[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 85 (Tuesday, May 21, 2019)]
[House]
[Pages H4024-H4030]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
PROVIDING FOR CONSIDERATION OF H.R. 1500, CONSUMERS FIRST ACT;
PROVIDING FOR CONSIDERATION OF H.R. 1994, SETTING EVERY COMMUNITY UP
FOR RETIREMENT ENHANCEMENT ACT OF 2019; PROVIDING FOR PROCEEDINGS
DURING THE PERIOD FROM MAY 24, 2019, THROUGH MAY 31, 2019; AND FOR
OTHER PURPOSES
Mr. PERLMUTTER. Madam Speaker, by direction of the Committee on
Rules, I call up House Resolution 389 and ask for its immediate
consideration.
The Clerk read the resolution, as follows:
H. Res. 389
Resolved, That at any time after adoption of this
resolution the Speaker may, pursuant to clause 2(b) of rule
XVIII, declare the House resolved into the Committee of the
Whole House on the state of the Union for consideration of
the bill (H.R. 1500) to require the Consumer Financial
Protection Bureau to meet its statutory purpose, and for
other purposes. The first reading of the bill shall be
dispensed with. All points of order against consideration of
the bill are waived. General debate shall be confined to the
bill and amendments specified in this section and shall not
exceed one hour equally divided and controlled by the chair
and ranking minority member of the Committee on Financial
Services. After general debate the bill shall be considered
for amendment under the five-minute rule. In lieu of the
amendment in the nature of a substitute recommended by the
Committee on Financial Services now printed in the bill, an
amendment in the nature of a substitute consisting of the
text of Rules Committee Print 116-15 shall be considered as
adopted in the House and in the Committee of the Whole. The
bill, as amended, shall be considered as the original bill
for the purpose of further amendment under the five-minute
rule and shall be considered as read. All points of order
against provisions in the bill, as amended, are waived. No
further amendment to the bill, as amended, shall be in order
except those printed in part A of the report of the Committee
on Rules accompanying this resolution. Each such further
amendment may be offered only in the order printed in the
report, may be offered only by a Member designated in the
report, shall be considered as read, shall be debatable for
the time specified in the report equally divided and
controlled by the proponent and an opponent, shall not be
subject to amendment, and shall not be subject to a demand
for division of the question in the House or in the Committee
of the Whole. All points of order against such further
amendments are waived. At the conclusion of consideration of
the bill for amendment the Committee shall rise and report
the bill, as amended, to the House with such further
amendments as may have been adopted. The previous question
shall be considered as ordered on the bill, as amended, and
on any further amendment thereto to final passage without
intervening motion except one motion to recommit with or
without instructions.
Sec. 2. Upon adoption of this resolution it shall be in
order to consider in the House the bill (H.R. 1994) to amend
the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to encourage retirement
savings, and for other purposes. All points of order against
consideration of the bill are waived. The amendment in the
nature of a substitute recommended by the Committee on Ways
and Means now printed in the bill, modified by the amendment
printed in part B of the report of the Committee on Rules
accompanying this resolution, shall be considered as adopted.
The bill, as amended, shall be considered as read. All points
of order against provisions in the bill, as amended, are
waived. The previous question shall be considered as ordered
on the bill, as amended, and on any further amendment
thereto, to final passage without intervening motion except:
(1) one hour of debate equally divided and controlled by the
chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on Ways
and Means; and (2) one motion to recommit with or without
instructions.
Sec. 3. On any legislative day during the period from May
24, 2019, through May 31, 2019--
(a) the Journal of the proceedings of the previous day
shall be considered as approved; and
(b) the Chair may at any time declare the House adjourned
to meet at a date and time, within the limits of clause 4,
section 5, article I of the Constitution, to be announced by
the Chair in declaring the adjournment.
Sec. 4. The Speaker may appoint Members to perform the
duties of the Chair for the duration of the period addressed
by section 3 of this resolution as though under clause 8(a)
of rule I.
Sec. 5. Each day during the period addressed by section 3
of this resolution shall
[[Page H4025]]
not constitute a legislative day for purposes of clause 7 of
rule XV.
Sec. 6. It shall be in order at any time on the
legislative day of May 23, 2019, for the Speaker to entertain
motions that the House suspend the rules as though under
clause 1 of rule XV, relating to a measure making
supplemental appropriations for the fiscal year ending
September 30, 2019.
Sec. 7. The requirement of clause 6(a) of rule XIII for a
two-thirds vote to consider a report from the Committee on
Rules on the same day it is presented to the House is waived
with respect to any resolution reported through the
legislative day of May 23, 2019, relating to a measure making
supplemental appropriations for the fiscal year ending
September 30, 2019.
Sec. 8. The Committee on Appropriations may, at any time
before 5:00 p.m. on Sunday, June 2, 2019, file privileged
reports to accompany measures making appropriations for the
fiscal year ending September 30, 2020.
{time} 1245
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Colorado is recognized
for 1 hour.
Mr. PERLMUTTER. Madam Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I
yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr.
Woodall), 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. PERLMUTTER. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all
Members be given 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the
gentleman from Colorado?
There was no objection.
Mr. PERLMUTTER. Madam Speaker, the Rules Committee met on Monday
night and reported a rule, House Resolution 389, which covers a lot of
territory. It provides for consideration of H.R. 1500, the Consumers
First Act under a structured rule which makes in order 17 amendments.
The rule also provides for consideration of H.R. 1994, the Setting
Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement Act, or the SECURE Act,
under a closed rule which self-executes Chairman Neal's manager's
amendment.
Additionally, the rule provides same-day authority and suspension
authority through Thursday, May 23, and it provides filing authority
for the Committee on Appropriations through 5 o'clock p.m., Sunday,
June 2.
Finally, the rule provides recess instructions through next Friday,
May 31.
Madam Speaker, H.R. 1500, the Consumers First Act, reverses the anti-
consumer actions taken by this administration to ensure the Consumer
Financial Protection Bureau once again serves the needs of American
consumers.
More than a decade ago, the United States experienced one of the
worst financial crises in our history, caused, in part, by a failure to
have strong protections for consumers of financial products and
services.
Through the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection
Act, Congress created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to be a
strong and independent agency with the mandate to protect consumers
from unfair, deceptive, or abusive acts or practices in the financial
marketplace. When the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was first
stood up, it was a powerful ally to consumers in middle-class families
across the country.
Under former Director Richard Cordray, the Consumer Financial
Protection Bureau returned nearly $12 billion to over 30 million
consumers who were harmed, handled over 1.2 million consumer complaints
about financial institutions, and implemented new safeguards to better
protect consumers who utilize a wide range of consumer financial
products and services.
Unfortunately, the Trump administration has politicized the agency,
weakened supervision and enforcement, and reduced transparency and
accountability. The Bureau has dismantled protections for Active Duty
servicemembers, weakened fair lending enforcement, blocked payday loan
cases, and terminated the Consumers Advisory Board. These are just a
few examples of how the agency is failing to meet its mission.
The Consumers First Act would block the Trump Administration's agenda
and ensure the CFPB starts working for the people once again.
Among other things, the bill would direct the Consumer Financial
Protection Bureau leadership to reverse all anti-consumer actions taken
under this administration, including resuming Military Lending Act
oversight. The bill restores the supervisory and enforcement powers of
the Office of Fair Lending and Equal Opportunity. It also reestablishes
a dedicated student loan office to help protect students as they find
ways to finance their education. Importantly, the bill requires
adequate agency staffing across the Bureau, including for supervision
and enforcement.
I want to thank Chairwoman Waters for her work on this legislation,
which I cosponsored and is supported by 51 consumer civil rights,
housing, and labor organizations.
This rule also provides for consideration of H.R. 1994, the SECURE
Act. I am also a cosponsor of this bill to make it easier for American
workers to save for their future. One of my number-one priorities is
ensuring all Coloradans and all Americans have the opportunity to find
a good job, can afford to send their kids to college, and have
something left over for their retirement.
Unfortunately, nearly half of Americans in the private sector work
for an employer who does not offer a retirement plan. A 2018 study by
the National Institute on Retirement Security found over 100 million
people of working age have few, if any, retirement assets.
The SECURE Act is a bipartisan bill which was approved unanimously by
the Ways and Means Committee, and I am eager for the House to pass this
important legislation. The SECURE Act would make it easier for small
businesses to offer retirement plans to their employees by eliminating
outdated barriers to the use of multiple employer plans and improving
the quality of these providers. This could result in hundreds of
thousands of new retirement accounts to help people save.
Additionally, the bill would allow long-time part-time workers to
participate in 401(k) plans and create a new tax credit to incentivize
small employers to set up retirement plans for their employees. It
would also add more flexibility for how long individuals could
contribute to their retirement accounts, and when they must begin
drawing down on those accounts.
This legislation is a big step forward in helping Americans save and
prepare for retirement, and I am proud to support it. I urge all of my
colleagues to support the rule and the underlying bills, and I reserve
the balance of my time.
Mr. WOODALL. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may
consume, and I want to thank my friend from Colorado for yielding me
the customary 30 minutes.
It is a close-knit bunch of folks up there on the Rules Committee,
Madam Speaker. If you have not been by recently, you ought to come by.
There are only 13 of us there. It is easy to remember everybody's name,
but you don't go to the Rules Committee when you have important
bipartisan legislation to bring to the House floor. You go to the
suspension calendar for that.
You go to the Rules Committee when you have contentious pieces of
legislation to bring to the floor. I regret that we are here today on
things that are absolutely contentious that could have been absolutely
partnership bills.
I want to reference first H.R. 1500. That is the bill my friend from
Colorado spoke about as it relates to the Consumer Financial Protection
Bureau. He is absolutely right. The way this Congress set up the
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau when Democrats were running this
institution and President Obama was in the White House was to make it a
completely administration-driven agency with no accountability to
Congress whatsoever. That was a mistake.
But the folks who set it up liked the team that was running it at the
time, and so our efforts in the minority to stop that from happening
were rebuffed. Now we are here today, Madam Speaker, and you might
think that we have a list of legislative fixes to the Consumer
Financial Protection Bureau. Not so.
I encourage you to pick up a copy of H.R. 1500 just to see what those
fixes
[[Page H4026]]
might be. It is a 40-page bill. You have to get to page 21 before
accusations and assertions against former Director Mick Mulvaney end,
and the important work, like changing the way we reference the agency
by name, begins.
I don't have any language today. No amendments were offered in the
Rules Committee last night, Madam Speaker, to talk about all of the
things that former Director Cordray did while he was there. The list of
things that he did that I don't like are long. The list of things that
he did that I thought violated the actual text of the law is pretty
long.
But he is gone, and we have the ability to fix anything we want to
fix that he did. So no amendments were offered to impugn the integrity
of the former director. Well, not the former director, Mr. Cordray; but
the former director, Mick Mulvaney, yes, acting director. There are 21
pages of a 40-page bill dedicated to personal attacks on the former
director.
Madam Speaker, if we wanted to do something about the Consumer
Financial Protection Bureau that brought its authority out of 1600
Pennsylvania Avenue and right back here to where it belongs in Article
I, we would make this agency subject to congressional appropriations.
This is a bipartisan issue.
If you want to find something that we agree on as an institution,
let's talk about making Article I the lawmaker in this country, rather
than Article II. Let's talk about taking it out of the White House's
hands and putting it back into the people's hands on Capitol Hill. You
will not find that idea in these pages.
It is a disappointment because we could be doing something in
partnership. Standing for consumers is a shared value, not a divisive
one.
I go now to the bill coming out of the Ways and Means Committee, H.R.
1994. Madam Speaker, as my friend from Colorado referenced, this bill
passed unanimously out of the Ways and Means Committee. Unanimously.
Take a look at the men and women on the Ways and Means Committee. I
think there are 42 of them. These are not shrinking violets on the Ways
and Means Committee. I see a couple of them out here. I won't call
anybody out by name--Mr. Panetta--but they are not shrinking violets on
this committee. These are serious public policy advocates who represent
very diverse parts of the country and who fight hard for the values
that their constituents represent.
Unanimously, they came together as a committee, Madam Speaker, to
change the rules for retirement, to make it easier for families to
save; to change the rules around college savings plans so that families
who ran into challenges in secondary years, families whose kids develop
special needs and might not be going on to college, but who have very
real needs today, to allow those dollars to be tapped by those families
to serve the educational needs of their children.
Unanimously it passed the committee. In fact, I will read from the
committee report. This is not something that was done lightly in
committee, Madam Speaker. We are talking about hundreds of pages of
legislation, hundreds of pages of a committee report. This was a
thoughtfully designed and crafted piece of legislation.
The committee said this:
The committee believes that expanding 529 plans will help
families save for education expenses that meet each family's
unique needs.
We run into that problem often, Madam Speaker. We try to do something
that is good for America, and it turns out that 330 million Americans
have different needs and priorities. So the Ways and Means avoided a
one-size-fits-all solution, recognizing those unique needs. I will read
on.
The committee says:
By allowing tax-free distributions for apprenticeship
expenses, homeschooling expenses, student loan repayments,
elementary and secondary expenses, in addition to tuition,
families can customize the use of their education savings to
make education more affordable.
We didn't read that on the headline of any major newspaper when the
Ways and Means passed that unanimously. I am sure there was something
in the headlines of that major newspaper about wars in foreign lands. I
am sure there was something in the newspaper that day about partisan
politics and how folks were poking each other with sharp rhetorical
sticks.
There was not a word about how the men and women of the people's
House on the Ways and Means Committee came together unanimously, not
because it wasn't hard to craft solutions. It is hard to craft
solutions, but they came together unanimously on consensus language to
move out of committee.
It sounds like I am going to tell a story with a happy ending, Madam
Speaker, and I should be. This should be a story about how we get
things done, but what happened last night that you also won't see on
the front page of the paper is, we took this consensus product that was
passed unanimously by Republicans and Democrats, and we took it up
there to the Rules Committee.
On a straight party-line vote, we ripped out all of the language
protecting families who were trying to help their children at home;
children who may not be getting everything they need through the public
schools and so they get additional education at home; families that may
have opted out of the public school system because they couldn't get
what their children need, and they are homeschooling their children.
This language that was agreed upon unanimously in a bipartisan way,
was ripped out in a party-line vote in the Rules Committee last night.
We will never vote on it in this Chamber, Madam Speaker.
The Ways and Means Committee in a long committee report, long
committee language, they deliberated over this language and concluded
that the right thing to do was to help all American families. But
somewhere between that unanimous vote in committee and late last night
in the Rules Committee, the decision came down from on high--and by on
high I do mean your side of the aisle, Madam Speaker, because when you
sit in the Speaker's chair, you have that kind of authority. The Rules
Committee is, in fact, the Speaker's committee--that said we are going
to rip this language out.
We offered an amendment last night. And I think it is only right that
folks come to sit here to watch the people's business. They think that
we are going to operate a transparent building here, and we work very
hard to do that.
{time} 1300
We offered an amendment last night in the Rules Committee to allow a
simple vote of the people's House on this provision. If you don't like
parents supplementing their students' education at home, so be it. I
don't understand it, but so be it. But let's have a vote on it here
just like they did in the Ways and Means Committee. On a party-line
basis, the amendment to allow the people's House to have a vote on this
provision was defeated.
You might not have noticed it when the Reading Clerk was reading,
Madam Speaker. I don't want to tell you how long that took to read. We
have a lot of things packaged in this bill. You will have to go all the
way down to the 12th section of the rule, and the important words are:
modified by the amendment printed in part B of the Rules Committee
report, modified by part B of the amendment printed in the Rules
Committee report.
I will translate that for you, Madam Speaker. That means with no vote
of this institution whatsoever and with no consultation or input from
the Ways and Means Committee that crafted this legislation, we are
going to revoke all benefits that would have gone to families who
cannot find the services they need outside the home and, thus, are
paying for those services inside the home.
Representative Mitchell came to the Rules Committee to testify on
this amendment last night, Madam Speaker. He said that his family is
blessed enough to have the financial resources to take care of their
special needs family member. But he talked about all the American
families who he has met in his district--the Speaker has them in her
district; the gentleman from Colorado has them in his district; and I
have them in my district--who don't have the financial means and who
don't have that sense of security.
The Ways and Means Committee in its wisdom unanimously said let's
provide that security to American families. The Rules Committee in an
error
[[Page H4027]]
in judgment repealed it because six Members voted ``yes'' last night.
That is all it took. All it took to silence an institution of 435,
Madam Speaker, was six Members voting to include this one seemingly
innocuous line that disadvantages families and children all across this
Nation.
It is another missed opportunity, Madam Speaker. We could have been
here today celebrating the things that we do here together. We could
have been here celebrating shared values. We could have been here today
making a difference that your constituents have asked of you and my
constituents have asked of me.
From the start of this process, for the weeks in committee, and for
the weeks since the committee has passed it, we were doing exactly
that. In about 6 minutes of voting last night, we erased it all. It
took weeks to build bipartisan consensus, Madam Speaker. It took
moments to erase it all.
We have choices in this institution, Madam Speaker. We made the wrong
one in the Rules Committee last night.
Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to defeat this rule and give us a
chance to make a right one. But we only get so many bites at this
apple. The trust of the American people in us as an institution and in
us as individuals is not infinite. If we betray that trust often
enough, it will disappear forever.
Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. PERLMUTTER. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may
consume.
Madam Speaker, I will start where my friend from Georgia just left
off, complaining about a tiny section in the bill that was stricken in
the Rules Committee. He is correct, because there are individuals
within our Caucus who don't think it is appropriate. The bill, however,
has dozens of provisions that benefit Americans of every stripe,
millions of people.
I would say to my friend from Georgia, if he feels so strongly about
it, then bring it up in a motion to recommit. It isn't the last
statement here. If my friend wants to see how many people want to vote
for this, then certainly bring it up there.
Otherwise, as my friend said, this was a major step forward on
retirement security for so many Americans. The perfect shouldn't be the
enemy of the good because the bill, the SECURE Act, advances that.
Secondly, I wish Representative Maloney was still in the chair, Madam
Speaker, because she would recognize, as it applies to the Consumers
First Act, that the purpose of having a single agency focus on
consumers first was so important because we saw that by having certain
activities handled by the Housing and Urban Development Department,
others handled by the Federal Reserve, and others handled by the
Federal Trade Commission, consumers were not being protected. Much of
that failure to protect--shark practices in the credit card industry
and bad practices in the mortgage industry--led to the recession that
we faced back in 2008, 2009, and 2010.
The purpose of having an independent agency like the CFPB was to
avoid that and put consumers first, just as H.R. 1500 is intended to
do.
Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California
(Mr. Panetta).
Mr. PANETTA. Madam Speaker, I thank Mr. Woodall for his advocacy as
well as his oratory skills.
As a member of the Ways and Means Committee, I want to talk about the
SECURE Act and obviously the work that we did in the Ways and Means
Committee in regard to not only H.R. 1994 but, more particular, a
certain part of that bipartisan legislation that helps home healthcare
workers save for their retirement. That would include the over 375,000
home healthcare workers in my home State of California.
Madam Speaker, we know that home healthcare is usually less
expensive. It is more convenient and, most times, just as effective as
the care people receive in a hospital or in a skilled nursing facility.
Home healthcare workers not only provide critical services for
seniors and those with physical, mental, or emotional disabilities, but
they also ensure that our loved ones with special needs are able to
live their lives in a dignified manner.
That dignity, that skill, and that care, I can tell you, is something
that I experienced firsthand throughout my childhood when my
grandmother suffered a debilitating stroke and had to live with us. We
took her in realizing that the effects of her stroke were permanent.
That is when my family decided to ensure that she had appropriate home
healthcare, not just the family but with full-time home healthcare
workers.
With both my parents working full-time, we were forced--but, yes, we
were also fortunate--to hire home healthcare workers, people who
actually came into our home, took care of my grandmother, and allowed
her to live a life with dignity and with the care necessary to enjoy
the latter years of her life.
However, and unfortunately, right now under the current Federal
Internal Revenue Code, home healthcare providers like those who cared
for my grandmother are not able to participate in a retirement plan or
save in an IRA. If you are a home healthcare worker in California who
works in and helps out families, then you would be ineligible to
participate in the CalSavers retirement program due to the current
Federal law.
That is why this bill is so important, because it would allow home
healthcare workers to contribute to a defined contribution plan or IRA,
giving home healthcare workers the ability to save and prepare for
their own retirement.
These healthcare workers give our family members dignity. This is the
least that we can do for home healthcare workers so that they can
retire with dignity.
That is what this bill does. That is one of the reasons why, as a
member of the Ways and Means Committee, I did vote for this bill. It is
also why I urge my colleagues to support the rule and the underlying
legislation.
Mr. WOODALL. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may
consume.
Madam Speaker, you heard the earnestness with which Mr. Panetta just
described the committee's work. You can go through every line of the
committee's work, and you are going to find a story similar to the one
that Mr. Panetta has told about his family that applies to hundreds of
thousands of families across the country.
That is what this work product was. That is what the committee spent
weeks and weeks putting together. That is, candidly, what my
constituents think we do up here every day: find problems, find
partners, craft solutions, and bring them to the floor.
My friend from Colorado said that we shouldn't let the perfect be the
enemy of the good, and I think he is exactly right. I haven't voted on
the perfect bill since I have been here, Madam Speaker. You may have
had that opportunity; I have not. I vote on bills that move the ball in
the right direction. Even had I been king for a day, I couldn't have
done it better.
But the flip side of ``don't let the perfect be the enemy of the
good'' is that this bill passed out of the Ways and Means Committee
unanimously. It was perfect if bipartisanship was your goal. It is now
good legislation. But with this change, it is perfectly partisan.
I would advise my colleagues that we spent a lot of time when we were
in control--and I had the pleasure of leading the rule, as my friend
from Colorado does today--protecting our Members from tough votes. You
may not know, Madam Speaker, but the way the Rules Committee works, we
could have offered waivers. If you wanted to strike protections for
homeschooling families, if you wanted to strike protections from
families who need to buy more than what they can find in their public
school system for their special needs child, you could have brought an
amendment to the floor of this House and said: I don't like those
protections for those families. I want to strike them.
But then you would have had to have stood up and said that whatever
your ax was that you were grinding that day took priority over those
families. No Member in this institution wants to do that, which is why
it comes to the Rules Committee as a seemingly innocuous line in a
committee report and why it only takes six members to vote ``yes'' on
it up there to make it a part of the underlying bill. It pretends that
the committee voted on it when, in fact, they did not.
[[Page H4028]]
If we want to vote on these issues, then let's vote on these issues.
But I will just tell my friends here in their fifth month of leadership
that they will begin to rue the day that they told their new Members
they could come to Capitol Hill, be a United States Congressperson, and
not have to take tough votes.
We began to rue that day when we started down that road, and you only
get one chance to start again.
Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. PERLMUTTER. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may
consume.
Responding to my good friend from Georgia, we are going to have a
chance to vote on this in the rule, and we will see whether or not a
majority is in favor of the changes that were made as part of this rule
package.
I would say to my friend, as part of the changes, we are adding Gold
Star families and other children to this entire SECURE Act package to
benefit them because in the race to give a $2 trillion tax cut to the
richest Americans, the Republican Party forgot about a lot of families
and a lot of children. That is being corrected in this bill and in this
amendment.
I urge my friend to take another look at it because this rule does
benefit Americans all across the board and all income levels.
Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from
Massachusetts (Mrs. Trahan).
Mrs. TRAHAN. Madam Speaker, I rise to offer my strong support for the
rule and for the Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement
Act.
This is an important retirement savings measure that has the support
of a wide range of stakeholders, from the United States Chamber of
Commerce to the Girl Scouts. What a credit to the committee for taking
up this important legislation for the people.
I want to highlight section 105, a provision that the committee
included to offer a tax incentive to small businesses for setting up
automatic enrollment for their employees' retirement plans.
Madam Speaker, while half of private-sector employees have access to
a retirement plan through their employer, it is estimated that just 15
percent of small businesses offer a retirement plan. Yet small
businesses employ approximately half of the Nation's private-sector
workforce.
Ensuring that small business employees have retirement options just
like those who work for larger companies will increase small
businesses' competitiveness at a time when the job market is
tightening, and it will position these employees for a secure
retirement.
Establishing automatic enrollment in retirement plans is critical.
Participation rates in defined contribution plans like a 401(k) are
above 90 percent among new hires when automatic enrollment is the
default. Moreover, 80 percent of participants increase their
contributions over time. Alternatively, when employers do not offer
automatic enrollment, new hire participation is below 50 percent.
Section 105 is based upon a bill that Mr. Kelly and I introduced, the
Small Employer Retirement Savings Auto-Enrollment Credit Act. It would
provide small businesses--those with up to 100 employees--a $500 tax
credit to defray the start-up cost of offering automatic enrollment.
The tax credit would also be available to small businesses that convert
their existing employee retirement program from an opt-in to auto-
enrollment.
I was pleased to work with the chairman and his staff as well as the
gentleman from Pennsylvania on this issue. I urge adoption of the
resolution and the SECURE Act.
{time} 1215
Mr. WOODALL. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may
consume.
Madam Speaker, I want to associate myself with everything my friend
from Massachusetts just said. Every line of this bill, as crafted by
the Ways and Means Committee, was designed to make a difference in a
family's life, a difference that every single one of us can be proud
of, and no one has a single bit of concern about that language.
The concern is that, instead of being down here celebrating this
bipartisan product, in the dark of night it was converted.
My friend from Colorado is absolutely right. Not only was the home-
schooling provision stripped out; a provision for Gold Star families
was put in.
Now, I will just tell you, if you have any concerns, Madam Speaker,
let me speak on behalf of the Republican Conference. If you want to
stand up for Gold Star families, I have got Members who want to stand
with you. I don't have some; I have them all.
To be fair, that has nothing to do with being a Republican. If I go
to the Democratic side of the aisle and look for folks to stand with
Gold Star families, I won't find one; I will find them all.
That is yet another thing that unites us, and kudos to Richard Neal,
as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, for taking an opportunity
to make the bill better in that way.
I happen to have his manager's amendment here, Madam Speaker. This is
the language that was taken up by the Rules Committee last night and,
again, stuck in because only six people voted ``yes.'' And page after
page is dealing with those Gold Star families and trying to right that
clerical error in drafting.
It is in the middle of page 3, with looks like seven words: ``In
section 302, strike subsections (b) and (d).'' You might not know what
section 302 is and what sections (b) and (d) are, Madam Speaker. I will
read some of that to you, again, from the Democratic chairman's
committee report, from the unanimous legislation that was passed.
The provision allows tax-free treatment to apply to distributions
made for certain additional qualifying expenses on behalf of designated
beneficiaries attending elementary and secondary schools.
This is the offensive language that my friend referenced that some
Members of his caucus had problems with that needed to be taken out.
Here it comes. And I don't mean to offend you by reading these words,
Madam Speaker, but I am just going to read them directly because I feel
the burden to do it.
In addition to tuition, tax-free treatment would apply to a
distribution made for expenses for fees, tutoring, special-needs
services, books, supplies, and other equipment incurred in connection
with the attendance of elementary school.
I am aghast. I am aghast that that is what the Ways and Means
Committee decided to do. I am just going to tell you again, Madam
Speaker.
The committee, in its wisdom, unanimously decided that we should
speak up for families who have problems with expenses for fees,
academic tutoring, special-needs services, books, supplies, and other
equipment incurred in connection with their child's attendance in
elementary school.
That is what this big to-do was about today. If you want to have a
vote on the floor of the House that says, ``I don't want children in
elementary school to have any help,'' we can have that vote. I think it
would lose, and so do my friends on the other side of the aisle.
That is why we are not going to have that vote. We are going to sneak
it in, in the rule, and never be able to speak on it.
I appreciate my friend raising the Gold Star issue because that is
yet another area of agreement, like the issue my friend from
Massachusetts spoke about, like the issue my friend from California
spoke about.
Madam Speaker, when you are in the majority in this Chamber, it is
easy to get legislation passed. You control the Rules Committee. You
control the votes on the board. You get to jam everything through.
I know. I spent 8 years in the majority, and that is the way every
day is when you are in the majority.
But you don't have to jam everything through. Occasionally--just
occasionally--there are bills, like this bill from the Ways and Means
Committee, where every single line is dedicated to solving problems,
problems that affect your district and problems that affect my
district.
Occasionally--just occasionally--we find Members on both sides of the
aisle sitting down, rolling up their sleeves, looking for solutions
instead of talking
[[Page H4029]]
points. And, when that happens, you produce good legislation like the
bill Chairman Neal brought before us today.
We could have been down here celebrating that legislation, Madam
Speaker. Instead, we are talking about the efforts to unwind it. And,
for the life of me, I just don't understand why that is the path we
have chosen.
I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. PERLMUTTER. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may
consume.
Madam Speaker, just in response to my friend, we have two bills that
are encompassed in this rule: H.R. 1500, the Consumers First Act, and
H.R. 1994, the SECURE Act.
The gentleman is focusing on one sentence out of dozens of provisions
that benefit millions of Americans to complain about this rule and what
was done.
Well, people get to vote on this rule. It isn't just 6 people or 10
people or 13 people. There will be 435 of us voting on whether we
approve the rule or not. There are other opportunities to take care of
the one sentence, if my friend is so aghast that it might be stricken
in favor of dozens of other provisions, including the Gold Star family
and children across America.
So, I appreciate the rhetorical abilities of my good friend from
Georgia, but, quite frankly, he is missing the forest for the trees
through all of this.
Secondly, H.R. 1500 is another key piece of legislation that is
encompassed in this rule to really get consumers first again, as
opposed to the financial services industry being first, which appears
to be the effort of the Trump administration.
Madam Speaker, I would inquire of my friend from Georgia if he has
any other speakers. If not, I suggest we close.
Mr. WOODALL. Madam Speaker, I don't have any speakers remaining. I
have a powerful previous question vote that I would like to describe,
and I am prepared to do that at this time.
Mr. PERLMUTTER. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. WOODALL. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may
consume.
We can't always get exercised about every single line in every single
bill. We would never get anything done.
We have an amendment process so that, if you get exercised about a
particular line in a particular bill, you can bring your amendment to
the floor and we vote on it.
We are going to get into the appropriations process soon. When we
spend money, it turns out to be one of those issues that people feel
strongly about. We are going to entertain hundreds of amendments--
Republican amendments, Democratic amendments.
Some Republican amendments are going to pass; some are going to fail.
Some Democrat amendments are going to pass; some are going to fail.
But we are going to work the will of the body, and we are going to do
the best we can to get to a final package that we move across the
street to the Senate.
My frustration in this moment, Madam Speaker, isn't that we have the
inability of moving things forward and discussing ideas. We do have the
ability to do that, and we did that well in the Ways and Means
Committee.
My frustration is that, when people don't like the way the committee
unanimously, in a bipartisan way, did something because they have
bipartisan concerns--and, to be clear, the concerns about this language
are not Republican concerns. This language was not stricken because
Republicans objected. This language was not stricken to satisfy any
bipartisan concern of any kind.
This was purely a partisan exercise. And if you want to have a
partisan exercise, I know 435 Members who are here all day, who will
come down here to the House floor and vote on it, and we can do that.
So I want to offer that opportunity, Madam Speaker. For folks who
think this is about public policy, as it was when the committee
considered it in a bipartisan way, I want to offer an amendment to this
bill.
If we defeat the previous question, Madam Speaker, I will offer an
amendment that strikes this offending section. What that means in
layman's terms is the bill would contain the Gold Star family language
that is very important to every Member of this Chamber. It would
contain the pension language that is very important to every Member of
this Chamber.
It would contain every line designed in a bipartisan fashion by the
Ways and Means Committee to make a difference in families' lives, but
it would strike the majority's effort, with only six votes on the Rules
Committee, to eliminate protections for home-schooling families
altogether.
Vote against the previous question, defeat the previous question, and
we can restore the bipartisan consensus language the Ways and Means
Committee crafted, and we will add the Gold Star family language that
my friend from Colorado and I agree on.
I don't serve in the Ways and Means Committee, Madam Speaker. They
have got big ideas they have to work on over there. I don't serve on
the Financial Services Committee. They have got big ideas they have to
work on over there.
I serve in the Rules Committee. My job is to get bills to the House
floor and to make sure that voices are heard on perfecting that
language.
If we defeat the previous question, we can achieve exactly the
partisan goal that the majority wants, but we can achieve it by
actually having a vote of the House on that goal.
I think the American people are tired of things being done in secret.
I think they are tired of things being done without the full story
being told.
I talk to my friends on the other side of the aisle regularly, daily,
hourly, Madam Speaker. I know the hunger from your side of the aisle to
deliver on behalf of the American people. I know that hunger. I know
the hunger on your side of the aisle to roll up sleeves and do the hard
things. Because the easy things somebody else has already taken care
of. All that is left for you and me are the hard things.
Going to the well of partisanship, pulling your sharp stick out of
your quiver and poking the other team, those aren't the hard things.
Those are the easy things. And, candidly, those aren't the surprising
things. They have become all too commonplace.
I don't get to run this institution, but I do get a vote in it. I see
opportunities for partnership, not because everybody wants it, but
because it has to happen. Republican President, Republican Senate,
Democratic House: The only way we succeed, Madam Speaker, is to succeed
together. That is the only pathway forward.
If anybody in this Chamber ran for their seat because they wanted to
stand up here and talk about it for 2 years, we have got a great
pathway for you. But if you ran for this seat because you actually
wanted to get it done, these bills today aren't doing it.
The Senate won't consider them. The President is not going to sign
them. But there are ideas in these bills, Madam Speaker, as expressed
unanimously by the Ways and Means Committee, that America is hungry for
and you and I can deliver.
Let's exceed expectations today. Defeat the previous question, and
let's restore this bill to the bipartisan compromise that the Ways and
Means Committee created.
Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. PERLMUTTER. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may
consume.
Madam Speaker, I want to thank Mr. Panetta and Mrs. Trahan for
joining us today to speak on this rule, the Consumers First Act, and
the SECURE Act.
And, just briefly, with respect to the Consumers First Act, there are
dozens and dozens of consumer, civil rights, and labor organizations
supporting the Consumers First Act and how we are approaching it
pursuant to this rule: Americans for Financial Reform, the Center for
Responsible Lending, the Communication Workers of America, the Consumer
Federation of America, and the NAACP, just to mention a few, with
respect to the Consumers First Act.
With respect to the SECURE Act: AARP, SEIU, the Church Alliance, the
Girl Scouts, the Boy Scouts, the National Association of Women Business
Owners.
And today is the 100th anniversary of a woman's right to vote, so
here we have got the National Association of Women Business Owners, as
well as the
[[Page H4030]]
National Council of Farmer Cooperatives, TIAA-CREF, and the Air Line
Pilots Association.
So we have consumer groups, insurance groups, and business groups
supporting the SECURE Act so that millions more Americans can feel
secure in their retirement, something that so many people feel insecure
about today.
The bill has dozens and dozens of provisions. The amendment that is
in the nature of the manager's amendment by Mr. Neal includes
additional children, Gold Star families, a lot of people who were left
out by the giant tax cut that the Republicans passed a year and a half
ago to benefit the wealthiest Americans.
These two bills are important steps forward for the constituents that
you represent, Madam Speaker, that the gentleman from Georgia
represents, and the people I represent.
The Consumers First Act will realign the Consumer Bureau's focus as a
truly independent voice protecting consumers first. We have seen what
the bureau can accomplish in the millions of consumers who were helped
under Director Cordray, and our constituents need the bureau to
continue to focus on them.
{time} 1330
The SECURE Act is an important bipartisan package which addresses
retirement security and makes an important technical change to the GOP
tax bill for Gold Star families, among others. This package was
developed by both sides of the aisle and with many stakeholders.
While the other side of the aisle may be upset over one provision out
of dozens and dozens of provisions, I hope they can recognize the
effort that went into this package to bring both sides together and the
millions of Americans who are benefited by this legislation.
These are both commonsense bills, and I look forward to their
passage.
Madam Speaker, I encourage a ``yes'' vote on the rule and the
previous question.
Mr. WOODALL. Will the gentleman yield?
Mr. PERLMUTTER. I yield to the gentleman from Georgia.
Mr. WOODALL. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the text of
the amendment be printed in the Record immediately prior to the vote on
the previous question.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Ms. Judy Chu of California). Is there
objection to the request of the gentleman from Georgia?
There was no objection.
Mr. PERLMUTTER. Madam Speaker, I kind of wanted to object, but I
didn't.
Madam Speaker, I encourage a ``yes'' vote on the rule and the
previous question.
The material previously referred to by Mr. Woodall is as follows:
Amendment to House Resolution 389
In section 2, after ``accompanying this resolution'' insert
``and the amendment specified in section 9 of this
resolution''.
At the end, add the following new section:
Sec. 9. The amendment referred to in section 2 of this
resolution is as follows:
In the amendment printed in part B of the report of the
Committee on Rules accompanying this resolution, strike ``In
section 302, strike subsections (b) and (d).''.
Mr. PERLMUTTER. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time,
and I move the previous question on the resolution.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on ordering the previous
question.
The question was taken; and the Speaker pro tempore announced that
the ayes appeared to have it.
Mr. WOODALL. Madam Speaker, on that, I demand the yeas and nays.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX, further
proceedings on this question will be postponed.
____________________