[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 128 (Tuesday, September 9, 2014)]
[House]
[Pages H7300-H7301]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         THE SEPTEMBER MESSAGE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Maryland (Mr. Hoyer) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, September should be a particularly important 
month for this House. It will be a month of contrasts. It will be a 
month in which the American people will be able to see that the 
Republican message to the American people is, ``You are on your own,'' 
while Democrats say, ``We are on your side.''
  All right. Well, what does that mean? The Republicans' announced 
agenda for this month ought to be no surprise to anyone who has been 
paying attention to the gridlock in Congress.

[[Page H7301]]

  Instead of focusing on the issues that matter--creating jobs, raising 
the minimum wage, fixing our broken immigration system--they are 
planning to reintroduce partisan messaging bills the House has already 
passed.
  So we are repeating what we have already done, as little as that may 
be.

                              {time}  1015

  Mr. Speaker, it appears as if the Republican House majority in the 
113th Congress will go out much as it came in: fixated on a single 
goal. The Republican chairman of the Rules Committee, Pete Sessions, 
summed up that goal late last year when he said--and I quote 
Congressman Sessions, Republican chairman of the Rules Committee: 
``Everything we do in this body should be about messaging to win back 
the Senate.'' Not about creating jobs, not about making America more 
secure, not about energy, not about the minimum wage, not about 
immigration reform, not about making sure that women get equal pay for 
equal work, not about any of those things. The chairman of the Rules 
Committee that controls how we consider legislation on this floor said 
it is about messaging so we can take back the Senate.
  All of us should remember that when Senator McConnell was asked a few 
years ago in the first term of the President of the United States, 
Barack Obama, he said, when asked, What is your major objective? his 
response was, To ensure that President Obama is a one-term President. 
Again, not about jobs, not about the economy, not about growing the 
middle class, not about making sure voting rights were secured, but 
making sure that President Obama only served one term. He failed in 
that objective, but the fact of the matter is they have stayed on that 
messaging and objective.
  Central to achieving that goal Republicans believe is to repeal or 
undermine the Affordable Care Act. And it comes without a shock to 
anyone that this month will also feature--as a matter of fact, this 
week--the 53rd vote to do just that.
  However, Mr. Speaker, the American people are obviously tired of 
partisan gridlock. All of us hear that and all of us on both sides of 
the aisle say we don't want partisan gridlock, but we have seen wasted 
opportunities in this House over and over again for Congress to make 
headway on the challenges that we face as a nation.
  Many are asking what happened to the promise Republicans made in 2010 
when, in their pledge to America, they wrote--and again I quote--in 
their pledge to America: a plan to create jobs, end economic 
uncertainty--by the way, they are the ones who threatened to default on 
the debt twice and who shut down the greatest government on the face of 
the Earth and the greatest country on the face of the Earth, shut down 
its government for 16 days at a cost of $24 billion. A plan, they said, 
to create jobs and economic certainty--it was uncertainty they 
created--and make America more competitive. They said that must be the 
first and most urgent domestic priority of our government.
  That is what they said in the pledge, but Chairman Sessions said, of 
course, messaging to take back the Senate was their major objective; 
therefore, that was a promise forgotten.
  Throughout September, House Democrats will be outlining how 
Republicans have failed to focus on the issues Americans care about and 
what Congress should be doing instead. House Democrats are ready to 
jump-start the middle class. That is not just a phrase.
  We know the middle class is shrinking, and we know to the extent the 
middle class is shrinking, America will not be doing as well. We need 
to expand the middle class, giving opportunities for those who are not 
in the middle class to climb ladders of opportunity to get into the 
middle class. We need to move our economy beyond recovery and into 
prosperity. We are for raising the minimum wage and ensuring equal pay 
for equal work. The overwhelming majority of Americans are for that.
  Poll after poll after poll shows that over 70 percent of America is 
for those two propositions. In my opinion, both have majority votes on 
this House floor. But Americans must be surprised that those two issues 
are not brought to this floor for action so that the people's House can 
speak.
  Now, there may be differences of opinion. Many Republicans may want 
to vote against the minimum wage, but America deserves to have a vote 
on that issue, and it has a right to have a vote on making sure that 
women get paid equally to what men get paid for the same job. They do 
that in the House of Representatives. Women are paid exactly what men 
are paid. That is right. That is what ought to happen.
  We need to fix our broken immigration system. My friend, Mr. Cantor, 
who is no longer with us, and I had colloquies, week after week after 
week, in which Mr. Cantor said, We understand the immigration system is 
broken. I said, We agree, it is broken. And we have done nothing to fix 
it.
  The Republicans have passed some five or six bills to fix it. They 
haven't brought their own bills to the floor so that the House could 
work its will. I don't believe that is the kind of Congress, Mr. 
Speaker, that America wants. We need to fix that system in a way that 
secures our border and brings millions out of the shadows.
  Mr. Speaker, we need to bring to the floor bipartisan Make It In 
America jobs bills designed to grow our manufacturing base, help our 
businesses to compete, and attract jobs that pay well and open doors of 
opportunity to workers and their families.
  The Republican-led committee passed out a bill sponsored by Mr. 
Lipinski almost unanimously--I think it was on a voice vote--a bill 
that passed in the last Congress with over 300 votes. I have been 
asking for the last 10 months that that bill be brought to the floor. 
All it says is America needs to have a playbook, a plan, a strategy, if 
you will, to grow our manufacturing sector, create more middle class 
jobs and compete with the rest of the world. We cannot get that bill to 
the floor. Mr. Speaker, I don't believe that is the kind of Congress 
America wants.
  These are the issues that the American people want Congress to focus 
on, not undoing the patient protections and cost savings that health 
care reform has brought, not rebranding an antiregulatory and 
antiworker platform as a jobs package that would add--Mr. Speaker, 
Americans are going to be astounded, legislation we are going to 
consider this week will add $560 billion to the debt. Now, we passed 
most of those bills and created a larger debt by more than that $560 
billion already, but we are going to do it again--not wasting 
taxpayers' money and time on partisan lawsuits and investigations, not 
giving the American people the least productive, and least open 
Congress in modern history.
  The pledge to America talked about transparency. We have had more 
closed rules in this Congress than any Congress in which I have served.
  Mr. Speaker, Americans want leaders who are on their side, not ones 
who have broken their promises. They need and deserve a people's House 
that is truly on their side.

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