close.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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

In closing, first, I lament the notion that this is motivated entirely by politics; although, I understand that would not be entirely unusual in this body. It was 80 degrees in San Diego today--a beautiful day. I don't fly all the way over here to the 91-degree heat that feels like 100 not to do something, and veterans are a top priority for me.

The point of this motion is that we have something right before us that would deal with the culture of complacency that has failed our veterans, and we could pass the bill supported both by Senator Bernie Sanders and Senator John McCain, which was passed by a vote of 93-3--I don't think you could get more bipartisan than that--and it would not raise the issues that Chairman Miller has discussed because, if we wanted to add more money, as Senator Sanders may want, we could take that up later.

There are very, very many points of agreement in the Senate bill, and it would incorporate many of the things we did here in the House if we would pass it just like this. So it makes all the sense in the world to go ahead and have that bill before us so that we could pass it. It could be on the President's desk tomorrow, and at least many of the points of agreement, like the instate tuition, for example, would be on their way to helping veterans right away.

Last week, I attended part of the stand down for homeless veterans in San Diego. The Veterans Village of San Diego organized the first stand down in 1988, and there are more than 200 similar programs nationwide that help provide a hand up, not a hand out for homeless vets. No one at the event asked me whether I thought the House or the Senate or the President had the best plan for keeping our promise to America's veterans. They want action, and they want it now. They don't want to hear about how the procedural rules of this place are some way to hide behind our lack of action.

They fought for our country in the jungles of Vietnam, in the deserts of Iraq, and in the mountains of Afghanistan. The fact that this House can't put aside partisan politics to do the right thing for our veterans is even more messed up than anyone can imagine.

I yield to the gentleman.

Absolutely not, Mr. Chairman. What I am suggesting is that the effect of our inability to vote on this Senate bill, which passed 93-3, sends the message that we just can't get it together.

I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. Miller, I could not argue with you. The only other point I would make is that the provisions of that bill are contained within the Senate bill that I hope we are able to vote on. That is why we could kill two birds with one stone.

Mr. Speaker, frankly, if we can't get this kind of thing done, it is no wonder that the approval rating of the body is at 9 percent. It is a shame.

I do urge my colleagues to adopt the motion to instruct so that we can get this effort moving and provide our veterans with the educational opportunities that they deserve, with the support they deserve, and with the opportunities that they deserve because they fought so hard and so bravely for us.

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

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

Madam Speaker, pursuant to clause 7(c) of rule XXII, I hereby give notice of my intention to offer a motion to instruct conferees on H.R. 3230, the conference report on Veterans Access and Accountability.

The form of the motion is as follows:

Mr. Peters of California moves that the managers on the

part of the House at the conference on the disagreeing votes

of the two Houses on the House amendment to the Senate

amendment to the bill H.R. 3230 (an Act to improve the access

of veterans to medical services from the Department of

Veterans Affairs, and for other purposes) be instructed to--

(1) recede from disagreement with section 702 of the Senate

amendment (relating to the approval of courses of education

provided by public institutions of higher learning for

purposes of the All-Volunteer Force Educational Assistance

Program and the Post-9/11 Educational Assistance Program

conditional on in-State tuition rate for veterans); and

(2) recede from the House amendment and concur in the

Senate amendment in all other instances.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to join the San Diego community in celebrating the 2014 San Diego LGBT Pride festival and parade.

From that historic night at Stonewall, 45 years ago, to California icon Harvey Milk, to the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell, and last year's overturning of DOMA and Prop 8--we have experienced uneven but unmistakable progress towards equality for our LGBT family, friends, coworkers, and neighbors.

In San Diego we have seen momentous contributions from the LGBT community--from The Center, an organization devoted to the care and well-being of the local LGBT community, where I was privileged to serve on the Board of Directors.

To my friend and City Council colleague Toni Atkins, recently elected the first San Diegan and openly lesbian Speaker of the California Assembly, and Todd Gloria who stepped in and stabilized our city in a time of crisis.

To local leaders like Robert Gleason who has been named the 2014 LGBT Pride Month Local Hero. Robert's tireless efforts and ability to build consensus helped create San Diego's LOST Community Leadership Council.

While we've made progress, establishing marriage equality in California and numerous other states across the country--a number that is growing--the fight for full equality is far from over.

Currently, there is no federal law that explicitly protects LGBT individuals from employment discrimination.

I am proud to be a strong and vocal supporter of LGBT civil rights, including a comprehensive Employment Non-Discrimination Act, to ensure that LGBT Americans in every state can live their lives openly without the fear of being fired from their jobs for who they are or who they love.

It is time for Congress to do its job and pass this bipartisan legislation. Thankfully there is progress on this front. A few months ago I sent President Obama a letter urging him to bar workplace discrimination by federal contractors.

I am proud that President Obama has decided to do just that and announced executive orders to protect LGBT federal employees and those working for federal contractors from workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

As we work toward full equality, I will continue to be a strong advocate for the rights of the LGBT community as I have been in the past. I hope you will stay engaged and active in this effort.

Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to join me in recognizing San Diego's LGBT community and look forward to celebrating with them during this year's Pride festival.