[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 134 (Wednesday, October 2, 2013)]
[House]
[Pages H6167-H6169]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             REGULAR ORDER

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Rodney Davis of Illinois). Under the 
Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2013, the Chair recognizes the 
gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, it's a privilege and honor to be 
recognized to address you here on the floor of the United States House 
of Representatives.
  I have been listening to the debate first on television in my office 
and then here from the floor. I would like to first, Mr. Speaker, 
address this idea of ``regular order.'' I heard a description of 
regular order that doesn't fit the regular order that I understand from 
my time here in this Congress. Parts of it, yes, I agree with, but it's 
not an objective description of what regular order is.
  The argument we heard from the gentleman continually was: Go to 
conference on the budget. Go to conference on the budget. Does the 
gentleman forget that his party in the other Chamber had refused to 
even pass a budget for over 1,000 days and that, finally, we had to 
pass legislation here in the House of Representatives to force it on 
the Senate to require them to pass a budget in order for them to get 
their pay, and the political pressure got high enough that they went 
ahead and passed that? Then in order to comply, so the Senators could 
get paid, they passed a sham budget, and now we've got a sham argument 
that says: Go to conference on the budget.
  This isn't about the budget, Mr. Speaker. This debate is not about 
the budget. This is about appropriations. Regular order first for a 
budget, if you have one. And this is a new experience for the Members 
that are here on the floor. They have never served in this Congress 
actually when there was a budget in the Senate before.
  But if you have a budget, you do concur with the House and the 
Senate, and you live by that as a guideline for the authorizations and 
the appropriations so that we all come together and we live within the 
means that we've agreed to here.

                              {time}  2045

  But that doesn't happen very often in history. It generally happens 
when Republicans are in control of the House, the Senate and the White 
House. I can think of no other time that's happened.
  But take this budget discussion off the table, Mr. Speaker, because 
it's not relevant to what's going on here. We're in a government 
slowdown, and we're in a partial shutdown. And resolving and 
conferencing a budget isn't going to do a thing to solve this situation 
that we're in now.
  It's irrelevant to any functionality of this Congress that can 
address this government partial shutdown. It's only a straw man, a red 
herring to drag out here to divert the attention that needs to be 
focused on this situation we have

[[Page H6168]]

that has to do with, not the budget, but the appropriations process.
  The appropriations process, the regular order that I thought I was 
going to hear the gentleman describe for the benefit of you, Mr. 
Speaker, and anybody that might be listening in, is what really happens 
when a Congress functions right, and that is, our 12 appropriations 
subcommittees each pass their appropriation bill under the guidelines 
of the authorization that comes from the authorizing committees.
  Those appropriation bills come to the floor, one at a time, 12 of 
them, and then perhaps a supplemental that add up to 13. We bring them 
to the floor under regular order. We allow the gentleman that was 
describing this doo-dah description of regular order to us an 
opportunity to bring as many amendments as he would like. Any Member 
can do so.
  Fatigue sets in. Sometimes a unanimous consent agreement comes along. 
But every Member has an opportunity to weigh in on each of the 
components of the 12 different appropriations subcommittees, and then 
perhaps, as I said, a supplemental.
  The wisdom of the American people has, through this republican form 
of government which, by the way, is guaranteed to us in the United 
States Constitution, a republican form of government, which means a 
representative form of government.
  And our obligation, Mr. Speaker, to the constituents within our 
district, is our best effort and our best judgment. And part of that is 
to turn our ear and listen to our constituents and the people across 
this country, because, among the 316 million Americans, we have the 
best answers to everything.
  Sometimes we get some not-so-good answers to some things, but it's 
our job to sort those things out, generate some ideas of our own that 
are stimulated by those of our constituents and others, and each other, 
and produce the best product possible to direct the destiny of the 
United States of America in a trajectory that would make our Founding 
Fathers proud. That's the legitimate process.
  But the gentleman has forgotten, or maybe hasn't been confronted with 
or experienced a real regular order appropriations process, even though 
we've done five or six appropriations bills here on the floor of this 
House in this Congress.
  So when we talk about regular order, the regular order would already 
be, if the appropriations bills were received on the Senate side and 
acted upon, they would all be done in this House side by now. We've 
done them multiple times in the past.
  And here's what happens, Mr. Speaker. The appropriations bills, the 
12, maybe the 13, pass the floor of this House. They get sent over to 
the Senate, messaged according, as envisioned by the Constitution. They 
arrive on the majority leader's desk in the United States Senate, Harry 
Reid.
  This is just figuratively speaking, Mr. Speaker. Then they get put in 
his bottom desk drawer and they stack up in his bottom desk drawer. And 
this goes on from June, July, even part of August, September.
  We get down into September, they're usually all over there, and then 
Harry Reid will have them stacked up in his desk. And when you get to 
the end of the fiscal year--they don't move a thing. No appropriation 
bill comes back here. There's no opportunity for conference on a single 
one.
  They just simply go, they stack up in Harry Reid's desk drawer, Mr. 
Speaker. And a week or two, or less, between the time that the 
government would automatically shut down, because on September 30, at 
midnight, we know, most everybody in America by now, that our fiscal 
year runs out, and the spending authority expires on the discretionary 
spending.
  Harry Reid pulls those bills out of his desk drawer, a stack like 
that, sets them up, figuratively speaking again, Mr. Speaker, gets out 
his black marker and draws a line through any spending he doesn't like, 
which isn't much, and then he adds on all the spending he does like, 
which is plenty, and they pass it in the Senate in a stack of--as 
called now, this little word, Mr. Speaker--a continuing resolution, a 
continuing resolution, which is the stack of all the appropriation 
bills the Senate refused to do all year.
  They send it back over here to the House of Representatives, and they 
say, take it or leave it. Take it or leave it. We're not going to talk. 
We're not going to debate. We're not going to go into conference with 
you. We are not going to negotiate on the future and the destiny of 
America. It's take it or leave it, my way or the highway. That's what's 
been happening.
  But in a real process, each appropriations bill would either come 
back to us with the Senate's objections and amendments, we would have 
an opportunity to accept it as it is or reject it, and go to 
conference. We've found ways to solve that in a legitimate way many 
times in the past.
  But under this configuration where we have no--what built the 
leverage that got us to this point with this continuing resolution that 
we passed out of this House multiple times, by the way. Republicans in 
the majority in the House of Representatives have, multiple times, 
passed all of the appropriations in the form even of a continuing 
resolution that's necessary to fund the legitimate functions of 
government, at sequestration levels, minus the money to implement or 
enforce ObamaCare, which reflects the will of the people of the United 
States of America.
  That is our constitutional responsibility to do that, Mr. Speaker.
  I carry this Constitution around in my pocket, and I pull it out and 
I read it, sometimes several times a day. But this document is, when 
you read it carefully and you understand and put your mind in the 
thought process of our Founding Fathers and the folks that put this 
constitution together and ratified it, you'll understand that these 
negotiations between the two branches of government, article I, the 
legislative, and article II, the executive branch of government, these 
negotiations are expected to take place.
  There is an expectation that--first of all, it says here in article I 
that we shall, that Congress, and the House of Representatives, shall 
move legislation through the House, through the Senate, concur on that 
legislation, message it to the President.
  If he should disagree, he has an obligation then to veto that 
legislation and return it to the Congress--this is important, Mr. 
Speaker--with his objections.
  The President is constitutionally obligated to return any legislation 
that he vetoes to the Congress with his objections. Our Founding 
Fathers decided you can't have a President making you play pin the tail 
on the donkey. He's going to have to write down the reasons he objects 
to legislation, so if the Congress is considering concurring with the 
President, we can accept his recommendations. And if we disagree, we'll 
be able to identify our disagreements. That is the very constitutional 
definition of negotiations themselves, Mr. Speaker.

  When there is an offer made, and then the other side of the equation 
produces a counteroffer, those who made the first offer can either 
accept the counteroffer, or they can produce another offer and move a 
little closer to the middle. This can happen one time, two, three, 
four, an infinite number of times if you had the time. That's between 
the House and the Senate, but also the Congress and the President of 
the United States.
  And what do we have with the President of the United States, Mr. 
Speaker?
  A President who, as far as I know, the first time in history, a 
President who's refused to negotiate with the United States Congress. 
This Constitution directs him to do so, at least when confronted with 
legislation that he has to choose whether he's going to veto it or 
whether he's going to sign it or he's going to allow it to be pocket-
vetoed after 10 legislative days.
  The Constitution directs the President to do so. And the President 
has said, I'm not negotiating with Congress. Unbelievable to me, Mr. 
Speaker, that he could take such a position that he'd refuse to 
negotiate with Congress.
  He's negotiating with the Syrians through the Russians. The President 
has opened up negotiations with the Iranians, whom we've not had 
dealings with since 1979. I don't know who on the planet the President 
will not negotiate with except the American people serving here in the 
United States Congress.

[[Page H6169]]

  Now, think how difficult it is to do business with somebody that 
won't talk to you. And I know they had a meeting today, Mr. Speaker. 
And the report that came out of that was they sat down, they talked, 
but they didn't negotiate. That's kind of what I expected, to tell you 
the truth, Mr. Speaker.
  So we have a dysfunction. We have a lot of demagoguery. We have a lot 
of hypocrisy. And I'm hearing it on the other side, and I heard a lot 
of it here tonight as they rolled out some of their practice buzz 
phrases.
  They said a series of ransom notes, Mr. Speaker. Ransom notes?
  Pull your Constitutions out and read it, guys. Excuse me, Mr. 
Speaker. That's my advice to them, should they be listening, that they 
should pull their Constitution out and read it. And they should 
understand that it's not a ransom note when you're working within your 
constitutional authority, in fact, constitutional directive.
  When you stepped down on the floor of this Congress at the beginning 
of the 113th Congress and you took an oath to uphold this Constitution, 
it wasn't to vacate your constitutional responsibilities or hand over 
your vote card to somebody else, or accept some kind of an idea that, 
because you disagree with the President, you should capitulate to his 
demands.
  How do you capitulate to a man's demands who won't talk to you?
  He talks to you through the press and sends out a message that says 
I'm not going to negotiate with Republicans. I'm not going to negotiate 
with people in Congress. I refuse to negotiate, and I'm not going to 
negotiate on the debt ceiling either.
  Well, we have this bill called ObamaCare, and ObamaCare is a piece of 
legislation that was pushed through here by hook, crook and legislative 
shenanigan. And there are those who say it's the law of the land; you 
must accept it, and you're obligated to fund it.
  Show me where in this Constitution you're obligated to fund something 
because a previous Congress, on a very partisan, narrow margin, passed 
the largest piece of socialized legislation in the history of the 
United States, a Federal takeover of our skin and everything inside it, 
the government and Federal takeover of our ability to make our 
decisions, as American people, on our future, on our health decisions, 
to dictate insurance policies, to dictate that people shall buy a 
product that the Federal Government either approves or produces. Never 
before in history has that happened.
  It was a manufacture of new taxes that President Obama said were not 
taxes. And John Roberts and the Supreme Court said, well, you know, 
they weren't taxes for the purposes of hearing this case, but they are 
taxes for the purposes of deciding the case.
  Then people will say, it's been found constitutional by the Supreme 
Court. Now you're obligated to fund it.
  And I say, no previous Congress can obligate a subsequent Congress. 
And this Congress cannot obligate the 114th Congress. We're in the 
113th, Mr. Speaker. This Congress cannot obligate the 114th Congress or 
any subsequent Congress.
  All we can do is put statutory language in place that is our best 
judgment at the time, that likely will influence the people that come 
behind us and cause them to stop and think it over. But it doesn't mean 
they can't come in and repeal anything that's been passed in the past. 
And it certainly doesn't mean we're obligated to fund it.
  And the House is here with a majority that was elected to repeal 
ObamaCare and a majority that was elected, I believe, to defund 
ObamaCare.
  I brought the amendment to defund ObamaCare for the first time on 
February 15 of 2011. My amendment passed. It was detached in the 
Senate. I'd like to have had it be part of the bill as it came through. 
I didn't get that done in the Rules Committee this time.
  But it happened here over the last week or two, the same thing I 
asked for then was approved by Rules this time and stuck with the bill 
when it went over to the Senate.
  And so now where we sit is this: the House has said we don't want a 
government shutdown. We don't want a government slowdown. What we want 
is a government that's funded in every aspect legitimately, with the 
exception of the funding to implement or enforce ObamaCare.
  That's our stand. If the American people reject that position, let 
them come to the polls and say so.
  So where we sit today, Mr. Speaker, is we have Members of Congress 
and their staff that are receiving phone calls that are ginned up by 
the other side, by the stacked language that we're seeing come here. 
And people are calling in and they're saying, you can't shut something 
down as big as the government. It would be a disaster.
  Well, it's Harry Reid and the President that have brought about this 
partial shutdown, a certain slowdown. It's Harry Reid and the 
President.
  But it doesn't look to me like it's a disaster. If it was a disaster, 
they wouldn't have to manufacture a crisis and borrow money from the 
Chinese to rent barricades to haul them down with a forklift and bring 
people back who have been furloughed already because of this government 
partial shutdown and ask them to take the barricades and build 
barricades around our memorials to our veterans, in particular, the 
World War II Memorial.
  They are borrowing money from China to rent barricades and bringing 
people off of furlough to put barricades up. And now, today, they're 
reinforcing barricades around the World War II Memorial and others, not 
just with yellow tape, caution tape and rented barricades, but now 
wiring them together, and they're bringing sandbags in and stacking 
sandbags up around the bases to better stabilize this, and bringing in 
welded wire mesh, wire that is another barrier for people.
  Why?
  These memorials have never been blockaded before. They're open 24/7, 
year-round. They're designed for people to come in, and they're 
designed for people to be able to go to the memorial at any time. They 
don't require guards. They don't require staffing. There's no money 
required to keep the memorials open.
  Most of them were built with private money from donations from the 
American people who want to honor our veterans, especially the World 
War II Memorial.
  To see those buses from Mississippi roll up, see those red-shirted 
veterans, between the age of 84 and 99, arrive and be able to look at 
that memorial from a distance but not be able to go into their 
memorial--
  A manufactured crisis. It would save money if the President does 
nothing but, instead, what we have is a President who has decided to 
commit, I believe, the most spiteful act in the history of the 
Commander in Chief in the United States of America.

                              {time}  2100

  To manufacture something in order to try to extract the maximum 
amount of pain by borrowing money to rent barricades to put up 
barriers, to put more people on to guard--especially our World War II 
Memorial--and to deny access to the memorial that's built to honor the 
World War II veterans, many of whom who have never been to Washington, 
D.C., before and have not seen their memorial before, and to say to 
them this one chance in your lifetime, your 90-plus years into this 
lifetime and your chance to come back again is pretty slim, to say 
you're never going to get to go in and experience this memorial because 
I want to send a message that I disagree with the decisions of the 
United States Congress, that is a huge political tantrum and a spiteful 
act, Mr. Speaker.
  I think the right thing is this: honor our veterans--those who fought 
in all wars, those who put uniforms on at all times. We must be there 
to open the gates for them every time that a bus pulls up.
  I thank and congratulate my colleagues who have stepped up to do so, 
Mr. Speaker, and I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________