[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 10 (Wednesday, January 21, 2015)]
[House]
[Pages H467-H470]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
CONTRASTING VIEWS OF GOVERNMENT
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Grothman). Under the Speaker's announced
policy of January 6, 2015, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from
Florida (Mr. Jolly) for 30 minutes.
Mr. JOLLY. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to address the
House and to address the country this afternoon and to do so with
colleagues of mine from Alabama (Mr. Byrne) and from Illinois (Mr.
Davis) to draw a contrast between the view of government represented by
our side of the aisle and of that which we heard last night from our
President, a President who seemingly ignored the will of the people as
expressed by the ballot box in November and who, instead, doubled down
on an agenda that we believe on our side of the aisle is the wrong view
of government and the wrong direction for our Nation. So I rise with my
colleagues today to talk about just a few of the very substantive
points and to do so very constructively and to present why we have a
different view of government and why we think that is important.
I would start by suggesting this. If we think about what the
President said last night, in his words, the President declared from
the rostrum that no challenge poses a greater threat to future
generations than climate change. Now, I understand the sympathetic
position on climate change. I am from a coastal State, and, frankly, I
am a member of the Republican Party who believes that, indeed, the
climate is changing, but I do not believe that the greatest challenge
facing our future generations is that of climate change.
In fact, you can harken back to the words of Thomas Jefferson. He had
a very different opinion than our President had last night. He said
that public debt is the greatest of dangers for our Nation to fear. I
would suggest that Jefferson was right, that the greatest threat to our
future generations is actually economic security and domestic security.
I would like to speak for just a couple of moments about that and allow
my colleagues to talk about other portions of the President's remarks.
Let's first talk about the long-term threat to our economic
security--our national debt--a topic that was completely ignored in the
President's address to the Nation last night.
Understand the significance of where we sit historically when it
comes to the national debt. When this President took office, our
national debt was just over $10 trillion, meaning it had taken 220
years for our Republic--220 years--to accumulate just over $10 trillion
in debt, a number already far too high. In the 8 years of this
administration, an additional $10 trillion will be added under this
President's watch. When he leaves his office, our debt will be over $20
trillion.
Mr. Speaker, that is a threat to our national security. The greatest
threat, perhaps, to our national security, arguably, could be
unwatched, out-of-control spending and debt that ultimately collapses
our economic system and ensures that we are no longer the world's
greatest superpower. In fact, George Washington, himself, admonished
that we have a moral obligation to pay off our debts during the life of
the majority, during our lifetimes.
Rather than hearing from a President who doubled down on a very
progressive agenda and who suggested with the rare audacity, as he did,
that our Nation is fine in that conflicts and wars are over, in that
our economy has returned, in that we have faster job growth than
European nations--and yet the President suggested last night that he
wants to grow our government in the very same manner that these
European nations have today--and rather than tell us how to grow a
government we already can't afford, I would ask the President to
present a plan to pay for the government we already have.
The greatest threat to future generations is not climate change. It
is our economic security, and it is also our homeland security. Many on
this side of the aisle have grave reservations about the President's
current plan to combat the war against ISIS, or ISIL--against radical
extremists-terrorists who intend to bring harm to the United States.
That is a threat. That is a real threat.
The President called for something last night that I strongly agree
with. I think this body should have a robust debate about an
authorization to use military force. We owe it to the American people,
who sent us here, to represent them on this very critical issue
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of what is our national policy to protect our homeland, to protect
American lives.
In fact, what is the current plan to arm Syrian rebels, and what is
the likelihood that that will actually be successful when we have seen
a lack of success in areas like Iraq?
Despite the declarations of last night, I would challenge that we are
not as safe as, perhaps, the President suggested. From the Middle East,
to Africa, to Paris, to Yemen, to our very own border, what is that
plan?
House Republicans passed a border security bill that reflected the
will of the people last July, yet we heard nothing last night--not a
single comment--about how to secure our border. It is a sharp contrast.
We heard about negotiating with Iran. We heard about releasing
prisoners from GTMO. We heard nothing about securing our borders and
securing our homeland, so we have taken this time today to present a
constructive contrast between the President's view of government and
our view of government and what we believe are the right priorities of
our government.
I am pleased to be joined by my colleagues today, and I would yield
now to my colleague from Illinois (Mr. Rodney Davis).
Mr. RODNEY DAVIS of Illinois. Thank you to my good friend and
colleague from Florida, and thank you to my good friend and colleague
from Alabama for joining us, Mr. Byrne.
Mr. Speaker, this is a great opportunity to talk about what we heard
in this Chamber, just slightly less than 24 hours ago, from this
President, who is from my home State of Illinois. We heard a lot of
ideas and a lot of talk and a lot of promises, but if it is anything
like the State of the Union Addresses that I have had an opportunity to
sit on in this Chamber over the last 2 years, we are not going to see a
lot of action.
There was a lot of talk about the economy. The economy is getting
better. Frankly, it can't have gotten much worse when you compare it to
a few years ago. Of course, it is going to get better, but the reality
is there are still 8.7 million Americans who are out of work, and 7
million Americans are in part-time jobs but are looking for full-time
jobs.
{time} 1700
The President's solution to many of the issues that were brought up
was to tax more American families--to tax American families who have
been saving for their children's college education to pay for a
grandiose idea he has yet to give us the details on.
The President also talked about helping our heroes: our veterans.
This one is personal to me because just a few weeks ago, the day we got
sworn in for the 114th Congress, Mr. Speaker, we were able to
unanimously pass a bill called the Hire More Heroes Act, which I
sponsored. This wasn't an idea that came from Washington. It was an
idea that came from Illinois. Brad Lavite, the superintendent of the
Madison County, Illinois, Veterans Assistance Commission, came to me
during the last Congress and said, Why is it that veterans who are
getting their health care through TRICARE and through the Department of
Defense count towards the ObamaCare 50-employee limit in the employer
mandate?
I came here, took his idea, and garnered hundreds of cosponsors to
put this on the floor of the House. It passed in the last Congress, but
it got held up in the Senate. It passed unanimously in this Congress on
day one, and that bill should go through the Senate and get to the
President's desk. If he wants to help veterans get jobs, I hope the
President signs that immediately when it hits his desk, hopefully, in
no more than a few weeks.
These are the types of solutions that are bipartisan solutions that
the President told us he wanted to put forth, but he talked to us in a
manner that I didn't think was bipartisan at all. Most of his speech
talked about what he was going to do. I would have rather heard the
President talk about what we are going to do together because, frankly,
that is what my constituents in Illinois want us to do. They want us to
come here and govern together.
That is why I am so glad to be here and be a part of this Special
Order with my good friend, Mr. Jolly. Hopefully, we can begin a good
banter about discussing what our thoughts are on where America needs to
go to move forward and work with this President but do it in a way that
is a lot less confrontational than what we heard last night.
Mr. JOLLY. With that, I yield to a real leader in this institution, a
colleague of ours from the great State of Alabama, Mr. Bradley Byrne.
Mr. BYRNE. I thank the gentlemen from Florida and Illinois. Those
were eloquent words spoken from the heart, because I know both of these
gentleman mean everything they just said.
Last night was an interesting moment for me. One of the President's
big plays is this proposal regarding community colleges.
Let me tell you a little bit about myself. I am the first person in
my family to go to college. Both of my parents grew up during the
Depression. There wasn't any money for college, but I was privileged to
go to college. During the time that I went, my parents were not doing
well financially. Like very many other people, I was a financial aid
student.
We didn't have Pell grants back then. You got Federal student loans
and maybe a Federal student work-study job. Lots and lots of people in
my generation did that. I don't ever complain about that because that
is the best money I ever borrowed and the best work I ever did because
it gave me the opportunity to do what I have done in life. But it also
taught me how important it is to give people an opportunity for a real
education so that they can move up in their lives.
This May, the last of my four children will finish college. We have
had somebody in college in my family since 2003. I have been writing
those tuition checks, fees, et cetera. So I look at this also from the
point of view of someone who has had to be there writing those checks,
sending their young people to college. But I am also the former
chancellor of post-secondary education for the State of Alabama. It was
my job to be the CEO of Alabama's 2-year college system, the community
colleges for the State of Alabama. And so I bring a certain level of
experience and expertise to this issue that may be a little different
from others in this body.
When the President first proposed this, his office just gave us a
heads up. It didn't check and say, Do you think this is a good idea?
Given your background, do you think this is something we can do? He
said, This is what we're going to do.
Our first question we asked was, How much will it cost? The initial
answer we got from the White House was, We don't know how much it's
going to cost. Now that should cause us all to ask a question about how
serious this proposal is when, in the very first instance that they
decide that they are going to propose it, they can't even tell us how
much it costs. Even after they decided how much they think it is going
to cost--$60 billion--they couldn't tell us how they were going to pay
for it.
So it led me to ask this question: Is this a serious idea? Because,
you see, over a third of our community college students in America are
already on Federal Pell grants, which cover all--or virtually all--of
their tuition and fee costs when they go to community college. And for
the people that don't have the eligibility to get Pell grants, there
are a combination of other things that they can get.
My experience as somebody who ran a community college system was that
covering tuition and fees was usually not the real problem most
community college students face. Most of them face a more difficult
problem, and that is they are not adequately academically prepared or
they have other problems in their lives, whether it is from their homes
or jobs or whatever. It is hard for them to stay in college and stay up
with the work that they have got to do. And so they need a lot of extra
help. And the President doesn't talk about that.
Now here is the worst thing about this proposal. We heard a lot last
night from the President of the United States that he was all about the
middle class. Let me tell you one of the taxes that he is going to
raise that is going to pay for these proposals. He is going to tax 529
plans.
For people that don't know what those are, 529 plans are savings
accounts, essentially, that moms and
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dads and grandmoms and granddads put money in over time and they use
that money that they saved over time to put their young people through
college. And the good thing about that is while they pay taxes on the
money that they make before they put it into the plans, if, when they
take the money out of those plans, there has been some appreciation--it
has gone from being this much money to that much money--they don't have
to pay taxes on it.
It is an incentive for them. It is a way for middle class people to
save for college for their young people. It is the only way middle
class people in this country have a real savings plan for the young
people. And this President, who stood up right behind me last night and
talked about being for the middle class, wants to tax those middle
class savings plans and take them away from people. Twelve million
people use those plans in this country, 12 million people like my
parents, like my wife and me, and like many, many other people in
America. They shouldn't have their plans taxed.
So I say to my colleagues from Florida and Illinois, if you look at
just that one part of what he proposed, it is hard to say he was
serious. Because if he really cares about higher education in America,
he would think about the other needs of these community college
students. But most importantly, he would think about those 12 million
parents that are saving for their young people, middle class people
whom he is trying to take money away from with this proposed tax.
I think that sort of gives you a flavor of my appreciation of that
one part of what he said last night.
Mr. JOLLY. You bring much education experience as a layperson but
also somebody with very specific political convictions. The President
talked about free community college. And as an example, he used two
local areas that now provide it. Well, I think that is the point of
departure for our view of government.
If a local community decides that they want to provide education
through whatever tax levy that the residents there might support, that
is a great opportunity. But to suggest that somehow Washington, which
so often fails in orchestrating through the heavy hand of government a
new type of education economics, is going to work better than those two
communities that he cited last night is exactly where the view of
government between our side of the aisle and his begins to depart.
Mr. RODNEY DAVIS of Illinois. Will the gentleman yield?
Mr. JOLLY. I yield to the gentleman.
Mr. RODNEY DAVIS of Illinois. I would like to know how many community
colleges the administration contacted to talk about whether or not this
was a good idea. The example that I have heard since this idea was put
forth was that Tennessee is going to do it. Well, great for Tennessee,
because they are probably going to use their lottery funds, from what I
have read, to pay for it.
Let me give you an example in Illinois, where I live, the President's
home State. Unless we are going to get a brand new crop of lotto
players, if the lotto is going to fund it, then you know what? That
money would be robbed from our K through 12 system to create what is
tantamount to grades 13 and 14 in our community colleges, which may not
have the faculty or may not have the facilities to handle the influx--
and then to top it off by taxing savings plans that many middle class
Americans have been using to be able to send their children to college
at a time when the cost to go to any college is rising exponentially
much faster than the inflation rate.
I don't know if this is a conflict of interest or not because this is
just a proposal from the White House, but I have a 529 plan. We have
been saving for my three kids to go to college. And to be taxed now,
after investing since they were very young--my daughter is now 17--I
can tell you from the standpoint as a dad that I can empathize with
many families who aren't in the financial position that we are able to
be in because we are blessed enough to serve our districts in this
institution.
It is flabbergasting to me to be able to hear the President talk
about these great ideas. Frankly, I just don't know how many of us sat
in this room last night and believed that it was going to get beyond
the idea stage. And I don't know how much effort he is going to put in
to try and pass this plan, but I would urge our colleagues to take a
good, hard look at this and also never forget the possible impact it is
going to have on our 4-year institutions, both private and public. I
serve nine of those in my district in Illinois. What kind of impact is
it going to have on those institutions when you take a good percentage
of students that will now go, if his plan is implemented, to the
community colleges, which provide a great education?
I would love to hear more about what you think and the impact it
might have on the community college systems that you are so familiar
with, Mr. Byrne.
Mr. BYRNE. That is an important point because when you look at
education, there are different parts of it. Each part serves its own
special need. The 4-year colleges are different from the 2-year
colleges, and they are different from high schools, et cetera. So there
is a role that each of them play, but sometimes we start fuzzing them
together and we miss the importance of each one of them.
I think there will be some negative effects on 4-year colleges. I
already heard from some 4-year college people about that. They don't
want to pick on the 2-year colleges because they don't want to be seen
to do that, but they understand there could be some negative effects.
But the point you and the gentleman from Florida were making that is
even more important to this, these are mainly local and State
decisions. The Federal Government is inserting itself in things that
traditionally, under our Federal understanding of government, the
Federal Government didn't get involved in.
I talked to our colleagues in this House from the State of Tennessee,
Democrat and Republican, and said, What do you think about us taking
your Tennessee plan and nationalizing it? They said, We think it's a
bad idea. We are proud of our Tennessee plan. We think it's a good
plan. We're proud that our State is doing it.
It is one thing to talk about it from a State level--I understand
they have one in Chicago at the local level--but it is different when
you blow it up to be a national thing.
So the President wants to take this good idea from a single State or
a single city and blow it up into a national thing, and we are not
really stoked here to do that. We don't really understand how to do
that.
Here is what happens now: we send the money out. And what happens
after we send the money? Rules and regulations and mandates come
flowing down after it, and Washington starts telling Tennessee and
Illinois and Florida and Alabama how to run our colleges. And that, my
friends, is a very bad idea. I don't think anybody in higher education
wants the heavy hand of the Federal Government telling us how to run
our institutions of higher education.
Let me end on this one point. America is known as having the best
institutions of higher education in the world. And the reason we do is
because each one of our institutions is different from one another.
They specialize in who they are and they focus on quality. And if we
start robbing that from them by trying to stamp some one-size-fits-all
concept of higher education, which the President is trying to do right
now with this rating system he wants to put on higher education, then
we may start losing in an area in which we are the preeminent leader in
the world. And I don't think the people of Alabama sent me here to let
the Federal Government do that to the fine institutions of higher
education we have in the State of Alabama.
Mr. JOLLY. In our remaining time, I would like to revisit another
topic--it is one on which I think the solutions on our side of the
aisle reflect the will of the people that we saw at the ballot box in
November--and that is border security.
{time} 1715
We need to reclaim this issue, as conservatives. We need to redefine
this national conversation. The President likes to continually say that
if Congress would just send him a bill, then all would be okay, and it
is usually followed by suggesting that if we send a
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bill that we pass, he will veto it. What he means is we have to send
him his bill.
I just want to point out something because we do have solutions on
this side of this aisle, and we have acted responsibly on behalf of
that. In July, we passed a border security bill that put facilities
closer to the border to keep those who enter illegally closer to the
border.
We changed the policy to ``last in, first out,'' so if you get in,
you don't get to linger for years before you are returned if you don't
have a humanitarian claim that merits staying.
We also increased funding for judges, created tele-courtrooms so that
we could more expeditiously process those who come here illegally--and
rightfully so--and we should do so very responsibly. We are a loving
nation made better for immigration, but we should show everybody the
rule of law and how you responsibly immigrate here.
Mind you, we also passed a bill that provided for the health care of
those who come here and while they are detained here, but I want to
point out something very specific. In the coming weeks, this Congress
is going to offer another bill--because that one was never accepted by
the Senate or went to the President--to require operational control of
our border.
That is a great urgency, to have operational control of our border,
not to just address the traditional border security issue, but to
address what we know is a growing concern about our domestic and
homeland security.
We have seen the threats around the globe. Most certainly, that has
to be an area where we can reach agreement with the White House, and I
hope we can take up the President on his offer to put a bill on his
desk and ask him to sign it, just as he has pledged to do so.
Mr. RODNEY DAVIS of Illinois. Will the gentleman yield?
Mr. JOLLY. I yield to the gentleman from Illinois.
Mr. RODNEY DAVIS of Illinois. Thank you to the gentleman for
yielding, and you bring up a great point. This isn't just a border
security issue because of an immigration issue. This is a border
security issue because of a homeland security issue.
We have to make our border secure. We are going to have what our
vision for border security is in this institution pass now to the
Senate, and the President will get his wish. We will put a bill on his
desk. It may not be the bill he wants, but my message to the
administration--to the White House--is: come work with us.
In my first 2 years here, I just haven't seen that happen on a wide
variety of issues. It seems like every idea that we come up with in
this institution, even some that passed by huge bipartisan majorities,
they threaten a veto. Well, that is okay, but that is not conducive to
working together to find solutions, and that is what I think we are
here for.
I think we, on this side, there are many of us who are out here to
find solutions to the Nation's problems, not to create more problems,
and that is exactly the message I hope to send to the American people
tonight, that we are willing to work with the President on border
security, on education, on a wide variety of issues, but we also have
to have some response back, and that is what I think we are lacking.
Mr. BYRNE. Will the gentleman yield?
Mr. JOLLY. I yield to the gentleman from Alabama.
Mr. BYRNE. I am on the Armed Services Committee, and I look at border
security as national security.
Let me give you a story from a trip that several of us on the Armed
Services Committee took to the Middle East back in August and
September. We visited several countries over there. As you know, it is
a very dangerous part of the world, clearly.
One of the countries we went to is Morocco. Morocco, if you think
about where it is, should have lots of problems, but you don't really
hear much about Morocco having terrorist incidents. When we were over
there, we asked a lot of questions. How is that so?
It is because they take their border security very seriously. They
use a lot of the military aid that America provides to Morocco for
their border security, and they keep the bad guys out, and so you don't
hear in this country that is in some of the most troubled parts of the
world, you don't hear about the problems there because they control
their borders. They understand that their internal and national
security is dependent upon that.
We had two brothers, the Tsarnaev brothers, who grew up in Boston.
One of them was allowed to go back to where they were from and one of
the satellite countries from Russia--obviously was trained by
terrorists.
We allowed him to come back into this country, after we were warned
by the Russians where he had gone, and he and his brother tragically
ignited those bombs at the Boston Marathon, seriously wounding a lot of
people and killing some.
Well, what sort of a security situation do we have that we allowed
him back into this country? What sort of security situation do we have
today?
This is not just about the southern border; it is about the northern
border. It is about our security of the entire Nation, and if we will
start looking at border security as national security, which is the way
we on this side of the aisle understand this issue, then we can protect
the American people.
It definitely does take us working with the President because he runs
the Department of Homeland Security through his appointee to that
Secretary's position, and it is his policies through that Department
that determine whether or not we are going to be protected, and
protecting our borders is a part of protecting Americans from
international terrorism, including international Islamic terrorism.
Mr. JOLLY. Mr. Davis, any more comments this evening?
Mr. RODNEY DAVIS of Illinois. If the gentleman would inquire how much
time we have left.
Mr. JOLLY. Mr. Speaker, how much time is remaining?
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Florida has 3 minutes
remaining.
Mr. RODNEY DAVIS of Illinois. Will the gentleman yield?
Mr. JOLLY. I yield to the gentleman from Illinois.
Mr. RODNEY DAVIS of Illinois. I am just excited to be able to talk
about what happened at the State of the Union last night, our
perspective. In closing, it kind of frustrates me that we didn't see
real solutions to the exploding cost of higher education.
If the solution is what the President laid out, which is going to
actually put more of a burden on middle class families by taxing their
savings plans that they have been saving for--for sometimes decades--
that is a wrong approach to bringing down the cost of higher education
to making Pell grants go further.
The President also mentioned another point last night about equal
pay. Well, it would have been nice to have the President and the White
House actually do that in the White House, where women make an average
of 18 percent less than men, so it is not just enough to talk about it
here in this Chamber. Do it when you have control over the opportunity
to make things happen.
That is why I hope it is not just rhetoric on many issues, but I want
to see action.
Mr. JOLLY. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate this time. I hope what the
American people have seen and our colleagues have seen is a Congress
with solutions.
We will be passing through this House border security solutions, a
homeland security solution. Frankly, addressing the constitutional
overreach we saw from the President, we will be passing energy
independence solutions, education solutions, tax reform solutions. We
are committed to doing that on behalf of the American people.
I look forward to working with our colleagues, and frankly, we remain
hopeful that we will have the opportunity to work with the President on
this as well.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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