Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 3\1/2\ minutes.

Mr. Speaker, as I said this morning, the reason why the government shut down is because the Republican majority has failed to fund the government. They have the majority of the House, the majority of the Senate, and the Presidency of the United States.

And with all due respect to my friend, the majority leader, five previous shutdowns were purposefully perpetrated by my Republican friends; the last for 16 days.

The continuing resolution on the floor today reflects that failure. It does not, 9 months after we should have been done, establish the level of spending for this fiscal year. It is 9 months late.

As a result, another continuing resolution may be inevitable. And in this resolution, we will extend the harmful effects of another CR to both defense and nondefense agencies for another 17 days.

That means that Congress will be more than 4 whole months into the fiscal year without a budget agreement. This is dangerous, Mr. Speaker, both to our military and to our civilian agencies, each of which require budget certainty.

Before February 8, Republicans must work with Democrats to resolve the issues at hand. This means working together to lift the budget caps in accordance with the principle of parity, which Speaker Ryan agreed to over the past 4 years and should continue to today and in the future.

It also means working in a bipartisan, bicameral way to address the status of DREAMers, now that President Trump created a crisis with his ending of the DACA program. Congress should act responsibly to allow these young people to stay, as more than 80 percent of Americans believe should be done.

Mr. Speaker, it requires reauthorizing community health centers and other critical health programs essential to complement the passage of the CHIP reauthorization, which is included in this CR.

We also have a responsibility to help those impacted by the devastating hurricanes in Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands; those affected by the wilderness fires in California; and communities struggling to combat opioid abuse.

Congress must not waste the next 17 days as it has the last 114. I will be voting ``no,'' Mr. Speaker, on this continuing resolution, not because I don't want to see it pass, but because it does not guarantee that Congress will address the issues that have been referenced.

I pray that neither I nor Congress will be in this same position come February 8. I hope we will address in a positive manner the issues before us.

I am now pleased, Mr. Speaker, to yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), the minority leader.

(Ms. PELOSI asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, we have 10\1/2\ days remaining before we have another crisis in funding our government. Those are legislative days. We have more calendar days. Let us try to use every one of those days to reach agreement on funding the government so we don't have another CR, which all of us believe is bad fiscal policy and substantive policy.

Mr. Speaker, I urge us to come together so that we can avoid another crisis like this and address the issues that we know need to be addressed.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. McCarthy), my friend and the majority leader.

(Mr. McCARTHY asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for that information.

Today, both Chambers have passed the CR that takes us to February 8. That leaves 17 calendar days. I was going to say it did 6\1/2\ legislative days, but the gentleman has now given up probably half a day, as I understand it, which is Wednesday of the retreat. So, essentially, Mr. Speaker, we have 6 days between now and February 8 in which we will be in session. That makes it incumbent upon us that we come together, cooperate with one another, compromise, and send legislation from here to the Senate that the Senate can agree to.

I want to say, I did not know the gentleman was going to mention that, but I want to see the Defense Department fully funded. But I also want to see fully funded departments that take care of the health of our people, the education of our children, domestic law enforcement, and relations between ourselves and the rest of the world in the State Department, and so many other agencies of government that are in the nondefense part of the budget.

Mr. Speaker, I would tell my friend that I would hope we would come to an agreement very, very shortly on the overall spending levels so that we can pass both defense and nondefense priority issues. And I would say to my friend, all we are asking for in that context, as the gentleman knows, is what we have done over the last 4 years as a result of agreements between Speaker Ryan and Senator Murray, so I would hope that we can proceed on that.

Secondly, and there is so much to bring up, but the second thing I want to mention is, clearly, one of the issues that we have been so concerned about has been how we are going to treat the DREAMers in our country. As the gentleman knows my view, based upon polls that I have read, 85 percent of Americans essentially agree that we ought not send those young people, for the most part, out of the country away from their home to places they do not know, particularly when they are making such a positive contribution to our country.

Now, while I said there were some 5\1/2\ days left between now and the 8th, there are 10\1/2\ days--actually, I guess, now, 9\1/2\ days in which to deal with the issue of the DREAMers.

The gentleman and I, Senator Cornyn, and Senator Durbin have been working. I look forward to working on that, and I hope that we work on it every calendar day that we have available--we won't be in session, but we will work on that--so we can, in fact, come to an agreement so that those young people who the American people think ought to stay here and continue to be productive citizens, contributing individuals to our country, would be allowed to stay here, given a path to citizenship. I would hope that we could work toward that end.

I yield to my friend.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for that information.

I am hopeful that we can agree on the underlying issue which led to the necessity for a CR and the temporary closing of government. That is the underlying agreement on what budget numbers will be, what our caps will be, how much discretionary funding we will have to spend both on defense and nondefense. That is at the core. When you fail to do that, you fail to pass appropriation bills, and you, therefore, have to repair to CRs, which everybody on this floor agrees is bad fiscal policy and should not be the way we do business.

Secondly, I appreciate the majority leader's leadership and engagement on the issue of solving the problem, or the challenge and the opportunity, I should say--not so much a problem, but an opportunity--of DREAMers. It is what the President, Mr. Speaker, asked us to do. Hopefully, we can, in fact, working in good faith with one another, get that done.

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

Mr. Speaker, we are in the second day of this Trump shutdown because Republicans won't take yes for an answer.

Senator Schumer went to the White House and had a deal with President Trump until the Freedom Caucus vetoed it and forced the President to go back on his word again.

Senator Schumer offered President Trump his border wall. Republicans said no.

Senate Democrats offered short-term continuing resolutions to keep the government open. Republicans said no.

Mr. Speaker, I offered a 4-day CR to keep the government open while we work on reaching a budget agreement that adheres to parity. Mr. Meadows objected, and the Republicans again said no.

When, I ask, will Republicans take yes for an answer?

I ask: Will the Republican leadership allow its Members to vote for a clean CR to reopen the government instead of giving its most extreme Freedom Caucus faction a veto in order to perpetuate the Trump shutdown?

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to bring up H.R. 4872, the End the Shutdown Act of 2018, a continuing resolution that would immediately reopen the government through Tuesday while negotiations continue on a budget agreement that adheres to parity and on other critical issues.

Mr. Speaker, I have a parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. Speaker, am I parliamentarily correct that a continuing resolution is not necessary if, in fact, an appropriations bill has been passed to fund the government?

Mr. Speaker, am I correct?

Mr. Speaker, the Trump travesty continues, as it has for the last 12 months. We have heard our colleagues on the other side of the aisle talk about the Children's Health Insurance Program. They are very concerned about its passage. Bring it to the floor. It will pass. And I guarantee you it will pass in the Senate.

Your Speaker, our Speaker, said: ``We will advance major legislation one issue at a time.''

Mr. Speaker, that is not what the bill you put on this floor did. It is not what the bill that is on the Senate floor did.

You are right. There is no controversy. Government should not be shutting down. It is the Trump confrontation and chaos that continues. That is why this government is shut down, and the American people are rightfully upset with every one of us; not just Republicans, not just Democrats. They are upset that their government is not working.

Mr. Speaker, bring these issues one at a time to this floor, and some will pass and some will not.

My time has expired, but the people's time is expiring. Let us do our work one issue at a time.

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

Mr. Speaker, let me say at the outset, we ought to both put sanctimony aside. Both sides are accusing one another of closing down the government.

Mr. Speaker, you voted to close down the government, and then you voted against opening it up.

Both sides have accused the other of doing what they have done.

Now, the fact of the matter is, Mr. Speaker, we are here because we have not succeeded in passing the appropriations bills and sending them to the

President. That is why we need a continuing resolution.

My Republican friends are in charge of the House. My Republican friends are in charge of the Senate, and they are in charge of the White House. We have not passed a single appropriations bill.

My view is, we have not done so because we have been unwilling to compromise. That is what this is about. It is about Republicans, frankly, being unwilling, in our opinion, to work together to get to agreement.

We don't want this shutdown. Our Republican friends say they don't want the shutdown, and we have said from the beginning that we are ready to work across the aisle to prevent it. In fact, the Republicans have had four opportunities. One hundred percent of the Democrats voted for a 90-day CR to give us time to get to agreement on appropriations bills and a level of funding.

Mr. Speaker, you know that. We have been talking about that for some time. We have not come to agreement. Therefore, we find ourselves here, notwithstanding the fact that we agree on a lot. We have asked to adhere to parity. Mr. Speaker, as you know, it is the process that you agreed with Senator Murray that we have followed for the last 4 years. All we are asking is, let's follow it again. That is why we are here, because we have not been able to get such an agreement.

We have also asked that we be able to protect--at the request of the President of the United States--DREAMers, put something on the floor, as he said, and send it to him, and he would sign it. We want to reauthorize the CHIP program, the community health centers, and other health programs. We agree on that.

The American public has got to be so distressed that they see this going on on this floor of the House.

We want to provide disaster relief to those in Texas, those in Florida, those in Puerto Rico, those in the Virgin Islands, and, yes, those who have been subjected to fires in the West.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my Republican colleagues who are in the majority and control the legislative process: end this shutdown. Use the authority you are asking for under this rule to bring to the floor the items on which we agree.

Mr. Speaker, you have said you would do that, take the tough issues head-on one at a time. I admired that statement. I will tell my friend, the Speaker of the House, that I will admire even more the performance.

Speaker Ryan said, in 2012: ``We will not duck the tough issues. We will not kick the can down the road. We will lead. We will not blame others . . . .''

Mr. Speaker, I ask you to do just that. Stop ignoring your responsibility as the majority party to keep the government open and serve the American people.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to bring up H.R. 4872, the End the Shutdown Act of 2018, a continuing resolution through Tuesday that would immediately reopen the government while negotiations continue on a budget agreement that adheres to parity, reauthorizing the Children's Health Insurance Program and other critical healthcare programs, addressing the issue of DREAMers as was requested by the President of the United States, and providing assistance to Americans impacted by natural disasters.

Mr. Speaker, parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. Speaker, I am stretching the parliamentary inquiry, the nature of this, but did the Speaker hear Mr. Meadows objecting to my unanimous consent request?

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, if we had entertained my unanimous consent request, we could have accomplished all that the gentleman from Oregon, the chairman of the committee, just discussed.

I will remind you that the reason Democrats voted against it was because you took the money for children's health out of children's health. You decreased the prevention trust fund by some $6 billion which had, in part, inoculation for children against disease. We thought robbing from Peter to pay Paul was not a good policy to pursue.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

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

Madam Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Madam Speaker, we are confronting a very serious situation, as all of us know, and that is we have not reached agreement on how to fund the government between now and September 30 of this year.

Almost one-third of fiscal year 2018 is gone. At some point in time-- the majority leader is not available right now, therefore, I am not asking him to yield, because he has something important that he is doing now--but at some point in time, Madam Speaker, I am hoping that the majority leader will come before us and we can have a colloquy on what we intend to do during the course of this day, perhaps tomorrow, perhaps Sunday, perhaps Monday, perhaps Tuesday, in order to get the business of the country done.

I am urging my Members to be available on very short notice so that they can complete the work of funding our government for fiscal year 2018. I hope that all other Members will be available to do so as well. That is our responsibility. We have not yet met that responsibility. Therefore, I want to give notice to my Members that we need to be here.

The Senate has not acted. We do not know what they will do. We need to be available for their action. I know the majority leader suggested that it was okay to leave and go home. I want to make it clear that is not my view. We have not completed our work. The American public expects us to do that.

I would hope that we would all remain available to complete the work of funding the government between now and fiscal year 2018 ending, of course, on September 30.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, we are now 4 months into the fiscal year and this is our fourth continuing resolution. The gentleman says now is the time to work things out. Every Democrat voted to extend the fiscal year by 90 days. Nothing was worked out. Why? Because you spent all your time on a tax bill giving 83 percent of the resources to the richest people in America.

Republicans control all the levers of the legislative process: the House, the Senate, the White House. They have the votes on their own to keep the government open or choose to shut it down, as they did by policy some years ago for 16 days.

We don't want to shut down the government. Keeping the government open by passing appropriations bills is the most basic responsibility of any governing majority. This governing majority has not sent a single--not one--appropriation bill to the President of the United States, not one.

Republicans ought to have gotten this work done in the spring and summer, but they wasted their time trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act. That is all they did.

After failing to do so, they asked for more time in September, and we voted, every one of us, to give them that time. They squandered it. They had to do two more extensions. They squandered that time, and now they want us to have another time where they can squander more time.

Instead of using the extra time to do the job of governing, they wasted it on passing a tax overhaul that added $1.5 trillion in new deficit spending and raised taxes on the middle class. So here we are again, Mr. Speaker.

Americans are right to be frustrated by the inability or unwillingness of the Republican-led Congress to do its job and keep the government open.

You have 241 votes. Get them. Get them. You have the authority to do it, and you have the responsibility to do it. Get the votes.

Even some Republican lawmakers are openly expressing frustration with their own leadership. Let me quote Representative Mark Meadows. He hit the nail on the head yesterday when he asked: ``What's the plan? When are we going to deal with immigration?''

The previous speaker talked about dealing with it. We haven't dealt with it. Put something on the floor. You haven't done it.

``When are we going to deal with spending?'' This is Mark Meadows. ``At what point do you quit kicking the can down the road''--this is Mark Meadows, Republican, not me--``and passing just another continuing resolution in hopes that things get better in a few weeks?''

Democrats don't want the government to shut down.

We don't have the power to shut it down either. It is entirely in the hands of the majority.

By the way, on that previous CR, 90 of your Members voted against it. Did they vote against the military? Did they vote against the first responders? Did they vote against education funding?

And we wring our hands about the military funding. Do you think it is any easier to run a nondefense agency with a CR? You are wrong if you think that. They undermine our domestic agencies as well, and I hope that they are equally worried about the impact that doing one short- term funding bill after another has on the domestic side.

Americans are frustrated that their Congress can't agree on what we agree on.

Republicans have previously supported the principles of parity when raising spending caps. That was the Paul Ryan deal. He is the Speaker. He said, yes, we will increase military and domestic the same. That was his deal, Paul Ryan, the Speaker.

That is all we are asking for, ``Paul Ryan, make your deal again,'' and he won't do it. Instead, he just wants to keep kicking the can down the road once, twice, thrice, now four times.

Yes, we want, as the previous speaker said, all DREAMers to stay in this country. We all want to reauthorize the CHIP program to prevent 9 million children from losing their health insurance. I dare you to put it on the floor. It will pass with every vote in this House. No, you want to blackmail us into passing something that we don't like and we don't think is good for the country.

Mr. Speaker, we want to address other urgent health priorities as well. You want to pass CHIP, but you do not want to pass the community health centers. My colleague Betty McCollum told us about that. Many CHIP children will have no place to go--you pass the bill, but no place to go. So why don't Republicans sit down and reach agreement?

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues across the aisle, don't shut down the government. I implore them. Use your majority not to delay but to govern. And I tell them, Democrats are still ready to work with you, as we have

been throughout, to sit down and reach bipartisan compromise on our most pressing challenges. We voted to give you 120 days to do that; now you want some more time.

You come to the door and ask for some cake, and your neighbor says, ``Come back tomorrow,'' and you come back tomorrow and you ask for the same thing, and he says, ``Come back tomorrow,'' and you go back the next day, and he says the same thing, ``Come back tomorrow.'' That is what the Republicans are saying, ``come back tomorrow,'' ``come back tomorrow,'' ``come back tomorrow,'' but there has been no tomorrow.

Vote against this CR.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. McCarthy), my friend and the majority leader, for the purpose of inquiring about the schedule for the week to come.

(Mr. McCARTHY asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for that information.

I presume the CR, or continuing resolution, is anticipated, as the gentleman referenced. Is that accurate?

Mr. Speaker, I yield to my friend.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for that.

Will that continuing resolution be clean, from the gentleman's standpoint--that is to say, it will not include other items on it--or does the gentleman have any anticipation that other items might be included on that?

Mr. Speaker, I yield to my friend.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman.

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman and I had the opportunity to be at the White House with the President earlier this week. He and I are attempting to work on seeing if we can make sure that we protect our DREAMers. I think we saw a unanimous opinion in the White House among the 17 Republicans and 7 or 8 Democrats who were there that it ought to be done. I was pleased the President said that it ought to be done, and ought to be done quickly. I appreciate the gentleman's efforts on that score.

Obviously, we also need to do something with the Children's Health Insurance Program. We have talked about that before.

We need to do something with respect to the supplemental for Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, as well as Florida and Texas. Obviously, we passed a supplemental here, and it did not pass in the Senate. Hopefully, the Senate will address that, and we can address it coming back across the aisle.

In addition, we are going to have to, as the gentleman referred to, establish caps. We still, at this late hour, late date, do not have a figure for the Appropriations Committee to use in terms of what they will mark their bills to. You mentioned it, but does the gentleman have any update or degree of confidence that will be done within the next few days?

Mr. Speaker, I yield to my friend.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman.

Mr. Speaker, nobody has any intention, of course, of holding the military hostage.

Secretary Mattis and his predecessors have all believed that a CR is damaging to the military's ability to move forward and plan. I would suggest to my friend, the majority leader, Mr. Speaker, that it is equally damaging to the nondefense side of the budget. Administrators and secretaries cannot plan for what resources they will have a month out, 2 months out, or until September 30 and the end of the fiscal year. Reaching agreement is important on both sides of the budget.

In addition, I would respectfully hope that we can pursue the policy and agreement that we made and on which Speaker Ryan was a principal on your side of the aisle and Senator Murray was the principal on our side of the aisle and reached agreement on the parity of increase--not parity of expenditures, because we spend more on defense, but parity of increase. Mr. Speaker, I would hope we could pursue that. It would accelerate agreement on how we are going forward.

I know the gentleman is going to be working on both of those efforts. I appreciate that and look forward to working with him.

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

Mr. Speaker, what a sad state of affairs. There are scores of critically important issues that need to be considered by this House, not the least of which is funding our government. We failed to do that, and now we are confronted with a bill that is recycled, and we have added two natural resources bills on it that could have passed unanimously.

I am a big defender of Native Tribes' rights and sovereignty, and I know that my colleagues on both sides of the aisle remain committed to their sovereignty as well. This bill, however, is about undermining the National Labor Relations Act, not about Tribal sovereignty.

That act, the National Labor Relations Act, safeguards workers' rights to organize and bargain collectively. Most of my friends on the other side of the aisle are not for that. I know that. I have seen them vote that way.

No matter where you work, the basic protections for American workers, however, ought to apply. It is already

settled law that the National Labor Relations Act and other worker protection laws apply to businesses even on Tribal lands outside the context of inherently governmental functions carried out by Tribal governments. This was not decided by some faceless bureaucrat. This was a court of our land that made this decision.

Instead of undermining workers' rights, this House ought to be moving forward with policies that help our workers and their families make it in America as part of a strong middle class. That means raising wages. It means making childcare more affordable. It means expanding access to opportunities like higher education, homeownership, and a secure retirement. Those are the issues that Democrats continue to be focused on.

That is not what this bill focuses on. Instead, Republicans are focused not on helping workers, but trying to pit one group, Tribes, against another group, workers. That is not what we ought to have in this country.

And they are attaching popular, noncontroversial natural resources bills to this legislation. They have nothing to do with this legislation and would pass overwhelmingly.

I am going to vote against this bill, and I hope they will bring the natural resources bills back so we can pass those, as everybody wants to do.

This is not the kind of regular order Speaker Ryan promised when he took the gavel and that Republicans promised when they took the majority.

As I said at the beginning, we are bringing this bill to the floor, a retread. This is not new legislation that they are offering. The only thing new about it is they put two natural resources bills attached to it.

We should be focused, as I said before, on reaching agreement on appropriation bills, on caps, on protecting DREAMers, on making sure that CHIP children aren't left aside, not this bill. But those bills aren't scheduled today, and they are not scheduled next week as far as I know. Maybe the majority leader will give me better information tomorrow.

In fact, what we really ought to be working on now, as I say, are those appropriation bills. But, under the Republican majority, we are still stuck working on fiscal year 2018 when we are already nearly halfway through.

I urge my colleagues not to oppose Tribal sovereignty, not to oppose the rights of our Native American brothers and sisters. We are for them, but not to be pitted against workers making a decent, acceptable wage so they can live with some quality of life.

It is not enough to give the upper 1 percent a huge tax cut and pretend that you are helping the middle class, the workers. In fact, in this bill, you are doing exactly the opposite.

I urge my colleagues to oppose this bill and stand up for workers, whether they are Native Americans or whoever they may be. Stand up for workers. Respect workers. Understand that workers made this country great, and they deserve our support and our protection.

Defeat this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Mrs. Lowey for yielding.

Here we are again, Mr. Speaker. Two weeks ago, the Republican majority asked for another 2 weeks to write an appropriations package to fund the government, yet now they are asking to kick the can down the road one more time.

We all knew that those 2 weeks were a pretense for getting the votes to pass their tax bill. We didn't make any progress on a bipartisan appropriations bill.

Before that, Republicans asked for an additional 12 weeks in September. We all voted to give that 12 weeks.

All of us know exactly why the can keeps being kicked farther and farther down the road. It is because the majority cannot muster a majority of their own Members to support bipartisan funding bills. Because the governing party, which controls the House, the Senate, and the White House, has not been able to govern.

Senate Republican Whip John Cornyn said on Sunday: ``The can always seems to be kicked down the road.''

Yet here we are again with Republicans doing exactly that.

Mr. Speaker, let's call the CR for what it is: a chaotic retreat from rational, regular, and fiscal responsibility. We have alongside it a supplemental funding bill that provides some

additional emergency relief to those affected by natural disasters, but it ought to do more, in my opinion, to help those in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.

It has been 3 months since Hurricanes Irma and Maria devastated Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, and since Hurricane Harvey visited so much water on Houston.

Many still do not have electricity or running water in Puerto Rico. These are our fellow Americans. We owe it to them and to ourselves to help them in their time of need.

Mr. Speaker, Congress can do better, and it should do better. We should act in a bipartisan way.

I was on the Appropriations Committee as an active member for 23 years. I was a member of the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Subcommittee. I told people that you could take the 13 of us--we were eight Democrats and five Republicans-- and thrown us up in the air, we would have come down in random seats, had a markup, and you would have been hard-pressed to identify the Democrat or the Republican, because we believed our responsibility was to fund the priorities of this country.

Now, I know that we passed 12 bills.

Mr. Speaker, the Appropriations Committee used to be an extraordinarily bipartisan committee where we worked together, not on a partisan basis, but on a basis of trying to determine which priorities were important for our country, what funds were needed so that agencies could operate in an effective way. That, unfortunately, is not happening the way it did.

So, Mr. Speaker, I urge my Republican friends, who control this House, and all the levers of government, to work with Democrats on making sure that all those who need emergency disaster relief, as well as those who need funds to operate their government agencies in a way that serves America best--I urge us to work together toward that end. I urge us because nobody believes these CRs are good policy, but they, unfortunately, are becoming regular, if not regular order.

Mr. Speaker, the other thing that the chairman did not say is that, after your last round of tax cuts, we had the deepest recession anybody in this body has experienced, starting in December 2007, when you had the Presidency, the House, and the Senate. You are at it again.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in sadness and disappointment that the House passed such an irresponsible, dangerous, and debt-exploding legislation yesterday. We should be better than this. We should be more responsible than this.

This bill gives 83 percent of its benefits to just 1 percent of the richest Americans.

Why didn't we have it reversed and give 83 percent to the people you talk about, Mr. Chairman?

It takes 13 million people off their health insurance coverage and it raises the deficit by $1.5 trillion.

There can be little doubt that the majority party is fixated on cutting taxes for the richest in our country.

Defeat this bill. Do right by the American people.