Floor Statements

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

Mr. Speaker, before I begin my formal remarks, I want to ask for God's blessing and protection on you; on my friend, Mr. McGovern; for all who come to this Chamber today to speak and to vote; for our wonderful staff that make this possible; and most especially for the men and women of the Capitol Police and the other affiliated law enforcement agencies that are here to protect everybody and to make sure that this proceeding can go forward.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Massachusetts, my very good friend, the distinguished chairman of the Rules Committee, Mr. McGovern, for yielding me the customary 30 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, today is a sad day for all of us, for me personally, for the Rules Committee, for the entire House of Representatives, and most certainly for the American people.

For the second time in 13 months, we are meeting to discuss the impeachment of the President of the United States. Our meeting today does not arise in a vacuum and comes at what I hope and pray is the end of a tumultuous period for our country.

Less than 1 week ago, Congress met to certify the results of the 2020 Presidential election. What started out as peaceful protests, turned into a riot as an untold number of individuals stormed the Capitol Building. Six people died as a result of this mob. It is only by the grace of God and the brave acts of the U.S. Capitol Police; the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police; the FBI; the ATF; and other responding agencies that there was not more bloodshed.

Violent acts such as these have no place in our Republic. These shocking and sobering events rest high on our minds today, as well they should. Certainly, January 6, 2021, will live in my memory as the darkest day during my time in service as a Member of this House.

After these grave events, we, as a nation and as an institution, have an opportunity to come together. President Trump has conceded the 2020 election. Congress has certified the results of the election, and next Wednesday, President-elect Biden will be sworn in as the President of the United States.

Congress and the Nation can move forward knowing that the political process was completed as designed and that the constitutional framework that has governed our Republic since 1789 held firm. But instead of moving forward as a unifying force, majority in the House is choosing to divide us further.

With only 1 week to go in his term, the majority is asking us to consider a resolution impeaching President Trump, and they do so knowing full well that even if the House passes this resolution, the Senate will not be able to begin considering these charges until after President Trump's term ends.

Mr. Speaker, I can think of no action the House can take that is more likely to further divide the American people than the action we are contemplating today. Emotions are clearly running high and political divisions have never been more apparent in my lifetime.

We desperately need to seek a path forward, healing for the American people. So it is unfortunate that a path to support healing is not the path the majority has chosen today. Instead, the House is moving forward erratically with a truncated process that does not comport with the modern practice and that will give Members no time to contemplate the serious course of action before us.

In every modern impeachment inquiry, an investigation and committee action has preceded bringing an impeachment resolution to the floor. In part, this is to ensure that members have the full facts, the opportunity to engage expert witnesses, and have a chance to be heard. It also provides due process to the President of the United States. Again, in every modern impeachment inquiry, the President has been given an opportunity to be heard in some form or another.

This is necessary in order to ensure that the American people have confidence in the procedures the House is following. It is also necessary, not because of the President's inappropriate and reckless words are deserving of defense, but because the Presidency itself demands due process in the impeachment proceedings.

Unfortunately, the majority has chosen to race to the floor with a new Article of Impeachment, forgoing any investigation, any committee process or any chance for Members to fully contemplate this course of action before proceeding.

Professor Jonathan Turley is correct when he called this ``a dangerous snap impeachment--an impeachment that effectively would go to a vote without the deliberation or inquiries of a traditional hearing.''

Professor Turley also noted that ``the damage caused by the rioters this week was enormous. However, it will pale in comparison to the damage from a new precedent of a snap impeachment. . . .''

Mr. Speaker, if the majority is seeking consensus, this is hardly the way to create it.

The majority is failing to provide the House with an opportunity to review all the facts--which are still coming to light--to discuss all the evidence, to listen to scholars, to examine the witnesses, and to consider precedence. This is not the type of robust process we have followed for every modern impeachment, and the failure to do so does a great disservice to this institution and to this country.

Mr. Speaker, I could think of nothing that will cause further division more than the path the majority is now taking. Rather than looking ahead to a new administration, the majority is again seeking to settle scores against the old one. Rather than seeking to heal America, they are seeking to divide us more deeply, and rather than following the appropriate processes the House has used in every modern impeachment, the majority is rushing to the floor, tripping all over themselves in their rush to impeach the President a second time.

What is worse, though, is the majority seems to believe this course of action is self-evident, and that is simply not the case. I have to tell them: it is not. Members have reviewed the same conduct and have come to dramatically different conclusions. Legal scholars like Professor Turley and Professor Alan Dershowitz, both of whom condemn the President's statements, believe that his statements are not impeachable. I know other scholars have different points of view.

Given this difference of opinion, shouldn't we have a better process than this?

Shouldn't we have a chance to examine witnesses, discuss the matter with legal scholars, and consider this in committee?

On a matter as grave and consequential as impeachment, shouldn't we follow the same process we have used in every modern impeachment rather than rushing to the floor?

On behalf of generations of Americans to come, we need to think more clearly about the consequences of our actions today. The fact of the matter is, Mr. Speaker, there is no reason to rush forward like this, other than the very obvious fact that there are only 7 days left until the new President takes office. But what is worse, as Professor Dershowitz has pointed out, because of the Senate's rules, the case cannot come to trial in the Senate until 1 p.m. on January 20, 1 hour after President Trump leaves office.

This is an ill-advised course, in my opinion, Mr. Speaker. Even Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat, agrees. Senator Manchin is quoted this week as having said, ``I think this is so ill-advised for Joe Biden to be coming in, trying to heal the country, trying to be the President of all the people when we are going to be so divided and fighting again. Let the judicial system do its job.''

So what, then, is the point of the rush to impeach?

We are coming off a horrific event that resulted in six deaths. We have an opportunity to move forward, but we cannot if the majority insists on bringing the country through the trauma of another impeachment. It will carry forward into the next President's term ensuring that he will struggle to organize his administration. What is worse, it will continue to generate the bitterness so many of us have opposed.

Why put us through that when we can't actually resolve this before the end of the President's term?

Mr. Speaker, I think my colleagues in the majority need to think about this more soberly. We need to recognize we are following a flawed process. We need to recognize that people of goodwill can differ. We need to recognize that, while the House may be done with this matter after today's vote, it will not be done for the country. It will not be done for the Senate, and it will not be done for the incoming Biden administration. The House's action today will only extend the division longer than necessary.

Finally, Mr. Speaker, I would note that there are other remedies that can be pursued. The President is expected to face litigation over his role in last Wednesday's events. There will be criminal proceedings against the perpetrators, and I hope all of those who stormed the Capitol will be brought to justice. And some Members have proposed an alternative procedure--censuring the President--which could garner significant bipartisan support in the House.

I do not think impeachment is a wise course, Mr. Speaker. I would urge my friends in the majority to reconsider. There is still time to choose a different path, one that leads to reconciliation and hope for better and brighter days.

Mr. Speaker, I urge opposition to the rule, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to immediately bring up a resolution establishing a bipartisan national commission on the domestic terrorist attack on the United States Capitol. This proposed bipartisan commission will be tasked with examining and reporting upon the terror attack upon our Capitol that occurred last Wednesday. The commission will be bipartisan in nature, modeled after the 9/11 Commission, and will fully be empowered to undertake a full investigation and make recommendations to the President and to Congress.

I can think of no more appropriate path for Congress to follow than by ensuring a bipartisan commission reviews all evidence and reports back to us on this horrific event.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of my amendment in the Record, along with extraneous material, immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

Mr. Speaker, I urge a ``no'' vote on the previous question.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Rodney Davis), who is the ranking Republican member on the House Administration Committee, for a further explanation of this amendment.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from South Carolina (Ms. Mace), one of our new Members, and note this is her first speech on the House floor.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Jordan), the distinguished Republican leader of the Judiciary Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Reschenthaler), a new member of the Rules Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Carter), my very good friend.

Mr. Speaker, I advise the Chair that I have additional speakers on the way, but they are having a difficult time. I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute the distinguished gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Bishop), who is my very good friend.

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

Whenever the gentleman is prepared to close, we will close. We were hopeful that one of our speakers would arrive, but they are having a difficult time getting here.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank you for presiding over these difficult proceedings today. I thank my good friend, the distinguished chairman of the Rules Committee. And I thank everybody who came to the floor and had something to say at an important moment.

I think the debate, while spirited, reflected the civility and decency of the institution that we are all privileged to be part of. I am very proud to have been part of it. I am very proud of all the Members and the manner in which they participated.

I want, again, to thank the staff and thank those who kept us safe in the process, particularly the Capitol Police.

Mr. Speaker, I oppose this rule, and I oppose the majority's actions today. After the traumatic events of last week, the majority should be taking steps to unite us. Instead, they are only dividing us further.

They are rushing to judgment, in my opinion, and bringing up impeachment after failing to follow any meaningful process whatsoever. No hearings have been held, no witnesses heard, no process or opportunity to respond was provided to the President. No Members had an opportunity to review or amend this article before it came to the floor. This is hardly the way the House should undertake such a serious act.

Mr. Speaker, there is still a way to unite the country. Let us look forward, not backward. Let us come together, not apart. Let us celebrate the peaceful transition of power to a new President rather than impeaching an old President. And let us affirm and reaffirm with one united voice that the House does not rush to judgment on the most consequential action we can take. Mr. Speaker, we deserve better than that and the American people deserve better than that.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues, as they reflect on this minute and we move into our next stage of debate, to remember that we are all privileged to represent a great and a good people. We have gone through a horrifying and tragic time, and we owe them the opportunity to reflect and we owe them our best efforts to bring everyone together.

I know people on this floor feel very passionately about this subject with different points of view. I honor each one of those points of view and I honor the people that voice them. Let's remember when we are through this that we are one people and that we have one purpose, that we are free through the grace of God and millions of brave Americans over centuries of time and we will remain that way, and we will move forward together once we settle this debate.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the previous question, ``no'' on the rule, ``no'' on the underlying measure, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend, the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania (Ms. Scanlon) for yielding me the customary 30 minutes, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Just a few days ago, the Nation was shaken by the violent and destructive actions of an outrageous mob that stormed the Capitol and attempted to gain access to this very Chamber, seeking to harm innocent lives and disrupt democracy at work.

I vehemently condemn their lawless actions. This never should have happened, and the perpetrators of these despicable crimes that took place in this building must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

While Americans have the right to passionately voice their views and peacefully dissent in protest, the siege on our Capitol last Wednesday was the furthest thing from peaceful protest. As a result of the violent and frightening events of the day, six lives have been lost.

This includes two courageous Capitol Police officers who put themselves in harm's way to protect us, secure the building, and restore order. We will never forget their selfless sacrifices and bravery. Our deepest prayers remain with their families, friends, loved ones, and the entire United States Capitol Police force as they grapple with their heavy loss.

As we seek to pick up the pieces and move forward healing our Nation, I am concerned that the majority is proceeding with the wrong course of action.

Earlier today, Mr. Speaker, the Rules Committee met and reported out a rule for consideration of House Resolution 21. This is a nonbinding resolution calling on Vice President Mike Pence to convene the Cabinet and declare President Trump incapable of executing his duties pursuant to section 4 of the 25th Amendment.

I think this resolution is misguided and inappropriate for the legislative branch to pursue. As such, I must oppose it.

Mr. Speaker, under the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, when it appears the President is unable to fulfill his or her duties, it is the responsibility of the Vice President, with the concurrence of a majority of the Cabinet, to initiate the process for making that determination.

That responsibility, grave as it is, rests solely with the Vice President. There is no role for Congress in this

process. The only role for Congress arises later and only in the circumstances where there is a dispute between the President and Vice President about the President's ability to fulfill his or her duties, but we are not faced with that situation now.

Nor is this resolution intended to designate, by law, another body besides the Cabinet to exercise this power, which the text of the 25th Amendment says it may do. Instead, with today's resolution, what the majority is asking the House to do is to assume a power it does not have. The House has no role in initiating section 4 of the 25th Amendment, and we should not pretend otherwise. Instead, that power lies with the Vice President.

And we should be very clear about what this resolution actually is. It is an attempt to pressure the Vice President into performing a duty he clearly does not believe is necessary at this time.

Mr. Speaker, I was here in the Capitol last week, as were all of my colleagues. We all had the opportunity to watch Vice President Pence as he fulfilled his duty under the Constitution. He showed sound judgment and poise under pressure, and his actions were above reproach. Indeed, he fulfilled his oath of office and acted in a manner befitting his constitutional role. It was a statesman-like performance under the most difficult of circumstances.

Despite witnessing the Vice President's sound judgment and ability to fulfill his oath in person, the majority is now seeking to push him into performing an additional action under the 25th Amendment. The Vice President has not done what the majority wishes him to do, and so they are bringing up this resolution now in effort to pressure him into doing so.

This act, attempting to substitute the House's judgment for the Vice President's, is not contemplated anywhere in the Constitution. As we all saw last Wednesday, Vice President Pence's judgment is sound. There is no need for the House to attempt to substitute its judgment for his own.

I personally have strong faith in him, and I believe he will consider his constitutional duty in the same manner that he carries out all of the other constitutional duties assigned to him: in a forthright manner that fulfills his oath of office and attests to his personal integrity.

Should the Vice President ever believe that the 25th Amendment needs to be invoked, I have no doubt that Vice President Pence, both as a leader, as a former House colleague, and as a friend, would exercise good judgment with respect to performing that duty. That he has not taken that action thus far is not an indication that the House needs to push him to do so. His record of sound judgment should speak to us on this issue.

As such, I urge my colleagues to reject this resolution. I urge a ``no'' vote on the rule, a ``no'' vote on the underlying measure, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from Arizona (Mrs. Lesko), who is my very good friend and fellow member of the Rules Committee.

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

Mr. Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to immediately bring up a resolution establishing a bipartisan national commission on the domestic terrorist attack on the United States Capitol.

This commission, modeled on the 9/11 Commission, will be charged with examining and reporting upon the facts and causes relating to the attack that occurred on January 6 of 2021 and with providing appropriate findings, conclusions, and recommendations for corrective measures.

I can think of no more appropriate path for Congress to follow, Mr. Speaker, than to ensure that a bipartisan commission reviews all evidence and reports back to us on this horrific event.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of my amendment in the Record, along with extraneous material, immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

Mr. Speaker, I urge a ``no'' vote on the previous question.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from the great State of Kentucky (Mr. Guthrie) for further explanation of the amendment.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes the gentlewoman from Michigan (Mrs. McClain), who will be giving her first address on the floor of the House.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Reschenthaler), who is the newest Republican member of the Rules Committee.

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

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

I would disagree somewhat with my good friend from Pennsylvania. I have had the privilege of being in this body for many years, and I have never seen what we see in sections 2 and 3 of this rule, the suspension of appropriate language.

I understand the difficulties of dealing with this issue and respect that. However, at a time when the rhetoric has been over the top, I think we should set a high example. We have never done this before in my time here. We didn't do it in previous impeachments.

The need to do it now is lost on me, Mr. Speaker.

Again, I have great confidence in my friend. I have great confidence in my friends on the Rules Committee.

So, the rule is the rule. This will almost certainly pass. I would just hope that everybody acts as good as they can. I mean, I hate to put it that simply, but this is an important issue.

I respect all the Members of this body. I know they have very different points of view on this. That is to be expected.

Generally, our debates are professional. Generally, that standard is something we are proud of and something that we aspire to. I hate to see it ever lowered or any exception provided.

I also have great confidence in the Speaker's Chair, and I know that they will enforce the appropriate level of civility and decency on the floor.

But, Mr. Speaker, I just ask my fellow Members to please, please think about this, because we have taken a very important safeguard off the rails of debate, so to speak.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Jordan), my very good friend, the distinguished Republican ranking member of the Judiciary Committee.

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

Mr. Speaker, in closing, I want to urge all of my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this resolution.

The resolution asks this House to substitute its judgment for the Vice President's in making the grave decision to initiate procedures under section 4 of the 25th Amendment. Under the Constitution, this is a role that belongs exclusively to the Vice President and the Cabinet, not to the House of Representatives. Attempting to usurp this responsibility is not supported by the Constitution and would be a historic overreach.

Members should also take assurance from the Vice President's strong record of sound judgment. Rather than pressuring him into acting, we should be reassured by the knowledge that he would act on this topic as he does on all others in performing his duty, in a manner befitting his constitutional role as Vice President of the United States.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the previous question and ``no'' on the rule, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

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

Madam Speaker, I really think that my good friends in the majority need more time to present a fair rules package. So I move to postpone consideration of H. Res. 8 until January 5, 2021.

Motion to Table

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

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Massachusetts, my very good friend, Chairman McGovern, for yielding me the customary 30 minutes; and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, we are here today to address the majority's proposed changes in the Rules of the House of Representatives for the 117th Congress.

These changes are some of the harshest and most cynical that I have experienced during my time in Congress. Democratic leadership is suppressing minority rights and paving the way for the Green New Deal by intentionally removing budgetary checks that have been in place for over a decade.

The most egregious of these changes is the complete gutting of the motion to recommit. The motion to recommit, or the MTR, is the minority's right to propose a final amendment before moving passage. This is a right that has been guaranteed to the minority for well over a century.

With today's changes, the majority is seeking to silence views they are afraid of with no regard for this institution or the American people's trust in our constitutional responsibility to govern and govern well. They are taking away the ability to debate a motion to recommit and the ability to offer a motion to recommit with instructions. This completely guts the minority's ability to offer a last amendment on the floor prior to passage of legislation.

I would remind my colleagues that during the many years Republicans were in the majority, we never even thought to deny the minority this motion. And the only reason Democrats are doing so today is out of embarrassment. They are embarrassed that the

Republicans were able to pass eight motions to recommit in the 116th Congress. But rather than acknowledging that Republicans sometimes have good policy ideas that should be incorporated into legislation, the majority is instead seeking to completely cut off this key right, and that, Madam Speaker, is simply reprehensible.

Madam Speaker, the motion to recommit has been around since the beginning of the House as an institution, and it has been in its present form since 1909. In fact, in 1919, Representative Abraham Garrett of Tennessee, noted that ``the motion to recommit is regarded as so sacred it is one of the few rules protected against the Committee on Rules by the general rules of the House.''

And when Speaker Pelosi was herself in the minority, she equated the motion to recommit with the right of free speech enshrined in our Constitution. How this majority can now decide that a procedure that is so important it is on par with the guarantee of free speech must be eliminated is beyond my understanding.

Madam Speaker, it is simply shocking that Democrats are so afraid of Republican ideas that they feel the need to rig the system against us. They don't want the House to work its will. They only want the Speaker's will. And we all know why that is. It is because the majority cannot effectively defend its policies against competing ideas.

Eight times in the last Congress a majority of the House agreed that the Republican policy idea had merit and should be included in the final bill. But that state of affairs is evidently so embarrassing to Democrats that they can't stand it, and now they have to completely shut down minority rights lest they be embarrassed further, especially after the November election dealt them a harsh blow and they lost seats in their own ranks.

Madam Speaker, I want to offer my friends on the other side of the aisle a word of warning: Majorities do not last forever. If there is one certainty we can take away from the history of American politics, it is that the party in power in the House of Representatives today will not hold that position forever. I can also guarantee you that your efforts to shut us down will not shut us up.

So instead of having bills that pass with slight improvements made through an MTR, bills will fail here on the House floor. And for that reason, among others, I am sure Democrats will regret making this egregious change in the very near future. Republicans are proud to debate our policies and proposals, unlike the majority today, whose record of promised openness and fulsome debate is an abject failure.

Now, Madam Speaker, while gutting the MTR may be the worst piece of this rules package to many, I want to applaud my friends for removing an almost equally egregious piece of this rules package. When the majority released this package over the weekend, there was a particularly noxious provision that would have empowered the Speaker of the House to censor the free speech of Members and employees of the House. What is worse, it would have empowered the Speaker to act as the sole judge, jury, and executioner, and included no clear guidelines for how this would be enforced. This proposed rule was downright un- American.

Fortunately, my friends on the other side of the aisle have listened to reason and removed that provision from this package. I wish they had further listened to reason and removed the provision taking away the minority's right to an MTR, which is why I offered a very reasonable motion to postpone for one day.

Madam Speaker, I could go on all day about the MTR, but there are other changes in this rules package that need to be highlighted. Slipped into the package is another change that will effectively eliminate the paygo rule. Paygo is a useful budgetary control measure that essentially says that we can't spend money that we don't have. But if the majority gets their way, paygo will be eliminated for a broad category of topics, including for measures relating to climate change. This is doing nothing more than removing a key barrier to the Green New Deal and other liberal tax-and-spend policies.

But never before has the majority tried to lift budgetary rules on something as absurdly expensive as the Green New Deal, which is estimated to cost as much as $100 trillion over the next decade, should it be enacted.

It is clear that the majority doesn't even want to have a conversation about the cost of the Green New Deal, and instead wants to ensure that the American people never find out about the cost of their extreme plans.

There are other measures in this rules package that are just as absurd. Not content with having investigated President Trump throughout his Presidency and subjected him to pointless impeachment, now Democrats are including provisions allowing them to send subpoenas to former Presidents, former Vice Presidents, and former White House staff, long after their administration has ended.

This provision is a continuation of the Democratic majority's obsession with investigating President Trump and his administration, and ensures they will be able to keep their investigation gravy train rolling along long after the President leaves office.

There is a similar provision which will allow certain committee chairs to reissue subpoenas prior to the committee organizing for the 117th Congress, thus ensuring that existing investigations into President Trump, no matter how silly or pointless, will not have to slow down or even let the new Congress consider their current merits or legislative justification.

Allowing a chair to issue subpoenas without any consultation with membership or with the minority is nothing less than an abuse of power. But I suppose I should not expect any less given the other provisions in this package.

Madam Speaker, despite my affection for my friend on the other side of the aisle, I have to tell him that this package stinks. It is deeply cynical and deeply short-sighted. It tramples on minority rights and it ensures a power grab by Democratic leadership. It will change the nature of this institution, and not for the better.

Madam Speaker, today, I call on all Members to vote ``no'' on this rules package. I ask all of my colleagues, regardless of party, to reject these radical and, at times, ridiculous changes. I call on all my colleagues to protect minority rights. The future of this institution depends on it.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds to respond to my friend.

I remind my friend that you accepted eight MTRs, or eight were approved, because Democrats decided the Republican proposals were good proposals and made the bill better. We couldn't have done it on our own. So, you are actually limiting the choices in front of your own Members.

We might not feel so strongly about the MTR if we got more amendments approved anyway. We only get about 18 percent of the amendments. When we were in the majority, we gave you 45. We got 38. You now get 68. So, you are taking a tool away that is important to us.

Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Rodney Davis), my very good friend and the distinguished ranking member on the House Administration Committee.

Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Scalise), my very good friend and the distinguished Republican whip.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume to quickly respond to my friend.

Ms. Scanlon said the eight MTRs that passed this House were poison pills. By definition, they weren't. They passed the House. Democrats voted for them. Things like fighting against anti-Semitism is hardly a poison pill.

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Arizona (Mrs. Lesko), my very good friend.

Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Newhouse), my very good friend and a former member of the Committee on Rules.

Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Smith), my very good friend and ranking Republican member of the Committee on the Budget.

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

Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished new Member from the great State of Texas (Ms. Van Duyne), who will be making her first address on the House floor.

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

If we defeat the previous question, Madam Speaker, I will offer an amendment to the rule to immediately amend the rules package to strike the complete gutting of the MTR. My amendment will restore this sacred right to the minority to offer a final amendment to the bill.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of my amendment in the Record, along with extraneous material, immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. McCarthy), the distinguished Republican leader, to discuss this critical amendment in more detail.

Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from California (Mr. Obernolte), one of our new Members.

Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Texas (Mr. Roy), my very good friend.

Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Westerman), my very good friend and the distinguished ranking member of the Natural Resources Committee.

Madam Speaker, I yield an additional 15 seconds to the gentleman.

Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Posey).

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

In closing, I want to urge all of my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this rules package. The majority's proposed package will only continue the ongoing assault on minority voices.

The changes in this package completely gut the MTR. With all due respect to my friends, we disagree on that. I am sorry you have a hard time handling it or getting your Members to where you want them to go, but the fact is, eight times in the last Congress, Democrats joined with Republicans in deciding that the Republican proposal improved the bill. It is that simple.

We shouldn't be taking that away, particularly when the record, I think, is so bad in the last Democratic Congress in granting amendment opportunities to the minority.

I remind my friends, when we were in the majority, you got 45 percent of all of the amendments made in order in the Rules Committee; the Republicans got 38 percent; the remainder were bipartisan. Last time, you got two-thirds of the amendments, we got 18 percent, and the remainder were bipartisan.

When you are removing the MTR, on top of not giving us very many amendments to begin with, we look on that as an effort to limit our ability to participate openly and effectively in debate. This rules package moves us in another direction.

I am sorry that the traditional rules of the House that have been here over 100 years are inconvenient to the Democratic majority. Sometimes it is good to be inconvenienced when you are in the majority.

You are limiting our ability to participate. Frankly, it will find other outlets; it always does. I think that is a tragic mistake I think that you will live to regret.

In addition to that, obviously, we disagree in the proposed rules package with eliminating paygo in some critical areas. We think you could drive a truck through those. It is a critical budgetary tool, and we do think it will be missed, and its absence will be used to pave the way for the Green New Deal.

In addition, the desire to continue to subpoena Presidents, Vice Presidents, and White House staff that are no longer in office strikes us as clearly an effort to just continue to harass the departing administration. I regret that. I think you will, too. I think people want us to look forward, not backward.

So we don't see much use in that, nor do we see the automatic ability to resubmit subpoenas from the last Congress as a good thing. Again, it is looking in the rearview mirror.

Madam Speaker, I urge rejection of the package, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise to oppose the rule and the underlying legislation. This is actually a very sad occasion, I think, for the House; it certainly is for me personally. I have never voted against a national defense authorization in my 17 years in Congress. As a matter of fact, most of our Members have never done that for the last 58 years, so it is pretty unusual for us to be here and we, personally, regret that a great deal.

My concerns with the substance of the bill are many, although there are, as my good friend from Massachusetts said, lots of good things in there, and there was lots of bipartisanship in writing it.

But the top line number is $15 billion less than the President requests and the Senate has already enacted in their NDAA bill. We think that hurts readiness. We have concerns with the reversal of some decisions, both slowing down the modernization of our nuclear forces, and moving us away from low-yield nuclear weapons, which we think we need to counter Russia and its current aggressive posture.

We are disappointed the bill doesn't include longstanding prohibition against transferring detainees from Guantanamo Bay to the United States. Those provisions were put in by a Democratic Congress in 2010. We are sorry our friends seem to reverse a decision that they believed in a decade ago.

And it includes a lot of restrictive policies and prohibitions on securing the southern border, including prohibitions on funding a border wall, fence, physical barriers. I understand there are differences there, but I would hope we could give the executive flexibility in that area.

Mr. Speaker, as concerned as I am about the substance of the bill, I am very concerned about the process. I grant my friend's point that a lot of amendments have been made in order. We could have made more. We actually offered an open rule last night that would have made everybody's amendments in order. It wouldn't have taken away any of the amendments my friends wanted to put out there, but it would have allowed everybody's amendments to come to the floor for full and robust debate.

Now, the amendments that were made in order, 67 percent of them, are Democratic amendments; 14 percent are Republican. We don't think that is a fair, remotely fair ratio.

And frankly, the en bloc arrangements in which we are going to bring many of these to the floor are even more imbalanced; basically 63 percent of those will be on Democratic initiatives; I think two are on Republican initiatives. So we are very concerned about that. I think if we don't stop this process, we are about to make the mistake that we made 2 weeks ago.

Now, the Senate has given us, as it did 2 weeks ago, a different example. They have passed a national defense authorization by a vote of 86-8, so overwhelmingly bipartisan. The President has said he would sign their bill. The President sent us a message that the partisan bill that we are embarking on and about to pass he will not sign; so we are headed for a confrontation. It is a confrontation where we will produce a partisan bill that the President won't sign. The Senate will produce a bipartisan bill that the President will sign, and I think we know how that story ends.

So we are dangerously close to repeating the mistake we made only 2 weeks ago, and I would hope that we stop, because if we proceed down this path, we will find ourselves in precisely the same situation we found ourselves in with the border wall.

Now, I also want to take issue with my friend a little bit about the 9/11 issue and our friend Mr. Wilson's bill and my good friend in the chair's bill, as well. I just want to say, putting a bill, those things that are bipartisan, in a rule, it just literally means that our side is not going to vote for it. It would be the same if it were your side. You can say all you want. It was going to pass no matter what. So we don't think this was necessary.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend for the additional time, and I will be brief.

So it is with a great deal of sorrow--not sorrow that I oppose the rule, because I think the rule needs to be much more open, much more inclusive, but I hope that we can get back, Mr. Speaker--and by rejecting this rule and rejecting the underlying legislation, we can-- to a bipartisan process where we produce a bipartisan National Defense Authorization Act.

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

Madam Speaker, pursuant to section 426 of the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, I make a point of order against consideration of the rule, House Resolution 466.

Section 426 of the Budget Act specifically states that the Rules Committee may not waive the point of order prescribed in section 425 of that same act.

House Resolution 466 makes in order a motion ``without intervention of any point of order.'' Therefore, I make a point of order, pursuant to section 426 of the Congressional Budget Act, that this rule may not be considered.

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

Madam Speaker, the bill before us today provides no CBO cost estimate, so we literally have no idea as to whether or not there are additional unfunded mandates being imposed on the States. We do know that the States are already having to use their scarce resources to deal with this border crisis, and the legislation before us today does nothing to alleviate that.

Indeed, my colleague from Texas (Mr. Burgess) made that very point and offered an amendment, which was rejected by the committee, to consider reimbursing the State of Texas over $800 million for their expenses. Those same kinds of expenses--probably not to that magnitude--have been undertaken by other States. Madam Speaker, we don't think that we should proceed until we have that information and the House has a chance to consider that.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Madam Speaker, actually, on that, we have a great deal in common with one another. We, too, think we ought to address this matter quickly.

As I am sure my friend recalls, we have tried on 16 different occasions over the last 8 weeks to bring legislation that would alleviate this problem to the floor. Our friends rejected that every single time.

We also have a bill that has been passed by the Senate 84-7: a bill where 35 Democrats--about three-quarters of the number of Democrats-- supported, a bill that we know would solve, a bill that if we would bring to this floor we can pass immediately and it would go to the President's desk; it wouldn't have to go back to the Senate. So my friends, by not accepting an overwhelmingly bipartisan bill by the Senate and simply moving it on, are the ones who are actually imposing a delay here.

What they have got in front of us that we will consider later today, if they are successful, frankly, is something we know the Senate is unlikely to accept. I have not heard from the President, but given the scope of the changes inside the bill, these are all changes that, in some cases, failed yesterday in the Senate--reductions in spending for the military and for the Border Patrol--that the administration has already signaled they will reject.

There is a simple solution here. We could simply take the Senate bill up that has passed 84-7--overwhelming support on both sides of the aisle--get that bill down to the President, and the money could start flowing immediately. If we proceed as my friends want to proceed, we are simply going to be playing ping-pong back and forth.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Madam Speaker, I don't doubt my friend's sincerity and compassion and concern for these young people for one minute. I know him well as a person and value him as a friend. Although, I must say, this would have been much nicer 8 weeks ago when the administration first asked for it.

While my friend lays out some of the changes in the House bill, he neglected to mention that the House bill cuts the administration's request for reimbursement to the military by $124 million. It cuts the administration's request for money to the Border Patrol, which is probably where the most difficult part is, by, I think, $89 million. So we have substantive disagreements.

Again, we have a bill that has passed overwhelmingly. Many of the items my friends want to add have already been considered by the Senate and rejected by the Senate. So it seems to me, when we have a bipartisan product that has got substantial support on both sides and that the White House has signaled it would accept, that is the way we should go.

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Womack), my good friend and the ranking Republican member of the Committee on the Budget.

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Woodall), my very good friend and distinguished member of the Rules Committee.

Madam Speaker, I am puzzled as well. I am puzzled why this wasn't dealt with 8 weeks ago when the administration asked. I am puzzled why, for 16 times when we tried to bring this matter up on the floor, our friends in the majority rejected that.

Now we are in a hurry. Well, if we are in a hurry, the way to act is to take the vehicle that has actually passed the United States Senate in an overwhelmingly bipartisan fashion and send it to the President of the United States.

That is not what my friends want to do. They want to prolong the debate. They have prolonged it for 2 months, for 8 weeks, by not taking the matter up. They are prolonging it today by not taking what has already been passed and moving along.

So, obviously, we oppose this rule, and we want to move on. We will be happy to work with them to move on the Senate legislation. I think it would pass in an overwhelmingly bipartisan way; the President would sign it; and that aid would begin flowing. What my friends are proposing is quite the opposite. It is a prolonged back-and-forth with the United States Senate.

I have deep respect for the institution, but what is going to come out of here is going to be partisan; what came out of there is bipartisan.

What is going to come out of here won't be signed by the President; what has come out of the United States Senate will be. So if they are in a hurry to get the money moving, that is the way we should proceed.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time is remaining?

Madam Speaker, I am prepared to close and will yield back the balance of my time at the conclusion of my remarks.

Madam Speaker, we don't think the House bill is a better bill. We don't think reducing the amount the Senate gave to the military by $124 million is a good idea. We don't think reducing the amount of money that is going to Border Patrol, which is one of the areas that is a problem, by $89 million is a good idea. We don't think a lot of this effort to micromanage a crisis that is thousands of miles away from us by this body here has good suggestions.

We want some flexibility. We think the Senate bill does take care of the needs on the border in terms of unaccompanied minors who have crossed over into our territory. So we just don't think this does it, and we think this prolongs the process.

We have a bipartisan bill--a perfect bill? No. Is our bill a perfect bill? No. As a matter of fact, we like the Senate bill on our side better than this bill. Regardless, that one can pass. That one can pass on this floor. That one can be signed into law.

This one that my friends are embarking on, they think it is an improvement. I will just tell them, politically, not passing the Senate, not likely to be signed by the President.

So if we want to get help there immediately, we have a way to do it in the Senate bill. We think this leads us to a political dead-end.

Madam Speaker, I would press for my motion, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

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

I want to begin by thanking my good friend, the gentleman from Massachusetts (Chairman McGovern) for yielding me the customary 30 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, well, we are here for the third time this week and the second time on a supplemental appropriations bill for the southern border.

Earlier this week, I spoke on this floor and expressed my concerns about the House bill. Make no mistake, we need emergency funding for the crisis on the southern border. We needed it 2 months ago, and we need it even more desperately today.

Two days ago, I warned that the bill the House was considering would not pass the Senate and would not become law, and I was proven correct. The House bill failed in the Senate. In fact, it only received 37 votes in support. In contrast, the Senate amendment passed in a bipartisan vote of 84-8.

If the Democratic leadership would allow a vote on the Senate text, I believe it would pass this Chamber today and be on its way to the President's desk--today. But, instead, we are here considering a rule that would further amend the bill, bringing back in provisions that have already failed to garner support in the Senate.

If this bill fails to pass the Senate, as I expect will happen, then we will be leaving town for a week without actually having passed anything to deal with the crisis. And I do remind my friends on the other side we have attempted on our side, 16 times, to bring up legislation to deal with this, and the President asked for this money 2 months ago.

So, I am glad they have a sense of urgency now, because we have not seen it in the past.

My sense is that this is more about maintaining the unity of the Democratic Caucus than it is about pressing legislation that can be enacted into law. But that has been true for this entire Congress, and it is why my friends have, so far, failed to enact any significant legislation during their tenure in the majority.

Mr. Speaker, we are out of time. We desperately need to get these emergency funds to the Federal agencies responsible for managing this crisis. They are out of money and need additional resources to take care of people, many of them innocent children, who are affected by this crisis. We do not have the luxury of time in responding to this emergency.

My friends on the other side of the aisle are about to make the exact same mistake that they made on Tuesday when they pushed forward a partisan bill that would not pass the Senate and that the President would not sign into law.

What I don't understand, Mr. Speaker, is why the majority is so resistant to acting in a bipartisan manner here. Both Republicans and Democrats agree that we need additional funding to address the crisis on the southern border. There is a real chance to send a bipartisan bill to the President that will become law. And, instead of doing what will immediately help children and families at the border, the majority is attempting to cut the needed funding from the Senate bill, add partisan riders back into it, and then send it back to the Senate, where it can fail again.

Madam Speaker, we do not have time to waste on purely political exercises. There is still an opportunity to correct that mistake, Madam Speaker, and I would urge the majority to take that opportunity seriously.

Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. McCarthy), the distinguished Republican leader.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Granger) for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the distinguished gentleman from New York (Mr. Katko) for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Missouri (Mrs. Wagner) for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

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

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

Madam Speaker, I yield to the distinguished gentlewoman from Indiana (Mrs. Brooks), my good friend, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the distinguished gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Walker) for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the distinguished gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Walberg), my friend, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the distinguished gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Mitchell), my friend, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the distinguished gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mast), my friend, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the distinguished gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Bergman), my good friend, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Missouri (Mrs. Hartzler), my good friend, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the distinguished gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Kevin Hern), my good friend, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the distinguished gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Smith), my good friend, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the distinguished gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Latta), my friend, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the distinguished gentleman from Texas (Mr. Babin), my good friend, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the distinguished gentleman from Texas, Judge Carter, my very good friend, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the distinguished gentleman from Texas (Mr. Wright), my good friend, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the distinguished gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Westerman), my good friend, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Burchett), my friend, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the distinguished gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Baird), my good friend, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the distinguished gentleman from Washington (Mr. Newhouse), my very good friend, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the distinguished gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Marshall), my very good friend, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Joyce), my good friend, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the distinguished gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Palmer), my very good friend, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Spano), my good friend, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Meuser), my very good friend, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Steil), my good friend, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Reschenthaler), my very good friend, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

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

Madam Speaker I yield to the distinguished gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Hill), my very good friend, for the purpose of unanimous consent.

Madam Speaker, I yield to my very good friend from the great State of Kentucky (Mr. Comer) for a unanimous consent request.

Madam Speaker, I yield to my very good friend from the great State of Montana (Mr. Gianforte) for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Madam Speaker, I yield to my very good friend from the great

State of Idaho (Mr. Fulcher) for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Madam Speaker, I yield to my very good friend from the great State of Texas (Mr. Conaway) for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Madam Speaker, I yield to my very good friend from the great State of Pennsylvania (Mr. Thompson) for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Keller), my friend and newest Member of the House of Representatives, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Madam Speaker, I yield to my very good friend from the great State of Illinois (Mr. Bost) for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the distinguished gentleman from Florida (Mr. Rutherford), my very good friend, for the purpose of unanimous consent request.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the distinguished gentleman from Virginia, my good friend (Mr. Riggleman) for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Madam Speaker, I yield to my good friend from the great State of Tennessee (Mr. Rose) for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Madam Speaker, I yield to my good friend from the great State of Illinois (Mr. LaHood) for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Madam Speaker, I yield to my good friend from the great State of South Carolina (Mr. Norman) for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Madam Speaker, I yield to my very good friend from the great State of Ohio (Mr. Stivers) for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Madam Speaker, I yield to my good friend from the great State of Virginia (Mr. Cline) for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Madam Speaker, I yield to my very good friend from the great State of Michigan (Mr. Moolenaar) for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from the great State of West Virginia (Mrs. Miller), my good friend, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from the great State of Kansas (Mr. Estes), my very good friend, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Madam Speaker, I yield to my good friend from the great State of Ohio, (Mr. Balderson) for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the distinguished gentlewoman from North Carolina (Ms. Foxx), my very good friend, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from the great State of Tennessee (Mr. David P. Roe), my very good friend, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from the great State of Tennessee (Mr. Fleischmann), my very good friend, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from the great State of Maryland (Mr. Harris), my very good friend, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from the great State of Ohio (Mr. Gibbs), my very good friend, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the distinguished gentleman from the great State of Illinois (Mr. Rodney Davis), my very good friend, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the distinguished gentleman from the great State of West Virginia (Mr. Mooney), my very good friend, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from the great State of Alabama (Mr. Byrne), my very good friend, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the distinguished gentleman from the great State of Ohio (Mr. Wenstrup), my very good friend, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the distinguished gentleman from the great State of Florida (Mr. Dunn), my very good friend, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from the great State of Texas (Mr. Gooden), my very good friend, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from the great State of Louisiana (Mr. Johnson), my very good

friend, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the distinguished gentleman from North Dakota (Mr. Armstrong), my very good friend, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Madam Speaker, I think you will be delighted to hear that I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from the great State of Michigan (Mr. Mitchell).

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

Madam Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to simply concur in the Senate amendment without further amendment. This will immediately send the bill to the President and deliver the necessary resources needed to respond to this humanitarian crisis.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of my amendment in the Record, along with extraneous material, immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

Madam Speaker, let me just say again, we can solve this problem now.

I respect that my friends have strong feelings about their legislation. We all do. The reality is that that legislation is not going to get through the Senate; it is not going to be signed by the President.

We have a vehicle that has already gotten through the Senate, that 75 percent of the Democrats in the Chamber voted for, including the entire Democratic leadership, and that could go, if this House would act on it, straight to the President's desk and be signed into law.

Now, my friends are, I know, concerned about resources. And, again, it is nice that they are. It would have been nice if, in the 18 previous times we have tried to bring this matter up before the House, they would have helped. It would have been nice if, 2 months ago, we had actually seen them respond.

We share their concern for these young people. That is why we asked for extra resources. The administration asked for extra resources 58 days ago. So I think, again, this ought to be pretty easy to resolve here.

My friends, with all due respect, have a partisan bill that will pass along partisan lines in this House, that will not be enacted by the Senate, and that will not be signed by the President.

The Senate has a bill they have already passed in a bipartisan fashion. It, frankly, has more money to help the people who are being paid overtime in the Border Patrol to--

Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

Madam Speaker, I want to thank the Speaker personally for taking control of a difficult situation.

So, Madam Speaker, just to resume my point, we have a vehicle. It could literally pass on this floor in less than an hour. It could head to the President. It satisfies almost all--not all, but almost all--of my friends' concerns. I would just ask them, in all seriousness, to just consider political reality here and let's get this done and get these resources to where they are needed. We can do that. We can do it in a bipartisan fashion.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from Arizona (Mrs. Lesko), my very good friend and distinguished member of the Rules Committee.

Madam Speaker, I yield the gentlewoman from Arizona an additional 30 seconds.

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

I know my friends are aware of this, but the Senate bill is actually--well, I certainly would vote for it. I think it would have overwhelming support on our side. The President, in the past, has expressed some concerns, and that is an important thing, but the Senate has really worked through a lot of these differences.

The bill that we would like to see put on this floor and that we know would pass with overwhelming, bipartisan support is a product of compromise, so much compromise that the entire Democratic leadership felt comfortable voting for it.

With all due respect to my friends, their bill is not the product of compromise. It is not going to get very many Republican votes here, if any. I would be surprised, frankly, if it did. It is not going to get accepted by the United States Senate. It absolutely won't be signed by the President of the United States.

We are all concerned about the conditions. We have been expressing that concern for 8 weeks. We never called this a manufactured crisis. We never said that this was made up for political purposes. The administration recognized it 8 weeks ago.

We have tried multiple times to get this House to focus on it. I am very pleased that we finally reached a point that both sides are focusing on it. But we also ought to focus on what is possible to achieve in a limited timeframe.

We know we are running out of money. We know there are real-life consequences to that. They are starting to unfold right now. There are services being cut back. For a lot of these conditions, frankly, we ought to look in the mirror, as Congress, and ask why we didn't get these resources there a long time ago.

Frankly, the House rule that we are discussing on the House bill, that bill actually reduces resources at the border. It doesn't expand them. It reduces them. It reduces them also for the American military. That is part of it.

The Senate bill, in my view, frankly, is much superior to my friends' product, but it has one virtue above all: All we have to do is put it on the floor and pass it, and it goes to the President of the United States to be signed immediately. Resources begin to move to where they are desperately needed immediately.

That is not true with my friends' bill. All it does is reopen the dialogue with the Senate, where it has very little prospect of passing. Then, frankly, if it did pass--not likely--it would be vetoed.

I am befuddled, Madam Speaker, that they are pursuing a goal that they know will not work, but we have seen this time and time again. It is more important to get a bill across the floor in a partisan fashion than it is to put something on the floor that is bipartisan, that can pass the Senate and come into law.

Now, my friends know we live in an era of divided government, and we have wasted 6 months, in my view, dealing with a lot of things that we knew would never pass. But I respect my friends' right to bring their agenda to the floor.

This is different. This is a national emergency. It has to pass. We have one vehicle where it can be passed and be signed so that help can go immediately. We have my friends' vehicle, which I know they believe in passionately, and I respect that, but it can't pass.

It is pretty simple. Sooner or later, I hope we get to the obvious answer and pass the Senate bill and send it to the President.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

I will just make the same point I have been making for days on end. We have something that can pass versus something that can't. I don't doubt for a minute that my friends are sincere in their concerns, but I also respect my colleagues on the other side of the rotunda in the United States Senate. I think they are sincere, too.

They have worked through and found a way to get something that got 84 votes. Three-quarters of the Democratic minority in the Senate voted for it. The entire Democratic leadership voted for it. The President has signaled that he will sign it.

We can continue the debates on some of these other things at a later point. My friends might want to come back with another piece of legislation addressing some of their concerns that they think are not appropriately addressed in the Senate bill. But the reality is that is the bill that can pass. The bill that they want to bring to this floor cannot.

We all agree there is a crisis. We all agree we need resources there. I think my friends know, if they would just put the Senate bill on the floor, it could pass, and it would go to the President.

We can continue to have this debate. We can even end it, launch some vehicle over to the Senate, and waste more time. That is all it will be, a waste of time.

I would hope we have all had our say. We all feel strongly about our points, but let's agree on the one thing we know can pass and the President would sign, which would get us resources and relief immediately on the border where we desperately need it.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

I personally thank my good friend, the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee), for the professional and very patient manner in which she handled the Chair and presided over this body. I wanted to recognize that.

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from New York (Mr. Katko), my very good friend.

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Stivers), who is my good friend.

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

Madam Speaker, in closing, I urge opposition to this rule. Once again, the majority is making the exact same mistake it made earlier this week. We have a bipartisan bill already approved by the Senate. The House should simply take it up and work its will on that bill.

Frankly, we all know, if that bill were allowed to come to the floor, it would pass overwhelmingly with a majority of each side voting in favor of it. Then it wouldn't have to go back to the Senate. It would go immediately to the President of the United States. He could sign it, and these resources would begin to flow.

Now, again, we have had a robust debate today, and I respect the passions on both sides and every point of view about this. Actually, I see a great deal of common agreement. We agree, which we did not 8 weeks ago, that there is an emergency on the southern border. We agree it is a humanitarian crisis. We agree there need to be resources that go there immediately. We agree that time is short.

We are also all elected officials who are privileged to be in this Chamber, and my experience with my friends on both sides of the aisle is that they are basically pretty practical people. They came here to solve problems. They have different viewpoints, but they are almost always very practical and try to get something done.

We know the Senate bill is not everything that my side would want. We certainly know it is not everything that my friend's side would want. But we know it is bipartisan. We know three-quarters of the Democrats in the other Chamber voted for it. We know it will pass.

With all due respect to my friends, they have clung so tightly to their bill, which I know they believe in. It will pass here, but it won't pass the Senate, and it certainly won't be signed by the President.

Where will we be if we continue down the road that they are laying out in front of us?

I know they are sincerely concerned about children on the border, but we are better off with a bill that passes so we have billions of dollars moving to where they are supposed to go, and a bill, by the way, that the entire Democratic leadership thought was appropriate and good enough.

Let's not sit here and make the perfect the enemy of the good. Let's be practical and deliver to the American people what they want, which is a solution, a solution that both parties will vote for and a solution that the President will sign.

How many times do we go home and hear that from our own constituents: Can't you guys get together and do anything? Can't you work together? Can't you put aside your differences and put the American people first?

It pains me as a House Member to admit it, I suppose, but the United States Senate did that in this case before we did. We can accept that and move on, and my friends can continue to fight for the things they believe. It is not as if, for these things that are in this bill that the administration won't accept, they can't wrap them up again and put them back in another bill and start the process.

If we do not act, the resources will not get to the border where they are needed, and these conditions that concern us all will continue.

I urge us to step back a little bit, accept that in this case the Senate has a bipartisan solution that will work, and for goodness' sake, just put it on the floor to see what happens.

We know what will happen. My friends will vote for it in overwhelming numbers. My friends on my side of the aisle will vote for it in overwhelming numbers. It will go straight to the President of the United States.

That isn't going to solve the problem, but it is going to ease the problem, and that is going to move us in the right direction and provide our very hard-pressed people--who are working this problem by caring for the migrants, trying to protect our borders, and trying to provide justice--the resources they need to continue to work on this problem while, frankly, we continue to try to arrive at a legislative solution.

Madam Speaker, I want to end with a point I made just a little bit earlier. I thank the Chair for the patient and professional manner in which she has allowed us to conduct this debate. I thank her very much for making sure that when we had an outside disturbance, it was quickly dealt with.

I urge my friends to reconsider and, hopefully, come together around a bill that neither of us thinks is perfect but both of us could probably vote for and the President could sign.

Madam Speaker, I thank my good friend, the chairman of the Rules Committee, for his participation in debate. It is always helpful and always enlightening. He is a good friend and a person I admire a great deal, even when we differ on a particular issue.

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

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

I want to begin by thanking my friend. I think this is a wise decision. I know it was a difficult decision, but I think it is the right thing because I know we have a common objective here.

We know we need resources at the border right away. We know, by the action my friend is taking, we now have the possibility of making that happen and doing it in a very bipartisan way; that is, taking a bill that passed the Senate 87-8, moving it here with a very substantial bipartisan majority, and, frankly, getting resources to exactly where I know my friend and his colleagues want them to go, which is to help folks at the border deal with this ever-mounting crisis.

Mr. Speaker, I urge that we accept the amendment. I thank my friend. I thank our friends on the other side for making what I know is a tough but, I think, a very wise decision. I think the country will be better off for it.

I appreciate the fact that we will pass this legislation in a bipartisan manner. As the Senate did, we will here. The President will sign it, and the resources that we all want to arrive and help alleviate the difficult situation at the border will start moving immediately.

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

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I want to thank my good friend, the gentleman from Massachusetts, Chairman McGovern, for yielding me the customary 30 minutes.

Madam Speaker, we are here today on two very different pieces of legislation. Last night at the Rules Committee, I noted that these unrelated bills have only one thing in common, and that is their place in the Democratic majority's partisan, going-nowhere agenda. Unfortunately, I believe today's rule is only going to compound that recurring problem of the Democrats, frankly, not even trying to work with Republicans to actually legislate in divided government.

Our first bill today is H.R. 3351, the Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Act of 2020. This is the 10th of 12 appropriations bills to come to the floor. As we have worked through these bills, I have raised several concerns that are applicable to this bill as well.

Like the previous appropriations bills this Congress, H.R. 3351 is marked to a high allocation figure that has no basis in reality. Remember, the House and Senate have not agreed to an overall budget for fiscal year 2020, which the Congressional Budget Act mandates be done by April 15.

Without a budget agreement, the budget cap numbers contained in the Budget Control Act will automatically take effect, leading to an 11 percent cut in defense spending and a 9 percent cut in nondefense spending.

Instead of working with Republicans in the Senate to reach a deal before marking and reporting funding bills, the majority has, instead, gone ahead and pushed through their own partisan appropriations bills that are marked to fake and unrealistic numbers.

The 12 appropriations bills the majority has proposed have several flaws in common. They reflect the idea that any increase in defense spending must be matched by an even greater increase in nondefense spending, which simply isn't a realistic assessment of our national priorities.

What is worse, these bills actually underfund defense and homeland security, coming in below the numbers that the President requested in order to ensure our military can adequately defend our Nation.

The FSGG bill we are considering today contains an 8 percent increase over fiscal year 2019, which makes little sense when we are simultaneously underfunding our national security.

Like the previous bills brought by my Democratic friends, the Financial Services appropriations bill also contains several partisan provisions that must be removed before a bipartisan, bicameral agreement can be reached on spending.

The majority has removed longstanding pro-life protections, such as a rider that prohibits the District of Columbia from using government funds to provide for abortions except in cases of rape, incest, or health of the mother.

The majority has also cut out a longstanding provision that I originally sponsored several years ago barring government contractors from being forced to disclose political campaign contributions. Since I originally sponsored this provision several years ago, I find it surprising that the majority would eliminate this provision, which provides important protections for government contractors and prevents contracts from being awarded on the basis of contributions.

Of course, there was an opportunity to work through and fix these problems through the amendment process. But instead of making things better, the majority has chosen, once again, to leave out minority voices.

I want to reiterate a point I made the last time I was on the floor for a rule. During the last Congress, when Republicans were in the majority, our record shows that we allowed more amendments sponsored solely by Democrats than we did amendments sponsored solely by Republicans.

The current majority has a much sorrier record. As of yesterday, of all amendments made in order this Congress, 67 percent were sponsored by Democrats, 19 percent by Republicans, and 13 percent were bipartisan.

Today's rule is right in line with that record. Sixty-seven percent of the amendments made in order are sponsored by Democrats, 24 percent by Republicans, and 9 percent are bipartisan.

Madam Speaker, this record of partisanship is a far cry from what the majority promised at the start of this Congress. There was an opportunity to move forward with fulfilling the majority's promises with today's rule. Instead, we see few Republican amendments and many Democratic amendments, resulting in a final product that will fail to achieve the bipartisan support needed to become law.

The second bill included in this rule is H.R. 2722, which the majority is promoting as a bill that provides security for elections. The reality is that this bill, like its partisan predecessor H.R. 1 that passed the House earlier this Congress, amounts to nothing less than a complete Federal takeover of elections.

Traditionally, elections are left to the States and local governments to conduct as they see fit. Localities can respond to local conditions; election officials can innovate; and elections can be operated in a way that best suits the unique needs of each community.

H.R. 2722 turns all that on its head. The bill will force all elections to be conducted using paper ballots, even if the local officials prefer more advanced technology. It will require costly recounts with no apparent purpose. It

will impose significant and wasteful spending on taxpayers.

Instead of affirming States as the laboratories of democracy, when it comes to elections, H.R. 2722 will impose a one-size-fits-all regulatory regime directed from Washington on communities across the country.

Madam Speaker, this state of affairs could and should have been avoided. Instead of pushing these partisan bills this week, the majority could have chosen to work with Republicans to craft bipartisan bills to address all of these problems.

Even if that did not come to pass, the majority at the Rules Committee still could have worked with the minority to make more minority amendments in order and give all Members the opportunity to fix these flawed bills on the floor. That they did not is yet another indication of where the majority's priorities lie: with pushing partisan bills to score political points and avoiding the bipartisan work of actually making law.

There is still a chance to change, Madam Speaker. In order to do so, the majority needs to decide whether they are here to score political points or if they are here to make law.

Before I conclude, I would be remiss if I did not highlight what is missing in today's rule. We should have been considering three bills today, not two. The missing bill is the supplemental appropriations bill providing funding for the humanitarian crisis on the southern border.

Each week, this crisis grows worse. Our facilities for holding new arrivals, particularly children and vulnerable unaccompanied minors, are already at the breaking point. Simply put, we need more resources, and we need them today.

To be fair to the President, he has been asking Congress to do that since May 1. The failure to brin forward a supplemental appropriations bill for this purpose is a major failure of governance by the majority.

All of us here, Republicans and Democrats alike, agree that we need to provide funding for this crisis. Time is wasting while we wait.

Back in 2014, when President Obama asked us for $3.7 billion in supplemental resources for precisely the same purpose, the House acted to give him the resources he needed in 24 days. As of today, almost 2 months have gone by with the majority failing to act.

Many of my friends on the other side rightfully express concern that unaccompanied minors backing up at border stations is not appropriate nor in the best interests of the children. I couldn't agree more. The Border Patrol couldn't agree more.

By failing to bring forward a supplemental appropriations bill, the path the majority is taking us on leads only to this outcome: hurting the children I know we all want to help.

Congress has given HHS the mandate to care for unaccompanied minors. Congress now needs to write the check so that HHS can do what Congress has mandated.

I remind my friends across the aisle that Republicans are ready and willing to work with them to pass a bipartisan supplemental appropriations package that provides needed funding for housing, for the Department of Defense, and especially for children who find themselves in an unfathomable situation at the border.

Madam Speaker, I urge opposition to the rule, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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

I want to remind my friends that it took them weeks, if not longer, to even acknowledge there was a crisis at the border. As a matter of fact, they were accusing the President of manufacturing the crisis a few weeks ago. Now, fortunately, they have come around to the idea that hundreds of thousands of people arriving over a 3-month period of time is a crisis.

Secondly, I want to remind them, they have still yet to act in the face of the crisis. They have had the ability to pass legislation. The President asked for it almost 60 days ago. We still haven't seen anything in terms of legislation reaching this floor.

Madam Speaker, I also want to point out that, frankly, it shouldn't take this long to respond. We can disagree over a lot of things. And I have no doubt about the sincerity of my friends when it comes to being concerned about the well-being of these children; none whatsoever.

But we know that part of this crisis is created because we haven't given the President the emergency funds he needs to quickly move people out of facilities where they were never designed to be, into influx facilities that we are trying to stand up, literally, right now. One of these is going to be in my district.

We dealt with this, by the way, in 2014. We did it with President Obama; supported it; gave him the funds he needed; a Republican House, a Democratic Senate, and the President. He got that money in 24 days. One of those facilities was set up in my district.

Again, we don't like using military bases in this way; don't approve of it; but we understand that President Obama faced an emergency situation, and we gave him the tools and the resources he needed to deal with that. That needs to happen now.

Frankly, what we are seeing in the House is quite a contrast to the Senate, which has a bill in the Appropriations Committee that was reported out 30-1. It is bipartisan. It is a bill the President has expressed a willingness to sign. We ought to be working with that vehicle, if my friends can't get something to the floor to deal with this urgent crisis now.

Madam Speaker, I would also, if I may, like to inform the Chair that if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to immediately bring up Congressman Davis' Election Security Assistance Act for consideration under an open rule.

This bill provides targeted and crucially needed resources to State and local election administrators to help secure America's voting infrastructure. Unlike the majority's partisan bill that takes over all election operations and replaces local authority with a one-size-fits- all mandate from Washington, the Republican alternative provides needed resources without stepping on the toes of State and local election administrators.

It provides grants to States to update aging and at-risk election infrastructure; provides security clearances to election officials to facilitate the sharing of information about threats with frontline officials; increases resources available to States and local governments; and provides for hands-on assistance, as needed.

Madam Speaker, we all agree that our elections need to be protected, and we all agree that more resources and more assets are necessary to accomplish that goal. But rather than pushing a complicated mandate from Washington that wastes taxpayer dollars and eliminates the tradition of State and local control over the election operations, we can do better by providing resources for security improvements and reinforcements for local officials with the minimum additional regulation.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of my amendment in the Record, along with extraneous material, immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

Madam Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Rodney Davis), my good friend, the author of the legislation in question.

Madam Speaker, to quote my friend, ``give me a break.'' The last Republican Congress appropriated roughly $300 million for election security, point 1.

Point 2, we have no evidence anybody hacked any election machines, as my friend, Mr. Davis pointed out in 2016 or 2018. If you want to respond to the Russians, you probably ought to respond to what they did, not to what they didn't do or didn't succeed in doing.

I would actually argue this administration did a lot more than the last administration. You have got a larger military today, partly because of what the Russians did. You have a reinvigorated NATO today. You have a President who actually sent lethal aid to Ukraine today.

You want to get the Russians' attention? That is the way you get it. When you lay down a red line in Syria, you enforce the red line. This administration has been a lot tougher on Russia than the last administration, which, by the way, knew this was going on, did almost nothing to alert anybody or to stop anybody; and now, are trying to blame it on the person that was actually involved in the election, our current President, for their lapse when they were actually in power in the executive branch.

So this idea that nobody wants to defend our elections is not true. And, frankly, I will take some offense because I have never said that the Russians didn't matter, or that our elections weren't serious or weren't threatened. I used to be a State election board secretary. I used to sit on the Board of Directors for the election board secretaries around the country, and the oldest public body that there is, or the oldest association of public officials there is in this country; very bipartisan, by the way, extraordinarily well-run. They don't agree with this bill.

I would just ask every Member to call their local Secretary of State or election administrator, whatever they have, and go through the bill and say, did you want to cede this much authority to the Congress of the United States; or do you think you do a pretty good job of running your own election?

I know in my State, we do a very good job of running our elections, and that has been true under Democrats and true under Republicans. I think that is true around the country.

The other thing is if you want to actually do something before the 2020 election, then whether you like it or not, you are going to have to do something that is bipartisan, because this will not get through the Senate and this will not become law, and that makes it a rather pointless exercise.

Sometimes in the legislative process, you sit down, and in Mr. Davis, I will tell you, you have a willing partner and a person who has a reputation in this body that I think is exceptionally bipartisan and who is working, I think, in good faith on this very problem, and you work through the problem.

But if it is going to be a partisan my-way-or-the-highway approach-- remember, this is coming under a closed rule, there is not even an amendment made in order here--then it is not likely to get out of this Chamber.

So if you are serious about trying to protect the elections, you would. You may not get everything you want, but

in divided government, you have to work together to get things done.

That is the problem with almost every major initiative that our Democratic friends have brought to the floor since they have been in the majority.

Sorry. The Constitution is pretty clear. The Senate gets to decide whether or not they are going to accept what we do over here or do something different. The President has a part in this process.

We had to endure this when we first became the majority. We had a Republican House, we had a Democratic Senate, we had a Democratic President.

I don't have any problem with my friends bringing their agenda to the floor. I applaud them for doing it. They ran on it. It is perfectly appropriate.

A lot of times we bring that agenda to the floor knowing we can get it across this Chamber, but we are not going to probably get it all the way through the process unless we change it some.

What we haven't seen yet is any evidence that the new majority has any ability to work with the current majority or the current President. And if that is what they want to do for 18 months, score political points as opposed to actually legislate something in a compromise manner, they are free to do that, too, but it is not going to work.

If the aim here is to make our elections more secure, then I wouldn't bring a bill with a closed rule. I would work with the other side, knowing that their very concerns are probably going to be similar to the concerns expressed in the United States Senate and by the President of the United States.

So, you know, that is an unsolicited piece of personal and political advice to my friends, but I think if they follow it, they will actually have some success legislatively and will actually get some things done.

We are going to disagree about a lot of things. The American people will sort that out in rather short order, about 18 months, but we ought to try to get the things we can do today done.

This is an area I think we could work together in if we approached it in a different manner.

I would also hope we could do the same thing on the southern border, Madam Speaker. That is an impending emergency right now. We are going to run out of money right now. So let's get that at least taken care of while we sort out our differences in other areas.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume to make a quick point, and then I want to move to my friend from Illinois.

Madam Speaker, I don't argue about constitutional power, but I argue about process.

Look, I seriously doubt my friends have spent very much time talking to election board secretaries and election administration officials around the country. Had they done so, they would have heard, I am sure, uniformly that they don't want a one-size-fits-all made system from Washington, D.C. They don't want to throw away equipment that they think is better than what we are offering them or that they have already invested millions of dollars in.

They are happy to work with us. They are happy to inform us and testify. That is not what is happening here.

This is the idea: all wisdom is in this Chamber, evidently, because it is not going to get through the Senate, it is not going to get signed by the President. We haven't talked to the people that actually are the front-line people in defending us in this process, and that is the folks at the State and the local level.

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Rodney Davis).

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

Madam Speaker, could I inquire, I am prepared to close whenever my friend is. If he has additional speakers, I will just reserve.

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

Madam Speaker, I would like to begin by just submitting for the Record the views of the National Disability Rights Network, which actually came out against this legislation because they believe it will make it more difficult for people with physical impairments to actually get to the polls and vote. I know that is not the intention of my friend on the other side, but that is the effect of one-size-fits-all voting.

National Disability

Rights Network,

June 25, 2019.

Hon. Zoe Lofgren,

Chairwoman, House Administration Committee, Washington, DC.

Hon. Rodney Davis,

Ranking Member, House Administration Committee, Washington,

Madam Speaker, my friend is not impressed, and that is a fair statement, and I don't question my friend ever, but I am not impressed with legislation that can't become law because it is futile. We come down here with a lot of sound and fury, but we don't get anything done.

Madam Speaker, in closing, I urge opposition to this rule. This rule will make in order for consideration two bills: H.R. 3351 and H.R. 2722.

The first is a partisan appropriations bill that is marked to an unrealistic number that does not reflect agreement with Republicans or the Senate and that includes partisan policy riders that must come out before this bill can become law.

Not to be outdone, H.R. 2722 is even more partisan, throwing out the traditional ability of States and localities to manage their own election procedures and, instead, imposing a one-size-fits-all regulatory regime direct from Washington, D.C. like H.R. 1 before it, this bill was produced without Republican input and, instead, reflects only the partisan motivations of the current majority.

Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the previous question, ``no'' on the rule, and ``no'' on the underlying measures.

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

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume, and I thank my good friend, the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern), for yielding me the customary 30 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, we are here today on our second rule of the day. This one is on a supplemental appropriations bill for the southern border. While the Rules Committee met to consider this bill last night and took testimony on it, due to some reported revolts in the Democratic Caucus, we did not actually report this bill out last night.

Instead, we met on this bill at 5:30 this afternoon and reported it to the floor 10 minutes later, using the same-day authority that Chairman McGovern has so often referred to as martial law.

Our emergency meeting this afternoon includes several last-minute changes in the bill that have provided little opportunity for anyone on either side of the aisle to actually review. Tragically, that is the story of this bill: last-minute changes made on short notice in an attempt to push through a partisan agenda at the expense of not only deliberation and consideration by the House of Representatives but, more importantly, at the expense of innocent children.

H.R. 3401 is a supplemental appropriations bill providing funding for the humanitarian crisis on the southern border. When it comes to H.R. 3401, I have good news and bad news.

The good news is that the Democrats finally agree that we need a supplemental appropriations funding bill for the southern border after Republicans have been sounding the alarm for months. The fact is, as my friends know, the President first requested assistance in this matter on May 1, almost 2 months ago.

A lot of the crisis at the border is because my friends simply didn't discharge their responsibilities. If you are the guy that is supposed to pay for the toothpaste and the soap, and you don't, you have some measure of responsibility when they are not delivered on time.

There is actually some more good news here. There is a real opportunity

for us to produce a bipartisan, bicameral bill that can become law.

The bad news is that H.R. 3401 is not that bill. In here, the majority is once again making no pretense to even pretending to work with the minority.

H.R. 3401 contains several partisan provisions.

It fails to provide supplemental funding for the Department of Defense despite the significant resources the military has expended responding to this crisis.

It includes partisan policy riders that tie the hands of the administration and fail to provide the flexibility necessary for the government to adequately address the crisis.

Most notably, this bill was produced without any Republican input at all.

Mr. Speaker, I want to reiterate what I said a moment ago. Both Republicans and now Democrats agree that there is a need for a supplemental appropriations bill. Why the majority failed to take advantage of the opportunity this agreement provides, I don't know.

Until the majority chooses to work with Republicans on this and produce a bipartisan bill, I fear we will simply be heading down the exact same path we have trodden so often before in this Congress, with the House pushing yet another piece of partisan legislation that will not pass the Senate and will not be signed into law by the President. That is disappointing, to say the least.

Mr. Speaker, this state of affairs could and should have been avoided. Instead of pushing three partisan bills this week, the majority could have chosen to work with Republicans to craft bipartisan bills to address all three of these problems.

Even if that did not come to pass, the majority at the Rules Committee could have worked with us to make minority amendments in order and to give all Members an opportunity to fix these flawed bills on the floor, or at least be heard. That they did not is merely yet another indication of where the majority's priorities lie, with pushing partisan bills to score political points and avoiding doing the hard work of actually making law.

There is a chance to change this, Mr. Speaker, but in order to do so, the majority needs to decide whether they are here to score political points or if they are here to make law.

I remind my friends on the other side, passing a bill that is a partisan bill through this Chamber won't solve the problem. I congratulate them on having a vehicle to go to conference. That is a good thing. But when they get there, they are going to find out they are going to have to do something they haven't done, frankly, throughout their tenure in the majority, and that is actually sit down and compromise with people on the other side of the aisle and work with the administration.

I hope they prove up to that task because if they don't, we will have exactly the same result--that is, legislation passing here but not succeeding in the other Chamber.

That will not solve the crisis on the border. It will exacerbate it.

Mr. Chair, I urge opposition to the rule, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Woodall), my good friend.

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

Mr. Speaker, we have heard some pretty harsh words about the administration's failure to respond. The reality is the administration asked 2 months ago of our friends who were slow to respond.

The administration warned us of what would happen, and it is unfolding

in front of our eyes, and it is unfolding because of the failure of Democrats in the House to actually take it seriously.

Let's go back to the rhetoric at the time: it is a manufactured crisis; it is not real; it is all made up.

That turned out to be a bad mistake, and it set us back weeks in this Chamber getting to where we finally are beginning to get a response.

Frankly, our friends simply couldn't get their act together on this for a while. I am glad they are beginning to do that now.

But let's also look at a little history, Mr. Speaker.

This problem isn't new. What is new is the slowness to respond. We faced this very same problem when we were in the majority and President Obama was in office in 2014. He asked for $3.7 billion. He got it within 24 days, and he got it without a lot of extraneous conditions added on it. That is exactly the opposite of the manner in which our friends on the other side are responding at the last minute. But they are responding, and for that I give them some credit.

But again, what is new is the slowness of response, the unwillingness to work with the other Chamber, and the unwillingness to work with the President to meet an emergency that he warned us was coming 2 months ago.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from Arizona (Mrs. Lesko), my good friend and fellow member of the Rules Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Biggs), my good friend.

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

Mr. Speaker, I just want to briefly yield myself such time as I may consume to make a quick point.

My friend is saying there is no money for Border Patrol and the military. Whose custody do you think those children are in for the first couple of days?

The problems are actually at those facilities. They have not been identified at Health and Human Services, other than they are just simply too full because my friends have spent so much time arguing about this rather than giving the administration the money that it asked for in a timely fashion, 2 months ago.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Burgess), my very good friend, fellow Rules Committee member, and distinguished doctor.

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

I yield an additional 15 seconds to the gentleman from Florida.

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

If we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to immediately bring up H.R. 3056, the Border Crisis Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2019.

Unlike the bill before us today, H.R. 3056 provides all the necessary funding that the administration has requested to address the humanitarian crisis on the southern border. The bill provides funding for the Department of Defense, which has expended significant resources responding to the crisis. It also provides the funding for refugee and entrant assistance and for U.S. Customs and Border Protection that the administration has requested and has told us is necessary to meet the crisis.

Most notably, this bill does so without adding any of the partisan riders that plague the majority's version of the supplemental. We can provide funding to meet this crisis without tying the hands of the administration and leaving them no wiggle room or flexibility.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of my amendment in the Record, along with extraneous material, immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Gonzalez).

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

I want to begin by telling my good friend how much I respect him, how much I admire him. I know how passionate he is on the issue of the children. No doubt about that.

I also want to tell my friend that I think, 8 weeks ago, we should have been acting on this. We were told there wasn't a crisis, and there wasn't a serious effort on the other side.

Last night, when my friends were struggling to find the votes, frankly, we could have delivered a lot of votes. Instead, they moved the bill further to the left to placate the most extreme elements in their own conference. I think that is going to make to it much harder to come to a deal eventually with the Senate and with the administration.

Mr. Speaker, in closing, I urge opposition to this rule. The rule will make in order consideration of H.R. 3401, a supplemental appropriations bill that could have been a bipartisan bill. Instead, the majority chose to make it partisan, failing to fund the national security elements of the border crisis, including partisan policy riders that tie the hands of the administration.

Not to be outdone, the majority also pushed through last-minute changes, using the same-day rule authority that had not been adequately considered by anyone on either side of the aisle.

Let me just reiterate, for the record, to reinforce the point my friend Mrs. Lesko made. Look, we got this bill at 4:57. We convened the Rules Committee at 5:30.

I can read things, but I can't always understand everything, let alone research everything in 33 minutes. We haven't got a single opportunity to offer a single amendment to this bill.

That is unfortunate, and I don't think it is a process that is likely to lead to a successful outcome.

Mr. Speaker, I want to conclude by urging my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the previous question, to vote ``no'' on the rule, to vote ``no'' on the underlying measure.

Let's go to work on a bipartisan bill. Let's meet all the requests the administration has asked for, in terms of resources. Give them the flexibility they need to do the job and recognize this is not a new problem.

We dealt with it, frankly, pretty successfully when President Obama was here by giving them the resources and the flexibility they needed. I am sorry my friends are not extending that same courtesy to the current President.

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

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

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

Mr. Chair, I thank the distinguished ranking Republican member of the Appropriations Committee, my good friend, Ms. Granger, for yielding.

I want to begin, Mr. Chair, on a positive note. I want to thank, particularly, my working partner, Rosa DeLauro, whom I have had the great opportunity to work with now for the fifth year. There are a lot of good things in this bill, a lot of things to be proud of. Frankly, we have worked together in the past and continued to work together in this bill.

I am particularly pleased with the additional support for the National Institutes of Health and for the Centers for Disease Control.

I very much support the focus on early childhood education, on first- generation college students through programs like TRIO and GEAR UP, frankly, through our ChalleNGe children, the IDEA program, and many other good provisions. However, there are certainly a number of other things in this bill that mean I won't be able to support it at this time.

I was disappointed to see language inserted throughout the bill that ties the hands of the administration in many ways. The bill forces a return to the Obama-era policies on Title X family programs. The bill ties the hands of the administration by not allowing it to process waivers that protect deeply held religious beliefs of institutions that provide vital services funded in the bill.

The bill micromanages the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, even going so far as to prescribe specific amounts of money to be used in advertising programs.

I am also concerned about a number of limitations in this bill that are going to lead to a Presidential veto.

While the bill does many good things, I remain concerned that it has been developed in a vacuum. As my good friend, the ranking member, said, these numbers are simply too high. They are not going to be accepted by a Republican Senate. They are not going to be signed by the President of the United States, and we run the risk of a Presidential veto.

We need to come together, Mr. Chair, House and Senate, Republicans and Democrats, with the administration to hammer out a deal on top-line funding before we can move forward and actually move this bill into law.

Finally, I would be remiss if I did not mention the significant crisis facing us on our southern border. That has yet to be addressed in this bill, and a number of our speakers have made that point.

The Department of Health and Human Services, Mr. Chair, is at the breaking point. We literally will go broke this month taking care of unaccompanied children unless the majority works with the administration and their Republican colleagues to address this problem.

I want to end by announcing that I will oppose the bill, but I look forward to working with my friends on the other side as we go through the process. I am convinced that under Chairwoman Lowey's leadership with Ranking Member Granger, we can arrive at a good solution for the country.

This is a work in progress, and I think it is going to get better as it moves through the process.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. David P. Roe).

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith), my good friend, and the most distinguished defender of life in this Chamber.

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

Mr. Chairman, the bill as reported out of the full Appropriations Committee contains a poison pill which my amendment seeks to remove.

The rider of the underlying bill blocks the exercise of civil rights of all Americans.

Last month, the Department of Health and Human Services issued a rule which gives the Office for Civil Rights the tools it needs to investigate discrimination and enforce the laws as written.

The new rule protects physicians, pharmacists, nurses, teachers, students, and faith-based charities, who do not wish to provide, participate in, pay for, provide coverage for, or refer to services such as abortion, sterilization, or assisted suicide.

The Labor-HHS bill will never become law if this language remains in it.

Mr. Chair, I ask my colleagues to support this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my good friend, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Raskin), for yielding me the customary 30 minutes, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I hadn't had this in the opening, but I want to disagree with my friend right off the top. The President of the United States does not work for the Congress of the United States. He works for the American people, and he heads up a branch of government that is a coequal branch of government. So, on that, we will have a long discussion.

Mr. Speaker, it has been a very eventful week in the Rules Committee, and it is only Tuesday. Last night, the committee met and reported out a rule that covers two drastically different measures. H.R. 2740 is an appropriations package that covered first 5 and then 4 of the 12 appropriations bills for fiscal year 2020. We also considered H. Res. 430, a resolution that gives authority to the Office of the General Counsel of the House of Representatives to seek to enforce certain subpoenas for documents through litigation.

Shortly after we finish here, the committee will again convene to consider the remainder of the appropriations package, which will be on the floor as part of a separate rule tomorrow.

Meanwhile, our Members will attempt the miracle of being in two places at once as we continue to debate H. Res. 430, which falls into our original jurisdiction here on the floor.

Mr. Speaker, H. Res. 430 comes from a dispute over documents relating to the special counsel's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election. The dispute also stems from the inherent oversight authority of Congress and our ability to perform oversight functions over the executive branch. It falls into the fuzzy boundaries between the branches of governments as to when and how we may compel the executive branch to turn over documents to the legislative branch.

I lay out that framework because there is an important point here that is being lost. The Democratic majority clearly wants to make this dispute entirely about this President, this Attorney General, this White House counsel, this investigation, this subpoena of documents. The Democrats want to focus attention there because they think it helps them politically to do so. But this dispute really shouldn't be about just that. It should, rather, be about the difficult and thorny questions that emerge in a system like ours with three branches of government with checks and balances.

In a sense, what the majority is seeking to do here today is completely unprecedented, both in its intent and in its execution. Consider the only other times the House has filed a lawsuit to seek to enforce a subpoena for documents. It has happened twice before, Mr. Speaker, once in 2007, to seek documents from former White House Counsel Harriet Miers, and again in 2012, to seek documents from then- Attorney General Eric Holder as a result of the congressional investigation into the Fast and Furious scandal.

In both of these cases, the House had already voted to hold both Miers and Holder in contempt of Congress before filing suit, which has not yet happened in this case. In the Miers case, 138 days elapsed from the first document request to the Judiciary Committee voting to hold her in contempt. In the Holder case, it was significantly longer, in that 464 days elapsed from the first document request to the committee voting to hold him in contempt. That was well over a year.

Here, the majority is forcing us to rush forward at a much faster pace. Just 44 days elapsed from the date of the first document request to the Attorney General until the Judiciary Committee voted to hold him in contempt. James Holzhauer has been champion of ``Jeopardy!'' for longer than that.

I don't understand the majority's haste here. Without exhausting all other options--continuing negotiation, discussion, compromise, and turning to a vote on contempt as the last resort--the majority is, instead, pushing this forward into litigation with the executive branch. In doing so, they may well be placing the House in a position that causes significant long-term damage to the institution.

When this matter goes before the courts, it will do so as a case of first impression and under an untested legal theory. In both the Miers and Holder cases, the House previously voted to hold those two individuals in contempt of Congress. Nothing like that has been done here. Using untested tactics like this could set a dangerous precedent that harms us all, Republicans and Democrats, in the long run.

Finally, I would also note that it is not clear what this resolution will ultimately accomplish. Since the House has not yet exercised all the tools in its tool kit, and since it is not clear that the negotiations with the Justice Department and the White House over the documents at issue are at an end, this whole thing may be nothing more than sound and fury. Indeed, given how quickly the majority is rushing into things, it seems unlikely that the only course of action left in the House is to file a lawsuit.

I strongly urge the majority to continue working with the Justice Department and the White House to find a resolution to these issues without resorting to knee-jerk lawsuits that may ultimately damage the House as an institution.

Today, we are also beginning consideration of H.R. 2740, an appropriations package covering 5 of 12 appropriations bills: Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education; Legislative Branch; Defense; State and Foreign Operations; and Energy and Water Development. These five bills cover over 70 percent of our total discretionary spending for fiscal year 2020.

To be precise, Mr. Speaker, we were to do five bills. At the last moment, the majority pulled the Legislative Branch appropriations bill. I will let them explain why at their leisure.

As a longtime member of the Appropriations Committee, I am pleased that we are beginning to move the appropriations bills to the floor. Unfortunately, the bills before us have numerous flaws, most notably that they are marked to allocation levels that aren't realistic.

As we move forward through the appropriations process, I think we need to be clear about the challenges we face this year.

At the end of September, fiscal year 2019 expires, and sequestration cuts contained in the Budget Control Act of 2011 will automatically take effect for fiscal year 2020. In order to prevent that, we need to come to a bipartisan, bicameral budget deal that the House, the Senate, and the President can all agree on. If we don't, then it doesn't really matter what fake number the House marks to. Sequestration will hit, and our defense budget will automatically be slashed by 11 percent and our nondefense budget by 9 percent below the allocations of 2019.

The spending levels in these appropriations bills are not just ambitious; they are unrealistic. Not only are the funding levels for many of these bills too high, so high that the Senate and the President will never agree to them, but the allocations the Appropriations Committee used reflect the misguided notion that any increase in defense spending must be matched by an increase in nondefense spending that is more than twice as high.

That is simply not a realistic assessment of our national priorities or the fiscal limitations imposed on us by our rising national debt. The defense provision of this bill, for example, comes in at $8 billion less than the President told us was needed to adequately fund the military, maintain readiness, and be prepared to confront international threats.

After years of severe underfunding of our Armed Forces and at a time when threats are emerging everywhere around the globe, spending less than the administration asks for on defense in order to push more money into domestic programs is not a wise course of action.

I am disappointed that the majority chose to strip out pro-life provisions that have been carried in appropriations bills for years. Instead, they added controversial pro-abortion riders that virtually guarantee no Republican support whatsoever for this package.

As the former chair and current ranking member of the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Subcommittee, I am familiar with the need for compromise on that particular piece of legislation. But by pushing forward with blatantly partisan riders like these, the majority is guaranteeing the outcome of these bills: dead on arrival in a Republican-led Senate and no chance of getting a Republican President's signature.

In the coming months, I hope we work through these problems, as we did last year, frankly. If the majority intends to move forward with unrealistic spending levels and insists on maintaining partisan riders, then we are simply guaranteeing a failed appropriations process.

Make no mistake, Mr. Speaker, our failure has consequences. A best- case scenario is a yearlong continuing resolution that funds the government at the exact same level as the current year. That is the best scenario if we fail. The worst-case scenario is another government shutdown or sequestration that automatically cuts all government funding levels. Neither of these is a good outcome for the House as an institution, for the Federal Government, or more importantly, for the American people.

Mr. Speaker, although I cannot support either bill before us today, I am hopeful that, eventually, we will reach a bipartisan, bicameral compromise on spending that the vast majority of Members in this House can support. That requires realistic funding levels and elimination of partisan riders from this package. The spending package before us today may be a worthy starting point, but it will take hard work and compromise to move the final bill that can become law.

Mr. Speaker, I urge opposition to the rule, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from the great State of Oklahoma (Mr. Kevin Hern).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith). My good friend is the most eloquent advocate for life in this Chamber.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Gonzalez).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Smucker).

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

Mr. Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule immediately to bring up H.R. 3056 for consideration under an open rule.

The bill provides $4.5 billion of funding to address the immediate humanitarian crisis on the southern border. This is a crisis of significant proportions, Mr. Speaker.

Our facilities for holding new arrivals, particularly children and the vulnerable unaccompanied minors, are already at the breaking point. Simply put, we need more resources, and we need them today.

This is not the first time we have needed to provide supplemental appropriations for this purpose. Back in 2014, then-President Barack Obama asked us for $3.7 billion in supplemental resources for precisely the same purpose. He got it. At the time, we had 60,000 unaccompanied minors who arrived in 2014. We face a similar and, frankly, larger humanitarian crisis today.

President Obama was right to request supplemental funds to deal with the crisis then. We would be right to appropriate supplemental funds to address that similar crisis now.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of my amendment in the Record, along with extraneous material, immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Rogers).

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

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

Mr. Speaker, my friend made reference a little bit earlier to amendments. He talked about the total number of amendments, but he left out the distribution of amendments. So, as the House considers this rule, I think we ought to take a look at how the Rules Committee has handled making amendments in order so far this Congress.

The rule on the floor today is making 106 amendments in order, out of 540 submitted, with hopefully more to come with tomorrow's rule.

Today's rule includes 22 amendments sponsored solely by Republicans. Sadly, this is considered an improvement over the majority's previous efforts.

With today's rule, in total, this Congress, 73 percent of all amendments made in order have been sponsored solely by Democrats--73 percent. Just 16 percent are sponsored by Republicans, with 11 percent bipartisan.

How does this compare with the last Congress? When Republicans were the majority party, 45 percent of all amendments made in order were sponsored solely by Democrats. Only 38 percent were sponsored solely by Republicans, with another 17 percent being bipartisan.

At the beginning of this Congress, the Democratic majority repeatedly promised a new, robust, and open process at the Rules Committee. They pledged that good ideas would be welcomed, no matter where they came from, and that thoughtful amendments would not be blocked.

Unfortunately, they have a long way to go to keep that promise. I think the numbers speak volumes.

We are 5 months into the 116th Congress. Should we expect this trend of shutting out minority party ideas to continue? Should we expect the same course of action in our rule tomorrow and in our rule on the second appropriations package next week and in

other rules in the weeks and months to come?

When will the promises made by the Democratic majority be kept? If not now, when?

Mr. Speaker, in closing, I urge opposition to the rule. The rule will make in order two measures: H. Res. 430 and H.R. 2740.

H. Res. 430 is a premature and ineffective resolution that will push the House forward into untested and ill-timed litigation with the executive branch over the subpoena of documents. While the House has an important oversight role to play, we must be careful to exercise that role wisely and carefully, lest we cause long-term damage to the institution.

H.R. 2740 is a package of 5 of the 12 outstanding appropriations bills that use unrealistic allocation levels and eliminate longstanding pro-life protections that must be restored before these bills can garner any Republican support.

I actually look forward to working with my colleagues in the House and the Senate as we move forward in the appropriations process, and I urge the majority to compromise with the Senate and the White House in order to achieve a final spending deal that avoids drastic sequestration cuts or, worse yet, another government shutdown.

I think that is actually the great lesson of the appropriations process, Mr. Speaker. We know we can do this. We did it last year, and we did it pretty well together.

But my friends have to get past the idea that they can impose their will on a Republican Senate and a Republican President. They are simply not going to be able to do that. They are going to have to bargain to a middle ground and compromise.

In the Appropriations Committee, as a rule, we do that, and we do it pretty well. I am hopeful that we can continue going forward on that front.

I am concerned, however, that the vitriol, if you will, that we see in the investigative and oversight efforts of our friends will spill into that process and lead us into a very difficult situation in September.

So, as we move forward on the appropriations front, again, I hope all of us relearn the virtues of compromise, understand that we were all sent here by the American people, that we have to work with one another to accomplish something, and that none of us can impose their will on the other.

With that, I look forward to working with my friend and with his colleagues and, certainly, through the appropriations process to making sure that the government is appropriately funded and well governed.

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

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my friend, the distinguished ranking member of the full Appropriations Committee, for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, today I rise in support of this supplemental appropriation covering numerous disasters. Communities hit by hurricanes, wildfires, tornadoes, and other natural disasters have been waiting too long for this needed relief. Over 40 States will be able to receive long-needed funding provided by this bill.

The bill provides critical aid to help farmers and ranchers recover from losses to crops and livestock. Funding for cities and schools that have had their infrastructure damaged by natural disasters will be able to begin necessary repairs to buildings.

The bill includes $50 million for the Department of Labor's dislocated worker national reserve. This funding will go to States to create temporary employment opportunities to assist with cleanup and recovery efforts for areas impacted by a disaster.

The bill includes over $300 million for the Department of Health and Human Services, and $80 million is provided to support community health centers for construction, equipment, and healthcare services for low- income populations. The bill provides $20 million for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to assess and mitigate environmental hazards, and $100 million is targeted to mental health and substance use services, helping people rebuild and recover.

The bill includes $30 million for childcare services and over $50 million to repair damaged Head Start facilities. The bill includes $25 million for the community services block grant, flexible funding that supports a range of social services for vulnerable populations.

The Department of Education receives $165 million to help restart operations at elementary and secondary schools and colleges and universities in areas damaged by natural disasters. This funding will also support school districts and colleges and universities outside of the affected areas receiving students displaced by the storms and other covered disasters.

Before I close, Mr. Speaker, I would be remiss if I didn't mention what is not in this bill, and that is more than $4 billion to deal with the intolerable situation at the southern border. This money has been requested by the administration. Most of that money is to take care of the unprecedented influx of unaccompanied minors. Our Democratic friends claim they care about these young people, but they fail to provide the funds needed that are required to feed, house, and provide medical care to this population. This is something that we need to look at and, frankly, deal with immediately.

As past chairman and now ranking member for the subcommittee that looks after the Department of Health and Human Services, I can tell you they are on the verge of running out of money, and we are going to have a real disaster with young people that I know none of us wants.

So I want to urge my friends to turn their attention to that urgent matter and work with the administration on it. I urge passage of the legislation, Mr. Speaker.

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

Madam Speaker, I want to begin by thanking the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania (Ms. Scanlon), my good friend, for yielding me the customary 30 minutes.

We, Madam Speaker, are here today on three very different pieces of legislation, which, unfortunately, makes this a complicated rule. One of our bills concerns civil rights, one concerns healthcare, and one concerns Native Americans. I will move through each of these bills relatively quickly, and then I want to address the process we followed to get here today.

The first bill, Madam Speaker, H.R. 5, is a complicated and complex piece of legislation that would make sweeping changes to our Nation's civil rights laws, if enacted. In general, the bill adds the terms ``sexual orientation'' and ``gender identity'' to the list of protected classes under the Civil Rights Act, joining classes like race, gender, religion, and national origin.

As I noted in our hearing yesterday, most Republicans in the House will oppose this bill not because we do not believe that all people should receive equal treatment under the law but because we have real concerns about how this bill will work in practice. A term like ``gender identity'' has such a vague definition that even proponents of the bill do not agree on exactly what the term means.

That should cause legislators to be especially thoughtful and provide clarity about what the term means and how the law will be applied. But we have not done so here.

Republicans have raised numerous questions about how this bill will work in practice. Will female athletes in junior high, high school, and college be forced to compete in women's athletics against competitors who were born biologically male? Will female sexual assault victims be forced to share vulnerable same-sex spaces like locker rooms and dressing rooms with other individuals who were born biologically male? And since the legislation appears to allow people to define their own gender identity, will it allow people to shift back and forth between gender as it suits them?

These are not rhetorical questions. They are real concerns that we have raised, with good reason, throughout the process.

H.R. 5 is known as the Equality Act, and I know every Member of the House, Republican and Democrat, agrees with the principle that all people should be treated equally under the law. But even as we strive toward that goal, when we are dealing with legislation of this magnitude, we must consider how the bill will work in practice.

Unfortunately, I don't think my friends in the majority have clear answers to very legitimate questions. Last night, during debate at the Rules Committee, our concerns were dismissed as we were told that the courts and administrative bureaucrats would sort out these unanswered issues. That is simply unacceptable.

Why would we want any ambiguity when it comes to a person's civil rights? We should be very clear about congressional intent, and the only way to do that is to write a law the way you intend for it to be carried out. Sadly, this bill falls well short of that certainty.

The second bill, H.R. 987, is actually seven bills: three genuinely bipartisan bills addressing prescription drug costs and four partisan and controversial bills addressing ObamaCare.

As I pointed out last night in our hearing, I don't particularly understand what the majority is trying to accomplish here. There are three bills that are all bipartisan that could easily progress to becoming law. I am even a cosponsor of one of those bills. Yet, I have to vote against the entire package because I do not support the partisan and controversial bills attached by Democrats.

Madam Speaker, at some point, the majority needs to decide if they are here to score political points or if they are here to govern. If they want to continue scoring rhetorical victories, then by all means, they should keep doing what they are doing, keep putting up partisan bills that won't go anywhere in the Senate and won't be signed into law, keep putting up messaging bills for the purpose of signaling to their primary voters, and keep spending their days engaged in show votes that won't ever improve the lives of those they were elected to represent.

If they want to govern for the American people, then the majority must move forward with real legislation that can get real support here, in the Senate, and at the White House.

We had the chance to do that with this package. The majority chose not to do so. I think that is a real missed opportunity for us, both as an institution and as a country.

Finally, the third bill, H.R. 312, the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe Reservation Reaffirmation Act, is a matter I want to discuss at some length because I think there has been, frankly, a lot of misinformation put out about this particular piece of legislation.

The Mashpee Wampanoag is a federally recognized Tribe based in Mashpee, Massachusetts. H.R. 312 would simply reaffirm the taking of land into trust for the benefit of this Tribe.

When the Federal Government takes land into trust for a Tribe, it is reserving that land for the benefit of the Tribe and Tribal members both now and into the future. It ensures that the Tribes have a home, that they have a stable place to build communities and to marshal their resources and conduct business. It ensures that the land that was promised to Tribes, and that was held by those Tribes, in many cases for many centuries, remains in Tribal hands.

Holding land in trust is a commitment made to Tribes by the Federal Government. It affirms Tribes will continue to be able to exercise sovereignty over their own land. That is really all this issue is about today, whether or not the Mashpee Wampanoag will be able to exercise their own sovereignty over their own land.

Unfortunately, some who oppose this bill are doing so because they are viewing this issue through a purely political lens rather than what our own Constitution says about Tribal sovereignty. This isn't a bill about a particular use for the land, and it isn't a bill about particular Members of this institution or the Senate. Instead, this is a bill about keeping Federal promises to Tribes.

Our country hasn't always kept those promises, and we have an opportunity today to step up and make clear that regardless of what happened in the past, today, the Federal Government keeps its promises to Tribes, no ifs, ands, or buts.

Before I close, I would like to make a couple of points about the process this week, particularly on the Equality Act and the healthcare issue.

On the Equality Act, 35 amendments were proposed. I thought that many, if not most, of these should have been considered on the floor. Yet, in the final rule, not one amendment was made in order, and we are considering this bill under a closed rule.

The majority is choosing not to make in order many amendments that deserve our consideration on the floor, like Ms. Holmes Norton's amendment to clarify that Washington, D.C., residents cannot be excluded or disqualified from jury service based on sexual orientation or gender identity, or the bipartisan amendment that would restore the application of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act to this bill, or Representative Johnson's commonsense amendment clarifying that nothing in the act should be construed as to deny parents the right to be involved in their minor child's medical care. These are all deserving amendments that should have been heard on the floor, and yet the majority chose to make precisely none in order.

On H.R. 987, the majority went in a different direction. In total, 51 amendments were submitted to the Rules Committee, and 15 of those were sponsored by Republicans. Yet with today's rule, 27 amendments were made in order, but just one amendment was made in order that was sponsored by a Republican, along with one bipartisan

manager's amendment--one out of 15. All the remaining amendments, 92 percent of those made in order, were sponsored solely by Democrats.

Madam Speaker, I think we can do better than that.

Last week, I reminded the House that when my party was in charge of the last Congress, we went out of our way to make minority and bipartisan amendments in order. Forty-five percent of all amendments made in order in the last Congress were sponsored solely by Democrats, while a further 17 percent were bipartisan.

As of today's rule, the stats are looking much worse for the current majority. Seventy-three percent of all amendments made in order were solely sponsored by Democrats through May 14. Thirteen percent are bipartisan. Just 14 percent were sponsored by Republicans.

We had an opportunity today, particularly on H.R. 5 and H.R. 987, to take steps toward remedying this issue.

I must continue to encourage my good friend, and he is my good friend, the chairman of the Rules Committee, to work with us to make more bipartisan and minority amendments in order and to ensure that all Members, regardless of party, have an opportunity to be heard on the floor, as he has often promised.

Madam Speaker, I urge opposition to the rule, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself a few seconds to respond to my friend from Pennsylvania.

We don't consider the markup in committee a very good markup. Only four amendments were considered, none were accepted, and, frankly, a number of Members seeking recognition for amendments were not recognized. So to think that this was anything other a train moving through a station, I think, is to mischaracterize how that particular markup worked.

With that, Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Burgess), my very good friend, fellow member of the Rules Committee, and also a leading member of the Committee on Energy and Commerce.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume for just a few minutes to respond to my good friend, the chairman. I want to tell you, there is nobody I hold in higher regard in the House of Representatives than Chairman McGovern, nobody I consider a better personal friend, nobody I consider a more responsible Member.

On this, we disagree. The gentleman is right, neither side is perfect. In this case, we are going to bring attention to this amendment issue until we see results. That is precisely what my friend did when he was in the minority, and there are some times we should have listened to him and we did not.

In this case, I think the imbalance is so egregious that we are going to continue to make that case until we see a change. Maybe we won't. Hopefully we will, because I know my friend approaches this with good intentions.

Secondly, I would say this bill was so important, the Equality Act, it ought to have amendments. That is the point. That is how you build consensus. I think they are missing the opportunity to get a lot of people who would support the basic concept that they are trying to advance.

And, finally, on the drug bill, I have just got to be honest with you. When they had a chance to pass something that would work and chose to bundle it with something that they knew couldn't pass, that makes me wonder how serious they are about dealing with that problem.

But, hopefully, we will get an opportunity to deal with that again. And that is an area we know we can work together on. We have proved it in committee.

So, with that, I look forward to continuing to work with my good friend, the chairman. I know that we will occasionally have differences. That is what this is all about. We will work those differences out.

Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from Missouri (Mrs. Hartzler), my very good friend, who also is a distinguished member of the House Armed Services Committee.

Madam Speaker, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentlewoman from Missouri.

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

Madam Speaker, I want to take this opportunity to inform the House that if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to immediately bring up H.R. 336, the Strengthening America's Security in the Middle East Act of 2019.

This bill includes four titles, three of which passed the House last Congress, and one of which has already passed the House this Congress on suspension.

My amendment will also include three additional provisions agreed to by the Senate when they considered their version of this bill, so that what we will debate will be identical to what the Senate passed with an overwhelming majority vote in February.

The most critical title of H.R. 336, in my opinion, is the Combating BDS Act of 2019, which will allow a State or local government to adopt measures to divest assets from entities using boycotts, disbursements, or sanctions to influence Israel's policy.

Madam Speaker, yesterday was the 71st anniversary of the founding of the State of Israel. I can think of no better way to celebrate Israel's independence, reaffirm our support for Israel, and indicate our ongoing commitment to a peaceful and more secure Middle East than to consider and pass H.R. 336 immediately.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of my amendment in the Record, along with extraneous material, immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

Madam Speaker, I urge a ``no'' vote on the previous question, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Madam Speaker, in closing, I want to urge opposition to the rule. The majority has proposed three different measures today, and while I am a supporter of the bill concerning Tribal rights, I am opposed to H.R. 5 and H.R. 987, and I regret that.

Quite frankly, had the process on these bills been different, I think the vote that we would see in this Chamber would be very different today. I think, literally, a more fulsome and more open process and amendments on H.R. 5 might have unlocked dozens of additional votes for that legislation.

I think with H.R. 987 we don't have to speculate. We know three of those bills passed out of the Energy and Commerce Committee with unanimous, bipartisan support, all of them dealing with drug prices. That would have been an easy vote. We could have moved that through.

My friends could have still brought the other four matters that they cared about under a rule, brought it to the floor. They have got the votes to move it. It would have precisely the same prospects of success it is going to have in the United States Senate.

The President has already made it clear, since he issued a statement, that he is very likely to veto it if it were to make it to his desk. So why in the world we threw away an opportunity to do some good for the American people in an area where we agree, in order to advance something that we know cannot become law, is mystifying to me, to say the least.

Again, H.R. 5 is well-intentioned and designed to expand civil rights, but it also adds a term with no clear definition to our civil rights laws without regard for how it will work in practice.

H.R. 987 has four bills that are unacceptable, three bills that are eminently acceptable. I do want to close though on a positive note.

Madam Speaker, I do applaud my friends for bringing the Native American issue to fruition today. I am going to be opposing them on the rule but supporting them on that legislation. I think it was a very wise decision to put it under a rule, quite frankly, and I applaud my good friend Chairman Grijalva for working with my good friend Chairman McGovern and making sure that that happened. This important piece of legislation, which, quite frankly, is important not just to the Tribe in question, but establishes the principle that we won't let land going into trust be taken out of trust, is very important.

Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the previous question, ``no'' on the rule, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend, the distinguished ranking member, for yielding time.

I want to thank both my friends, the chairman and the ranking member, for their help in bringing this legislation to the floor. It could not have happened without both of their assistance.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 375, legislation that would amend the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 and reaffirm the authority of the Secretary of the Interior to take land into trust for Indian Tribes.

Between the passage of the Dawes Act in 1887 and the passage of the Indian Reorganization Act in 1934, the Indian landmass in the United States shrank by 86 million acres.

Since the enactment of the Indian Reorganization Act, the Department of the Interior has taken back approximately 9 million acres of land into trust status. Tribes have used their trust lands to build community facilities such as schools, health centers, and housing that serve their Tribal members. This land is also used for Tribal enterprises and promotes economic development in communities that are often underserved and poverty-stricken.

In 2009, the Supreme Court of the United States overturned long- existing precedent in its decision on the Carcieri v. Salazar case. The Supreme Court ruled specifically that the Secretary's authority to hold land in trust under the Indian Reorganization Act was limited only to recognized Tribes ``now under Federal jurisdiction,'' with the word ``now'' meaning June 18, 1934, the date of the enactment of the Indian Reorganization Act.

Previously, lower courts have viewed the word ``now'' as the instant when the Secretary invoked trust acquisition authority. However, the Supreme Court reversed the lower court ruling on the interpretation that the term ``now under Federal jurisdiction'' in section 19 of the Indian Reorganization Act was to be interpreted. It found that the phrase refers only to those Tribes that were under Federal jurisdiction of the United States when the Indian Reorganization Act was enacted in 1934.

As a result of the Carcieri decision, the Secretary of the Interior may no longer use the Indian Reorganization Act to acquire trust land for any post-1934 Tribe without specific authorization from Congress. Because the Secretary has acquired lands in trust for dozens of Tribes recognized after 1934, the Carcieri ruling calls into question the validity of the trust status of such lands and jeopardizes their immunity from State and local taxation and regulatory jurisdiction.

Many Tribes have been forced into court to defend the status of their trust land, costing them millions of dollars and compromising their investments and jurisdiction.

H.R. 375 would amend the Indian Reorganization Act and clarify the language the Supreme Court ruled against by striking ``the term,'' which I have previously referenced, and inserting the words ``effective beginning on June 18, 1934, the term.'' It would also amend the statute language from ``any recognized Indian Tribe now under Federal jurisdiction'' to ``any federally recognized Indian Tribe.''

The modest changes clarify that the Secretary does have authority to take land into trust for any Tribe that the Federal Government has recognized.

As a member of the Chickasaw Nation and co-chair of the Native American Caucus, I commend the Natural Resources Committee for favorably marking up this legislation and this body for moving forward with the passage of this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on H.R. 375.