Congressional Record, Volume 161 Issue 184 (Thursday, December 17, 2015)

[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 184 (Thursday, December 17, 2015)]
[House]
[Pages H9679-H9684]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

FUNDING BILL IS REFLECTION OF PRIORITIES

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 6, 2015, the gentlewoman from New Jersey (Mrs. Watson Coleman)
is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.

General Leave

Mrs. WATSON COLEMAN. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all
Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and
to include any extraneous material on the subject of my Special Order.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the
gentlewoman from New Jersey?
There was no objection.
Mrs. WATSON COLEMAN. Mr. Speaker, if a funding bill is a reflection
of priorities, then the omnibus that we are considering right now is
the clearest snapshot of what is wrong with our Nation.
We are talking about lifting a 40-year ban on the export of crude
oil, risking thousands of jobs and rising gas prices for working
families immediately after joining the most important climate agreement
ever created.

[[Page H9680]]

We are expected to swallow tiny increases to the programs working
families need and rely on while we make permanent tax cuts for
corporations and millionaires that we have not paid for. We are
expected to cheer the extension of vital programs, like the child tax
credit, when that credit has not been indexed to cover the rising costs
families face.
Mr. Speaker, these are games. After only a year in Congress, I am
tired of playing them. We like the word compromise. It implies that we
have done something good, that we have worked together.
If we pass this bill, we will have worked together to keep America
down for generations to come. We are patting ourselves on the back for
making it out of sequester, but the incremental spending increases in
this omnibus funding package do nothing to make up for the past 5 years
of cuts.
We have spent so much time digging ourselves deeper and deeper into a
funding hole that this omnibus seems like level ground. The fact is it
is not. It is far from it.
Regardless of how nice funding increases may sound, the foundations
of the American Dream are crumbling beneath our feet right now with
stagnant wages, struggling schools and a wealth gap that is only
getting bigger.
Working families need funding that supports their needs. They need a
Tax Code that promotes the middle class. They need tax credits and
funding for programs to help cover the outrageous cost of child care
and preschool education, costs that outstrip tuition at public colleges
in 31 of our 50 States. They need funding for higher education that
would allow them to graduate without debt.
They need more support for our highways, our bridges, our rail
systems, and broader infrastructure, the kinds of projects that create
good-paying jobs and make every community stronger, the kinds of
projects that cause people to feel confident that they have enough
security in their future and enough money in their pocket to spend some
of it and help to stimulate the economy and to create many, many, many
ancillary jobs and small business needs. They need a lot more than what
is being offered in this legislation.
A funding bill compromise should not compromise the needs of families
across the country who are relying on us to get this right. Any
extension of tax credit needs to be protected and uplift every
American. We can't afford to pass them without a plan for them.
Mr. Speaker, we have labored over many things in this House. We have
spent a long time talking about less important issues. But we are being
confronted right now with a humongous bill that has broad implications
on communities that are vulnerable for the next several generations. We
are asked to support a piece of legislation that does not seem to
address, from a proportionally equal perspective, those needs.
I want to take a moment now to just draw the House's attention to
this front page story in Politico. It headlines ``Congress' half-
trillion-dollar spending binge.''
What is fascinating about this is that my colleagues on the other
side of the aisle, the folks that are responsible for this spending
binge, are always the first to condemn government spending.
Now they want to spend billions of dollars on special interests
without supporting Pell grants, without supporting our Historically
Black Colleges and Universities, without supporting the programs that
combat poverty like WIC, without supporting the working families in
this country and supporting the needs that they have in order to
prosper.
Their prosperity helps guarantee the economy's prosperity because the
revenues generated from the things that we do to uplift our working
families gets put back into the economy and creates a better, fairer,
and larger economy.
The numbers in this omnibus lie. They sound like increases, but they
do nothing to pull us out of the rut that the past 5 years have left us
in. I know that there are many of my colleagues who feel this same way.
We look at the modest increases that may be associated with the
childcare tax credit. We look at modest increases that may be applied
to a housing program. We look at modest increases that may be applied
to several programs that, if there were sufficient revenue associated
with those programs, would indeed make a difference in these
communities.

{time} 1515

But the proportionality of priority in this omnibus bill and in our
effort today and tomorrow does not speak to our acknowledgment that it
is the majority of people, that it is the middle class, the working
class, and, yes, even the most vulnerable that we are leaving behind.
We can do better than that. Mr. Speaker, we need to do better than
that because we are better than that.
There are several glaring omissions in the omnibus bill, but none are
more illogical than our failure to support Puerto Rico. It is
unfathomable that we are unwilling to support a U.S. territory in a
financial meltdown just as we offer permanent tax breaks for
corporations and special interests who don't even need our help. We are
leaving the citizens of Puerto Rico woefully in need. This is not fair.
This is un-American. This is not who we are.
What is our responsibility to the citizens of Puerto Rico who won't
have access to good hospitals and medical care and Medicare? What about
the children, almost 56 percent, who live in poverty? What are we
saying to them? What we are saying in this bill that is before us this
day coming forth that is expected to move forward in this House is that
we are still only concerned with elevating the status, the well-being,
the security, and the happiness of those who already have a lion's
share of all of it.
Mr. Speaker, we are better than that. We have a responsibility to
speak up, protect, preserve, and ensure opportunity for all. That is
what we have been elected to do.
I want to take a moment to talk about the giveaway to oil companies
that we have in this omnibus. There is nothing positive about this for
working families. Ending the 40-year ban on crude oil risks our energy
security here at home. It threatens our environmental leadership, and
it takes away jobs from American workers.
We didn't pass legislation to create more access to oil in this
country simply to be able to provide wealthy companies the opportunity
to sell it abroad at a higher price, to bypass our refineries, to sell
crude oil in other countries and have them benefit from the jobs that
we fought to create through legislation that we passed. That is
illogical. That is counterintuitive to why we did what we did in the
first place. But yet it is in this bill.
Yet the glaring priority of the wealthy multinational corporations
versus the interests of the everyday working families is just in your
face--unacceptable, totally unacceptable. It serves no purpose that I
can identify other than to further appease another of the special
interest groups so dear to my colleagues on the other side of the
aisle, but it does nothing for the economy of the United States of
America and for the working families here. I guess I shouldn't be
surprised because it is not the first time, and I doubt that it will be
the last time.
Mr. Speaker, we can go on and on and on, and I will have additional
points that I would like to raise with regard to this omnibus bill, but
my friend, my colleague from the great State of New York, Congressman
Hakeem Jeffries, has come here to share his perspective on the impact
of this omnibus bill.
With that, I yield to my colleague.
Mr. JEFFRIES. I would like to thank the distinguished gentlewoman
from New Jersey (Mrs. Watson Coleman), from the Garden State, for her
tremendous leadership throughout the course of this year as it relates
to presiding over the Congressional Progressive Caucus' Special Order
hour, where week after week you have been able to illuminate for the
American people some of the challenges that we face here, trying to
enact policies that make sense for hardworking Americans, for working
families, for low-income folks, for the middle class, for seniors, for
the most vulnerable amongst us.
For just a moment, I wanted to reflect on one particular aspect of
the omnibus bill that I find troubling, and that is the failure to do
what is necessary to help put the people of Puerto Rico--United States
citizens--on a trajectory that will allow them to achieve some manner
of economic stability moving forward.

[[Page H9681]]

Now, I never practiced criminal law. I am a lawyer, attorney, but I
understand that there are sometimes crimes of commission--that is when
you affirmatively do something that is damaging--and then there are
crimes of omission. I think that the greatest omission as it relates to
this $1.1-plus trillion spending bill is the failure to do anything to
help deal with the economic crisis that exists right now in Puerto
Rico, a crisis, by the way, that, in large measure, has responsibility
right here in the United States Congress.
In 1996, we began a process of a 10-year phaseout of provisions in
the tax law that were put into place in order to help the economy of
Puerto Rico. That 10-year phaseout ended in 2006. Over that period, it
witnessed a dramatic disinvestment of corporate entities from the
island of Puerto Rico toward the mainland and other places. A massive
number of jobs were lost. That phaseout was completed in 2006. Puerto
Rico has been in a deep recession ever since.
Now, every other citizen of the United States of America who lives in
the 50 States here lives in a municipality that has bankruptcy
provisions available to it to help it restructure its debt when
necessary. The people of Puerto Rico, again as a result of a law
enacted here in this Chamber in 1984, have been denied bankruptcy
protection.
Fundamentally, all the people of Puerto Rico were asking for is to
make sure that those citizens who live on the island can be put in the
same place--not better--the same place as every other United States
citizen so that they can avail themselves of bankruptcy protection to
enable them to restructure their debt in a way that makes sense, that
allows them to pay their teachers, their police officers, their
firefighters, and others. And yet, when all that was done, all the acts
of commission, with a $1.1-plus trillion agreement, we couldn't help
the people of Puerto Rico by simply putting them in the same place
through restructuring provisions in a manner that would give them an
opportunity without a single cent of taxpayer expense to be in a better
place?
The people of Puerto Rico participate in the military, die in foreign
conflicts of the United States of America at a rate higher than those
in the 50 States, yet they are compensated, from a Medicaid
reimbursement standpoint, around 40 or 50 percent--if not more--less.
We don't have enough time to go through how policy set here in the
United States Congress has devastated the people of Puerto Rico
economically for the last few decades, but it does seem to me that we
could find some way to deal with this issue. We found a way to give
away billions and billions of dollars to big oil companies as it
relates to lifting the prohibition on the export of crude oil, but we
couldn't find a way to help the hardworking people of Puerto Rico.
Shame on us here in the United States Congress.
Lastly, it is my understanding that the Speaker, who I take to be a
man of his word, has said, well, we are going to deal with this issue
in the next 90 days. But here is the problem. On January 1, there is a
significant amount of money that Puerto Rico owes that it cannot pay,
so the island can't wait until March 31 for the Congress to try to work
this out. The promissory note is not good enough.

As an African American Member of Congress, I am reminded of the
speech that Dr. King gave in 1963 right outside these Halls on The
National Mall. He talked about the fact that the eloquent and
magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of
Independence were a glorious promissory note: We hold these truths to
be self-evident . . . all men are created equal . . . endowed by their
Creator . . . the ability to pursue life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness.
But century after century, decade after decade, that promissory note
essentially was handed over to the African American community as a
check stamped ``insufficient funds.'' I just can't, with all or any
degree of confidence, suggest that we could credibly say to the people
of Puerto Rico and to those individuals of Puerto Rican descent that I
represent back home in Brooklyn and in Queens that this so-called
promissory note issued is going to result in us taking any action 90-
plus days from now.
I just hope that there is a way for us to find some measure of
resolution before we ultimately vote on this omnibus bill to deal in
good faith with the people of Puerto Rico--United States citizens--who
deserve our attention.
Mrs. WATSON COLEMAN. My colleague has spoken so eloquently about the
impact of the omission of Puerto Rico in the omnibus bill and what it
does to the territory of Puerto Rico and the citizens that are there.
My colleague has spoken eloquently as to the proportionality questions
in this omnibus bill, in general, that would not only negatively impact
Puerto Rico but Puerto Rican and other citizens here in the United
States of America; whole communities, whole cohorts of working class
families.
Would my colleague just use a little bit of his time to talk about
that issue of fairness and proportionality that I have heard you so
eloquently speak about.
I yield to the gentleman from New York.
Mr. JEFFRIES. The big question I think that we face here, earlier
today we voted on a tax extender package, $600-plus billion. None of it
was paid for, at least as it relates to what was done today.
I think reasonable people understand that making these tax breaks
permanent in a way where they were not paid for ultimately is going to
blow a tremendous hole in the deficit. As we move forward, the people
who will pay for the tax cuts that were passed out of this House
earlier today, hundreds of billions of dollars--notwithstanding the
earned income tax credit and the child care tax credit that, of course,
many of us support--the people who will pay for it will be the poor,
the sick, the afflicted, working families, those who need assistance.
In good conscience, there is no way that I could support the tax
extender package and go back home to my community and say we have just
done a good thing.
As it relates to the omnibus, I think we all have to ask the
question, if the plus-up in the omnibus is somewhere in the
neighborhood of $31 billion or $32 billion in additional spending, yet
we understand that in the tax extender package hundreds of billions of
dollars were unpaid for over a 10-year period and, ultimately, someone
is going to pay the price for that--that is one of the reasons why we
got something like sequestration. We got jammed as a result of tax cuts
that were not paid for in 2001, tax cuts that were not paid for in
2003, a failed war in Iraq, a failed war in Afghanistan. None of that
was paid for. Ultimately we find ourselves in fiscal difficulty. Who
pays? The most vulnerable in America. That is how we got sequestration.

{time} 1530

So I am not convinced that we are not going to find ourselves in a
similar situation moving forward as a result of what was done with this
tax extender package today.
I am in the process of continuing to review the omnibus bill and
trying to weigh and balance the equities. I will tell you, though, that
the failure to do something for the people of Puerto Rico is greatly
troubling, because it doesn't cost the taxpayers anything, and the fact
that some of the programs of importance to urban America, like
Historically Black Colleges and Universities, may not have received the
resources that some of us think they deserve, and we have got concerns
as a result of some of the foreclosure prevention issues in some other
areas.
We are all going to have to take a look at the equities, but it is
clear that we should be able to do much better for the American people,
for those that we have come to Congress to represent, for those who
have disproportionately borne the burden of reckless and irresponsible
fiscal policies over the past decade or so. And let's just hope that we
can proceed to do things differently in a way that benefits those we
represent here in America.
So I thank the distinguished gentlewoman for the opportunity to speak
further on this issue. I also want to acknowledge my good friend, Keith
Ellison, who is a tremendous champion for working families all across
the country.
Mrs. WATSON COLEMAN. I appreciate that and I thank my colleague and
friend.

[[Page H9682]]

I appreciate your perspective on the proportionality issue. Who is
going to pay? We are going to pay. Who is going to pay when the bill
comes due? It is the working families. It is the most vulnerable. And
let us not get so excited about a $30 billion increase when we
recognize we have been under sequestration. What does that mean?
I thank the gentleman for sharing his time with us.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Ellison).
Mr. ELLISON. I thank the gentlewoman, who has done an awesome job
holding down the Progressive Special Order Hour. It has been to the
benefit of everyone who listens.
Mr. Speaker, it is important for all of us involved in this debate
and every American to understand a concept known as starve the beast.
It is a conservative concept. And what it really means--and I would
like everybody to be clear--is that the conservative wing in our
country wants to shrink the size of government so that a big
multinational oil company will never have to worry about an EPA
regulator because the government will have so little money, they won't
have an EPA regulator.
The starve-the-beast concept means that a big bank won't ever have to
worry about a bank regulator saying: Hey, Mr. Banker, you cannot do
that with the American people's money. You have to be fair; you have to
be proper and right with the people's money. Because we will shrink the
government to be so small and so weak that there won't ever be that
regulator who will say to the big banks: You cannot do that.
Starve the beast means that the largest private sector elements in
our country can escape the accountability the government provides
through the people who inspect the water, the people who inspect the
meat, the people who inspect the air quality. It is the people who
inspect all these things. And when the public interest runs afoul of
the private gain, the private gain will prevail because the public
won't have the wherewithal and the resources to say no, or you have to
readjust this, or you have to operate at a higher standard of quality,
or anything like that.
Now, how do you get this starve-the-beast strategy in play? Well, one
thing that you do is you have unpaid-for tax cuts. You get these tax
cuts in place and they are all good if you say: Isn't this great? Don't
you want to escape paying taxes? Who likes paying taxes? Nobody.
So people say: Okay. Good. We are going to get out of having to pay
taxes. How nice. But then you don't pay for them. Then what happens to
the budget? Well, you have got a big hole in the budget because the
revenue you were counting on is not there. Then you use the public
relations to say that raising taxes is just the worst thing anyone
could ever do at any time in their life. They say this three-letter
word of taxes--really, a four-letter word--and I will let your
imagination go from there--and then, because they have made raising
revenue utterly radioactive, all we can do is cut.
And so what do we do? Well, we cut education funding. We cut Meals on
Wheels. We cut the National Institutes of Health. We cut, cut, cut all
this stuff that ordinary citizens rely on until we get to the next
rounds of tax cuts.
By the way, when it comes to tax cuts and conservatives, if the
economy is doing really well, they need a tax cut. If it is doing
really bad, the solution to that is what? A tax cut. And if we are just
doing average, well, why not have a tax cut? It is almost always unpaid
for.
And if you look at it over time, there is this pattern of
irresponsible tax cuts, deficits, cuts to fix it, more tax cuts,
deficit, more cuts to fix it. Never do we raise the revenue we need in
order to meet the needs of our society.
Who gets hurt? Not the country club set. It is people who need the
government to function on their behalf or people who drink water every
day and who need an inspection of it, people who like to breathe clean
air, people who might want to eat some meat that has been inspected,
people suffering from a serious disease like Alzheimer's or Parkinson's
who might need the National Institutes of Health to put forth a grant
which will help.
So what does that all have to do with this discussion? Well, today,
we just passed a bill that gave $600-some billion worth of unpaid-for
tax cuts and made them permanent. We created a structural deficit that
is even worse.
Now, they are going to give it back a little bit. A little bit. We
give away $600 billion, they give us $30 billion, and voila, we are
supposed to be happy about that.
There is a concept known as Stockholm syndrome. Your captor holds you
in control. After they have held you a little while, they give you a
few little chits. Then they make you think that when they give you even
a little drop of water, they are so benevolent.
I will never forget that we never should have had sequester in the
first place. We never should have had sequester. We had a hostage-
taking situation where Republicans were literally threatening to
default and renege on the full faith and credit of the United States by
busting the debt ceiling. And if we did not give them back all kinds of
cuts and concessions, they would bust the debt ceiling.
So then we entered into this deal where we had some cuts in the
beginning, and then they said: We are going to set up a special
committee, three Republicans in the House, three Republicans in the
Senate, three Democrats in the House, three Democrats in the Senate.
And this committee was supposed to come up with some targeted cuts to
reduce the deficit, which they said then was just the worst thing in
the world, and that is to ever have a deficit.

Then they got in that committee and instead of upholding their pledge
to protect and defend the United States, they upheld their pledge to
not raise taxes to certain political figures in our landscape. The
whole committee failed. And it was contemplated that if this committee
cannot come up with targeted cuts, then there will be across-the-board
cuts on both sides, also known as sequester.
You know what? That committee really never had a chance. I wish we
would have known then that that committee was always a sucker deal,
because they were clinking the champagne glasses when that committee
failed because they knew it was going to be across-the-board cuts. They
said: It is going to be domestic discretionary, which you liberals
like, and there are going to be cuts to the military, which us
conservatives like--which is a sort of a gross overgeneralization and
not exactly accurate, but that was the rough approximation.
What we never accounted for is that in 2001, the U.S. military budget
was already about $290 billion. By the time we got to sequester, it was
about $700 billion. They could stand some cuts, but the programs that
the average citizen needed that were going to be ravaged could not.
And so that you know, no sooner than the sequester went into effect,
we had people saying: Oh, we can't do these military cuts. It can't
happen. It won't happen. They had their friends and their advocates,
even though they had been getting fat for years, but what about Meals
on Wheels and education funding and environmental protection? That was
attacked.
So what does that mean about today? What it means about today is
this: We have seen more taxes, more things given away. I definitely
think that some of the things that were made permanent today are good
tax treatments. I am for research and development. I am certainly for
child credit and the EITC. But they should be paid for, because if they
are not paid for, they are going to come out of another part of the
budget next year.
Oh, and by the way, how come tax extenders don't have to be paid for,
but anything that regular people need must be paid for? Why do we have
to find offsets for unemployment insurance, but not for things that Big
Business needs? It is utter hypocrisy.
I just want to tell you, Mr. Speaker, for the folks who are
listening, that there is a very important thing that Speaker John
Boehner said when the Republicans took over a few years ago. They came
out with this big, ugly budget to cut all these things that Americans
really rely on to prosper and grow, and we wouldn't pass their House
bill. And so Speaker Boehner said: If they won't take it one big loaf
at a time, they will take it one slice at

[[Page H9683]]

a time. And boy, if that promise has not been kept.
We absolutely have to turn around and say no to this starve-the-beast
philosophy. We have to turn it around and start meeting the needs of
the American people.
Taxes are the price we pay to live in a civilized society. If you
don't like taxes, move to Somalia, where you won't have to pay any.
Good luck. But in America, where we pay taxes that pay for schools,
that pay for more clean water, highways, police, and fire, we have got
to stop and stand against this false claim that there is something
wrong with taxation.
Let me just wrap up on one point. I know we have got to move on--we
have got other great speakers who I actually want to hear from myself--
but I want to make one very quick comment as I listen to my colleagues
and prepare to take my seat, and that is about one of the things we are
going to be dealing with tomorrow.
Now, we talk about this tax extender thing and the omnibus as if it
is two different things. It is actually one big thing. That is the
truth.
One of the elements of the omnibus tomorrow--which is pretty ugly--is
lifting the oil export ban on crude oil. According to the Energy
Information Administration, lifting the ban will increase oil industry
profits by more than $20 billion annually.
Now, the big companies that make all these extra profits, I think
they have their favorites in the House of Representatives. And not too
many of them sit over here. Probably a lot of them sit over there.
I will also say that it will cut refinery jobs, it will make us more
dependent upon foreign oil, and it will increase more fossil fuel. This
is absolutely the wrong thing. The only virtue of it is that a small,
tiny, select number of people are going to get $20 billion. And I am
disgusted by it.
By the oil industry's own expectations, this action will lead to more
than 7,600 additional wells being drilled each year and more fossil
fuels. According to the report from the Center for America Progress,
repealing the ban would result in an additional 515 metric tons of
carbon pollution each year, roughly equal to 108 million more passenger
cars or 135 coal-fired power plants. It will cost jobs in refineries.
It will do real damage to Americans. And yet this is what is on the
docket tomorrow.

{time} 1545

Now, are there good things on the docket tomorrow? Yes, there are. I
will leave it to other people to decide whether it is worth it to pass
a monstrosity like this.
So I will say: Always know that sometimes when you are in the game,
somebody else playing has an overall long-term strategy, and if you are
just playing minute to minute, you are going to be no match for them.
Understand starve the beast. Don't play the game.
Mrs. WATSON COLEMAN. I thank the gentleman very much for sharing his
wisdom with us and his perspective on those issues that we are
confronting in the very near future.
Mr. Speaker, could you tell me how much time I have left?
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Kelly of Mississippi). The gentlewoman
has 23 minutes remaining.
Mrs. WATSON COLEMAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield to my colleague from
Georgia (Mr. Johnson).
Mr. JOHNSON of Georgia. I thank the gentlewoman.
Today, we are just about ready to vote on an omnibus spending bill,
which is a part of the tax extender bill that we, or that some passed
today. I did not vote for it. I was opposed to the tax extender bill,
which added $622 billion to the Nation's long-term debt, unpaid for,
and largely tax cuts to the wealthy.
There are some features in the tax extenders bill that were
appealing. For instance, it enhanced the child tax credit. It made it
permanent, along with the enhanced earned income tax credit. Those are
important for middle class people, working people. Those are very
important, and we did the right thing on those.
But, unfortunately, they represented a small part of that $622
billion, two-thirds of which was a giveaway to the wealthy through
various tax loopholes. So Congress did that dirty deed today, and it
blew a hole in the Nation's long-term debt.
And you know what is going to happen? Because while you have reduced
the amount of resources that the Federal Government takes in to be able
to give back to the people who are governed, in the form of
transportation dollars, healthcare dollars, education dollars, national
security dollars, things that we have to pay for; in other words, you
can't have the freedoms that we enjoy and the prosperity that we all
enjoy, without having a government that lays down this infrastructure,
and that is what our tax receipts pay for.
We have been cutting Federal revenues since 1980. It has been almost
40 years we have been on an incessant cutting of government. We have
been spending a lot of money. We have been spending without paying for
it. That is what has created the debt, largely because of wars,
unfought wars, and tax cuts.
So while we have things to pay for, we haven't been paying for them
with tax moneys. We have been paying for them with the promise of
taking in tax moneys, and we continue to increase the debt by cutting
taxes.
So how do you then pay for the government that we need when you are
cutting these taxes? Well, we pay for this government every year when
we have these spending bills that come up, and they tend to always come
up at the end of the year, when everybody is ready to go home, and when
government is about to shut down because it hasn't been funded.
So what did we do this year? We did the same thing we did this year
that we did in previous years, and that is to wait till the last
minute, put together a 2,000-plus-page spending bill, and then we
spring it on Members of Congress in the dead of night, and give us 2
days, 2 full days to be able to read through it, and then vote on it.
We are scheduled to vote on it tomorrow.
It is not a great way of doing bills in this country, and that is
what we have been doing, giving away resources. We did that today.
Tomorrow we will pass this spending bill. They call it two bills, but
really it is one bill that has been split into two parts. The first
dirty deed was done today. The next dirty deed will be done tomorrow,
the spending bill.
Now, the spending bill has a lot of stuff in there that should not be
in there. Why should you have a spending bill, and then you turn around
and give away the Nation's resources, the Nation's oil? You're going to
remove a 40-year prohibition on the production of crude oil to be sent
overseas for refinement. You are going to remove that ban in a spending
bill that was unleashed on us just 2 days ago, 2,000 pages, a spending
bill.
But why are you giving a break to the oil industry? Why are we going
to vote to remove that ban on sending our precious oil offshore to be
refined, thus costing us good middle class jobs here in America?
Those refinery workers, they are going to lose their jobs because we
are going to allow the oil to be exported so that it can be refined in
a foreign nation by workers who are not paid commensurate to what we
are paid over here, and then we are going to import our own oil back
into our country at a higher price. It doesn't make sense, ladies and
gentlemen.
We need to be weaned from foreign oil, and we do that through
producing our own oil. But if we are going to then send our oil
overseas to be refined, then the only person, the only folks that are
getting rich off of that are the oil companies. They have been getting
rich for a long time, and we are giving them another opportunity to
make billions and billions of dollars more. It is the oil that belongs
to this country. And so it is wrong that we do that.
This is one of the features in our spending bill tomorrow, and I
disagree with that. I think most Americans probably do, and many
Members of Congress do also.
But, yet, there will be many who will pass this bill just simply to
get out of here and keep the government open, and that is not a great
way of doing business. That is not the way we should do business in
this country. America deserves better. The citizens deserve better.
Mrs. WATSON COLEMAN. I want to thank the gentleman from Georgia. I

[[Page H9684]]

appreciate his comments and thank him for sharing his wisdom and
experience with us.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to my classmate and colleague from Arizona (Mr.
Gallego).
Mr. GALLEGO. The omnibus has been billed as a compromise, but in
reality it is packed with Republican policy provisions that only
compromise our values.
The omnibus bill should be about funding the government, not about
pushing through policies that would never receive enough votes to pass
on their own. Asking us to support this bill is asking us to support
bad policy.
Among the legislation's many serious shortcomings is its failure to
address the mounting fiscal crisis in Puerto Rico.
Mr. Speaker, the people of Puerto Rico are American citizens. They
vote in our elections. They swear allegiance to our flag, they fight,
and they die in our wars. Yet, at a time when massive bills are coming
due, this Congress has turned its back on Puerto Rico.
Including a provision in the omnibus to allow Puerto Rico to
restructure its debt wouldn't cost the American taxpayer one penny. We
did not put that in. Every single State in this union can access the
protections afforded by chapter 9. Puerto Rico is unfairly denied this
ability. That is simply unfair, and our refusal to come to the island's
aid is un-American.
Mr. Speaker, the omnibus will also deal a blow to our efforts to save
our planet. Less than a week after reaching a historic climate change
pact in Paris, Republicans want to undo the progress made by giving Big
Oil a major victory, while leaving our brothers and sisters in Puerto
Rico behind.
Lifting the oil export ban on the heels of new studies warning
against the drastic rates of warming of lakes across the country and
around the world is a major blow to all efforts made in Paris.
According to the Energy Information Administration, lifting the ban
will increase gross profits of the oil industry by more than $20
billion annually, at the direct expense of America's wildlife and
natural resources. By the oil industry's own projections, lifting the
ban will result in more than 7,500 additional wells being drilled
annually, resulting in the degradation of more than one million square
acres of wildlife habitat.
Increasing drilling without protections for wildlife, and without
permanently reauthorizing the Land and Water Conservation Fund, takes
us backwards and will harm domestic jobs, while exacerbating the huge
challenges we currently face in preserving our outdoor heritage and
tackling climate change.
Mr. Speaker, Democrats are being asked to supply two-thirds of the
votes for this bill, but this agreement does not reflect even two-
thirds of our values. We should reject this bad deal for Americans.
Mrs. WATSON COLEMAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my
time.

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