[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.

                          ____________________