[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 6 (Friday, January 11, 2019)]
[House]
[Pages H505-H510]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
LEGISLATIVE PROGRAM
(Mr. SCALISE asked and was given permission to address the House for
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, I yield to my friend from Maryland (Mr.
Hoyer), who is the majority leader of the House, for our first official
colloquy.
Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. We have
reversed positions, of course. For a number of years now I have had the
privilege of having a colloquy with Mr. McCarthy who was then the
majority leader. So Mr. Scalise has now undertaken my role, a role
probably he didn't welcome, but I know that he will do well as minority
whip.
As majority leader I am still here doing the colloquy, and I am proud
to be doing it with Mr. Scalise who is an outstanding Member. I
congratulate him on his position and look forward to working with him
through the years toward trying to create agreement, consensus, and
action by the Congress on behalf of the American people.
Mr. Speaker, on Monday, the House will meet at noon for morning-hour
debate and 2 p.m. for legislative business with votes postponed until
6:30 p.m.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, the House will meet at 10 a.m. for morning-
hour debate and noon for legislative business.
On Thursday, the House will meet at 9 a.m. for legislative business
with last votes no later than 3 p.m.
We will consider several bills under suspension of the rules. The
complete list of suspensions, as is the natural order, will be
announced at the close of business today.
In addition, Mr. Speaker, we will consider H.R. 268 which is the
Disaster Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2019. Chairwoman Lowey
released this legislation last week. It will provide relief and
recovery assistance for Americans affected by recent hurricanes--some
of which were historic in their power and devastation--wildfires,
typhoons, and other natural disasters.
Mr. Speaker, we will also consider additional legislation related to
fiscal year 2019 appropriations.
We are on day 21 of the shutdown. The House Democrats will continue
to work so that it comes to an end as soon as possible.
Members will also be advised that additional legislative items are
possible. I might add to that, it is possible we will deal with one,
two, or three of the appropriation bills that haven't been passed, but
it is also quite possible that, hopefully, we will deal with the
balance of the appropriation bills which have not been enacted. We will
have to see what transpires over the next 24, 48, 72, or 96 hours.
Hopefully, we will be able to move forward to get our Federal employees
back to work.
Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Maryland. I
appreciate his kind remarks and would return those as well.
The gentleman is well-versed at this process and is a noble battler
in the debate of ideas. I look forward to having continued
conversations about, not only the areas where we may have some
differences, but how we can find common ground. The gentleman is very
good at working with both sides to find common ground, and, obviously,
right now we are in the middle of one of those differences that
hopefully can get resolved.
As we have been in these meetings at the White House with the other
leaders, both House and Senate, Republican and Democrat, the
unfortunate thing is that we have been at an impasse. The President,
through his Department of Homeland Security, has made a formal request
and a detailed request for the amount of money it will take to secure
our border; to properly give our agents--the people who are risking
their lives to keep our country safe--the tools they need. It requires
a lot of things. It might require more border patrol agents, more tools
and technology, but clearly also physical barriers. That seems to be
the area where we have had an impasse.
{time} 1230
I know that as the President put a formal offer on the table backed
up by the experts at the Department of Homeland Security for what it
will take to secure the border, up until this point, we haven't seen a
formal proposal response to counter that offer, if, in fact, the
gentleman's side does agree that we need to secure the border. The
President has made a formal request that came from our experts at the
Department of Homeland Security.
The only offer I have seen put on the table is the Speaker's offer,
and I am not even sure if it was serious, when she said she would
support $1. Now, I know the gentleman from Maryland would hopefully
recognize that $1 is not a serious counteroffer.
The President has had multiple meetings at the White House and has
continued to extend an invitation for whenever there is a serious
counteroffer that can be backed up with an explanation of how that can
actually secure our border, if, in fact, that is the objective of the
other side.
Can the gentleman from Maryland share with me when that counteroffer
will be made, when a formal, serious proposal to get our government
back open and secure our border will be put on the table?
Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman for his observations.
Of course, as the gentleman knows, we have and continue to be and are
today even more so concerned about the fact that the President of the
United States has taken hostage the Government of the United States and
shut it down. As a result, what we have asked for before we get into
serious negotiations is to let us open up the government; for, after
all, when we have border security being our focus, nobody that is
protecting the borders for the United States of America is getting
paid. The morale is low; the apprehension is high; and we believe very
strongly that the first step we ought to take is open up government.
Then, as the gentleman well knows, we have articulated on numerous
occasions--and I hope the gentleman believes we are honest. And when
the gentleman reviews the record of when we were in charge of the House
and the Senate, we made very substantial investments in border
security, as I think probably the gentleman knows.
Furthermore, we have been ready to support and offered the bills that
the Republicans have passed. And, in fact, I think the minority leader
in the Senate said that he would accept the number that the President
suggested, and
[[Page H506]]
we made some counteroffers. They were rejected.
In fact, Senator McConnell believed he had an agreement with the
President on keeping the government open. He sent us a bill to do just
that in the waning days of December, and as the minority whip well
knows, that bill was not taken up on the floor of this House.
In fact, a bill which had been pending for 11\1/2\ months in
committee first came to the floor with 10 days left in the year. That
bill included a number far above the number that the President
originally asked for and far above any number that had been discussed.
Although it passed the House, the House knew then, very well, that it
did not have the votes in the Senate to pass, and it did not pass. As a
result, the government shut down.
And we continue to be in a place, as we said at the White House, to
negotiate on border security to secure our borders, to protect our
people from those who would come across our borders to commit crimes,
protect against drugs being imported, protect against the trafficking
of human beings. We all share that view: Republicans and Democrats. The
issue is how we most effectively accomplish that objective.
Pending that, the government, as we took power--and it was our
responsibility--what we have done over the last 2 weeks is to pass,
essentially, your bills. I don't know how we can be much more
bipartisan than that than to pass your bills.
Mr. SCALISE. Reclaiming my time, those were not our bills. The House
had a negotiation going on with the Senate. The Senate, as the
gentleman knows, passed some bills--not all of the bills that were
brought to the House floor, but brought some bills that were different
from the House bills. As you know, when the Senate passes a bill and
the House has a different version, you go to conference committee. You
don't just say: ``We are going to take the Senate bill.''
Also, as you brought that bill to the floor, the Speaker, the
majority leader brought to the floor as part of that package a bill
that did not pass the Senate floor, a bill that would have reversed the
Mexico City policy. That change was dramatic because that would have
allowed taxpayer money to go to foreign government entities that
provide abortion.
It has been the policy of this country, since Ronald Reagan went to
Mexico to deliver that speech and create the Mexico City policy, that
we don't give taxpayer money to fund abortion. And I know that has gone
back and forth through different administrations.
This President has made it very clear that he will strictly enforce
the Mexico City policy. That bill on the floor would have reversed it.
That is not language that passed the Senate floor.
In addition to that, if you go back throughout these negotiations, at
the very beginning, the President has been talking about a crisis at
the border. The crisis at the border is very real. In our first meeting
with the leaders in the Situation Room at the White House, both the
Speaker and the minority leader of the Senate interrupted the Secretary
of Homeland Security every time she tried to go through this new crisis
that we are seeing.
It is not just the drugs, which are dramatic and we need to stop. It
is not just the human trafficking, which is dramatic and we need to
stop. It is not just the murders that are happening. There are murders
that happened in so many States.
In your State of Maryland, just recently, someone who is in this
country illegally from El Salvador was sentenced to life in prison
without parole in Montgomery County, Maryland, for the murder of
someone, and he had no remorse for his crime.
We just saw a police officer in California who was murdered by
someone who came back and forth through this country illegally multiple
times because we don't have physical barriers to secure our border.
So that presentation was interrupted, and we never got through the
full presentation; but ultimately, the Secretary of Homeland Security
has laid out why we have a crisis at the border, and it needs to be
resolved, and they went into a detailed breakdown of costs to secure
the border.
So at issue right here, now, is a difference in amount. If your side
truly does agree that we have to secure our border, which I have heard
the Speaker, the minority leader, and others say they need to secure
the border, yet they haven't been willing to agree to more than $1 in
the request that has been made by the administration to secure the
border.
So the real question is, at the heart of this debate, if we are all
for border security, we can talk about border security.
In fact, back in 2006, President Obama, when he was a Senator, talked
about the need for securing the border when he voted for the Fence Act.
The minority leader, Mr. Schumer, at the time voted for the Fence Act.
That language, the language--and you can call it whatever you like: a
fence, a wall, cement, steel slats. But ultimately, it is law, language
that allows what can and can't be built.
The language that Minority Leader Schumer at the time voted for in
2006 would have given the Department of Homeland Security many of the
tools they need in language, but not the money. And so now we are at a
point where, if it is all of a sudden he is against that kind of
physical structure that he was for in `06, he ought to explain why, and
so should others who have maybe changed their position.
But if the language in 2006 would give the Secretary of Homeland
Security the tools they need and the authority they need to actually
start securing the ports of the border that are between ports of
entry--we have ports of entry, and everybody knows where those are. And
we, by the way, stopped a lot of really bad people from coming into our
country at ports of entry. What we don't know is how many people come
through the areas where we have no ports of entry, where we have no
borders.
Everybody recognizes that you can't just stop people at the points of
entry and then have no protection in the hundreds of miles--we are
talking about over 500 miles of unprotected area of this country on the
southern border where there is a crisis that is growing every single
day.
And if we acknowledge that--now, I know the minority leader and the
Speaker went on TV the other night and said it is a fabricated crisis.
How could you call this a fabricated crisis when you see deaths, when
you see over 90 percent of the heroin that comes into this country and
kills Americans every single day is coming across our southern border.
That is not a fabricated crisis. Those are real serious things that are
happening, that are bad.
There are good people who come to this country. America is the
greatest country in the world for letting people in legally. We let
over a million people into our country legally every single year, and
it enriches our country. It is a legal process. And there are millions
of people waiting to come to this country the right way.
So while we recognize that greatness of our country, we also
recognize that there are people who are bad people who come into our
country every single day as well, and we need to have the tools to
secure our border so we can stop that.
So the real question is: How much money is the other side willing to
support to actually secure the border?
If the department that is tasked with keeping our country safe is
saying they need $5.7 billion, if you agree to a smaller number, if you
want to put on the table a smaller number--it is not $1, and let's at
least recognize that was an insult. So if it is not $1, then what is
the amount you will support and put on the table to start a real
negotiation to solve this crisis?
I yield to the gentleman.
Mr. HOYER. Mr. President, the Government of the United States
partially has been shut down. That is the issue here. We can have the
debate that the gentleman just discussed--not a word about opening up
the people's government, not a word about 800,000 people who are not
getting their salaries, not a word of the financial instability that he
is subjecting 800,000 people to, ``he'' being the President of the
United States. They are being held hostage for the ransom of doing what
they believe is the right thing to do on border security.
However, Mr. Hurd says--a Republican who has more border mileage on
[[Page H507]]
the border than any other congressional district in America--what the
President wants to do is not the right thing.
Senator Ron Johnson says a similar quote. Lindsey Graham said he
thought it was a bad investment. Now, he didn't say it yesterday or the
day before. He said it about a year ago.
Mr. SCALISE. Reclaiming my time, Lindsey Graham did say we need to
build the wall. Lindsey Graham has a different solution, I am sure,
than the gentleman from Maryland. So let's be clear.
And I was speaking to Senator Graham last night about this. He wants
to start building the wall. And clearly, your side has not been
willing.
And the President, by the way, in the meeting in the Oval Office, in
the Situation Room, 2 days ago looked at the Speaker directly and said:
Okay. We don't agree even on some of these other areas of government
that haven't been open, but if you will agree to work with me on the
wall, I will support another 30 days of keeping all government going,
even on the areas we disagree, but to open everything up and continue
negotiations on the wall. And the Speaker said no.
We could have everything open today, but the Speaker is the one who
is being held hostage by the far left elements of your party because
she is yet to agree to anything, not putting more than $1.
She said on TV last week she would support $1. That is an insult. And
I have yet to see, in any of the meetings I have been in, her
willingness to support more than that.
And so we could have everything opened today. That offer has been put
on the table. The President, himself, has said you can write the
definition of the wall. You can ban cement wall. The President has
already acknowledged he would be willing to support that. He would be
willing to support a lower number if you can justify how it secures the
border, but that offer has never been put on the table.
We could end this crisis today. Twenty-one days in is too long. And
there is a solution. But the solution includes, it is not going to be
your way or the highway. You can't say: ``No, we want everything or
nothing.'' You have got to be willing to put something on the table
that will secure the border of this country, or just say you are not
for border security. But you can't say you are for border security and
then not agree to more than $1.
I yield to the gentleman.
Mr. HOYER. The government is shut down. There is no excuse for that.
But the President wants his way, and he has taken 800,000 people
hostage, and the ransom he demands is his wall.
{time} 1245
Nancy Pelosi has nothing to do with shutting down this government. We
have passed bill after bill over the last 2 weeks to open up this
government.
If the minority whip thinks it is good for border security not to pay
people who are protecting the border, he and I differ.
Let me tell you what Mick Mulvaney said. Now, he wasn't there last
night, and I talked to Senator Graham last night. He made the statement
that I just reflected to you.
Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney said, in 2015--I understand it is
not when he is working for the President, who is paying his salary--
``To just say build the darn fence and have that be the end of an
immigration discussion is absurd and almost childish for someone
running for President to take that simplistic of a view.''
He said that on WRHI on 8/25/15. Look it up.
The government is shut down. If the minority whip will look at the
record, we funded more money for border security in 2009 than was
funded in the next 7 years under Republican control.
They didn't bring their bill, Mr. Speaker, to the floor until 11\1/2\
months had passed. But now border security has to be done right this
second or we are going to close down government, keep it shut, and keep
hostage 800,000 people and millions and millions and millions of
Americans who rely on the services of government.
A, we are for border security. We do not want people coming into this
country who are not authorized to come into this country.
B, we care about crime. We care about drugs. We care about investing
money to stop drugs coming into the country and to treat those who are
afflicted with drugs.
The record reflects that, Mr. Speaker. But the record also reflects
that the Republicans have, over and over and over again, used the
shutting down of government, the taking hostage of the people's
government, to get their way.
Newt Gingrich did it first for a long period of time in 1995 and
1996, 21 days. We are going to surpass that this time. He did it
because President Clinton said: I am not going to allow you to cut
education spending for the people of United States as deeply as you
want to cut it.
Then Senator Cruz came over here and talked to the so-called Freedom
Caucus and said: Unless Obama agrees to repeal the Affordable Care Act,
we are going to shut down government.
And they shut down government. Very frankly, when we tried to open it
up, the minority whip didn't vote to open it up. So maybe he doesn't
care about opening up government, paying people who are working for the
people of the United States. I don't know.
Then, just recently, a few weeks ago, when they came to the end of
the fiscal year, they had not done their job. The Republicans are in
charge of the Senate; they were in charge of the House; and they have
the Presidency of the United States.
So we did a CR, and we voted for it because we didn't want to shut
down government. Then we came to the December date to which that CR
ran, and, lo and behold, the majority leader of the United States
Senate sent us over a bill. It was not our bill; it was a bill from the
Republican majority leader. It came here under unanimous consent. Their
Republican-led Senate sent it here, and, lo and behold, the leadership
in the House would not take up that bill.
Why? The President, who had told Senator McConnell he would sign it,
changed his mind. Whether it was Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Rush
Limbaugh, I don't know who the principal adviser in that decision was,
but one person communicated: I won't sign that bill.
So the Republican leadership decided: We won't put that bill on the
floor.
They put a bill on the floor--they said over and over and over again:
This week, we put bills on the floor that wouldn't pass the Senate.
They put a bill that they knew would not pass the United States
Senate on the floor, sent it over there. It didn't pass, and government
has been shut down.
The gentleman continues to want to talk about, can we negotiate? We
can negotiate. The President walked out. He walked out because Nancy
Pelosi, when asked, ``Thirty days from now, will you support the
wall?'' said, ``No.''
The President had a tantrum, and he walked out. He said: Well, this
is a waste of my time.
This is not a process where the President tells us to do things. As I
recall, Mr. Speaker, the Constitution of the United States, Article I,
says we are the policymakers; we are the ones who pass the laws; we are
the ones who say what the executive department carries out as policy.
So we ought to pass these bills. Then, yes, we ought to deal,
honestly and openly and together, to make sure the borders are secure.
The gentleman said the immigration system does not work; it is
broken. He is absolutely right. The Senate, 5 or 6 years ago, passed a
bill, in a bipartisan way, with over 62 votes, 14 Republicans, and sent
it to the House under Republican leadership 6 years ago. They have
never brought that bill to the floor. We have pleaded with them to
bring that bill to the floor to fix the immigration system. It has
never come, Mr. Speaker, to the floor of this House.
But what we should never do, we should never take hostage the
government of the United States, the employees who toil every day on
behalf of the policies that we adopt and on behalf of the American
people. We should never take them hostage and say: If you don't do what
I say to do, we are going to keep them in an unpaid status, working if
they are critical employees and locked out if they are not.
Mr. Speaker, it is very, very unfortunate that we find ourselves in
this position. I would urge that the Republican
[[Page H508]]
whip, who is my friend and whom I respect, talk to the President of the
United States and say: Let's open up the government. Mr. Hoyer has told
me we will sit down and have a rational, reasonable fact-based, expert-
based discussion on how, in fact, we accomplish the objective we all
say we want to accomplish, and that is to make our borders secure.
We are prepared to do that, open this government.
Mr. SCALISE. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman is
finished. We will, obviously, have more time to go back and forth on
this, but let's keep in mind a few facts.
First of all, the last shutdown of the United States Government was
dubbed the Schumer shutdown because the Senate minority leader wanted
to force his way on DACA.
Mr. HOYER. Will the gentleman yield?
Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman for one moment.
Mr. HOYER. Does the gentleman remember how long that lasted?
Mr. SCALISE. Oh, it lasted very shortly because the gentleman from
New York realized he was on the wrong side of the issue, just like
right now your side is on the wrong side of this issue opposing border
security.
Let's be very clear what the fight is about, and it shouldn't be a
fight. It is a fight because the President has said: Here is a proposal
that my Department of Homeland Security has brought that said these are
the tools they need to keep the country safe with a crisis at the
border.
It can't be denied. I know some on your side want to deny it. I don't
think the gentleman from Maryland denies it. But, clearly, when the
Senate minority leader and the Speaker of the House go on national TV
and say it is a fabricated crisis at the border, the American people
see what is happening at the border. We can debate how best to solve
it.
The President, through the Department of Homeland Security, has put
down a proposal of what it is going to take. This is not a new idea.
Obviously, the President ran on this as a front-and-center issue. He
not only ran on it, but he was elected by the American people as
President to carry out border security and build a wall. It was part of
the national debate.
I know some people on your side don't even want to recognize that
that election occurred and the result, but it happened.
Mr. HOYER. Oh, no. I think there was an election, and he did raise
that question. As I recall, that is why I am the majority leader and
you are the minority whip.
Mr. SCALISE. You were not the majority leader when that happened. He
was elected on that. We were still in the majority.
Let's remember why we are here. To think that this is some new idea
the President is bringing forward is ignoring the history, and let's go
through some of that history.
Obviously, it was front and center in the presidential election, and
he was elected in large part on building a wall to secure our country's
border.
Then we go to the first spending bill as he was President, and we had
a disagreement. There were a lot of things that we were in disagreement
on.
We wanted to rebuild our military, and we finally came to a 2-year
agreement to do just that. It was critically important to start
rebuilding the military of this country that was decimated, to give our
men and women in uniform who risk their lives for our country a much-
needed pay raise. We finally did that.
In that negotiation, the President wanted and he was talking about
$25 billion for full border security, to build out the full 550 miles
that are not secure right now, and they are well identified. The
gentleman from Maryland knows those areas where we haven't built walls.
Sure, we have got some money to build walls. There is about 120 miles
of wall being built, wall that is not all cement. Some of it is steel
slats.
Let the experts figure out the best way to secure our border. We are
not the architects of the border. Let the experts be that.
But there is some wall being built, but not enough, especially in the
areas where Federal law today prohibits wall from being built.
You want to know how ridiculous some of the laws are right now that
we are trying to change? Federal law prohibits the President from
building walls in the most cost-effective way, in the most efficient
way. Why would we have those kinds of prohibitions in law?
We passed a bill through the House before the shutdown happened. You
voted no. A lot of your side voted no. I think all your side, in fact,
voted no. But it was a bill the President would have signed that would
have given him the tools he needs to secure the border.
It went over to the Senate. The reason it didn't get to the
President's desk is not because there wasn't Republican support. They
have a 60-vote rule in the Senate.
I can disagree. You might even disagree, I don't know. I disagree on
that. On appropriations bills, they should at least let the majority
rule so we can properly govern this country in a more efficient manner.
But they have a 60-vote requirement.
So the Senate minority, the Democrats in the Senate, all voted
together to block it, and that led to a shutdown. That bill would have
kept the government running and secured the border, but Democrats voted
no in the House, Democrats voted no in the Senate, and so we have a
shutdown.
How are we going to get out of this? How are we going to get it
resolved? We can talk about hostages. We can talk about the people on
your side of the aisle who refuse to support any border security with a
dollar amount behind it. You can use words all day, but words don't
secure our borders. Borders secure our border. Walls and barriers
secure our border.
The President has said that you can call it and define it whatever
you want. He has been very flexible in wanting to negotiate. But in
every one of those meetings, there has not been a counteroffer put on
the table by your side.
If we want to resolve the crisis, it involves both sides coming
together. The President is already out there publicly, in our meetings,
saying he is willing to negotiate and come to a different place.
You should work with your side to come up with definitions, to come
up with a different dollar amount. But it has to end in securing our
border. If we all agree on that, it has to end in the actual language
and dollars to accomplish that objective.
The President said: I will give you 30 more days. Even though we
don't agree on some of these other things, I will agree to sign that
into law, if you will agree to work with me on the wall.
The Speaker said no. It was the Speaker who said no, not the
President. That is why we are at day 21.
We didn't even need to be at day 1. We passed a bill out of the
House. The Senate killed it because every Democrat voted no.
So here we are. Republicans and Democrats and everybody in this room
know how we can solve this problem, but it is not by you all sitting
there and saying we only are going to support a dollar and nothing
more. Real money has to be put on the table to solve the crisis.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.
Mr. HOYER. We could go on and on, Mr. Speaker. The fact of the matter
is the Senate sent us a bill to keep the government open. They passed
it unanimously, under Republican leadership. The President said he
would sign it. He changed his mind, and this House folded. And the
Republicans who were in charge at the time wouldn't even put the Senate
bill on the floor.
We are not prepared to be bludgeoned by taking hostage 800,000 people
who work for the Federal Government and who are not now being paid,
some of whom are working.
{time} 1300
And, ironically, they are working to protect the border and to make
sure our planes are flying, to make sure people who fly on planes are
not in danger.
We want the President of the United States to open up this
government. We want the Republicans to help us open up this government.
We just passed four bills that are the Senate bills. Senator McConnell
is not going to take ``yes'' for an answer because the President tells
him: I am not going to sign those bills.
[[Page H509]]
Let me tell you something, Mr. Speaker. I have been a Member of this
body for some period of time, and I served with George Bush. He was
President of the United States, and we had a Democratic House, and we
didn't have a shutdown. He signed appropriations bills. We worked
together. We respected one another.
I would hope, Mr. Speaker, in closing, that the whip would, in fact,
help us open up the government, and then we are prepared to sit down--
he knows me--and talk about how we make our borders secure and protect
our people and, yes, give humanitarian services to those who are
seeking asylum, running from violence and mayhem and murder. We are
prepared to do that. We want to do that.
I would hope the whip, I would hope Senator McConnell, who was quoted
just a few years ago as saying, ``shutdown is a failed policy''--
shutdowns ought not to occur. Adults who are responsible ought not to
allow that to happen, realizing full well that in order to preclude
that from happening, compromise is absolutely essential on both sides.
President Trump is the President of the United States. We have to
work with him to compromise, to come to agreement. But there are an
awful lot of Republicans--I quoted Will Hurd; I quoted Ron Johnson; I
quoted some other Republicans--an awful lot of Republicans who think
the President has the wrong idea. And, frankly, as Mr. Mulvaney said
during the course of the campaign, it wasn't a very realistic idea.
But, that aside, it is time for us to open up the government, and
then we will have an extensive discussion, as we must, as we should, in
the best interests of the American people, to keep our borders secure
and keep them safe.
Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. I know that we are
closing this. I do want to go back.
Last year, when the President signed the omnibus bill to keep the
government open, at that time he said: This won't happen again. He laid
down a marker last year that, okay, he will go along with a bill that
is far short of what he needs to secure the border, but he wasn't going
to do it again. That was a year ago.
So everybody has known that this issue is going to have to get
resolved because lives are at risk. The President, like we did, took an
oath to protect this country. That is what this is about. We surely
want to open up all areas of government, but keeping the border secure
is part of that. And so when the President signed the bill last year,
he said: It is not going to happen again.
Now, obviously, when we came to this year, there were some people
telling the President the votes weren't there to put the money in place
to secure the border. In fact, the now Speaker, when she was minority
leader, went to the White House and told the President: The votes
aren't there in the House to fund your request for the wall.
Mr. HOYER. How many Republicans were in the House at that point in
time?
Mr. SCALISE. We had over 218, clearly.
Mr. HOYER. You had 240-plus.
Mr. SCALISE. Good for you, and, obviously, things have changed.
But when the minority leader then told the President the votes
weren't there to fund the wall, maybe the President took her at her
word and thought that was an accurate assessment of the House. It
turned out she was wrong. We passed the bill to fund the President's
request.
The House had a difference with the Senate. It is surely not the
first time in this country's history where the Senate passed one bill
that was short of what we needed to secure the border, and we came back
and passed a bill to fully fulfill the President's request to secure
the border. So we ended up at an impasse not because there weren't
enough Republican votes, but because there were no Democratic votes to
do that. And now we are here today.
Let's talk about quotes. He wants to quote Republicans. I will quote
a Democrat. I won't tell you who it is first.
In 2006, when there was a bill to put $50 billion in place, over 25
years, for border security, this Democrat in the Senate said it will
authorize some badly needed funding for better fences and better
security along our borders, and that should help stem some of the tide
of illegal immigration in this country.
That was in 2006, for over $50 billion for border security, and the
Democrat who said that was then-Senator Barack Obama. So you can quote
Republicans. I will quote Democrats.
Mr. HOYER. That bill passed, did it not?
Mr. SCALISE. That bill passed, but it didn't put the money there, and
that is why we are here.
And again, he can talk and give great speeches and say we need $50
billion, but if you don't appropriate the $50 billion, the money is not
there to actually build the fencing that is needed.
Mr. HOYER. Was that bill brought up in the House?
Mr. SCALISE. And so now we need to talk about how to fund the wall,
how to fund the structure, call it what you will. And again, the
President, himself, has said you can title it however you want. You can
ban cement fencing.
But at the same time, what Barack Obama and Chuck Schumer voted for
in 2006 is the authority to build what is needed, but they didn't put
the money there. It is time to finally back up the word. It is hot air
until you put the money on the table.
So the money has been put on the table by the Republicans, at least
an offer, backed up with real data of where the money would be spent to
secure this country. There has not been a counteroffer.
So let's talk now about the final issue, and that is adjournment.
I know later today the House will be voting to adjourn. Last week,
the House, under the Democratic majority, as you proudly talk about the
fact that you all are in the majority, you all voted to adjourn. We
voted not to adjourn.
We should stay here to get this job done, to finally have a real
negotiation to solve our differences. We can solve our differences, but
we are not going to solve them by continuing to adjourn every weekend
when we should be negotiating and getting the government back open and
securing the border.
On this final thought, would the gentleman address the vote, the
motion that will be made later to adjourn that we oppose?
I yield to the gentleman.
Mr. HOYER. The gentleman has a different concept of negotiating than
I do. If somebody takes somebody that I care about hostage and says now
I want to negotiate with you, it is not a negotiation. That is a
demand. That is a ``if you don't do it, I am going to harm people.''
When you said the President of the United States said: This is the
last time I am going to open up government, I am going to sign an
almost overwhelmingly supported piece of legislation by Republicans and
Democrats--George Bush never did that. I don't ever remember Ronald
Reagan doing that or George H.W. Bush doing that or Bill Clinton doing
that. They did it when it was a close vote, but not when it was
overwhelming that we ought to open up the government.
As long as hostages are held by your opponent, you are not
negotiating. You are subject to being demanded, ``Do what I say.'' That
is not the democratic process, and it is harming, literally, millions,
tens of millions of people in the process in order to get his way. I
have not seen that before.
The other two shutdowns were legislative shutdowns. There is no doubt
this is an executive shutdown, and you just said it: I will never sign
something like this again unless it gives me what I want.
Frankly, that is what we saw in the negotiations over the 3 days we
were there. The last day, of course, was about a 10-minute day because
the President stomped out.
Mr. Scalise, all I can tell you is I share your view of the
objective, but because we don't agree with the same ways and means to
accomplish that objective, shutting down government ought not to be the
alternative. The alternative ought to be to keep talking and getting to
a place where I think you and I both want to get, where these borders
are secure, where people are not being transported across it for human
trafficking purposes, where murderers don't come across the border.
But there is a surge right now across our border, and that surge is
of mostly
[[Page H510]]
mothers and children seeking asylum, coming to ports of entry--not
across any fences or borders, coming to ports of entry. The border
guards are telling us they are turning themselves in. They want to,
because they are seeking refuge from a country that has purported to be
a country of refuge, that raises a statue in New York Harbor to send
that message. But we need to make them known to us when they come into
the country. We agree on that.
So, rather than all this rhetoric back and forth, Mr. Speaker, it is
a simple proposition. Senator McConnell has said, unless the President
says he will sign on opening up the government, he won't put it on the
floor. That is the only person who is stopping you, because we have
sent bills.
Mr. Cole of your side said: I don't like the bills because they are
only Senate bills. We don't like them either, but we like, less,
government being shut down. We like, less, 800,000 people being put at
risk. We like, less, the anxiety that we are causing our Federal
employees in terms of the financial stability of their homes and their
ability to put food on their tables and pay their mortgage and pay
their rent.
Surely--surely--we ought to be able to come to agreement that that is
not what we ought to inflict to get our way. I hope we open up our
government.
Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Maryland.
And when you look at the women who are coming across through this
trek to try to cross the border, first of all, asylum has been offered
by Mexico to all of the people as part of that caravan. Thousands of
people were offered asylum, work permits--turned it down. There is a
legal way to seek asylum.
It seems to me, if another country offers you asylum and you want to
leave your country, you take the asylum, but they turned it down. But
the women who are coming over, Doctors Without Borders has done a study
and said that over 30 percent of the women who are on this trek have
been sexually assaulted or worse.
We should all want to address this crisis. There is a way to solve
the crisis. If we talk about hostages, both sides can use terms. But
when the President of the United States and the White House look at the
Speaker and say, ``I will sign a bill that contains things that we have
yet to negotiate that I don't agree with; I will sign it if you agree
to keep negotiating,'' and the Speaker of the House said no, that is
the my-way-or-the-highway approach that is wrong.
The President has put multiple things on the table, has offered to
negotiate on terms, on dollars, on every front, and not one
counteroffer. That has got to change. We can solve this crisis, but it
is going to involve both sides being willing to put something on the
table to solve the border security crisis. I hope we can get there, and
we will keep working at it.
I appreciate the comments and the thoughts of the gentleman from
Maryland, and I truly do believe that he wants to solve this. We have
some differences. Let's keep working and get it done.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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