[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 147 (Wednesday, September 28, 2016)]
[House]
[Pages H6070-H6072]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
PROVIDING FOR CONSIDERATION OF THE SENATE AMENDMENT TO THE BILL H.R.
5325, LEGISLATIVE BRANCH APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2017
Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call
up House Resolution 901 and ask for its immediate consideration.
The Clerk read the resolution, as follows:
H. Res. 901
Resolved, That upon adoption of this resolution it shall be
in order to take from the Speaker's table the bill (H.R.
5325) making appropriations for the Legislative Branch for
the fiscal year ending September 30, 2017, and for other
purposes, with the Senate amendment thereto, and to consider
in the House, without intervention of any point of order, a
motion offered by the chair of the Committee on
Appropriations or his designee that the House concur in the
Senate amendment. The Senate amendment and the motion shall
be considered as read. The motion shall be debatable for one
hour equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking
minority member of the Committee on Appropriations. The
previous question shall be considered as ordered on the
motion to adoption without intervening motion.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Oklahoma is recognized
for 1 hour.
Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the
customary 30 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Slaughter),
pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During
consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose
of debate only.
General Leave
Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have
5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the
gentleman from Oklahoma?
There was no objection.
Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, earlier today, the Rules Committee met and
reported a rule for consideration of the Senate amendment to H.R. 5325,
the Continuing Appropriations and Military Construction, Veterans
Affairs, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2017, and Zika
Response and Preparedness Act.
The rule makes in order a motion offered by the chair of the
Committee on Appropriations that the House concur in the Senate
amendment to H.R. 5325, with 60 minutes equally divided and controlled
by the chair and the ranking member of the Committee on Appropriations.
Mr. Speaker, as a member of the Appropriations Committee, I am always
disappointed when we are forced to consider continuing resolutions,
especially given the work this House has done in the appropriations
process this fiscal year.
For 2 years in a row, the House Appropriations Committee was able to
complete all 12 appropriations bills--and complete them before the
August recess. In addition, this House passed five appropriations
bills. Unfortunately, just as in years past, Senate Democrats prevented
consideration of many appropriations bills on the floor of that body.
This leads us to the unfortunate situation of having to put forward a
short-term CR to fund the government through December 9.
I hope that in the weeks and months ahead, the House, Senate, and the
President can come to an agreement on a path forward which ensures we
are not in this same position in December.
At the same time, I am pleased that this amendment also includes a
fully conferenced MILCON-VA bill. The MILCON-VA portion provides a 4
percent increase for the VA, additional resources to address the
disability claims backlog, and contains a number of important oversight
provisions to make certain our veterans receive the care that they
deserve.
The military construction portion provides $7.9 billion for military
family housing, Guard and Reserve facilities, and military bases both
in the United States and around the world. This ensures that we can
sustain quality housing for 1.3 million military families.
In addition, the MILCON-VA bill maintains a provision which prohibits
the closure of Guantanamo Bay and the construction of any facilities to
house detainees in the United States or its territories.
Importantly, Mr. Speaker, this amendment also provides a total of
$1.1 billion to fight Zika and offsets $400 million of this spending.
While I would have preferred offsetting the entire amount--and have
supported legislation to do just that--I believe this is a reasonable
compromise with both the Senate and the administration, both of whom
initially proposed no offsets at all.
When combined with funds already preprogramed by the administration
for Zika response activities, the total available resources to respond
to Zika equals $1.7 billion. This legislation provides the necessary
funds for the Centers for Disease Control, the National Institutes of
Health, the State Department, and USAID to develop vaccines and
diagnostic tests for mosquito control and, in addition, provides
healthcare resources to those areas experiencing the highest rates of
Zika transmission, all while maintaining the Hyde amendment
restrictions barring the use of taxpayer dollars for abortion services.
I am encouraged by the hard work of Chairman Rogers, Ranking Member
Lowey, and, of course, the Speaker, whose leadership has made all of
this possible. While a CR is not the ideal vehicle, the alternative of
a government shutdown is not what we have been sent here to Washington
to do.
Additionally, I am encouraged that we are finally returning to
regular order and passing full-year appropriations measures by the end
of the fiscal year. This is the first time since fiscal year 2006, when
we passed two bills by the end of the fiscal year, that we have passed
any individual appropriations bills through both Chambers of the United
States Congress by the September 30 deadline. While we have a long way
to go, this is a good first step that we can hopefully build upon next
year.
I urge support for the rule and the underlying legislation.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may
consume. I thank my colleague, the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Cole),
for yielding me the customary 30 minutes.
Mr. Speaker, the deadline for keeping the government running has been
staring us all in the face for months. Yet, the majority is using
martial law rule to rush the continuing resolution to the floor just 2
days before the weekend deadline. I wish we had spent the last 4 weeks
properly debating the bill under regular order.
Mr. Speaker, I am relieved that a reasonable compromise was reached
on a bipartisan amendment to the Water Resources Development Act that
will authorize funding for the people of Flint, Michigan, who have been
forced to drink and bathe in poisoned water for years. As the only
microbiologist in Congress, I can detail the many ways that this is a
major public health failure.
The children that have been impacted could suffer everything from
neurodevelopmental damage to behavioral changes to anemia to
hypertension. These are lifelong impacts, Mr. Speaker, along with a
statistically higher risk of incarceration.
This compromise is a positive step forward, but there is much more
work
[[Page H6071]]
to do at all levels of the government to get the resources needed to
help the people of Flint and the United States.
Thankfully, Mr. Speaker, the bill finally provides the resources to
tackle the Zika virus more than 7 months after President Obama
submitted his funding request to Congress to combat the spread of the
virus and accelerate research into finding a vaccine.
I am disappointed that this continues a poison pill that would
prevent the Securities and Exchange Commission from moving forward with
a rule requiring publicly traded companies to disclose their political
spending. This is so important. I think the fact that spending is out
of control, money comes in from everywhere and we don't know how much,
where it goes, and it is not a good thing for a democracy. I think it
is nothing more than an attempt to hide from the American people the
identities of the big corporate donors and probably people from all
over the world who are sending money in here in hidden ways to affect
our campaigns.
If sunlight is the best disinfectant, then we certainly should have
spread some sunlight on the SEC to be able to do what we had asked them
to do. We are very concerned that electoral spending is increasingly
being conducted in the dark.
It is also disappointing that, despite overwhelming bipartisan,
bicameral support, the continuing resolution fails to ensure that the
Export-Import Bank is able to fully help businesses and workers across
the country by restoring a board quorum to the bank.
This continuing resolution is going to avert a crisis in the short
term, but it is a clear demonstration of the failure of the majority to
do the most basic job: fund the government.
The majority has been so preoccupied with holding more than 60 votes
to repeal the Affordable Care Act and investigating nonexistent
scandals involving Planned Parenthood that they have allowed the body
to lurch from crisis to crisis instead of enacting long-term
appropriations. All the while, our infrastructure is crumbling and the
cost of college education and college loans and the interest on them,
which is crippling, is skyrocketing.
Mr. Speaker, CBS News has highlighted that it costs the taxpayers an
estimated $24 million a week to run the House of Representatives. It is
abundantly clear that, under this leadership, taxpayers aren't getting
their money's worth. Nonetheless, I am pleased to be here to be part of
passing this tonight to prevent the awful crisis of a shutdown, and I
think we have all learned lessons there.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I want to begin by congratulating my friend and thanking
her. I know she is committed to the resumption of regular order, and
she has worked that way tirelessly. That is a goal that we share with
our friends on the other side of the aisle.
I think it is worth pointing out that you can't have regular order in
the House if you don't have regular order in the Senate. The real
reason we are here is because the Senate has refused consistently to
take up appropriations bills that have been passed by this House.
At some point, you simply quit passing the bills because the Senate
isn't going to deal with you. Once we finally have a Senate that will
work in regular order--and I hope we do at the beginning of next
January--perhaps we can overcome this and get back to the system that I
know my friend from New York and I want to see on this floor: passing
each individual appropriations bill, doing so in a way that Members can
participate, conferences with our friends in the Senate, and then
moving forward.
As to Zika, I think it is worth pointing out that nothing has not
been done for lack of money. The reality is, when the administration
made its initial request for Zika funds, they immediately received a
letter from Chairman Rogers, from Subcommittee Chairman Granger on
State-Foreign Operations, and from myself, saying: Look, we know this
is an emergency. We agree with you. You have billions of dollars of
funds. Start spending that money--a bowl of money, so-called--and we
will replace that money.
Frankly, they have done that, to their credit. They set aside $600
million, not all of which has been spent, but that was the responsible
thing to do, as Congress studied and look at this problem.
Chairman Rogers actually led a codel that went to Brazil, Peru, and
some of the areas that have suffered from this disease, and we have
continued to work. We have twice put on this floor hundreds of millions
of dollars for Zika response that our friends on the other side didn't
see fit to vote for.
Zika didn't get funded because, frankly, our friends just simply
didn't want to pay for it. That has actually been the essence of the
dispute, in my opinion. It has not been about Zika. It has been about
whether or not you pay for Zika.
The original request from the administration was for $1.9 billion
over a 2-year period to come out of State-Foreign Operations and Labor-
HHS, two committees that, in that same period, have $425 billion to
spend. It is not hard to pay for $1.9 billion out of $425 billion.
Still, at the end of the day, my friend is absolutely correct: we are
here. We have not failed to do anything, but we do need to provide a
framework to go forward with guaranteed continuity. I am pleased and
proud this does that. Frankly, we reserve the option next fiscal year
to look at actually covering other parts of the unfunded spending on
Zika.
{time} 2045
In terms of the Export-Import Bank, I am going to agree with my
friend. I don't know that this was the appropriate vehicle, but I think
the point she makes is exactly right. We need to restore this
particular institution to full functioning. That has been a matter of
some partisan debate, but, actually, I agree with my friends. I support
the Export-Import Bank, and I think we need to re-establish it. And if
we could have done it in this bill, that would have been fine with me.
But I trust the people that negotiated the final product, and they
did try to remove a lot of issues that were controversial and divisive
so that, hopefully, we could get a substantial majority of both parties
to vote for continuing the government.
I want to end by saying that, again, I want to invite our friends in
the Senate to participate in regular order. In some ways they have done
that. I want to give them credit for last year and this year passing
all 12 appropriations bills at least through the full committee level.
But it was a decision by their leadership not to allow those bills to
come to the floor that actually gummed up the works. It is not anything
that was done in the House. Indeed, we didn't give up on that process
until it became abundantly clear that the Senate wasn't going to move.
We are now, however, at the last moment. My friend is correct in
that. I am pleased that we have negotiated together in good faith,
frankly, within this body, across the rotunda with the other body, and
with the administration, to arrive at something that will get us
through the election and give us the time when we return from the
election to sit down.
In that period of time, I want to commit to my friend that I will be
looking forward to working with her and her colleagues to make sure we
fully finish the appropriations process.
There are some in this body that don't want to do that. They want to
simply CR or do a continuing resolution to some point in the future
next year, dumping off the work of this Congress and this
administration on the next administration and the next Congress. That
would be a big mistake, in my opinion.
I know my friend feels exactly the same way, so I commit to her, I
will do everything I can on my side of the aisle--I know she will on
her side--to make sure that we continue the full appropriations
process, and we make sure fiscal year 2017 is funded.
The new administration, when it shows up, is going to have a lot to
do, whoever that person is. They are going to have to advance their
agenda. They are going to have to name the Cabinet members. They are
going to have to get them confirmed. They are going to have to write a
budget for FY18 by the middle of February. We will have a debt ceiling
crisis in March, and we
[[Page H6072]]
will have, frankly, the sequester to deal with which, like Halley's
Comet, will return on schedule on time. That is plenty for a new
President and a new Congress to do.
I would hope we do our job in the so-called lameduck session and make
sure that they don't have the additional task of picking up and doing
the work that this Congress and this President should have done on
their own. So my friend is right on that point.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may
consume.
Mr. Speaker, the House of Representatives has been in session for the
last 4 weeks, more than enough time to properly debate the continuing
resolution under regular order. But, instead, we have taken up a lot of
one-House bills that will never become law.
Mr. Speaker, you can't run the United States Government in 3-month
tranches. The majority should get back to focusing on the issues the
American people care about, like repairing our roads and bridges and
bringing down the cost of college education.
Also, let's end the brinksmanship that my colleague spoke of--and I
accept his offer to work and look forward to working with him--and the
temporary stopgap measures and the threats of a government shutdown
always hanging over us by getting back to enacting long-term
appropriations. That is something that I would be happy to join him in
because, frankly, what we have done now is no way to run our
government.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.
I want to begin by thanking my good friend for her debate and her
cooperation and her hard work in this exercise that has been genuinely
valuable and significant.
And I want to agree with her basic point. We need to do our business.
I wish it would have all been done by this point. It has extended into
the period after the election, but that is a place that I hope we
finish our business. I know my friend will be working to that end;
certainly, I will as well.
Mr. Speaker, passage of this legislation is critical to prevent a
government shutdown, to provide the necessary funds to address the Zika
virus, and to demonstrate to the American people that Congress can
actually govern.
While I would have much preferred considering 12 individual
appropriations bills, I am encouraged that at least one fully
conferenced bill is included in the legislation before us today. So I
want to urge my colleagues to support this rule and the underlying
legislation.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the
previous question on the resolution.
The previous question was ordered.
The resolution was agreed to.
A motion to reconsider was laid upon the table.
____________________