[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 94 (Wednesday, June 5, 2019)]
[House]
[Pages H4332-H4337]
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 rise for the purpose of inquiring of the 
majority leader the schedule for next week.
  I yield to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), the majority 
leader.
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. 
Scalise), the Republican whip, for yielding.
  Mr. Speaker, on Monday, the House will meet at 2 p.m. for legislative 
business, with votes postponed until 6:30 p.m.
  Mr. Speaker, on Tuesday and Wednesday, the House will meet at 10 a.m. 
for morning-hour debate and 12 p.m. for legislative business.
  Members are reminded that when the House is considering 
appropriations bills, votes will occur after 7 p.m. and, obviously, 
before as well.
  On Thursday, the House will meet at 9 a.m. for legislative business. 
Last votes on Thursday are expected to occur probably between 2 and 3 
p.m. That is different, as I know most Members are used to leaving at 
11. We are leaving at 10:30 today, but it will be somewhere between 2 
and 3 p.m. on that Thursday.
  We will consider several bills under suspension of the rules. The 
complete list of suspension bills will be announced by the close of 
business today.
  The House will also consider a contempt resolution. This resolution 
would force Attorney General Barr and former White House Counsel McGahn 
to comply with congressional subpoenas that have been duly issued by 
the House Judiciary Committee. The resolution will authorize the 
Judiciary Committee to pursue civil action to seek enforcement of its 
subpoenas in Federal court.
  Madam Speaker, it also authorizes House committees that have issued 
subpoenas as part of their oversight and investigation responsibilities 
to seek civil enforcement of those subpoenas when they are ignored.
  Madam Speaker, in addition to that contempt resolution, the House 
will consider H.R. 2740, the Labor, Health and Human Services, 
Education, Legislative Branch, Defense, State, Foreign Operations, and 
Energy and Water Development Appropriations Act of 2020.
  This will be the first of several minibuses, Madam Speaker, that will 
be coming to the floor over this work period. It is my intention to 
pass all 12 appropriations bills through the House by the end of June. 
This package is the first step toward the House doing its work.
  This is, as I said, the first step toward precluding the possibility 
of a shutdown at the end of this year, as occurred at the beginning of 
this year. I am hopeful that all Members will cooperate with Chair 
Lowey and Ranking Member Granger, who have led their committees in 
working extraordinarily hard, 12 subcommittees, all of which will have 
marked up their bills by the middle of next week and be ready for floor 
action. This is one of the earliest times we have considered it.
  My Republican colleagues passed a number of bills, as well, in the 
last year. It was in the Senate that we didn't get that done. But the 
fact of the matter is, hopefully, we will be able to get this done.
  Mr. SCALISE. Madam Speaker, as we start the appropriations process 
to, ultimately, get to the point where we are able to pass our 
appropriations bills prior to September 30, I think the gentleman 
recognizes that the only way we will have an opportunity to get to a 
point where we don't have a shutdown is if we are in agreement, both 
between the House and Senate as well as with the White House, on the 
actual number, the amount of money that the Federal Government would be 
able to spend in that year.
  We have had agreements in prior years, budget agreements, on how we 
are going to do that. I think the gentleman understands that even 
within the Democratic-controlled House, there is not an agreement. The 
Budget Committee, the majority's Budget Committee, was not able to pass 
a budget. It was not even able to pass out of committee an amount of 
money to determine what we could spend in the House or the Senate. 
There is not an agreement at all.
  In fact, if you look, it is the first time in 9 years that the House 
Budget Committee did not produce a budget. That budget, that is usually 
the document that says this is the amount of money that the 
appropriations bills can ultimately equal up to, whether it is defense 
or all the other bills.
  Next week, more than half of the discretionary spending of the 
country is going to be on the House floor. The Department of Defense 
bill alone represents more than half of the discretionary spending, and 
there is not an agreement between the House and Senate or with the 
White House on how much we are going to fund defense.

  I would like to see us get that agreement, but, clearly, the 
gentleman

[[Page H4333]]

knows we don't have one. Unfortunately, those bills are typically 
bipartisan, and the Appropriations Committee has produced a very 
partisan defense bill. That doesn't happen often.
  I wish the Democrats on the committee would have worked with the 
Republicans on the Appropriations Committee to produce a bipartisan 
bill so that we would have a better chance of getting something that 
can get signed into law.
  If we want to avoid a shutdown, the best way to do it is to work with 
both parties, not just produce a Democrat-only bill. That doesn't 
happen too often. Unfortunately, I think that is the direction we are 
headed.
  I would like to ask the gentleman, number one, if he has any kind of 
idea on how we are going to get to a budget agreement, an agreement on 
some kind of spending forecast, so that we can have a picture of how we 
can get bills that can get signed into law and an amendment process 
that would be fair to both sides.
  I think we have talked about this before, how so far this Congress, 
it has been very tilted, where the lion's share of amendments that are 
coming out of the Rules Committee are only Democratic amendments. There 
has been a history this Congress of shutting out Republican amendments 
on the floor, and I would hope there would be a more fair process as 
these important bills--DOD, Labor-H, and some of the other bills--are 
going to be coming to the floor, where the Rules Committee would at 
least allow both sides to speak as we try to produce a bill that could 
be bipartisan but, so far, has not been.
  Mr. HOYER. Will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. SCALISE. I yield to the gentleman from Maryland.
  Mr. HOYER. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  First of all, of course, there was no budget last year. There was a 
budget that was passed in the latter part of the year before, but that 
was for reconciliation purposes so that Republicans could pass their 
tax bill with less than 60 votes in the United States Senate. So I 
wouldn't go too far on the budget.
  Republicans were in charge for 8 years, and they never had a budget. 
That doesn't mean we didn't pass one through the House, but there was 
never a budget. There was never a budget that was implemented, that I 
can remember, in the long term.

                              {time}  1045

  But that aside, as the gentleman probably knows, I, in January, 
started talking with his leadership, with Ranking Member Granger, with 
Senator McConnell, with Senator Shelby, with Senator Leahy, with Mrs. 
Lowey, and with our leadership about the necessity to reach an 
agreement on the level of discretionary spending, which we call the 
caps.
  Clearly, as Senator McConnell pointed out in our discussions, the 
White House was a critical component of that because, as the gentleman 
knows, in order to change the sequester, which I think is one of the 
stupidest policies that we put in place, but in order to change the 
sequester, we would have to have a bill signed by the President. So, 
clearly, the President would have to be involved.
  Unfortunately, sometime thereafter, Mr. Vought and Mr. Mulvaney 
suggested that we ought to go to sequester, that we ought to just march 
to the sequester numbers.
  For the Members who may not know exactly what that means, that means 
a $54 billion cut in defense spending. I don't really think anybody in 
this House thinks that is an appropriate step for us to take, but that 
is what Mr. Mulvaney and Mr. Vought of OMB suggested, except, by the 
way, they crossed their fingers to say we will use $180 billion of 
additional deficit spending out of the overseas contingency operations 
to fund defense.
  In other words, yes, we will do the sequester, but it will really 
only have an effect on the nondefense, education, healthcare, medical 
research, law enforcement, et cetera. It would only have an effect on 
that side of the budget.
  I didn't think that made much sense. And, very frankly, I think all 
of the people that I just mentioned that I had talked to didn't think 
it made sense either.
  Obviously, Paul Ryan, when he was Speaker, didn't think it made 
sense, because he led a deal with Senator Murray to give us numbers 
that we thought were reasonable, and we came to an agreement.
  I would hope that we could do that now. I know there are some 
negotiations at the top four level and in the White House that have not 
reached agreement yet. I think that is unfortunate.
  Now, the gentleman observed that we haven't passed a budget. He is 
correct. But we did pass the exact same number that the Budget 
Committee reported out for discretionary spending, and we adopted it in 
the rule.
  He is right; we did not adopt it in the budget as it was offered, but 
that wasn't necessary, because in either event, that wouldn't have 
solved the problem.
  But we adopted the same exact number, the Democrats voted for that 
number, to which the committee marked its bills. As the gentleman 
knows, that was $733 billion on defense and $639 billion on nondefense. 
There was some argument on our side as to whether those numbers ought 
to be closer together, but that aside, that is what those bills have 
been.
  So there is a number, and it was a number that was used by the 
Appropriations Committee, and it is a number that is reflected in the 
bills that we will be bringing to the floor.
  Now, of course we could wait, as I think, frankly, the White House 
wants us to wait, until September, maybe September 27, 28, or 29, and 
then they would say: Well, we are going to do a CR at last year's 
numbers.
  Now, that would be a little more than sequester, no doubt about that, 
but it would not be a number that I think the Members of this House on 
either side of the aisle would be happy with--maybe for different 
reasons but, nevertheless, not happy with.
  So I am in agreement that we need to reach a number. We need to pass 
a bill, because, if we do not, under the law that we passed some years 
ago, 15 days after the first session of this Congress adjourns, 
sequester will automatically go into effect.
  Nobody would be happy. America will not be happy. Our security will 
suffer and our people will suffer under those numbers. So I am in full 
agreement that we ought to reach a number.
  Now, with respect to the appropriations bills, I think we need to 
move them. Obviously, there is going to be a lot of negotiation back 
and forth, a lot of different steps will need to be taken. But this is 
a first step; it is an important step; and it sets a marker as to where 
we are going to start negotiations.
  Hopefully, those negotiations will bear fruit with the Senate and 
with the White House, because I know the gentleman shares my view that 
shutting down the government is not an option that we ought to be 
pursuing. Hopefully, we, through these actions, can preclude that from 
happening, and I think that will be a positive result.
  Mr. SCALISE. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his comments.
  I share the majority leader's understanding that there is a 
negotiation going on to see if we can get an agreement on the budget 
numbers. We are not there yet.
  I understand the gentleman that the majority has to move, at some 
point, on those appropriations bills next week. We all know that the 
bills that are being moved are not bills that we have an agreement on 
and, unfortunately, started off on a very partisan nature. Hopefully, 
we can get to a more bipartisan nature in the bills, bills like 
defense, that are coming up.
  We want our military to be properly funded, and we want our military 
to have the certainty that they don't have to operate under a CR, they 
don't have to operate under a cloud of potential shutdown.
  Our men and women in uniform, as we get ready to honor the brave 
sacrifices that were made on D-Day--tomorrow, of course, marks the 75th 
anniversary of D-Day and the heroic efforts that so many made, 
sacrificing their lives. Over 10,000 American soldiers died, and, of 
course, we reflect and pause to thank them for their sacrifice, to 
recognize that sacrifice that they made.
  And just as they did, today we have men and women in uniform risking

[[Page H4334]]

their lives for our country. And we don't want to have this potential 
that, if we get to September 30 and can't get an agreement on what that 
proper level should be, that they should worry whether or not they are 
going to get paid.

  So, hopefully, we can keep that work going, those conversations and 
negotiations going to finalize an agreement that we can get. We are not 
there yet. We will see where it goes next week.
  We then want to shift over now and talk about what else is going to 
be on the floor next week, and that is going to be this contempt 
resolution. I haven't seen the language. I don't know when the 
gentleman's side plans to file.
  I would ask the majority leader, it is clear that there is a march to 
impeachment, that this starts, maybe, the formal march to impeachment 
on the House floor. But just this Sunday, the majority whip was asked 
on a TV show if he felt the House was going to impeach the President of 
the United States, and he said yes.
  There has been no evidence that would necessitate an impeachment. We 
had this nearly 2-year investigation by Mr. Mueller, and it was all 
about whether or not there was collusion between the President and 
Russia. They looked into whether or not there was any kind of 
interference by Russia in our elections.
  Of course, he did find that there was interference by Russia. Russia 
tried to interfere with our elections while Barack Obama was President 
of the United States.
  Now, what did Barack Obama do to stop that? I don't know. I don't 
know if that is going to be investigated--it should be--whether or not 
the President did everything in his powers at the time to stop Russia 
from interfering with our elections.
  We need to work together to make sure it doesn't happen again. That 
should be our focus.
  There was no collusion, by the way, and he found that. There was no 
obstruction of justice.
  I know the committee wants to keep focusing and looking into 
everything that they can to try to find more evidence that wasn't 
there, but if they start bringing and you start bringing resolutions to 
hold, for example, the Attorney General in contempt--we haven't seen 
what the charges are, but some of the things that the Judiciary 
Committee has asked the Attorney General to produce, if the Attorney 
General produced that information, he would be violating law.
  Why would you hold the Attorney General of the United States in 
contempt of Congress for not breaking the law?
  Those are some of the things we have seen. Again, we haven't seen the 
final language. We have heard some conjecture by the chairman of the 
Judiciary Committee, by others who want to start this impeachment 
drumbeat.
  Madam Speaker, I would just urge caution to the gentleman as the 
House floor becomes politicized to just try to impeach the President 
because some people just don't like the fact that he was elected in 
2016.
  There will be an election next year. There are a whole lot of people 
on the Democratic side who are already trying to get the nomination to 
unseat the President, and that debate is already going on in the 
country, and it will happen in full next year.
  Let's let the people of this country decide who the President of the 
United States is. Let's respect the fact that the people of this 
country, in 2016, said they wanted Donald Trump to be the President of 
the United States, and he is the President of the United States, and he 
is carrying out his duties, and he is carrying out the agenda that he 
campaigned on, as it should be.
  If somebody wants to carry out a different agenda, next year they are 
going to have that opportunity to present it to the people of this 
country.
  But even though there was no collusion identified by the special 
counsel, this idea that we are still going to just start bringing 
legislative instruments to the floor like contempt and then, 
ultimately, as the majority whip said Sunday that he felt that there 
would be impeachment on the House floor, I would just urge caution to 
the gentleman. This next week, this legislation that is going to be 
brought forward is all a part of that.
  We should respect this process more. We should respect the fact that 
the Attorney General of the United States has an obligation to enforce 
the laws of this country. And when he is asked by Congress to do 
something that would actually violate laws, we ought to respect the 
fact that he said he would come and testify to the Judiciary Committee, 
to the members of the Judiciary Committee.
  Then the Judiciary Committee changed the rules of the game and said 
they didn't want Members of Congress to question him; they wanted staff 
to question, which would be unprecedented, so he didn't come. But he 
did say he would come and testify to the committee under the normal 
processes that have always been in place.
  So with that, again, we haven't seen the legislation yet. Once we do, 
we will review it, but I would just urge caution.
  Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. HOYER. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his comments.
  Very frankly, the person who rejected the premise that this matter 
was over was Robert Mueller in a relatively short press conference in 
which he answered no questions, but he clearly demonstrated that he 
thought Mr. Barr misrepresented the fact that this was over. In fact, 
he said:

       If we thought the President had not done anything wrong and 
     we were convinced of that, we would have said so. We did not 
     say so.

  Now, having said that, this is not related to impeachment. This is 
related to the Congress' authority, under the Constitution of the 
United States, to receive information from the executive on behalf of 
the American people.
  Now, if Mr. Barr believes that the information requested need not be 
submitted, then he had nothing to fear, because what we are seeking is 
a court ruling, an independent body's ruling as to whether or not he 
ought to be held in contempt and directed by a court to provide the 
information to the Congress of the United States, acting pursuant to 
its constitutional duty.
  Madam Speaker, I will tell my friend that it is a sad day when the 
Republicans and Democrats do not stand together on behalf of not only 
this institution's constitutional authority, but responsibility to get 
the information it needs both with respect to, as, again, Mr. Mueller 
pointed out, the very serious issue of the Russians trying to affect 
our democracy and our elections.
  There is no dispute of that fact. In fact, nine Russians were 
indicted by the Mueller special counsel for exactly that purpose.

                              {time}  1100

  Now, this resolution to which the gentleman refers authorizes the 
Judiciary Committee to pursue civil action to seek enforcement in 
Federal court of its subpoenas to Attorney General Barr and former 
White House Counsel McGahn, who is no longer a Federal employee. It 
also authorizes House committees that have issued subpoenas as part of 
their oversight and investigation responsibilities. Let me emphasize 
that: Investigation responsibilities, oversight. That is part of the 
constitutional responsibility of the Congress of the United States, 
which, by the way, your party pursued extraordinarily vigorously over 
the last 8 years of the Obama administration, and, very frankly, in 
previous administrations.
  We are seeking civil enforcement to have a determination as to 
whether or not Attorney General Barr, Mr. McGahn, and indeed others, 
who have refused to comply with constitutionally sanctioned requests by 
the Congress of the United States for information on behalf of the 
American people. The President of the United States, like Barr, said it 
is over.
  Mr. Mueller says it is not over. Mr. Mueller says he did not have the 
authority pursuant to Justice policy to go further, but he pointed out 
that there are other bodies that have the authority and responsibility 
to do so. Who is that? Us, the Congress of the United States.
  Now, one of the problems that we are having is that the President has 
instructed almost all of government not to respond to the Congress of 
the United States, not to answer questions, not to testify, not to 
appear. I have called that perhaps the biggest coverup in the history 
of any President who

[[Page H4335]]

has, in effect, given a blanket suggestion, and in some cases order, 
that people ought not to testify. He said there is no reason to go any 
further. He has made that decision. And especially in Congress where it 
is very partisan, obviously very partisan. We did think this is not 
partisan. This is our responsibility to the American people.
  By refusing to cooperate with Congress, the Trump administration has 
engaged in a refusal to allow the Congress to exercise its 
responsibility, and therefore, we are going to continue to pursue the 
facts on behalf of the American people. And that is what this is about. 
You will note that we have not sought criminal contempt. We have, 
however, found it to be untenable, unacceptable to have an 
administration, any administration, Republican or Democrat, tell the 
Congress whether it is a Republican Congress or a Democratic Congress 
that it will not respond to requests for information, to subpoenas to 
testify, and for other information that Congress needs. So that is what 
we are going to do.
  Mr. SCALISE. Well, the gentleman mentioned a lot of things that I 
think need to be addressed.
  First, the idea that there is some coverup. Let's recognize and 
remember that for nearly 2 years of the Mueller investigation, 
President Trump fully complied with all of the requests that were made, 
and when the Mueller investigation was completed, first of all, Mr. 
Barr, the Attorney General, had an opportunity to review that report 
and give a summary to Congress.
  During that period, Mr. Barr invited Mr. Mueller to review the 
report, to review his summary. Mr. Mueller chose not to participate in 
that. And so ultimately the Attorney General then gave Congress a 
summary, which made it crystal clear there was no collusion after 
almost 2 years and over $30 million of taxpayer money looking into this 
where the President fully complied, his administration fully complied, 
and they were probing everything.
  Mr. HOYER. Will my friend yield?
  Mr. SCALISE. The gentleman will yield, but after I first go through 
this because these are important points to make because anybody that 
wants to use the term ``coverup'' ought to be very cognizant of what 
they are talking about when we talk about that investigation. Because 
that investigation was as thorough as any that we have seen, and the 
Attorney General and the special counsel were both involved in 
reviewing it, but the special counsel had an opportunity if he found 
wrongdoing to file charges. And the gentleman from Maryland knows that.
  Mr. HOYER. No, I do not know that.
  Mr. SCALISE. He could have filed charges, and he filed absolutely no 
charges. There were no charges filed, because there was nothing wrong 
that was found.
  Mr. HOYER. And he said why he did not.
  Mr. SCALISE. The task was to see if there was any collusion between 
Russia and the Trump campaign while Russia was interfering with the 
elections. We know Russia interfered with the elections.
  Why did the Obama administration allow Russia to interfere with the 
elections? That is a question we should be probing. Why? Not just to go 
back in time, but to make sure it doesn't happen again. And how much 
time is being spent going and looking and seeing just exactly what 
Russia did to interfere with our election while Barack Obama was 
President? They are not doing that. They want to go after all these 
witch hunts, and was there more collusion. There was no collusion.
  And so instead of saying, okay, they tried for 2 years. You had 
members of your own leadership team saying they had evidence of 
collusion, and yet, there was no evidence of collusion and they have 
never come forth and said they were wrong. They have never brought 
forward what their mysterious evidence was, because there was no 
evidence, because there was no collusion. And so instead of that, they 
are continuing to say, let's just hold contempt hearings for the 
Attorney General here on the House floor.
  The majority whip says the House will impeach the President. The 
gentleman hasn't answered that. Well, where is that going to happen? 
When is that going to happen? Why don't we actually focus on the 
problems of this country? Because the same committee that continues 
down these rabbit holes and on these witch hunts, that same committee 
that has jurisdiction over this whole Mueller investigation that found 
no collusion, no charges filed by the special counsel, that is the same 
committee that has jurisdiction over the border crisis.
  And the gentleman knows we have a crisis at our border. It is a 
serious crisis because we don't have control over our border yet. We 
need to get control over our border, but in the next 2 weeks--
literally, in the next 2 weeks the department of DHS is about to run 
out of money to deal with this crisis.
  And the President of the United States submitted a supplemental 
request to this majority asking to give additional funding so that we 
can take care of those kids that are coming over every day in the 
thousands, the unaccompanied children where the Department of Health 
and Human Services is about to run out of money to take care of those 
kids.
  And so what happens to those kids? If they come over illegally, the 
law says what Homeland Security has to do. And if they come over and 
they are sick, which some of them are coming over very sick, they are 
turned over to DHS where DHS takes care of them, and DHS has told you 
they are about to run out of money and not a thing has been done.
  In fact, when the Labor-HHS bill was in subcommittee, one of our 
Members actually filed an amendment to try to include the money, so 
that we can keep taking care of the health needs of those kids that are 
coming over illegally, and that was rejected on a party line vote. Your 
party voted against that. And the committee of jurisdiction, instead of 
focusing on how to solve this problem, how we can help resolve this 
problem in a bipartisan way, which it should be bipartisan, we all 
ought to care about these kids that are coming over that have a lot of 
health issues that we are trying address, but they are about to run out 
of money. And what are we going to do about it? We have asked that this 
majority do something to address that request that was sent down from 
the President weeks ago.
  But we are literally facing a crisis in a matter of days where they 
will run out of money. When is that going to be addressed by this 
majority? We have asked for it to be addressed, and it hasn't. So when 
is the Speaker going to bring legislation? Would the majority leader be 
willing to bring legislation? For weeks we have talked about it right 
here in this colloquy, and it hasn't been addressed. And so before it 
becomes a crisis where literally DHS cannot take and care for the 
health needs of these kids that are coming over, why don't we address 
it now, instead of waiting until they truly run out of money, can no 
longer take care of those kids and bad things would happen. I don't 
want those bad things to happen. I know you don't want those bad things 
to happen. And the President doesn't want those bad things to happen. 
That is why he sent that supplemental request weeks ago, and it hasn't 
been dealt with.
  I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  Let me deal with the question of the supplemental, first. There is a 
humanitarian crisis at the border. We need to deal with it. The 
President came down with a request some two-plus weeks ago.
  Mr. SCALISE. Four.
  Mr. HOYER. The Republicans held up consideration of a disaster bill 
that we passed in January. Now, this dealt with natural disasters, not 
the humanitarian crisis at the border. I understand that.
  We passed that Monday ultimately because the administration wanted to 
undermine very badly the American citizens who live in Puerto Rico. 
Finally, we got agreement that that was the right thing to do and the 
Senate passed it overwhelmingly, then sent it over here. We tried to 
pass it by unanimous consent, and your side objected. You objected 
three times. So we had to pass it this Monday. We did overwhelmingly. 
Not as many perhaps on the gentleman's side as on my side, but we 
passed it handily.
  The fact of the matter is, we need to deal with this humanitarian 
crisis. We need to deal with the humanitarian crisis, and if we limit 
it to dealing with

[[Page H4336]]

the humanitarian crisis, Madam Speaker, we will do it. And, in fact, 
Ms. Lucille Roybal-Allard is in discussions on that now. My view is the 
four corners, meaning the Speaker, the Republican leader, Senator 
McConnell, the majority leader, and Mr. Schumer are dealing with it. I 
hope they get it done very soon. And if they get it done we are going 
to move it because there is a crisis and we need to deal with it.
  But I would urge my friend to urge his colleagues not to try to do 
some of the President's agenda unrelated to the humanitarian crisis. 
And if we can do that, we will get to an agreement, in my opinion.
  Now let me go back to your what I believe to be inaccurate, 
recitation--as I believe Attorney General Barr's recitation of what the 
Mueller report says, and Mr. Mueller clearly made that very, very 
crystal clear that he had a different view as to whether that was.
  Now, I have got a whole page here of things that the Mueller report 
says with reference to--``collusion'' is a word that the President has 
created. It is not collusion, not a crime, per se. Conspiracy is a 
crime, but the President uses this word ``collusion'' as fake news, as 
a distraction, as a magician's trick to look over here, not here, so 
that I can fool you.

  I asked the gentleman to yield when he said, well, the special 
counsel decided to do nothing. The special counsel made it very clear 
that under Justice Department directives, a sitting President cannot be 
indicted. And Mr. Mueller said if he can't be indicted, I don't want to 
make an allegation, which would not be fair because he cannot be 
indicted, and therefore, there will be no fora on which to defend 
himself. But he observed there was another forum, that was 
inappropriate for him, that did have the responsibility and the ability 
to take action, and that, as I said, is us.
  Now, I won't go through this list of findings that the Mueller 
committee or task force, the special counsel concluded, but in my 
opinion, and I said this in a release 2 days after, were pretty damning 
and at a minimum worthy of the Congress of the United States trying to 
get to the bottom of what Manafort and Stone and others did in 
reference to WikiLeaks, welcoming the Russian participation that they 
thought was helping them. Mueller report.
  So we can go into that at great length, but the proper way to do that 
is to do what we are doing, ask questions, have witnesses, review 
documents and other communications to get to the bottom of this, and we 
intend to do that. And we intend to do it in a considered, focused way.
  Neither the Speaker nor I, as the gentleman has read, are saying that 
we are seeking impeachment, but we are seeking to do our constitutional 
duty, our responsibility to the American people and to the Constitution 
to ensure that, in fact, the American people know what this 
administration or individuals who work with this administration or 
others were doing.

                              {time}  1115

  Madam Speaker, lastly, because we can go on at length about this, let 
me say that the gentleman protests too much. The Republicans control 
the United States Senate. Very frankly, the Intelligence Committee is 
working in a bipartisan fashion with Mr. Burr from North Carolina and 
Mr. Warner from Virginia.
  Madam Speaker, if the gentleman, my friend, the whip, is frustrated, 
I suggest he call up his friends in the United States Senate to say 
they ought to do this; they ought to do that; and they ought to do the 
other.
  If they think it is the right thing to do, maybe they will do it. But 
we intend to do our responsibility here.
  Again, I would hope that we could join together in defense of the 
Congress' responsibility and authority and not have any 
administration--Republican, Democratic, Obama, Trump, any President--
say, no, it is not going to give us any information, that some other 
body has disposed of that question.
  Some other body is not us, and we need to move ahead on doing our 
responsibility.
  Again, I would hope the gentleman would cooperate, but we are going 
to continue to do the business of the people of this country as well.
  We have differences on that. We think this was a pretty historic 
week. We passed the disaster bill. We extended flood insurance, and we 
extended TANF, so neither one of them expired. Then, we passed the 
American Dream and Promise Act, legislation that will relieve the fears 
of 2-plus million people who are positive participants in the American 
Dream.
  It was a bipartisan bill, not a lot from your side, but we think it 
is a historic piece of legislation. We hope the Senate takes it up.
  We have been trying to get that bill on the floor for 8 years, 
without success. We got it on the floor. As I knew it would, it passed. 
I think it would have passed had we put it on the floor in the previous 
Congress, but we didn't get it to the floor.
  Madam Speaker, I look forward to working with the whip toward 
reaching some bipartisan resolutions.
  In particular, I agree with him, and I think we all agree that we 
want to make sure that we have the resources necessary to handle what 
is, in fact, a humanitarian crisis, with so many people fleeing natural 
disasters and man-made disasters--terror, murder, mayhem--for safety 
for themselves and their families, as have millions and millions and 
millions of people who preceded them who came to this country. Whether 
they came from Europe, Asia, Africa, South America, Central America, 
they came here because America had a beacon that they saw as a land of 
opportunity and a land of freedom, equality, and justice, a land in 
which they wanted to live and make better.
  Madam Speaker, we will continue to do our business as well as 
exercise our responsibilities.
  Mr. SCALISE. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his comments, 
and I would share a lot of the disagreements we have with how the 
Senate does business, whether it is a Republican or Democratic Senate.
  Their rules, in many ways, work to undermine much of the good work 
that we do here in the House, whether it is a Republican or Democratic 
majority. We can find a lot of common ground on that disagreement.
  As it relates to immigration, I, too, believe America has this unique 
place in the world as that shining beacon for anybody who seeks 
freedom, anybody who seeks the liberty that has been fought for with 
blood and treasure by so many heroes throughout generations to make 
America the place that people look to when they think about freedom.
  We are also the most generous nation in the world when it comes to 
immigration, and we are proud of that. That is something we celebrate. 
We let over a million people a year into America to be a part of the 
American Dream, to come to seek the American Dream, and that is what it 
should be about.
  It should be about seeking those things that make America great so 
that more people can come to add to the richness of this country. We do 
that, but we also are a nation of laws, and we can't lose sight of that 
at the same time that we want to maintain that beacon.
  We only maintain it if we also maintain those great laws that we take 
an oath to uphold. All of us take that oath. That oath is critically 
important, because as people want to come here, they want to come here 
because of what America is. It is our job to preserve the greatness of 
what America is.
  If we start to lose that, if we start to look the other way and 
ignore this law and try to undermine that law, it really weakens the 
greatness of our democracy.
  When you look at the differences we had on the House floor, so many 
of us wanted to address the problems that are created by not having a 
secure border. But when you say, for example, that if somebody comes 
here when they are actually in a gang database, and by law, we can't 
even look at that database to see if that person coming into our 
country is a member of a gang or committed violent crimes, that is not 
what is the richness of America. We want to maintain the dream that 
people come here to seek.
  We may disagree on the methods of getting there, but let's keep 
working to try to get to a better place, something signed into law to 
fix the problems with our immigration system, to get

[[Page H4337]]

back to a functioning, legal immigration system, instead of having 
thousands of people, whether they are part of that culture that wants 
to seek the American Dream or whether they are coming here to undermine 
what is great about America, think they can just traipse through, 
thousands a day at a time, because we have not secured our border.
  In our homes, we have windows, doors, a yard. We might have a fence. 
But if we lock our door, we are locking it for a reason. It is not 
because we don't want anyone inside. It is because we only want to let 
in the people who are coming to be a part of what is great about our 
family and about our home. If somebody wants to come to do us harm, 
that is why we have the lock on the door.
  We let over a million people a year into our country, and that is 
part of what is great about our Nation. No other country in the world, 
by the way, is close to the generosity in letting people into their 
country every year. No country is letting in over a million people a 
year.
  We need to get back to a system where our immigration system works.
  We passed a bipartisan bill last week to take care of the disaster 
needs of so many people around the country, and it was bipartisan. It 
was an example of what works.
  There were some Members who objected. Some of them objected because 
the humanitarian money that is needed to address this crisis at the 
border wasn't in the bill.
  I am glad the gentleman acknowledged that we need to work to resolve 
it. Hopefully, we can do that next week before the crisis hits, before 
DHS actually runs out of money so that we have a severe crisis.
  Let's work together to stop it. I know the gentleman has acknowledged 
he wants to do that. While there are some other things that are going 
to be on the floor next week that, unfortunately, will be very partisan 
in nature that we will disagree on, let's also try to work to address 
that crisis so that, again, we get back to the richness of what's great 
about this Nation.
  Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman and look forward to working 
together next week on the things that we can accomplish for this 
country.
  Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Ms. Slotkin). Remarks in debate in the House 
may not engage in personalities toward the President, whether 
originating as the Member's own words or being reiterated from another 
source.

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