Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend for yielding. It is a very generous gesture when we have a different point of view on the bill.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of H.R. 312, the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe Reservation Reaffirmation Act.

Mashpee Wampanoag people have lived in the Massachusetts area for thousands of years. In fact, our shared Thanksgiving tradition highlights a celebration of Pilgrims and Indians breaking bread together over the first colonial holiday, and it is the Mashpee who sat at the table.

In 2007, the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe was federally recognized. Mr. Speaker, 8 years later, the Bureau of Indian Affairs approved the decision to take land into trust on behalf of the Mashpee for a reservation. The Tribe was then able to provide services directly to its citizens, become eligible for Federal programs, and explore economic opportunities.

Shortly after, in 2016, the Mashpee's reservation decision was challenged in court by plaintiffs stating that, because the Tribe was federally recognized after 1934, the Department of the Interior could not take land into trust on behalf of a Tribe. This decision stems from the 2009 Supreme Court decision, Carcieri v. Salazar. It is an example of why that law needs to be fixed.

In 2018, the administration issued a decision that would take the Mashpees' reservation out of trust. This marked the first time since the termination era that a Tribe has lost their trust land.

Frankly, from my standpoint, Mr. Speaker, an attack on trust land anywhere threatens trust land everywhere, so I am very happy to be working with my good friend, Mr. Keating, on H.R. 312. It is a bipartisan bill, and it is necessary. It will reaffirm the trust status of the Mashpee reservation.

The local elected officials with jurisdiction over the land are supportive of the bill, as is the State's entire congressional delegation, as is the Republican Governor of the State.

Mr. Speaker, a ``yes'' vote on this bill will right a wrong. It is a vote for local control. It is a vote for Tribal sovereignty, and it brings the Mashpee land back into trust. It marks another important step in our shared American journey.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on the bill.

Madam Speaker, I thank my very good friend, Mrs. Lesko, for yielding.

Well, we are here again, Madam Speaker, on yet another bill that isn't going to pass the Senate, isn't going to become law, and doesn't really do anything.

As they have done over and over again over the past few months, my Democratic friends seem content to bring up virtue-signaling messaging bills as a substitute for passing real bipartisan legislation to solve problems facing the American people.

Today's bill purports to force the President to return the United States to the Paris Agreement on climate change, never mind that he hasn't actually pulled the United States from that agreement yet, nor can he until the day after the next Presidential election in 2020. But on that day, to be fair, I think he will.

Ineffective though it may be, the bill does nothing to address the serious fundamental flaws in the Paris Agreement, nor does it offer any substantial legislation to consider the problem of our own changing climate.

Instead, like many other bills the majority has offered in Congress, today's legislation is all talk, no action. It is simply another messaging bill to allow the majority to go on record in opposition to President Trump. That is not legislating.

Madam Speaker, it didn't have to be this way. We had an opportunity to improve this bill both at the committees of jurisdiction and again at the Rules Committee this week, and we could have made the bill better if we had made more amendments from both sides of the aisle in order for consideration on the floor. Legislating is better and more effective when all Members can have their ideas considered before final passage.

Making more amendments in order is a pledge that we have heard time and time again from my good friend and my good chairman, Mr. McGovern, so it is unfortunate that this rule misses a perfect opportunity to have robust debate on ideas from both sides of the aisle.

At the Rules Committee Monday night, 91 amendments were proposed and considered. Of those, 45 were proposed by Democrats, 44 by Republicans, and 2 were bipartisan. Of the 44 Republican amendments, 35 had no points of order against them or any parliamentary issues, yet when the final rule was proposed and passed out of committee, it made in order 30 amendments: 1 bipartisan amendment, 26 Democratic amendments, and just 3 Republican amendments.

Is that really how the majority wants to operate going forward, 58 percent of the Democratic amendments allowed to come to the floor, but just 6 percent of the Republican amendments and just 8 percent without points of order? That is an abysmal result.

For example, my good friend Rodney Davis of Illinois proposed an amendment that simply would have noted that the 2018 farm bill is relevant to achieving the goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and would have required the President to add the Committee on Agriculture to any reports he sends on this topic to the Foreign Affairs and Energy and Commerce Committees. This is a commonsense amendment that takes into account the role agriculture can play in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, yet the amendment was blocked from consideration on the floor.

What is the harm, I ask, in debating that amendment here on the floor and

bringing our Nation's farmers into the discussion?

Dr. Burgess, my fellow member of the Rules Committee and a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, submitted two amendments that required the President to consider how carbon emission-free nuclear power and other forms of renewable energy with zero emissions, like hydropower, could contribute to meeting the United States' obligation under the Paris Agreement.

It seems logical to me that, when you are seeking to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, using energy sources that are emission-free makes sense, yet the majority didn't even want to discuss that on the floor and blocked both of Dr. Burgess' amendments. What harm was there in discussing them?

I could go on and on, but the reality is that the majority has used its power at the Rules Committee to block consideration of dozens of amendments that could have and should have been discussed on the floor.

When the Democrats took majority control in the House, they promised a more inclusive process with more minority voices heard, more Republican amendments considered.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me additional time.

When the Democrats took majority control of the House, they promised a more inclusive process, more minority voices heard, more Republican amendments considered. If today's action is any indication, we have a long way to go in making that promise a reality. Instead, we are moving forward with a deeply flawed bill that could and should have been improved through the amendment process.

I have been a member of the Rules Committee for a long time, including many years in the majority. It is fair to ask: How did we do when we were in the majority? Let's look at the record.

In the 115th Congress, under Republican control of the Rules Committee, 45 percent of the amendments made in order were Democratic, 38 percent were Republican, 17 percent were bipartisan. The statistics for today's rule is a far cry from the fairness of that record.

If the majority truly wants to address the environment and wants to legislate, then we can all certainly do better than the bill before us today, and we can do better than the process we saw with this bill. All Members should have an opportunity to be heard, and we should all have an opportunity to make the bill better today.

Madam Speaker, I urge opposition to the rule and the underlying legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my good friend, a member of the Budget Committee, for yielding, and my colleague on the Rules Committee.

I rise to oppose the rule and oppose the underlying legislation. Now, I oppose the rule because it is not really a rule at all. It is really legislation masking as a rule.

Buried in this rule is a measure that will, what we call self- execute, but deem what the budget is going to be. In other words, our friends are telling us: We may not have the votes, even though we have a substantial majority, to pass our own caps bill. But just in case, the rule vote, which is a partisan vote, we are going to put it in here.

Now, that doesn't speak to a high degree of confidence that my friends will have the votes, which they should have, on their caps deal. I would argue it is technically legal, but it is not a very seemly practice to actually express your distrust of your own majority that directly.

Second, let's talk a little bit about the underlying legislation. There is a lot here I don't agree with, but I want to focus on one thing in particular, Mr. Speaker, and that is the ``budget'' itself, because it is not a budget. It is a caps bill.

It is not even a caps deal. It hasn't been negotiated with the Senate. It hasn't been negotiated with the administration. It is an arbitrary number. It has no chance of becoming law. There is no way a Republican Senate will have double the amount of increase for domestic programs as it has for defense. It is just not going to happen.

So, now, the Appropriations Committee--and I am always happy to have numbers as an appropriator--will now move on down with a set of numbers that we know will not survive negotiations with the Senate or with the President. So we are going to mark up a lot of bills, but they are going to be the numbers that are a fantasy.

Finally, in this caps deal, we ought to point out, our own rules require the majority to present a budget. We couldn't even get a budget out of the Democratic Budget Committee. Now, that is a failure to govern.

The Speaker, herself, said on one occasion: Show me your budget, and I will show you your values.

It suggests that you don't want to show the American people your values, because you certainly aren't showing us a budget in this legislation.

So the rule, frankly, is a backdoor way to enact some sort of caps legislation, caps legislation that will not be accepted by the Senate, that will not be accepted by the President of the United States.

The underlying legislation doesn't have a budget, which our own rules require that it have. It has a mere statement of spending levels that, again, are not going to be accepted by the other Chamber or by the President of the United States.

And, finally, our friends have abdicated their most important responsibility, which is showing the American people their view and their vision of what the budget ought to shape.

The rule ought to be rejected; the underlying legislation ought to be rejected; and our friends ought to challenge themselves to bring us a budget that they can support, that they can put in front of the American people.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my good friend from Arizona for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to oppose the rule, and to offer conditional support for the underlying legislation, H.R. 1585, the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2019.

I oppose the rule simply because my friends didn't make in order quite a number of proposals that we had that we think ought to be debated on today, but in fairness, I want to thank Chairman McGovern for making in order quite a few amendments that related particularly to VAWA in Indian Country, and I look forward to supporting those amendments.

I have always tried to consider legislation within its full context and look at the overall benefit of the bill, and I will certainly do the same with respect to VAWA.

Certainly there are provisions in this version of the reauthorization with which I profoundly disagree. Those are particularly related to the Second Amendment; this includes a misguided provision to strip someone of the right to possess a firearm following a misdemeanor conviction.

Frankly, I hope and expect that these provisions will change as the bill progresses through the legislative process.

To enact VAWA, to actually achieve the objective, my friends are going to have to do something they haven't done so far: that is actually compromise. They will have to compromise with a Republican Senate and a Republican President, or this important legislation will not come into law.

However, there are compelling things about this legislation, and I believe them particularly to be consistent with my own views and my own voting record on Tribal sovereignty and protection of native women, and I want to be supportive where I can be.

In 2013, Congress authorized the Tribal Court's jurisdiction over non-Indian offenders that are arrested for committing domestic violence or assault against women Tribal members on Indian lands.

The legislation we are considering today expands this jurisdiction to include not only women, but also Tribal children. Further, it extends critical protection to Tribal police officers.

There are several important amendments that will be debated related to Indian Country, and I urge the adoption of all of them.

I support the right of Tribes to enact their own definition of domestic and sexual violence, rather than replacing it with the Federal Government's definitions. States already have this flexibility; Tribes should as well.

In addition, I also believe Tribal law enforcement should have the authority to have access to the National Crime Information Systems.

Mr. Speaker, more than four out of five American Indian and Alaska Native women have experienced violence in their lifetime. More than half of the American Indian and Alaska Native women have experienced sexual violence in their lifetime. American Indian and Alaska Native women are almost twice as likely as White women to have experienced violence in the past year. Native women face murder rates more than ten times the national average in some parts of the country. They are also more than twice as likely to have experienced rape than non-Hispanic white women over the course of a lifetime.

Given these statistics of acts of violence, 96 percent of American Indian and Alaska Native women who are victims of sexual violence experience violence at the hands of non-native perpetrators. To reiterate, nearly all the violence committed against native women is committed by non-natives.

Mr. Speaker, I do not believe the protection of all women and children is or should be treated as a partisan issue. Tribal governments, through trust and treaty obligations, should have the same authority as States to protect women and children in vulnerable situations. All States, Tribal, and local law enforcement authorities should have access to the use of the same tools to prevent these crimes on or off reservations.

As I have said before, hunters know where to hunt, fishermen know where to fish, and predators know where to prey.

The passage of a reformed Violence Against Women Act gives Tribes badly needed tools to combat the epidemic of violence and abuse in Indian Country.

Mr. Speaker, I urge all Members of the House of Representatives to work together in a bipartisan manner to create, in the end, a bill that can pass both chambers and be enacted into law.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank my good friend, the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania (Ms. Scanlon) for yielding me the customary 30 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, we had quite the debate on this bill in the Rules Committee last night, and I expect the debate on the floor today will be along similar lines. Today's bill is H.R. 1, which my friends on the other side of the aisle are calling by the misnomer ``For the People Act.'' Unfortunately, this bill is completely misnamed.

It is not for the people. It is, instead, for the Democratic majority, by the Democratic majority, in hopes of maintaining the Democratic majority for many years to come. Every provision in this bill reflects that goal.

That began with the process the majority used to put this bill together. H.R. 1 was referred to 10 different committees, yet only one, House Administration, held a markup. My friends hold a 2-to-1 advantage on that committee. There are only three Republicans who can participate.

Later, we will be hearing from some of the Republican ranking members of these committees, each of whom will talk about provisions that they had hoped to address, had their respective committees marked up the bill. This failure to allow other committees with jurisdiction to mark up the bill reinforces the desire of the majority to push this bill through as quickly as possible without any additional consideration. Without further hearings and markups, it is all too easy for the majority to sweep the bill's flaws under the rug and pass it quickly without allowing the American people to see what they are up to.

This bill would be more aptly named the ``For the Politicians Act'' or ``Welfare for Politicians Act.'' It reinforces the idea that the majority cares only about passing a bill that will lead to more Democrats in the House of Representatives.

We do not have time today to go over every provision in this bill, but for now, I will take a moment to point out some of the bigger flaws in this product.

First, H.R. 1 takes taxpayer dollars and uses them to create a special piggy bank for campaigns. That is right, Democrats want to use taxpayer dollars of the American people to finance their political campaigns. H.R. 1 creates a matching program for small-dollar campaign contributions, thereby shifting taxpayer dollars to politicians to run their campaigns. In essence, Democrats are demanding that your tax dollars be used to subsidize and fund political candidates.

According to the Bipartisan Policy Center, since 2000, total spending on Federal elections has exploded, going from $2.7 billion that cycle to $6.4 billion in 2016. With so much money being raised from private sources, one wonders why the majority wants to waste taxpayer dollars adding even more money into campaigns.

Second, H.R. 1 completely takes over elections, removing authority from States and local election boards and giving it to Washington, D.C. Currently, States have the authority to determine how they want to structure their own elections, including voter registration, timing, and even redistricting. But all that goes away under H.R. 1. States would no longer be able to set voter registration requirements, nor hold elections where and how often they want, nor reapportion voters into appropriate districts. Instead, under H.R. 1, Washington, D.C., takes over all these functions.

I doubt any secretary of state or supervisor of elections in America supports this federalization of the election process. In fact, last night in the Rules Committee meeting, Mr. Speaker, I entered into the record a letter from the

Oklahoma State Election Board opposing H.R. 1 on precisely these grounds.

Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record that letter again today.

Oklahoma State Election Board,

Oklahoma City, OK, March 4, 2019.

Re Election Administration Provisions of H.R. 1.

Hon. Tom Cole,

House of Representatives,

Washington, DC.

Dear Representative Cole: As Oklahoma's chief state

election official, I am very proud of Oklahoma's election

system. Our state has one of the most effective and efficient

election systems in the world. It is uniform, it is fair, it

is secure, it is accurate and it is fast.

As the House of Representatives prepares to consider H.R.

1, I want to take a moment to express some concerns about

several of its provisions related to election administration.

While I believe H.R. 1 to be well-intentioned by its

sponsors, its ``one-size-fits-all'' requirements for state

election systems would require Oklahoma to make extensive

changes to the way we run elections. I am concerned that some

of H.R. 1's mandates could negatively impact the very things

Oklahoma's election system does so well.

Based on my review of H.R. 1, here is a list of my top

concerns.

``Voting by Mail'': To combat Oklahoma's past history of

absentee ballot fraud, several decades ago the Oklahoma

Legislature enacted legislation requiring most voters to have

their identity confirmed by a notary public when voting by

absentee ballot. Oklahoma law also requires absentee ballots

to be received by the county election board no later than

7:00 p.m. on Election Day. These procedures help prevent

fraud and enable county election boards to have 100% of

absentee ballots counted on election night. Unfortunately,

H.R. 1 seems to do away with these safeguards and

efficiencies, instead requiring county election boards to (1)

accept signed affidavits in lieu of notarized ones and (2) to

accept an absentee ballot postmarked on Election Day. H.R.

1's mandates would prevent Oklahoma from counting all

absentee ballots by Election Day, would require the counting

of absentee ballots to continue for days or weeks after an

election, and would take away a critical security feature of

our election system.

``Early voting'': In Oklahoma, county election boards

typically have a very small staff. (Many have only the

secretary and one assistant.) For federal and state

elections, Oklahoma currently allows ``early voting'' on the

Thursday, Friday and Saturday prior to Election Day. Most

counties have a single early voting site, but several have

two sites. Even with the assistance of absentee voting boards

paid for by the State Election Board, most counties barely

have enough budget and staff to successfully conduct early

voting on the three days currently required. H.R. 1's

requirement for FIFTEEN CONSECUTIVE DAYS of early voting is

simply not feasible given the small budgets and staffing

levels of the 77 county election boards. This would make it

virtually impossible for county election board staff to

perform their other critical duties (e.g., processing mail

absentee ballots, processing voter registration applications,

and preparing supplies for precinct workers) if they are

instead conducting early voting during this time.

``Same Day Voter Registration'': Oklahoma has a very

reasonable deadline for voter registration (applications must

be submitted by the 24th day prior to an election). H.R. 1

requires county election boards to conduct voter registration

during ``early'' voting periods and on Election Day. This

mandate is not currently feasible with the current funding

and staffing levels of county election boards. The logistics

of predicting how many ballots to print and how many precinct

officials to assign to polling places, with the number of

potential voters unknown, would be extremely difficult and

inefficient. Same day voter registration increases the risk

that due to error or fraud an ineligible person is allowed to

register and vote.

``Provisional ballots'': Oklahoma has a county-based

election system. While Oklahoma uses the same voting system

statewide, for security reasons each county's system is

siloed and does not directly interact with other counties'

systems. (For example, one county cannot print or count

another county's ballot.) Oklahoma law requires a voter to

vote in the assigned polling place in the county where the

voter is registered. Provisional ballots are issued for a

variety of reasons, and, if eligible, are counted after 2:00

p.m. on the Friday following Election Day. However, H.R. 1

requires a provisional ballot to be counted even if it is

cast in the wrong county, which creates a security risk and

is not currently possible given Oklahoma's election security

features.

``Online Voter Registration'': Oklahoma will implement

online voter registration in the near future. Unfortunately,

H.R. 1 sets different requirements for its federally-mandated

online voter registration system than is required by Oklahoma

law. (For example, H.R. 1 does everything from defining

acceptable signature requirements, to mandating a telephone

version of an online voter registration system, to

micromanaging the features required for a state's customer

support system.) Further, Oklahoma's future online voter

registration system will require that a registrant's identity

be conformed by matching the person's information with an

existing driver license or state I.D., but H.R. 1 sets

different (and less secure) standards for confirming a

registrant's identity.

``Federalism'': While I believe H.R. 1's sponsors are well-

intentioned, a great many of its election provisions--even

those that are not concerns--relate to policy decisions that

are best left to the states under our federal system. I am

concerned that, in its current form, H.R. 1 could lead to

costly and lengthy litigation.

While these are not my only concerns, they are the most

serious. I appreciate your representation of our state in

Congress, and I feel it is my duty as Oklahoma's chief

election official to make you aware of some of the potential

negative impacts H.R. 1 could have on our state's election

system.

If you ever have any questions about elections in Oklahoma,

please feel free to contact me or Assistant Secretary Pam

Slater. Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Paul Ziriax, Secretary,

Oklahoma State Election Board.

Mr. Speaker, I would also point out that, in the case of redistricting, if the State cannot reach a resolution, H.R. 1 hands over the redistricting function to an unelected Federal court here in Washington, D.C. Everywhere you look, this bill represents an erosion of traditional State authority and a power grab for Democrats here in Washington.

Perhaps even more egregiously, the bill places limits on freedom of speech, criminalizing actions that we would currently describe as mere advocacy for candidates. Not since the Sedition Act of 1798 has the Federal Government tried to pass something that tramples so heavily on freedom of speech as H.R. 1. The bill is so bad in this regard that even the American Civil Liberties Union is opposing it, which is a perfect illustration of just how bad H.R. 1 really is.

Mr. Speaker, I could go on and on. Everywhere you look, H.R. 1 fails to do what the majority has promised. They have promised it is to be about returning power to the people. Instead, this bill only gives power and money to Democratic politicians. It takes away authority from States and gives it to the Federal Government, wastes taxpayer dollars on political campaigns, weakens the voting system, and limits freedom of speech.

In sum, Mr. Speaker, I cannot imagine how any Member can stand up with a straight face and support this bill. I urge opposition to the rule, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Lucas), my good friend.

Mr. Speaker, I yield the gentleman an additional 15 seconds.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Perry).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Jordan), my good friend and distinguished Republican ranking member on the Committee on Oversight and Reform.

Mr. Speaker, I yield the gentleman from Ohio an additional 15 seconds.

Mr. Speaker, yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Burgess), my good friend, fellow member of the Rules Committee, and classmate.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Rodney Davis), my friend and the ranking Republican Member on the House Administration Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Arizona (Mrs. Lesko), my good friend and fellow member of the Rules Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 15 seconds to the gentlewoman from Arizona.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. McHenry), the distinguished Republican ranking member on the Financial Services 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 add a provision that bars candidates from receiving matching funds under this bill unless that candidate certifies that no tax lien exists on any property owned by that candidate by reason of a failure of the candidate to pay any Federal, State, or local tax.

Mr. Speaker, the logic of this is simple. If the majority is going to insist that millions--really, billions--of Federal tax dollars should be spent subsidizing campaigns, then the candidates should also certify that they have paid all the taxes due from them. If a candidate has a tax lien against them, then they should not receive taxpayer dollars to subsidize their campaign. This is common sense and simple fairness.

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, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to close.

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

Mr. Speaker, I urge opposition to this rule and the underlying measure. The majority has brought up a misnamed bill that instead serves only to preserve its own power. H.R. 1 will create a taxpayer- funded ATM to waste Federal dollars on political campaigns.

Let me say that again: to waste Federal dollars on campaigns.

My friends are worried about the power of money, but they are injecting billions of new taxpayer dollars into this. And not only that, the taxpayer has no say in where those dollars go. They don't get to pick a candidate or whatever. We are just going to willy-nilly have their dollars support candidates whom they may or may not agree with.

This does not only apply to Democrats and Republicans. There are fringe candidates who will get funding under this, too, candidates, quite frankly, who will probably embarrass my friends and ourselves.

So I think this is an enormously misguided idea. It will take over elections and voter registration from States and transfer power to Washington.

Let me say that again. My friends are voting to literally turn over the State election operations of 50 separate States and federalize them. They haven't talked to very many secretaries of state. I think there was only one who actually was allowed to testify in opposition to this bill.

Instead, we are going to foist off billions of dollars in unpaid mandates on every State in the country so my friends can continue this misguided effort to alter the political landscape of the greatest Republic and democracy in the world.

This bill will weaken voting systems and weaken the enforcement mechanism that guards against fraud, and it will undermine Americans' fundamental First Amendment rights.

Mr. Speaker, I would strongly urge my friends on the other side to reconsider their course of action. This bill is not going to be heard by the Senate; it will never be signed by the President of the United States; and instead of building a bipartisan coalition for election and campaign reform, it will partisanize this process further.

There was and still is an opportunity to have this bill considered in markups across every committee of jurisdiction. Instead, the majority is simply ramming it through, using a committee where they hold a 2-to- 1 majority and limiting, frankly, the ability of Members to participate in the process of writing the bill.

We can do better than this, Mr. Speaker, and we should strive to do better than this now.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the previous question, ``no'' on the underlying measure, and 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. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chairman, I rise today in support of my amendment to

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Norman), my good friend.

Mr. Chairman, may I inquire how much time I have remaining.

Mr. Chairman, I want to disagree very profoundly with my friend.

Frankly, what this amendment does is keep politics out of contracting. My friends want to put politics back into contracting. The decisions, as my friend, Mr. Norman, mentioned, on contracts, ought to be made on the basis of the quality of the bid and the quality of the job. There is no reason to ask for political information when you are evaluating whether or not a bridge should be built or whether or not a road should be paved and who should do that.

Frankly, what we are going to do is inject politics by requiring the list of political contributors. If you don't think that will matter, I think you are being painfully naive.

Mr. Chairman, I urge support of the amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Woodall), my good friend, for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act. If we defeat the previous question, we will bring up the text of this important piece of legislation to defend life.

Frankly, Mr. Speaker, I am mystified as to why the majority is loath to actually make this vote. Indeed, they have been doing backflips to avoid allowing the House to actually go on record on this important issue.

This bill is a commonsense approach to protecting our Nation's most vulnerable. It amends the Federal Criminal Code simply to require that any doctor present when a child is born alive following an abortion or attempted abortion must provide the child with the same degree of care as he or she would provide any other child. The bill also requires that any such child is immediately admitted to a hospital.

Mr. Speaker, as we have seen in recent weeks, many people in elected positions do not appear to appreciate the need to provide for protections for our most vulnerable Americans newly born, but it is clear that current law fails to provide adequate protections for newborns who survive an abortion attempt. This bill draws a sorely needed bright line of protection around abortion survivors and requires that they be given the same level of care as any other premature infant.

As stewards of the law of this country, Mr. Speaker, protecting the most vulnerable, including the unborn, should be one of Congress' basic responsibilities.

Since entering Congress, I have made the protection of life one of my highest priorities. I believe that all Members should have that same priority. Today, we can take a step toward making this a reality by defeating the previous question and bringing up the Born-Alive Survivors Protection Act for a vote.

Mr. Speaker, I urge opposition to the previous question.

Madam Speaker, I thank my good friend from Colorado (Mr. Perlmutter) for yielding, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, we are here today to pass an appropriations package that should complete our work and fully fund the government for fiscal year 2019.

As Members of this body know, this has been a long road, perhaps much longer than we expected at the beginning.

As we saw at the start of this Congress, the difficulties this body can sometimes face in coming to an agreement can translate into difficulty and hardship for the American people. I think I can speak for all of us here in this body when I say that government shutdowns are bad for the American people, bad for government, and bad policy, and we should all strive to never let them happen again.

Now, of course, we have a little bit different view of how that shutdown came about. It is worth noting for the record that the House actually did vote to fund the government and produced a bill in December that the President said he would sign and a majority of the United States Senate actually favored.

But the Senate gets to set its own rules. They could reach a number of 60, but the Democratic minority chose not to do that. So, given that, that is what shut down the government, and we have all been dealing with the consequences of it ever since.

But today we are poised to finish our work, and though the road may have been difficult, I think Members should look back on this process and commend themselves for what they have accomplished.

Last September, we finalized and passed into law 5 of the 12 funding bills, an accomplishment we had not matched in over 20 years. Those five, which included the two largest bills--Defense and Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies--covered approximately 75 percent of all Federal discretionary spending.

Prior to the end of the FY 2018 year, the House also passed four additional spending bills, which we then moved to conference with the Senate.

Indeed, of the seven outstanding spending bills, six of them were negotiated with the Senate and have been ready to be moved for final passage for quite some time. The sticking point has been the final bill on that for Homeland Security, which vexed Members for some time. But though we did not reach a deal on Homeland Security quickly, we did eventually reach a deal.

Today, I am pleased to be standing with my colleagues to bring up seven bipartisan, bicameral, fully negotiated and conferenced spending bills that are ready to be passed and sent to the President's desk for signature.

As we finish the work for fiscal year 2019 and move into our efforts for fiscal year 2020, I want to commend my fellow members of the Appropriations Committee for their hard work.

Thanks to the leadership of people like Ranking Member Kay Granger, Chairwoman Nita Lowey, and Chairman Rodney Frelinghuysen, and thanks to the hard work of dozens of Members, we are at last ready to send these bills to the President.

I congratulate my friends and colleagues on both sides of the aisle and, indeed, offer those same congratulations to the entire House.

I look forward to working together on fiscal year 2020 in the weeks and months ahead. Perhaps, working together, we can get all the bills passed, conferenced with the Senate, and sent to the President by the end of the fiscal year.

That will certainly be my goal and the goal of every appropriator on both sides of this Chamber and on both sides of the rotunda in the Capitol Building.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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 provide for consideration of H.R. 1239, the Protecting Women Act of 2019.

This bill provides a straight extension of the Violence Against Women Act, or VAWA, as is it commonly known, through the end of the fiscal year.

Beginning in 1994, VAWA has provided grants to State, local, and Tribal law enforcement officials to investigate and prosecute violent crimes against women, including domestic violence, sexual assault, dating violence, and stalking.

Unfortunately, VAWA is scheduled to expire, literally, tomorrow, and my friends on the other side, frankly, are just standing by and watching it happen, even though they control this Chamber.

Republicans fought to include an extension of VAWA in the underlying conference report as we had done in previous continuing resolutions, but we were rebuffed by our other friends on the other side of the aisle, and they have not made any move to schedule a separate vote on this floor to avoid a lapse in this critical program, so Republicans will.

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

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

Madam Speaker, I yield such time as she may consume to the gentlewoman from Arizona (Mrs. Lesko), my good friend and fellow member of the Rules Committee, to discuss her bill and this previous question.

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

Madam Speaker, I want to thank my friend, frankly, for his response on the VAWA issue. And I don't pretend to speak for all Republicans. I will point out to my friend, actually the last time we did a reauthorization, I voted against the Republican bill to bring the Senate Democratic bill to the floor because I thought it was a better bill. It was a stronger bill.

It had Tribal provisions and it had areas we had not addressed previously. I thought those were good changes. It is pretty unusual for me to break with my own team and bring down the Republican bill and pass the Democratic bill, but I was proud to do it because it was a better bill.

I don't think simply having money in place is the same as having the authorizations in place. This is an opportunity, in my view, to just have continuity while we do exactly what my friend suggests. Let's find a way, and come together. I think we will. That has traditionally been a bipartisan bill. I hope we do it. But I don't see a reason why we should have a lapse in authority.

This is something we tried to put, actually, in conference in the base bill, and it would not have prevented my friends from going on and offering a new authorization. It was just simply, let's keep this going.

So to me, the previous question that we will offer should the rule be defeated, will have that opportunity, and I hope my friends avail themselves of that.

In addition to that, I want to thank my friends genuinely for the cooperation in this process on the appropriations bills themselves. As I said, six of these bills were essentially agreed to in December in a bipartisan way between both the House and the Senate.

So we will hear the argument or could hear the argument tonight. All of this is new, and there is a 1,000-plus page bill, and what have you. The reality is, there are probably about 75 pages, I am told from the conferees, of new text here. Most of this is actually something that this House has voted on and passed in December.

Not reopening old issues and settling them where we could and then moving forward is something my friends ought to be proud of. I think it was absolutely the right thing to do. It let us get on to the important business of fiscal year 2020 more quickly and more expeditiously.

And my friends are in the majority, and if they want to make changes there, additions or subtractions, they will be in a position to do that. But I think closing the book here is a good one.

I hope all of us, honestly, as Republicans and Democrats--I have been around here long enough to be in the minority, in the majority, and in the minority again. It tends to move back and forth.

But as my friends have pointed out, these are important funding bills that provide for the continuity of government. And in these negotiations nobody ever gets everything they want. It is not possible, even when one side or the other controls both Chambers and the White House. I have been here when that has happened on our side and on my friend's side. You still never get everything you want in appropriations.

But I think there is going to be a premium placed on cooperation and negotiations going forward. There is no question. We have a Democratic House, we have a Republican Senate, and we have a Republican President.

Everything that we are going to accomplish in the next 18 months for the American people will have to be a compromise where we work together. I actually think this is a good first step in starting that process. I think my friends are to be commended in doing that.

We won't get every vote for this underlying legislation on our side. I doubt my friends will get every vote on their side, but we will have a pretty substantial bipartisan majority in favor of moving forward, fully funding the government and, hopefully, that sets the example for what we do in fiscal year 2020.

Again, I look forward to working with my friends going forward. I look forward to beginning that process here tonight by working together to pass a bill the Senate has already passed in an overwhelmingly bipartisan fashion and that the President has said he will sign, and I assume that he certainly will.

As difficult as this road has been, Madam Speaker, I think this is actually a hopeful moment for this Chamber and maybe the beginning of good habits of negotiation, compromise, and cooperation, because we are certainly going to need those habits going forward.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Madam Speaker, I thank my friend, and, again, I thank him quite sincerely for his work. We have had the opportunity to work together now in the Rules Committee for a little while. We hadn't had that opportunity previously. He is always a thoughtful and an interesting voice in that body and certainly here on the floor.

While we will disagree over the rule and might well disagree over the previous question, on the underlying legislation, I suspect my friend and I will be voting on the same side tonight.

That is something I hope that the American people take note of. We will have lots of Democrats and lots of Republicans voting on the same side. Yes, we have our differences about how we got here or what we would have liked. But at the end of the day, we have come together and given the American people what they deserve, and that is a fully funded, operational government, and we have resolved our differences in conference.

I, too, want to join my friends in congratulating the chair of the conference committee, Chair Lowey; congratulating our ranking member, Kay Granger; and congratulating their counterparts, Senator Shelby and Senator Leahy for the work they did in working through these knotty issues and bringing us together.

Yes, I wish it happened more quickly, but they are not the only players. I think all four of them worked in good faith and served our Chambers well in their deliberations.

Madam Speaker, in closing, I urge support for the underlying measure. While the process of finalizing full-year funding for fiscal year 2019 may have taken longer than we expected, today's measure will complete the process. I expect the House will pass these seven bills today, and I expect that the President will sign them in the very near future.

I applaud and commend my colleagues for their hard work and hope that we will carry this spirit of bipartisanship with us as we move forward into the fiscal year 2020 appropriations process.

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 ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 962, the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, and I ask for its immediate consideration in the House so we can defend life.

Mr. Speaker, I ask for immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, we have had a bill that has been tied up in Judiciary for a long time. It is about defending life. It is about making sure that we do not take away life from people that are unborn. I just ask for its immediate consideration.

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

Normally, Madam Speaker, I would be agreeing with my good friend, Mr. McGovern, on the issue of congressional war powers, and, frankly, I want to applaud his efforts over the years to reassert congressional war powers.

It is a responsibility, in my view and, I know, my friend's view, that Congress has abdicated and one which we must work to reclaim in the weeks and months ahead. I commit to work with my friend, as I have in the past, to do just that in the future. But, in my view, this particular issue is not about congressional war powers.

Madam Speaker, we had a spirited debate on this joint resolution in the Rules Committee Monday night, and I expect that today's debate will be just as spirited. The reason is because this measure concerns one of the most important of Congress' powers: the power under Article I of the Constitution to declare war and to say when, where, and with whom the American Armed Forces will be committed to combat.

In 1973, Congress passed the War Powers Resolution, which is intended to give Congress and the President procedures to follow when committing U.S. Armed Forces into hostilities and to give Congress a method to instruct the President to remove U.S. forces from hostilities.

Today, the majority is bringing up H.J. Res. 37, a resolution ostensibly arising under Congress' powers under the War Powers Resolution, to instruct the President to remove United States Armed Forces from hostilities in Yemen. Specifically, this refers to United States support for key allies, a coalition led by Saudi Arabia in their intervention in the civil war in Yemen against the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels.

Unfortunately, Madam Speaker, I believe this resolution is fatally flawed, misstates the facts, and will not accomplish what the majority is promising. For that reason, I oppose this rule and oppose this joint resolution.

Let's start with the text of the resolution.

Section 2 of the resolution directs the President to ``remove United States Armed Forces from hostilities in or affecting the Republic of Yemen except United States Armed Forces engaged in operations directed at al-Qaida or associated forces.''

Of course, the problem with this resolution is that, under the terms of the War Powers Resolution, American Armed Forces are not currently engaged in hostilities. Hostilities, under the War Powers Resolution, means firing weapons or dropping bombs.

As we heard on Monday night at rules, the United States is presently providing assistance to the Saudi-led coalition that falls short of actual hostilities. We are providing intelligence and logistics support to an ally, but that is a far cry from the threshold necessary to be considered hostilities for the purposes of the War Powers Resolution.

This came up during Monday night's Rules Committee debate. I note that even Representative Connolly, who spoke in favor of this resolution at the Foreign Affairs Committee a few weeks ago, stated that ``the United States is not technically involved on the ground in hostilities.''

If we are not ``technically involved'' in hostilities--we don't have troops on the ground, we don't have flights in the air, and we are not engaging in combat missions of any kind against the Houthis in Yemen-- then what does this resolution actually accomplish?

The majority attempts to get around this by redefining hostilities to mean ``in-flight refueling non-United States aircraft conducting missions as part of the ongoing civil war in Yemen.''

Even if I did accept, for the sake of argument, that this is a legitimate definition--and I don't--this is still a false statement. The United States is not currently providing Saudi Arabia with in- flight refueling assistance and has not since early November of last year. That fact is just one of the many problems with the resolution.

I do point out the last administration certainly did that. It is actually this administration that canceled that procedure, which it inherited from the Obama administration.

But even if the statement, again, were accurate, I believe the majority's resolution raises significant questions that should give us pause.

Across the globe, the United States has security agreements with 117 countries, including Saudi Arabia and other countries in the Saudi-led coalition. We as a nation and the President of the United States have obligations under those security agreements, including to provide them with support when they find themselves in combat situations. The resolution the majority is asking us to consider today is putting all of those security agreements--all 117 of them--into jeopardy.

When the President provides assistance short of hostilities to allies and to countries with whom the United States has a security agreement, the President is generally well within his or her rights as Commander in Chief to do so and well within his or her statutory authority to do so.

It is only when American troops enter hostilities that the War Powers Resolution applies, and today, in Yemen, American forces are not involved in hostilities.

I think that the majority should sit back and think about the possible consequences of this resolution. For allies around the globe, this resolution should give them pause; and, for our adversaries, this resolution should give them hope.

For the first time, the United States Congress would be saying that the President of the United States no longer has the authority to provide assistance short of hostilities that we have agreed to under our security agreements with these countries. For our allies and NATO, this would put in jeopardy our commitment to the collective defense of Europe.

For our allies in the Pacific, like South Korea and Japan, it would put into question our ability to continue to provide support in the event of a conflict with North Korea.

For potential adversaries like Russia or Iran, this resolution provides the hope that America will not live up to its security commitments and will not support our allies during their time of need.

Perhaps most disturbingly, it would put our ongoing security arrangements with the state of Israel in question. In 1973, shortly before the War Powers Resolution was passed, Israel was subject to a surprise attack. During the resulting Yom Kippur War, while Israel was fighting for its survival, the United States launched an effort to resupply Israel. The United States military airlifted supplies, ammunition, and vehicles to Israel, helping to ensure their continued survival. However, we were never engaged in hostilities. We never committed forces to combat.

If the majority has its say, U.S. assistance to Israel under similar circumstances could be put in jeopardy. Under the type of resolution the majority is putting forward today, Israel would have good cause to question the U.S. commitment to that nation and to question our commitment to providing Israel with support in the future.

Should the United States provide Israel with the support it needs, our allies would have good reason to fear that a portion of the House of Representatives would try to shut off the tap by putting forward a resolution like this. I suggest to my friends that they rethink whether the War Powers Resolution should or even can be used in this way.

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

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

My friends talked a great deal about human rights, and I just want to make the point that I don't believe--I surely don't believe they think that the Houthi rebels in Yemen are great defenders of human rights or that the Iranian forces who are on the ground in Yemen are actually there to advance human rights and are defending them.

Frankly, I think this issue has more to do with whether or not we are involved in hostilities, which we clearly are not.

Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Woodall), my good friend, a distinguished member of the Rules Committee.

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 bring up the text of H.R. 336, the Strengthening America's Security in the Middle East Act of 2019. One of the four constituent parts of this bill has already passed the House by voice vote in this Congress, and three of the four constituent parts passed the House by voice vote last Congress.

The four parts of this bill authorize assistance and weapons transfers to Israel, extend defense cooperation with Jordan, establish additional sanctions related to the conflict in Syria, and allows States to divest from entities boycotting Israel. On the whole, unlike the resolution on the floor today, it will preserve and strengthen our relationship with our allies and reaffirm America's commitment to a peaceful and more secure Middle East.

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 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Wyoming (Ms. Cheney), my distinguished colleague and the chair of the Republican Conference.

Madam Speaker, I yield an additional 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Wyoming.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume, and then I will turn to my friend from Texas.

Madam Speaker, I want to thank my friend for his comments. And we do; we just disagree. I do not see this as appropriate for the War Powers Resolution, because we don't have troops in common; we have not committed anybody to hostilities. But the Commander in Chief historically has had broad authority to assist countries that we have agreements and arrangements with that he thinks are important in our own security, short of committing troops into combat. I think that is precisely what he is doing.

Frankly, that is what his predecessor did. It would have been nice if our friends were as equally concerned when President Obama actually was committing us to the kinds of activities we are talking about. I don't recall hearing a lot about it then, but I am happy to discuss it now.

Madam Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. McCaul), the former chairman of the Homeland Security Committee and the current ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee.

Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Zeldin), my good friend.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself the remainder of my time to close.

Madam Speaker, I urge opposition to this rule and the underlying measure.

The majority has brought up a resolution under the War Powers Resolution instructing the President to remove the United States Armed Forces from hostilities in Yemen. Unfortunately, this resolution is misguided. United States Armed Forces are not currently involved in hostilities in Yemen, and it is unclear exactly what this resolution will accomplish.

Further, passage of this resolution would likely damage our relationships with our allies, who would have reason to question our commitments to them, and embolden our potential adversaries in the future.

I want to take just a moment to, frankly, reaffirm and thank my friend for his strong assertion of Congress' powers under war powers. I think he has absolutely been a leader in this area, and I have tried to work with him on many occasions.

I want to state for the Record, I look forward to working with him in this area again, because I think this body, under both Republicans and Democrats, has far too often abdicated its responsibilities and simply left it to the executive branch to determine when we were at war.

Frankly, when President Bush 41 went to war in the Gulf, he came to Congress and asked for its permission; when President Bush 43 went to war, he came to Congress and asked for its permission in both Afghanistan and Iraq--and they received it.

President Obama never bothered to do that. Whether it was in Libya or whether it was extending the mission, in many cases, he simply did not choose to do that. And, frankly, it was President Obama who began the actions that concerned my friends in Yemen.

So, again, my friend has appropriately tried to pursue, over the course of his career, the reassertion of congressional war powers, and I commend him for that. This case is not one of those cases.

The President of the United States does have legitimate powers as Commander in Chief to support friends and allies short of war without congressional approval. That has happened time and time and time again in American history.

We have 117 security agreements with various countries around the world. Some of those are with countries we have formal alliances with, some of them are not. They do not commit the United States to hostilities, but they do say, in certain situations, we will be there to render support.

I agree with my friend that there have been atrocities in Yemen. I think he is absolutely right about that. I think, unfortunately, we didn't talk very much about the Iranian role in that. We didn't talk very much about the Houthi role in that. We didn't talk very much about who overthrew a legitimate government and what other countries were involved in that. This is a lot more complex than that.

But, in this case, unlike Libya, for instance, where President Obama did commit us to military activity without coming to this Chamber and asking permission, somehow stretched the NATO alliance to cover our participation in a conflict within a country that had not attacked any member of NATO, let alone the United States of America, that was a time we should have done something like this.

Right now, in my view, whether you agree with him or not, the President is exercising his legitimate authority as Commander in Chief. And it is worth noting for the Record, he is actually doing less than his predecessor, President Obama, did. He actually is the person, President Trump, who ordered the cessation of aerial refueling operations with the Saudi Air Force.

Again, there is room for disagreement here. I know, on the underlying issue of congressional war powers, my friend and I agree. I look forward to working with him on that issue as we go forward, as I know we will. But, in my opinion, this is the wrong place and the wrong time to have this debate.

I think the President is operating well within his rights. He has made it clear he will veto this legislation should it pass the United States Senate. None of us know whether it will. But I can assure you this: that veto will have more than enough votes to sustain it.

So, again, I thank my friend for the spirited debate and discussion. It is always thoughtful.

Madam Speaker, I urge a ``no'' vote on the previous question, ``no'' on the underlying measure, 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, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

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

Madam Speaker, I want to begin by congratulating my friend on his recent appointment to the Rules Committee, where we have already had the opportunity to interact with one another. And I want to again congratulate him for bringing his first rule to the floor as well. I know we are going to have a good relationship in the next couple of years as we work together.

Madam Speaker, we are back here in appropriations; only this time, the majority has taken what was an important, likely bipartisan disaster relief appropriations bill and turned it into a partisan football.

Last night, the Committee on Rules was scheduled to meet on a $12.1 billion supplemental appropriations bill. At the last minute, the majority chose to make in order and self-execute an amendment that would tack on an additional measure, a continuing resolution to fund the government through February 8.

I don't know if I can fully convey how disappointed I am that the majority is seeking to play politics with this important issue and use an otherwise noncontroversial disaster appropriations bill as a vehicle to pass a controversial spending bill that is going absolutely nowhere.

Last year, the Nation faced a wide variety of disasters, from wildfires in the West to hurricanes that hit Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands and the

Southeastern United States, and the volcanoes in Hawaii.

When disaster strikes, we have an obligation to help each other. I don't think there is a single Member of the House who would disagree with that fundamental principle.

Before the Rules Committee acted last night, we were on our way to a bipartisan bill that fulfilled that principle. But today, we are considering a partisan bill that will not resolve the shutdown, and it holds up crucial aid for disaster victims.

To that end, Madam Speaker, I have to say that the original version of the bill was actually very good. It took roughly what the House had passed at the end of the last Congress and added to it.

In December, we passed a bill that provided $7.38 billion in disaster relief. The original bill up today would provide $12.1 billion in disaster relief, with additional money going mostly to increase existing accounts and to provide nutrition assistance to Puerto Rico. Frankly, I was prepared to be fully supportive of that measure.

Moreover, I was especially pleased that the majority took the steps toward an open process. They issued a call for amendments, considered them, and made some very good amendments in order.

I want to commend Chairman McGovern for taking these steps and giving Members on both sides of the aisle an opportunity to present the case for their amendments to the Rules Committee and, in many cases, to the full House.

But instead of moving forward on a joint disaster relief bill, the majority decided at the last minute to turn this noncontroversial piece of legislation into a controversial one by attaching a self-executing manager's amendment which adds a continuing resolution to fund the government through February 8.

Madam Speaker, I want to be clear. I want to end the government shutdown as well. I have said countless times on this floor and elsewhere that the primary responsibility of legislators is to fund the government and keep it open. Our constituents deserve no less than the full amount of government services we have promised them.

At the end of December, I voted in favor of a bill that would have done exactly that. It would have funded the government through February 8. It would have funded disaster relief, and it would have provided funding for border security. A majority of the Senate favored that bill, and the President had said he would sign it. Unfortunately, the Democratic minority in the Senate blocked consideration of the bill, a bill that could have stopped this shutdown before it ever happened.

This, now, is the fourth proposal by my friends across the aisle to reopen the government. Tomorrow, we will be likely considering a fifth proposal. Unfortunately, each of these items has in common the same flaws.

The Senate made it clear that it will not take up any spending bill that the President cannot sign, and the President has made it clear that he will not sign any bill that does not address border security. Yet my friends across the aisle continue to put forward measure after measure that simply do not provide funding for border security.

Today, the majority is seeking to one-up itself. They have taken a disaster relief bill to provide funding for victims of hurricanes, wildfires, and volcanoes, and they are attaching to it the same funding bill the House previously passed. The House may have passed it, but the Senate won't, and the President won't sign it.

Why, then, does the majority insist on using disaster victims as leverage to avoid addressing border security?

Madam Speaker, I want to reopen the government. I want us to provide for disaster victims, and I want us to provide for border security. We can accomplish all three of these things. The House can do all three of these things. In fact, the House has done all three of these things as recently as December. Why the majority only wants to accomplish one of those and wants to do so by using disaster victims as leverage is beyond me.

I know my friends think they can force the Senate and the President to bend to their will, but they cannot, and they will not. In divided government, negotiation and compromise are indispensable in governing. So far, my friends have engaged in neither.

Madam Speaker, today, we should be happy to provide needed relief to disaster victims. Instead, we are here on the fourth proposal from the majority on government funding and a fourth proposal that does not address fundamental problems, does not negotiate with the majority, and does not put forward a bill that can become law.

To quote the baseball legend and philosopher Yogi Berra, ``it's deja vu all over again.''

So I would suggest my friends go to the bargaining table with the United States Senate and with the President of the United States and see if they can actually work with the other bodies and help us come to some resolution, the differences between the two.

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

Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from the State of Washington (Mr. Newhouse), my good friend and former member of the Rules Committee.

Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Meuser), my good friend and a new member of this body.

Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Florida

(Mr. Rutherford), my very good friend and former law enforcement professional and sheriff.

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

I wish to notify the House, Madam Speaker, that if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule that will bring up the appropriations package the House passed in December, including full funding for the government through February 8, $7.8 billion for disaster relief, and $5.7 billion for border security.

Madam Speaker, that is a bill that the Senate will actually take up and pass. That is a bill that the President has said he will actually sign.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of the 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 such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, I thank my friend again for the time; I thank him for participating in the debate; and I congratulate him on being close to finishing his first rule.

Madam Speaker, in closing, I want to respond to a couple of things that my good friend said. First of all, he said he brought ``their'' bills to the floor, meaning our bills, I presume. He didn't bring our bills to the floor. He brought Senate bills to the floor.

Actually, those bills are nothing like the bills that the House had passed and, in many cases, are quite inferior to the product that had been jointly compromised between the two bodies.

Just speaking from something I know very well, which is Indian healthcare, the bill that he presented to us had absolutely no House input from either Republican or Democratic Members, had $135 million less for the Indian Healthcare Service, had $26 million less for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. I can go on and on and on.

The bills actually that, frankly, we were pretty close to having conferenced and done were, honestly, quite superior. They had many Democratic and Republican suggestions in them and many Member suggestions. If we passed what the majority is presenting, all we are doing is just turning over the appropriations function of the United States House of Representatives to the United States Senate and saying: We don't really need a House; anything you guys do is fine.

That is the product that has been presented to us. It is not acceptable to our side to simply throw away House prerogatives and positions.

Again, my friends have the majority here. We respect that. They will almost certainly prevail on the rule and on the vote, and I certainly accept that. That is the way this institution works.

But what he fails to tell me is whether or not he is ever going to get the Senate to ever pick this up. So far, he hasn't. This is the fourth attempt. We will see another one tomorrow. Whether or not he can actually produce legislation that the President of the United States will sign, so far, he hasn't. And they are the majority.

Under our constitutional system, passing legislation through the House is simply not sufficient. It has to be able to pass the United States Senate. It has to be signed by the President of the United States, unless two-thirds of the House and the Senate are willing to override his veto. Frankly, I don't think my friends have two-thirds majority here either, and they certainly don't in the United States Senate.

So I have a modest proposal. Probably the people who are producing this legislation here should sit down and talk with the United States Senate ahead of time and say: Can we split the difference here? Can we find some common ground?

Actually, the President did that in December, literally sent the Vice President to the negotiation to say: We would like to get $5 billion. We think that is the appropriate amount. But what if we settle at $2\1/ 2\ billion? The answer was no.

That is a normal, reasonable compromise. It is called splitting the difference. The President tried to do that.

I do commend my friends, because I know they are serious about wanting to reopen the government. We would love to work with them on getting that done, but it is going to entail some compromise.

Frankly, over the next 2 years, if my friends want to get anything done, and I know they do, they will have to compromise.

Been there before. We were in a situation where we were the majority in the United States House of Representatives with a Democratic majority in the Senate and a Democratic President. It took, I will say, some of my colleagues a long time to figure out that we had to have help in the United States Senate, and we had to have a President that would sign bills, and we were going to have to compromise on some things that we thought were fundamentally very, very important.

I suggest my friends learn from our experience in that regard.

Again, I respect the effort to reopen the government. I would love to participate in it. This bill, quite frankly, could have been something that I think would have started us down the right direction, and it almost was.

We had Members on both sides of the aisle that very much wanted to vote for this legislation. Frankly, and again, I commend the chairman of our committee, Mr. McGovern. He set up a process so that we could provide amendments, Member input. We had full consideration of those amendments in the Rules Committee. I would have liked a few more to be made in order, but I can't complain about the ones that were. I think it was a fair process.

Only the Democratic leadership's insistence on putting something that they knew the Senate would not pick up, and they knew the President would not sign, stopped that disaster relief bill. That is all. That literally could have been passed out of here today, could have been passed immediately by the United States Senate, would have been signed by the President, would have gotten us out of this cycle at least a little bit, would have shown us what functioning government actually looks like. But I guess the theater of the moment is more important than actually getting disaster relief to people, so we will go through this exercise yet again.

Madam Speaker, in closing, I urge opposition to this rule and the underlying measure. The majority has taken a noncontroversial, bipartisan, supplemental disaster appropriations bill and has turned it into a political football. Today's bill was originally intended to provide relief for disaster victims, and, instead, the majority has turned it into yet another continuing resolution that is not going anywhere.

This is the same continuing resolution that the House previously passed and that the Senate refused to consider. Whether the Democrats like it or not, they need to engage with Republicans on border security. Instead, they are now bringing up their fourth attempt to pass a government funding bill without border security. And this time, they are using disaster victims as leverage to push their policies.

The majority would be better served to undertake serious negotiations with Republicans over the need for border security and find a way out of the crisis of their making, rather than pushing the exact same bill again.

Madam Speaker, I urge a ``no'' on the previous question, ``no'' on the underlying measure, 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 not only for yielding, but for his distinguished 4 years as the chairman of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Subcommittee. I want to congratulate my good friend, the former ranking member and now the new chairman of the House Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Subcommittee as well. They worked very well together over the last several years. I know they will continue to work well together, and I know that we will continue to do good work on that committee.

Mr. Speaker, to quote the great baseball player and American philosopher, Yogi Berra: ``It's deja vu all over again.''

We considered this bill last week. The Senate told us at the time that if we sent it to them, they weren't going to take it up; and the President said, by the way: I am not going to sign it.

So what are we doing this week? We are sending the exact same bill. The Senate has told us the exact same thing, and the President has told us the exact same thing.

If anybody thinks this is accomplishing anything, it is not. Quite frankly, we should be embarrassed as Members of the House of Representatives to bring this bill to the floor.

There is not a single speaker in this Chamber today who had a single thing to do with anything in this bill--no appropriator, nobody-- totally a Senate product. So every speaker who gets up and talks about how important this is, literally, had nothing to do with writing it. As a matter of fact, in many cases, they had to give up things that they succeeded in getting into the House bill, both Democrats and Republicans.

I think, frankly, candidly, honestly, any of us would admit the House bill and the conference product that was finished is a much better bill than this. If we are going to bring something to the floor where we disagree, why don't we at least bring something we are proud to bring here.

Nobody should be proud to bring a bill that actually cuts what the House did in Indian healthcare by $135 million.

Nobody should be proud to bring a bill to the floor that cuts $26 billion out of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which we all agreed on, collectively, and were concessions, frankly, that we were going to win in the course of a conference.

So the bill is an embarrassment, and the outcome is going to be predictable. The Senate is not going to pick it up. The President would not sign it if it were sent to him.

So we have wasted an entire week. We have wasted the week because our friends can't sit down and split the difference, which, by the way, the President offered us in December. He asked for $5 billion. He told the negotiators: I will take $2.5 billion.

Splitting the difference is usually a definition of compromise. Instead, we hurtled on into a government shutdown that nobody in this Chamber wanted, but we have a standoff at the top level.

I don't think anybody particularly looks good in this: the President, the Senate, and certainly not the House. I would hope after we go through this charade--and it is a total charade--that we get back to work. If we are going to present something here, let's at least present something we are proud of and that we actually participated in writing.

Again, this will end another sad week in this Chamber. I urge the majority to get to work. Produce something that a Senate that is of the other party will pass and that a President will sign. If you don't, you are not governing.

To just be immovable and then point fingers as if other people are responsible, people who actually offered you a compromise to split the difference in December that would have avoided the entire shutdown, I think the responsibility is pretty clear as to who brought the government to a close, and that is our friends' failure to sit down and negotiate seriously with the United States Senate and with the President of the United States.

Mr. Speaker, I will oppose this measure and certainly will look forward to voting against it in the hope that we will eventually get back to the product that we wrote and produced and would actually serve the American people better than this piece of legislation.

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

Mr. Speaker, we are back again on appropriations, and we are back again on the exact same set of bills as before.

Last week, the House agreed, over Republican objections, to pass a set of appropriations bills, six of which would fund the relevant departments for a full year, the seventh of which would fund the Department of Homeland Security until February 8.

Today, not content with already having passed these bills once, my friends in the majority are again bringing up four individual bills that were part of the same package covering the Transportation and Housing and Urban Development bill, Financial Services and

general government bill, the Agriculture bill, and the Interior and Environment bill. Nothing substantive in these bills has changed. Indeed, nothing substantive has yet changed anywhere in this process:

The government remains partially shut down;

The Senate is refusing to pass the bills my Democratic Party colleagues are proposing;

The President is refusing to sign them; and

The majority is proposing to fix the problem by passing the exact same bills.

To quote the great Yogi Bera: ``It is deja vu all over again.''

While I commend my friends in the majority for trying to reopen the government, let's be clear about what they are proposing. The four bills under consideration here represent only the Senate-passed versions of the bills covering the fiscal year 2019 appropriations process. They represent no input at all from the House, no input at all from the Appropriations Committee, and no input at all from the joint House and Senate conference committees that were appointed to iron out the differences between these bills and their House counterparts.

In essence, the Democrats' only plan is for the House to swallow the Senate's original bills, abrogate our authority and responsibility as a coequal House of Congress, and declare victory. What is more surprising is that my friends now expect that having tried this same thing before, they will now get a different result.

To be clear, last week, when the House passed these exact same bills, the Senate made it known these bills would not come to the floor; and even if they did, the President has made it known that he would not sign them. I don't know what they think is so different about this week over last to make my friends think that all they need to do is to pass them again and, magically, the Senate will pass these bills and the President will sign them.

Perhaps even more surprising, the majority now wishes to bring these four bills forward under a closed rule, with no opportunity for the House to amend them and no opportunity for Members to weigh in. As a member of the Appropriations Committee, I understand how hard it is to have a full process on appropriations bills. But it is, indeed, possible, even when funding bills carry over into a new year or even a new majority.

In 2011, right after Republicans took majority control of the House, we considered a bill on the floor to fund the entire Federal Government. We did it under an open rule, with only a preprinting requirement. When we considered that bill on the floor, 162 amendments were offered from both sides of the aisle, and we had a grand total of 66 hours of floor debate on the bill, stretching out over 5 days.

Given the amount of time we used in 2011, I fully understand what an undertaking that would be. But unless the majority believes that these bills will quickly pass the Senate and quickly be signed by the President into law, then there is plenty of time for thoughtful debate and plenty of time to hear ideas from all Members of this House. Instead, the majority has chosen to push forward with an appropriations strategy that they know cannot succeed.

Mr. Speaker, the House should be taking steps this week to negotiate with the Senate and the President to end this shutdown. That means that, whether the majority likes it or not, they need to engage on border security.

The American people have told us time and time again that they want action on border security. The solution they are proposing today does nothing on that front.

Even if we pass these bills today, and even if they, ultimately, became law, the border would remain unsecured and the Department of Homeland Security would remain shut down. Nothing the House will do in this package will change that essential fact, and nothing in this package is a step on the road to changing that essential fact.

Mr. Speaker, it wasn't always this way. In 2006, 64 Democrats joined Republicans in passing the Secure Fence Act, which President Bush signed into law. Those 64 Democrats then included 13 current Members now and one additional Member who has since gone on to the Senate. Even liberal lions of the House, like our good friend and former colleague Congressman Barney Frank, joined the Republicans in voting for border security. I am unclear what has changed, from then until now, that would cause the entire majority Caucus to refuse to work with Republicans on border security when so many did so back in 2006.

In closing, Mr. Speaker, while I agree with the good intentions of the majority in seeking to fund the government, their method of doing so is in no way sufficient. Instead of abrogating our own authority, embracing a Senate-only product that the President will not sign, and kicking the can down the road, we should be taking concrete steps to reopen the government, secure the border, and move on to the many important needs of the American people.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume to make a couple of quick points, and then yield to another speaker, if I may.

Mr. Speaker, I want to disagree a little bit with my friend's memory on

what the last Congress did and did not do. Quite frankly, it was the most successful Congress in enacting appropriations bills in 22 years, 75 percent of them across the floor on time. We will see how good the record is as my friends are in the majority. And I am going to work with my friends on that, because I know it is the intention to do that, but it is no easy task.

To say that the last Congress didn't act when, in fact, it put a bill over in the United States Senate that the President would have signed is simply untrue. To suggest that Republicans controlled the Senate in this process, when a Democratic minority in the Senate kept us from getting to 60 votes, there is where your real obstruction was. Quite frankly, this problem would have never happened if the Senate chose to operate the way we do, by simple majority vote, and the President would have had a bill.

One last point, if I may. The President did offer to negotiate. The reports in the media are that he actually offered to reduce his request by half. That is normally, around here, considered a real negotiation: Let's split the difference and find the common ground.

My friends didn't choose to take up that offer. So the idea that they have somehow been innocent bystanders when they were in the minority, in a process out of control, simply misstates reality.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from the great State of Washington (Mr. Newhouse), my good friend, a member of the Appropriations Committee, and a former member of the Rules Committee.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume, and then I will yield to my good friend from Michigan.

Mr. Speaker, I will be happy to take up the challenge. I would be happy to meet with anybody to reopen the government. I would be happy if we had a product in front of us, which we did have in late December that had actually been agreed to by the United States Senate.

Why my friends chose to just simply take the Senate bills--which I will assure you, are not nearly as good as the conference bills between the two bodies--and throw all of the work out that this body did over a year, the appropriators, and the rest of the authorizing committees that play a supplemental role in this, I will never know.

It would have been a lot harder to vote ``no'' than just simply sit here and strip 435 Members of their ability to legislate, which is effectively what my friends in the majority have chosen to do.

I hope going forward we can do exactly what my friend suggests. I would also suggest that the people he mentioned go meet with the President of the United States. He was here all December, happy to negotiate with anybody. He wasn't in Hawaii. He was here. He offered to split the difference. That was an unacceptable offer to my friends.

So if you want to negotiate, negotiate with the President. If you want to do something with the Senate, I would expect that you should probably sit down and talk to them because you are sending them something this week that you sent last week, that they didn't take up then, and they are not going to take up now.

So whenever we want to negotiate, I would be thrilled to be at the table, but I haven't seen any evidence that my friends do want to negotiate. Instead, they simply want to dictate. They simply want to dictate the outcome and achieve what they think is a political victory, and that is coming at the expense of the American people. Real negotiations mean sitting down and settling differences. It doesn't mean shooting paper back and forth across the rotunda.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Mitchell), my good friend and a distinguished Member.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I would like to notify the body, if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to report modified open rules for each bill before us today: H.R. 264, H.R. 265, H.R. 266, and H.R. 267. The rule would include a preprinting requirement.

Mr. Speaker, the bills before us today are simply nothing more than Senate products. House Democrats would rather try to win political points against the Senate than allow this House to do its job. Again, the Senate hasn't indicated they will take up these measures, and the President has not agreed to sign these measures. There is time to do this the right way.

In 2011, right after Republicans took the majority control of the House, the government was operating under a continuing resolution, and we considered a bill on the floor to fund the entire Federal Government, and we did it under one open rule with just a preprinting requirement.

There were a total of 66 hours of floor debate from the afternoon of February 15, 2011, to the early hours of February 19, including one stretch of debate that lasted 42 hours.

I do understand what an enormous undertaking it would be, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't and can't take the time.

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, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, I was amused--and I actually mean this in very good spirit--when my friend mentioned how frequently he had been quoted in today's debate, and I have to say I consider my friend one of the great debaters in this Chamber, and I enjoy hearing him quoted on the floor of the House. So I accept that, and I hope the gentleman knows it was a compliment to him in many ways.

I also want to tell him--and I mean this very seriously--I take him at his word. I don't have any doubt my friend wants to operate differently than we have operated in the past and that he wants this institution to be more open to inclusion of various points of view and very sincere debate, and I pledge to my friend I will work with him in that endeavor.

Now, it is hard to resist pointing out the gentleman's first six bills have all been under closed rules. I suspect we will continue to point that out until we have an opportunity to say to my good friend-- and I think we will in the very near future--``Congratulations, you are following through on the things that you said.'' Again, I know my friend will do that at what he considers and the majority considers the appropriate time.

We have a lot of discussion, Mr. Speaker, about who did and didn't do their jobs in the last Congress. I would tell you, in my view, that the House did its job. It passed its bills. It sent to the Senate a product that the President would sign.

Mr. Speaker, I would tell you, you are doing your job here, as well, right now in the majority. You passed bills last week. You sent them over to the United States Senate.

In our case, the minority in the Senate blocked consideration of our bills. Had those bills been placed on the floor, we wouldn't be here today. They would have all passed. They had majority support in the Senate; they had a President willing to sign them; and they had already passed the House.

The only reason why we are here today is because the Democratic minority in the Senate manipulated the rules of the Senate in such a way that they could stop action. I suspect we all have had frustration with that as House Members in the past. I think we will again in the future.

I also want to reflect with my friends, and I draw this conclusion not so much out of their actions, but actions that my own party, from time to time, has committed, and I suspect I will say this to this Chamber many times: Pursuit of absolute victory in domestic political disputes is always a mistake. It always leaves a divided country and an embittered opponent, and you will rue the day when you pursue it. We have certainly done that, Mr. Speaker, on my side of the aisle.

I think that, to some degree, though, is what is going on today. Sooner or later--and we are going to live with a Republican Senate for the next 2 years and a Republican President for the next 2 years--my friends in the majority will have to decide whether they want to govern or debate, because that is all we are doing now.

Mr. Speaker, you are not the opposition party anymore. You are the majority party, and you have every right to pursue your agenda. But if you really want to govern, if you really want to get something done, in the end, you are going to have to work with the Republican Senate, and you are going to have to work with the Republican President.

We learned that hard reality when we were in the majority but dealing with a Democratic Senate and a Democratic President in 2011 through 2014. I hope my friends learn the lesson more quickly and become wiser than we were. I hope they benefit from our experience.

Mr. Speaker, in closing, I urge opposition to this rule and the underlying measure. The majority today is putting forward a closed rule to bring up four appropriations bills, each of which the House has already passed last week.

But, unfortunately, each of these bills is not a product of the House of Representatives. These bills are Senate products that do not reflect any House input. What is worse, they do not solve the fundamental problem of border security, and they do not represent a serious effort to reopen the government.

Since the Senate will not pass these bills and the President will not sign them, all we are accomplishing here today is spinning our wheels. The majority would be better served to undertake serious negotiations with the President and the Senate over the need for border security and to find a way out of the crisis of their own making rather than hoping that something will be different this time.

Mr. Speaker, I urge a ``no'' on the previous question, ``no'' on the underlying measure, and 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.

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

Madam Speaker, I want to begin by welcoming my good friend from Florida, first, to the Rules Committee, congratulate her on her first rule on the floor, and, finally, thank her quite sincerely for the distinguished service she rendered to our country when she was a member of the Cabinet for former President Clinton. It is wonderful to have the gentlewoman in the people's House.

Madam Speaker, we are here again, this time on the third and final title of the rules package for the 116th Congress. Title III authorizes the House to intervene, otherwise appear, or take any other steps in the case Texas v. United States, the lawsuit currently pending over the legality of the Affordable Care Act. In essence, if this passes, the House will be giving Speaker Pelosi the authority to intervene in this lawsuit on behalf of the entire House of Representatives.

I spoke briefly about this matter during the debate of the overall rules package last week, and I am sure my opposition to title III comes as no surprise to my friends on the other side of the aisle. Today, we have several speakers on our side from the Ways and Means Committee and the Energy and Commerce Committee, all of whom are deeply familiar with these issues and who will be able to tackle this in more detail. But for now, I will make a few key points.

First and foremost, it really isn't a surprise that the Democrats' poorly written healthcare law finds itself, once again, in legal trouble. The lawsuit this time arises from Texas where 20 States have filed suits on the grounds that, because there is no longer a tax penalty in place for failing to purchase health insurance under the individual mandate, and because there is no severability clause, the law itself is unconstitutional.

Last month, a district court judge in Texas agreed with the States and struck down the Affordable Care Act. That ruling has been stayed pending appeal.

This really should not have come as a surprise to the majority. At the time the Affordable Care Act was passed, many of us on the Republican side raised similar concerns. The act, as drafted, was too poorly written and too precariously balanced to stand up under its own weight.

The succeeding 9 years have caused those predictions to come to pass. Premiums have skyrocketed; insurers have fled the market; and for many Americans, the care they thought they were accessing under the Affordable Care Act has become anything but affordable.

Before Republicans acted last Congress to repeal the tax penalty for the individual mandate, literally millions of taxpayers made the decision to pay that penalty instead of buying health insurance they could not afford.

No matter what the outcome of this lawsuit will be, House Republicans have over and over again expressed their support for protections for those with preexisting conditions. Should the Texas decision be upheld, Republicans stand ready to work with Democrats to build an insurance system that protects people with preexisting conditions, increases transparency and choice, and lowers costs across the country.

That is exactly what we tried to do in the last Congress with the American Health Care Act, which we in the House proposed and passed as a solution to the broken law that is the Affordable Care Act. While it fell short in the Senate, its passage in the House clearly shows Republicans were ready to take steps to fix this broken system.

Rather than taking those steps today, Democrats are asking us to grant Speaker Pelosi a blank check to intervene in this lawsuit. Rather than allowing the States to continue to pursue this litigation, as is their right under the Constitution, Democrats want this House to intervene. But the majority has not said why intervention is necessary and why the House of Representatives must jump into this litigation against some of the States. Other States have already made the decision to intervene in support of the Affordable Care Act, rendering intervention by this House unnecessary.

At best, this proposal is a political exercise intended to allow the majority to reiterate their position on the Affordable Care Act. At worst, it is an attempt to pressure the courts. Either way, there is no real justification for doing what the majority wishes to do today.

Madam Speaker, the best way for the majority to protect Americans and to protect access to healthcare is to pass a constitutionally sound law that is well considered, well structured, and that will result in lower premiums and better access to health insurance. It is not what they have proposed here, which is a wasteful expenditure of taxpayer dollars to defend the indefensible.

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

Madam Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Texas (Mr. Burgess), a member of both the Rules Committee and the Energy and Commerce Committee, who also happens to be perhaps the foremost expert on the ACA in the House of Representatives.

Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Walden), my good friend, who is also the former chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and current ranking member.

Madam Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Roe), my good friend, the former chairman of the Veterans' Affairs Committee and now its current ranking member.

Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Wenstrup), my good friend, who not only provided lifesaving care to men and women in uniform in another career, but has actually done that in this body as well.

Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Texas (Mr. Arrington), my good friend.

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

Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from California (Mr. Nunes), my very good friend and former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and current ranking member of that committee.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume simply to make a quick point.

Actually, a vote against this provision is not a vote against preexisting conditions. It is a vote to limit the power of the Speaker--not to allow the Speaker to, on her own, decide whether she is going to intervene in law cases where, frankly, the intervention of this House isn't necessary. There are States litigating against the ACA. There are States litigating for the ACA. The idea that either side is unrepresented, I think, just doesn't bear serious scrutiny.

So, you know, not only is it an exercise in futility, in my opinion, it is an exercise that is totally unnecessary because we have already given the Speaker that power. The majority has already seen fit to do that. So why we are wasting time, money, and effort in this particular exercise eludes me.

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

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

Madam Speaker, to my good friend, the distinguished chairman of the Ways and Means, I think that offer is made quite sincerely, and I think it will be taken up by our side. We can work together in a bipartisan way to do exactly what the gentleman suggests.

In my opinion, this particular measure doesn't do that. It doesn't get us anywhere. It involves us in litigation unnecessarily, and it doesn't--by the way, for the second time, since we gave the Speaker this authority--I didn't vote for it, my friends did, that is their right, she has it, so why we are here on the floor today arguing about it mystifies me.

But, again, I know my friend's offer is made in good faith. I think it will be taken up in good faith. We should work together to do exactly what my friend suggests, that is, guarantee that every American is protected from preexisting conditions and able to go into the marketplace and buy insurance at a practical and reasonable rate that they can afford.

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

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

Madam Speaker, I am always delighted when my friends on the other side believe in judicial restraint, so it is nice to see we have some new converts in that.

I just make my basic point again, Madam Speaker. We are here for no particular reason debating something that we did last week, giving that power to the Speaker. I didn't agree with that vote. We had an opportunity last week, actually, to take up a Republican measure that would have legislatively guaranteed protections for preexisting. The majority chose not to do that. So I have just forced back on the conclusion that this is much more about political theater than it is about genuine substance.

I will say, though, in disagreeing with my good friend from New Jersey, I am not a lawyer. I don't pretend to be able to be an expert judge of the legal merits, but I do think I would not so blithely dismiss 20 State attorneys general and a court that ruled in their favor. It tells me that there are significant legal issues here and that those legal issues are going to be litigated in due course.

What mystifies me is why we need to be involved in it since there is high-powered law from different States with different points of view that are in this right now.

So, again, I see no particular reason to do this, although, with all due respect, my friends have already given the Speaker the power to do it, so I don't know why we need to do it a second time. But, again, I am here to represent my colleagues on my side of the aisle, and we will continue to do that.

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

Madam Speaker, let me advise my friend, I am prepared to close. I see she has additional speakers, so, for the moment, I will simply reserve the balance of my time.

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

Madam Speaker, actually, I know I informed the gentlewoman differently, but my good friend, Mr. Burgess, got so excited by the debate he came back and asked for an additional minute. So if I may, Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Burgess).

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

Madam Speaker, in closing, I urge opposition to this measure. The majority is asking the House of Representatives to authorize the Speaker to intervene in a lawsuit over the legality of the Affordable Care Act. Such an act is unnecessary and wasteful.

It should have been obvious to the majority that the Affordable Care Act was and is poorly written and precariously unbalanced as Republicans warned them at the time it was passed, and the intervening years have brought those predictions to come about. Premiums have skyrocketed. Insurers have fled the market. The American consumers have suffered as a result.

The appropriate solution is not to intervene in a lawsuit but, instead, to spend time working with Republicans to craft a replacement fix to this broken system. And moreover, it is certainly not to do today, in a rule, what we have already done in the same rule last week.

Madam Speaker, I have enjoyed the debate, but I am not exactly sure why we had it. Again, it is always worthwhile to spend time on the floor with my friends.

So, Madam Speaker, I urge a ``no'' on the previous question, ``no'' on the underlying measure, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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