[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 121 (Thursday, July 18, 2019)]
[House]
[Pages H7129-H7134]
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. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Maryland 
(Mr. Hoyer), the majority leader, for the purpose of inquiring about 
next week's schedule.
  Mr. HOYER. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  Madam Speaker, on Tuesday, 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 Wednesday and Thursday, the House will meet at 10 a.m. for 
morning-hour debate and noon for legislative business.
  On Friday, the House will meet at 9 a.m. for legislative business, 
and last votes of the week would be expected no later than 3 p.m.
  We will consider several bills, Madam Speaker, under suspension of 
the rules. The complete list of suspension bills will be announced by 
close of business tomorrow.
  The House will also consider H.R. 397, the Rehabilitation for 
Multiemployer Pensions Act, commonly referred to as the Butch Lewis 
Act.
  The 10 million Americans who have paid into multiemployer pensions 
deserve to know they will receive the benefits they have earned when 
they retire. The bill will help ensure a secure retirement for these 
workers and retirees.
  In addition, Madam Speaker, the House will consider H.R. 2203, the 
Homeland Security Improvement Act. This legislation introduced by 
Congresswoman Escobar will ensure that the Department of Homeland 
Security addresses border issues in a responsible and humane manner. 
The bill fosters greater accountability when it comes to the handling 
of children and migrant families at all levels within the Department of 
Homeland Security.
  The House is also expected to consider additional legislation, Madam 
Speaker, related to the current humanitarian crisis on the southern 
border.
  Members are advised that additional legislative items are expected. 
As we know, it is the last week before we adjourn, and there is an 
effort to try to get things done that can, in fact, be done within the 
timeframe we have available to us.
  It is my sincere hope that an agreement is reached to raise budget 
caps and the debt limit. The Speaker and Secretary Mnuchin and others 
have been working very hard on this objective, and I am hopeful that 
they will reach an agreement that we can agree on as a House and as a 
Senate. Assuming an agreement is reached, we will consider that as soon 
as they reach it, and hopefully, that will be next week.
  Mr. SCALISE. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for giving that 
update on the schedule.
  I know that we have been in talks on a budget caps agreement. I met 
with the Vice President earlier this morning, talking through some of 
the things that may be included.
  Obviously, there is no final agreement. We would hope that those 
talks go on, and we, hopefully, reach an agreement where we can give 
real certainty, especially to our Department of Defense, that we will 
look at what sequestration would do to defense. We have been able to 
rebuild our defense over the last 2 years. We would like to see that 
progress continue.
  A lot of other issues are at stake there, and we encourage those 
talks to move forward. We will be ready to move if there is an 
agreement reached between all the parties, including the White House.
  I did not hear mention of anything regarding the BDS legislation. We 
have heard that there might be some movement on standing up against the 
BDS movement.
  I know that when we looked at a number of bills, there are some 
resolutions that are out there, some good, some bad. As we know, there 
is time for talk, and then, there is time for action. The resolutions 
are only talk.
  The legislation, H.R. 336 by Mr. McCaul, is the only bill out there. 
S. 1 moved through the Senate with a large, overwhelming bipartisan 
vote. It is similar legislation that would actually have teeth, not 
just words, which are important, but words followed up with action, 
real teeth to help not only this country but our States that are also 
standing up against the BDS movement, to give them some muscle, some 
ability to stand up to the BDS movement.
  Madam Speaker, I would ask the gentleman, is there any indication 
that there might be movement on H.R. 336, to follow up the words with 
real action against the BDS movement?
  Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. HOYER. In response to my friend, Madam Speaker, I will tell him 
that the committee did, in fact, mark up bills this past Wednesday, 
yesterday, and those bills are being looked at to possibly move to the 
floor.
  Mr. SCALISE. Madam Speaker, specifically, if I could ask my friend, 
H.R. 336 was not one of those bills that was marked up. The only bills 
that were marked up were resolutions.
  Again, while some of those resolutions might have some good language 
in them, there are no actual teeth. There is no policy. There is no 
change in law to give us more tools as a country to stand up to the BDS 
movement, to defend our friend Israel.
  As we know, the BDS movement really is rooted in anti-Semitism to 
undermine Israel's economy, which none of us should want to see. I know 
my friend doesn't want to see Israel's economy undermined, but there is 
a movement to do that. If we are going to truly stand up against it, 
words are not enough. We need action.
  H.R. 336, again, reflects similar legislation that passed the Senate 
with an overwhelming vote, Republicans and Democrats coming together to 
give real tools to stand up to this movement and support our friend 
Israel.
  Madam Speaker, I would inquire of the gentleman, would that bill be 
considered? It was not part of the package of bills that were brought 
up in committee this week. I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. HOYER. Madam Speaker, again, I will tell my friend, as he has 
articulated, that bill has not been marked up in committee. There are 
two bills that were marked up in committee, and there is a possibility 
that we will consider those, but the other bill was not marked up.

  Mr. SCALISE. Madam Speaker, I would encourage that we go back and 
look. This committee can do better. If we are going to stand up against 
this movement and support our friend Israel against this attempt to 
undermine their economy, we need real tools.
  H.R. 336 is the only instrument out there. It is similar to S. 1. We 
would love to see S. 1 passed. There have been questions about whether 
or not it has an origination problem, so that is why H.R. 336 was 
filed.
  But, again, H.R. 336 has the same language that passed with 77 votes 
in the Senate, overwhelmingly, Republicans and Democrats coming 
together. I would encourage us to follow that lead of bipartisanship, 
standing with Israel.
  I am disappointed that it is not included in the package. It moved 
out of committee. I would hope we would go back and consider bringing 
that bill to the floor.
  Again, words are nice, but words without action don't give us the 
tools we need to stand with our friend Israel against this undermining 
attempt known as BDS.
  I yield to the gentleman from Maryland.

[[Page H7130]]

  


                              {time}  1215

  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman's comments. 
Unfortunately, of course, three of the component parts of the bill, to 
which the gentleman refers, we are strongly for. Unfortunately, they 
were held up in the Senate, as the gentleman may know.
  We want to see the MOU for Israel assistance package, which we 
strongly support, which was negotiated by the Obama administration and 
which we strongly support in terms of the amount of money, available 
not only on a general basis, but also a specific basis, for support of 
Israel's defense against rockets and other munitions that would be sent 
into Israel.
  We also support the Syria sanctions and the Jordan MOU, so we hope, 
at some point, they will move. I will reiterate, however, there have 
been two bills marked up, and the possibility of considering those for 
next week is there.
  Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, clearly, if there are issues that need to 
be worked out, differences that might exist between the chairman and 
the lead Republican on the committee, that work needs to be done. There 
have been no indications given to us of some counteroffer, some 
different way to do it, some better way to do it, than what is in H.R. 
336.
  But again, the language in H.R. 336 is the same language that was in 
S. 1, which passed the Senate with a 77-23 vote. It doesn't mean that 
the Senate has the best idea, but it shows there was a way that 
Republicans and Democrats could come together to stand with Israel 
against this movement.
  If there is a better way to do it, we would be more than happy to 
work through those better ideas. None of those better ideas have been 
presented to us. They just shut down that bill. They shut down the 
ability to have a bill come to the floor to actually put teeth in law 
to give us more tools.
  I would urge that if there is a better alternative, that the chairman 
of the committee or the leadership on your side has, please present 
that and let's negotiate it, but none of that has been presented up 
until now.
  So, I would just encourage us to do better as we try to give more 
support to our friend Israel against this growing movement.
  Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask about the agenda as we have seen it 
so far in the decorum. The agenda we have seen this week alone, 
multiple pieces of legislation--whether it is targeted at the 
President, we had a resolution on the President's tweet. There was a 
resolution filed to impeach the President of the United States. There 
was a resolution to hold Trump officials in contempt of Congress with 
no basis for that contempt. There were multiple resolutions just this 
week to target and harass different policies of the administration--
there is so much legislation we ought to be on this floor debating to 
do things that would actually help real families.
  There is a crisis at our border, and there has been no bipartisan 
legislation. The bills that are going to be coming to the floor next 
week, that the gentleman mentioned, dealing with homeland security are 
known by many in the homeland security field as the open borders bill, 
not a bipartisan approach to solving our problem at the border. We need 
a secure border. We need to solve the crisis at the border.
  Fix our broken asylum laws. We want to encourage asylum to work. 
There ought to be a way to apply for asylum. But, in all honesty, if 
somebody goes through other countries and turns down asylum in those 
countries and comes here and just reads a script, because they know 
there is a loophole in our law, we ought to work together to fix those 
broken loopholes and the things that are causing an overwhelming crisis 
at our border. That has not been done.
  Bills to lower drug prices. We had a bipartisan agreement in the 
Committee on Energy and Commerce, to lower drug prices, and yet that 
was abandoned when that bill came to the floor and sent in a way that 
became a partisan bill. These shouldn't be partisan issues.
  I would hope that we would move away from the harassment agenda and 
get back to an agenda that is focused on Republicans and Democrats 
working together, not in a partisan way to say, hey, we passed some 
bill out of the House, that everybody knows is going nowhere because it 
was a partisan approach.
  Look at what the Senate has done to move bipartisan bills through 
their Chamber. We can do the same. We can do better than the Senate, 
but we are not.
  When the Speaker breaks the House rules, when you see this break 
down, it just raises the ire because there is not that attempt to work 
in a bipartisan way to solve these problems. And there are a lot of 
good ideas that are bipartisan to solve these problems. The 
disappointment is that we don't see those coming to the House floor.
  The bills that deal with real policy coming to the House floor are 
only brought, by and large, from a partisan perspective, and the 
bipartisan approaches are being discarded.
  BDS is one clear example where there is a way to solve the problem, 
where Republicans and Democrats came together. Even from the 
gentleman's acknowledgement, there is no indication that it is going to 
move out of committee any time soon. It ought to be out of committee 
and it ought to be on the House floor, so that we can not only debate 
it, but pass it, and get a bill to the President's desk to allow us to 
stand up more against the BDS movement in support of Israel.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  First of all, let me say two things:
  We are confronting, in my view, an unprecedented refusal of an 
administration to cooperate with the Congress in the exercise of its 
constitutional duties. I refer specifically to the issuance of 
subpoenas, either for testimony or for documentary evidence, so the 
Congress can properly exercise its oversight responsibilities under the 
Constitution.
  I have been here for some almost four decades, and I have never seen 
any administration, essentially, direct across the board no response to 
the Congress of the United States or to its committees. So, yes, we are 
pursuing.

  The gentleman referred to the contempt citation dealing with Mr. Barr 
and Mr. Ross. Now, the issue at the center of that, as the gentleman 
knows, is the administration ultimately decided it would not pursue the 
policies that were the subject of that investigation. However, it is 
not about the specific, but it is about the general constitutional 
responsibility that this Congress has to the American people.
  We ask for information not on behalf of ourselves individually, but 
on behalf of the American people, so they will know what their 
government is doing, there will be a transparency to the operations of 
government, and they will be able to determine whether or not any 
administrative official, or the administration generally, is acting on 
its behalf personally or whether it is acting on behalf of the American 
people.
  So, from that perspective, I think the resolutions that we have 
offered, of which there, essentially, have been two dealing with this 
issue, and maybe more, the refusal to cooperate with subpoenas has 
continued.
  I hope the gentleman will understand that we are trying to protect 
the responsibilities and authority of the Congress of the United 
States, the people's body, the article I body, to do its duty properly.
  Secondly, yes, we did have a very difficult day yesterday. But I will 
tell my friend from Louisiana that I think it is the absolute 
responsibility of this body to respond if it sees things that are being 
done by the administration or by others that it perceives to be 
contrary to the ideas of this country, contrary to the declaration that 
we believe that all men and, yes, all women are created equal; contrary 
to the extraordinary wrenching war that we had among the States to 
determine that all were equal. And a construction period.
  And then, as I grew up in the 1950s and the 1960s, looking racism in 
the face and saying, we reject it, that we reject racism, we reject 
prejudices, we reject simplifying if people are a certain color, a 
certain race, a certain nationality, or a certain gender, that somehow, 
they are less than other Americans. I think it is our responsibility to 
confront that.
  That is what we did yesterday. It was difficult, I understand. I was 
sorry that it was not a bipartisan vote, because I

[[Page H7131]]

don't believe that Members on your side of the aisle want to tolerate 
racism any more than we want to tolerate racism. And if we see it, I 
think we have a responsibility to speak out, to stand up, and to say 
this is not right in America, this is not America.
  So, yes, we had a resolution yesterday that the gentlemen refers to 
in response to a tweet. It was not the tweet, it was what the tweet 
said, what it implied, what it diminished in terms of America's sense 
of decency and equality and tolerance and inclusion for our people.
  Now, let me go to legislation. As the gentleman knows, we have passed 
substantial pieces of legislation.
  We passed H.R. 1. No Republicans voted for that, but it seeks to make 
it easier for people to vote in America, make sure their vote is 
protected and counted.
  It made sure that we have transparency in the financing of campaigns.
  It made sure that our redistricting was fair to our citizens and that 
we politicians were not drawing the districts, but that the districts 
are drawn in fairness to the American people.
  It also demanded ethics performance.
  But then we passed an anti-hate resolution. It was just words, but it 
said no to hate: 173 Republicans voted for that. It overwhelming passed 
bipartisan.
  We passed a Land and Water Conservation Fund that made that fund 
permanent, a very important bill for a State like Louisiana and, quite 
frankly, my own State of Maryland, who are all surrounded by water, 
have a lot of water. That bill got 133 Republicans. It languishes still 
in the Senate.
  We passed the SECURE Act, which makes it easier for people to get 
retirement security. That was supported by 187 Republicans.
  We passed the violence against women reauthorization. Unfortunately, 
it didn't get overwhelming votes, but it got 33 Republicans voting for 
it. It languishes in the Senate.
  We passed a provision that said we want to protect preexisting 
conditions in the Affordable Care Act. We got 8 Republicans. I would 
have wished we had gotten more.
  We passed disaster relief. The gentleman knows a lot about disaster 
relief, important to his State. Unfortunately, we only got 34 
Republicans, but it was a bipartisan bill.
  We have also passed background checks, which are supported by 90 
percent of the American people, to try to make gun violence lessened in 
the United States of America. For that bill, we only got 8 Republicans.
  But those two bills, supported by 90 percent of the American people, 
languishes in the United States Senate, the majority leader not 
bringing up that legislation.
  We passed a national emergency resolution, which said, Mr. President, 
you can't take money that we appropriated for X and just send it over 
to Y. That was, I thought, a protection of our constitutional 
authority. The Constitution says we raise, and we spend money and we 
direct the executive--we direct the executive--how to do that. That got 
13 Republicans supporting it, a major piece of legislation.
  We passed a Dreamer legislation. We have been asking for that 
legislation for almost a decade, or at least 6 years, I should say. And 
that legislation got no vote over the last 5 years. It got a vote this 
year. We got a number of Republicans--7 to be exact--to vote for that.
  Now, I could go through a number of other pieces of legislation, 
including, lastly, the minimum wage bill. This was about capitalism, 
not socialism. We are capitalists over here. We believe in the free 
market system over here. And any assertion to the contrary, Madam 
Speaker, is absolutely false.
  It is a good political tactic, it is a scare tactic, Madam Speaker, 
but I reject it out of hand. We believe in the free market system. We 
believe the free market system has been the system that has provided 
the most benefits for the broadest number of people.

                              {time}  1230

  We believe that is one of the great facets of our democracy, our free 
market system. And I will tell my friend, Madam Speaker, that it was 
Democrats in the 1930s that saved the free market system. It was 
Democrats in December of 2007 that came in and made sure that the free 
market system did not crash after 8 years of Republican leadership.
  I would hope that the gentleman would not make the assertion that 
surely he knows is not true, Madam Speaker, that we on this side are 
looking to support a socialist agenda. We are promoting and continue to 
promote a socially sensitive agenda for the American people to make 
sure that they have healthcare.
  Medicare was called a socialist program, Madam Speaker, when it was 
adopted. That is a program that millions and millions of Americans rely 
on and have been brought out of poverty. Medicare was a called a 
socialist program when it was adopted. That program, combined with 
Social Security, has millions of Americans having a sense of security, 
a sense of independence, a sense that they are not going to fall 
through the cracks.
  So we ought not to be debating, I say, Madam Speaker, this phony 
shibboleth of socialism.
  The minimum wage is simply saying, in America, we value people who 
work, and we want to ensure that people who work are not living in 
poverty and have some ability to support themselves and their families 
in a decent way. We passed that bill today. We are proud of passing 
that bill.
  Very frankly, for 10 years of Republican control of the House of 
Representatives, we pleaded with them to bring a minimum wage bill of 
whatever number to the floor, and they didn't bring a single cent raise 
in a decade, the longest time since the minimum wage was adopted in the 
1930s, to make sure that Americans were lifted out of the deepest 
recession that this country has ever had.
  So I say to my friend, we have done a lot. I wish the Senate would 
move it.
  Let me close in terms of this response. I am very proud of this. We 
have passed 10 appropriations bills out of 12, the most since 2006.
  Now, in 2006, the Republicans were in charge. I don't refer to the 
gentleman personally, but the Republicans were in charge, and they 
didn't bring the Labor-Health bill to the floor. I am not sure why, but 
I had offered a minimum wage increase in that bill, in the Labor-Health 
Subcommittee, and they never brought it to the floor.
  It passed in committee, even though the Republicans were in charge 
and the majority of Members in the committee were Republicans. That 
minimum wage increase passed, but they refused to bring it to the 
floor. I can only conclude that they are not for increasing the minimum 
wage.
  We disagree with that position. We believe that in America, if you 
are working, playing by the rules, and making our economy grow, then 
you ought to be paid a wage that you can survive on and, better than 
that, live on.
  And so I am proud of the legislation that we passed, and I am proud 
of the 10 appropriations bills, which, by the way, fund 96 percent of 
the government.
  Our colleagues in the Senate, Madam Speaker, have not passed a single 
appropriations bill through committee, not one.
  So we are doing our job, Madam Speaker, and we are addressing the 
issues of the American people.
  I agree 100 percent with the minority, with the Republican whip that 
we need to deal with drug pricing. We have pledged to do that. We are 
working together. The President says he wants to do that. Hopefully, we 
can get to a consensus.
  I agree with the gentleman from Louisiana, Madam Speaker, we haven't 
gotten there yet. Hopefully, we can get there. Hopefully, we can 
strengthen the Affordable Care Act so that people will have the 
confidence that it will be available to them.
  I know that was a relatively--maybe not relatively--a long answer, 
but I think we have done a lot of work. I am very proud of the 6 months 
that we have had.
  We spent the first 35 days trying to open up the government. This is 
the first Congress in the history of the United States in which the 
government was shut down when the new Congress started. It has been 
shut down before, but this was the first time when we started. It took 
us 35 days to get it open. And when we did get it open, we started on 
an agenda of which I am proud.

[[Page H7132]]

  Do we have more work to do? We do. Madam Speaker, we intend to 
continue on an agenda that does that work.
  Mr. SCALISE. Madam Speaker, there is clearly a lot to cover there. 
Let's start with the big debate, and that is what the gentleman alluded 
to, and that is government control versus freedom, because that is 
going to be the debate over the next year where there is already a 
Presidential primary debate process going on.
  When you see every candidate for President on one side saying that 
they want to give free healthcare benefits to people who are here 
illegally, yet many of them embrace a plan that would literally end 
private insurance for families that enjoy the healthcare plans they 
have in the private marketplace, the Medicare for All proposal, there 
are so many different areas where we see this debate about government 
control versus freedom.
  And, yes, to the gentleman, there are some on his side who refer to 
themselves as socialist Democrats. And so if they want to call 
themselves that, then at least own the things that go with socialism 
and recognize the damage that is done by socialism.
  To think that any one party has some kind of ownership of capitalism 
in the free market system, I would be more than happy to see us engage 
in a debate about capitalism, because there are some on the other side 
that attack it on a regular basis.
  But if you look at how Republican policies have gotten us to where we 
are with the most booming economy in the world, our economy is the envy 
of the world. People's wages are rising. Low-income people, in fact, 
are benefiting the most. And we are seeing the increase in the 
rebuilding of our middle class that was evaporating.

  For 8 years in a row under the previous administration, every single 
quarter, our economy had less than 2 percent growth. The economy wasn't 
even that bad during the Great Depression that the gentleman cited.
  So when we came in with the Republican majority and the Republican 
President, we were able to pass actual policies like the Tax Cuts and 
Jobs Act, like reversing so many of the radical regulations that we saw 
that had nothing to do with health and safety but had to do with 
carrying out an agenda to shut down industries in this country like the 
fossil fuel industry and so many others that are providing not only 
jobs, lower carbon emission, dominance in the world, helping our 
friends around the world, and lowering energy prices for families in 
America.
  Those policies have actually been increasing wages for lower income 
people, not government-controlled prices as passed today where the 
government is going to try to come in and set artificial rates for what 
people ought to make as opposed to letting this great market that is 
working incredibly well raise wages for families.
  We have seen the studies. We have seen the University of Washington 
study, which was cited today, where we can look at real examples of 
communities that have had artificially high minimum wages, like 
Seattle, where they put in place a $15 minimum wage. It sounds great. 
The government is going to set everybody's rates and tell everybody how 
much they are going to make, and what it resulted in is over 5 million 
hours lost for workers.
  In fact, the lower income families in Seattle were hurt the most by 
that policy by a margin of 3 to 1. It damages low-income families.
  Again, it might sound good that the government is going to tell 
everyone what they can make, but most of us who believe in the free 
market system reject that idea that we should set policies that are 
crushing jobs in America.
  There is a bar in New York that was closed because of the increase in 
the minimum wage that one of our colleagues used to work at. It was 
closed because of an artificially set price, minimum wage, in the city 
of New York.
  So when you look at jobs that are fleeing some communities and going 
to other communities, that ought to tell you how those policies are 
working.
  But we have a growing economy, not because we had a lot of government 
control out of Washington, but, in fact, because we allowed freedom. We 
allowed people to keep more of what they earned. We allowed people to 
make their own choices. And it is a successful formula. We want to see 
more of it.
  Now, if we can get into the issue of the harassment agenda, the 
subpoenas, the finding people in contempt, let's talk about Secretary 
Ross and the work that was done to comply with the committee's request.
  If you look, and this is reading from a document sent by Secretary 
Ross and Attorney General Barr to the committee, it says:

       The Department's engagement with the committee is a good 
     faith accommodation process, rooted in the separation of 
     powers. As part of that process, both Departments have made 
     multiple witnesses available for voluntary, transcribed 
     interviews and have produced more than 30,000 pages of 
     documents to the committee.
       Before the committee abruptly and prematurely terminated 
     the accommodation process last month, the Department of 
     Justice intended to provide a significant number of 
     additional documents identified as responsive to the 
     committee's subpoena.

  They go on to talk about how they were complying with the committee, 
producing over 30,000 pages of documents just related to the Census. 
And then the committee abruptly decides they just want to hold him in 
contempt because there were some documents they wanted that the 
Attorney General would have actually broken the law if he turned them 
over.
  So you saw a Department complying and going overboard to ensure that 
the separation of powers and the oversight that existed would continue.
  Of course, when we were in the majority and the previous 
administration of the other party was there, we had a lot of oversight 
hearings, exercising our Article I powers as we all should, but we 
didn't go week after week.
  Just this week alone, there was a resolution condemning the 
President's tweets, an impeachment resolution, a resolution to hold two 
Cabinet Secretaries in contempt, and three resolutions of disapproval 
on policy. That was just this week.
  The American people don't want to see us fighting over power. They 
want to see us fighting for their needs, the needs of hardworking 
families.
  Again, I identified so many things.
  Just to finish up on the resolution that was discussed earlier, the 
gentleman said we need to respond to things that violate this country's 
principles.
  First of all, we reject racism wholeheartedly. We reject hate. We 
reject anti-Semitism.
  There have been comments made by Members of the gentleman's party 
that have not been addressed on this floor that violate those 
principles.
  We can all bring resolutions broadly stating things, but if the 
intention is to identify people by name, it is, to us, rather 
conspicuous that, when people of the other party say those things, they 
are not addressed on this floor by name. And so we know that happened.
  Again, the way that the Speaker violated the rules of the House, and 
then a vote was brought to this floor to basically say that those rules 
don't apply to the Speaker.
  If the rules don't apply to the Speaker, then who do they apply to? 
They ought to apply to all of us equally.
  If any of us break the rules of the House and are called out on it 
and are found by the Chair to be in violation of the rules, then we 
ought to accept that. We ought not have the vote on the House floor to 
say, well, the rules apply to some people, but not everybody.
  If the rules are in place, they ought to be in place to be enforced 
equally, not that some in power have an exemption and have a free pass 
to break those rules.
  So if we are going to talk about what we reject, let's be fair and 
equal about it.
  I yield to the gentleman from Maryland.
  Mr. HOYER. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  Madam Speaker, I want to go back to this free market and the minimum 
wage.
  The gentleman, Madam Speaker, projects that: Let the free market 
operate.
  We do not allow employers to hire people under a certain age because 
we want to protect children. I suppose that is interfering with the 
free market because we know that, throughout the world, we have 8-, 9-, 
and 10-year-old children being asked to work 10-, 12-, 14-hour days at 
rudimentary tasks.

[[Page H7133]]

  


                              {time}  1245

  Perhaps he believes that we ought to have people work 80, 90 hours a 
week trying to manage their families and their lives and not have a 40-
hour week because of the free market. After all, individuals can decide 
whether they are going to work 80 or 90 hours a week. We have known 
that in our history.
  Perhaps we ought to have a free market that doesn't worry about 
whether workers are safe on the job. Whether it is in a mine or a 
factory, we require places to be safe so that we can protect workers.
  We don't believe that undermines the free market system. We think 
that improves the free market system. So there are rules.
  Mr. SCALISE. If I could interject, we share that. That is not an us 
versus them issue. We agree with those. Obviously, there are some that 
we disagree with. The ones that the gentleman mentioned are things that 
we agree with.
  Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. HOYER. Madam Speaker, my point to the gentleman is, yes, we think 
people ought to be paid a decent wage, and we know there are people in 
our workplace and in our community who have no bargaining power 
whatsoever. They don't have fancy college educations, and they don't 
have fancy skills, but they are needed in our economy. They are needed 
to do things that the community needs done. When you go to a hotel, you 
hope that bed is made up. You hope the bathrooms are clean. When you go 
to the grocery store, you hope that the peas and corn have been picked.
  We believe that those folks are necessary for our community and need 
to be paid a decent wage, just as we think they need to be safe. I am 
glad the gentleman agrees on that. I thought he did.
  But my point, Madam Speaker, is that there is an analogy here to 
safety, to hours, to working conditions, and yes, to wages.
  I don't know that the party that the gentleman represents has ever 
offered an increase in the minimum wage. I am going to check on that. I 
don't know. Since I have been here, they have not. It has always been 
us offering the increase.
  President George Bush, to his credit, signed the Fair Minimum Wage 
Act in 2007, which was still less than it was in 1968. As a matter of 
fact, it is 40 percent less today than it was in 1968. Workers are 
being paid 40 percent less.
  Lastly, I will say, Madam Speaker, one thing our party agrees with is 
that men and women have a right to come together and bargain 
collectively for their wages, their working conditions, and their 
benefits. They need to be on some degree of parity because we know that 
with big employers, and even small employers, individuals are not on 
parity. They either do this or don't, and if there are no rules, then 
people are subjected, in my view and in my observation, to unfair 
tactics that they have no defense against other than us.
  I say to my friend, I think he and I agree on hours, hopefully, the 
age at which people can work certain hours, and on safety conditions in 
workplaces. I am not sure about bargaining collectively in unions. I 
think they are critical to the creation of a middle class and the 
maintenance of a strong middle class. We also very strongly believe in 
the free market system.
  I could pick out one or two of your Members who may have some 
differences of agreement. I won't mention any names, but I can think of 
some names on the gentleman's side of the aisle. I am sure the 
gentleman can as well and, in fact, does disagree, from his 
perspective, with some people on my side of the aisle. But we intend to 
continue to be very supportive of building jobs.
  My friend knows that I have an agenda. I call it Make It In America. 
It is about growing jobs, growing enterprises, helping entrepreneurs, 
and making sure that people have good wages and a good future through 
the free enterprise system.
  Mr. SCALISE. Clearly, Madam Speaker, if we talk about what makes this 
country great, it is the freedoms and the economic success that we have 
seen for families, businesses, and everybody. It is the reason people 
come here from all around the world. What we have done to create this 
great free market system has unleashed potential for anybody to come 
here and be anything they want to be.
  I have been proud to help pass policies that have actually increased 
wages for families not through government price controls but through 
economic growth and through giving people more of their money back 
instead of their having to come to Washington to get an amount or come 
to a union boss to get the amount that they can earn. They can actually 
go do it on their own.
  It is playing out in reality, not in theory, but in reality, where we 
are seeing the lowest-income workers benefiting the most from our 
policies of cutting taxes, not by telling people how much they can make 
but by letting them go out and make even more on their own.
  They are doing it. It is the lower-income people who are benefiting 
the most from those policies. We ought to encourage more of that.
  The unemployment rate amongst African Americans and Hispanics is at 
the lowest rate in our country's history not through government 
controls but by cutting taxes and letting them have more of their 
money, by seeing businesses grow, and by hiring more people.
  We are seeing more job openings today than there are people looking 
for work. That is what is so exciting.
  We see that women-owned businesses are up 20 percent over the last 
few years because of these conservative policies that I have helped 
pass.
  Yes, when I support right-to-work laws, if a person wants to go work 
for a company that happens to be in a union-based industry or a union-
based State, and they say they don't want dues forced out of their 
paychecks, to give dues to somebody who believes in things that they 
don't agree with, they shouldn't be forced to do that. In many places, 
they are.
  I want more individual freedom. I want more ability for people to go 
out and live that American Dream, to start up their own business in 
their garage and then one day maybe become a billionaire because there 
was that opportunity provided to them, not our telling them how much 
they can make, but our allowing them, in a safe way, the ability to go 
be the best they can be.

  I will use an example because I know the gentleman and I share the 
belief that people need to be safe in the workplace, and we need to do 
all we can to ensure that. Look at deepwater drilling in the Gulf of 
Mexico, which is based out of parts of my district. Port Fourchon in 
Louisiana is the hub of all that deepwater drilling that we saw.
  There was the horrible tragedy, the Deepwater Horizon. People died, 
and the environment was polluted. That was done not because there 
weren't enough laws in place but because a company broke the laws. A 
company went around those safety standards that we put in place.
  We went and hammered them. We fined them. I passed a bill out of this 
House in a very bipartisan way called the RESTORE Act that ensured that 
they pay billions of dollars back to fix the damage that they had done 
and to hold that company accountable for what they had done. Its 
purpose was not to shut the whole industry down, because every other 
company that was out there had done things the right way.
  What we saw from the previous administration was a rule that came out 
called the Well Control Rule that wasn't rooted in safety. After 
industry did an even better job to put well containment in place so 
that, if something like that ever happened again, they could quickly 
move to stop it, instead of government working to help expedite that 
process, government sat back and waited until industry came up with a 
better way to solve that problem on their own. Then, it came up with a 
rule that actually would have undermined the new safety standards they 
put in place. It would have made it difficult because Washington would 
have been able to tell them how to manage a well in the middle of the 
Gulf of Mexico instead of understanding that pressure changes instantly 
and that they have to be able to respond to it.
  Government was setting a standard that would have undermined safety. 
Luckily, we reversed that Obama-era rule that would have made things 
less safe.

[[Page H7134]]

  Let's not think that every regulation is about increasing safety. We 
ought to stand together to support safety standards and strengthen them 
where we can. There may be rules and regulations that undermine safety 
because some people just don't want drilling for oil, and some people 
support the Green New Deal kind of approaches that I and many don't. 
But don't try to undermine safety just to shut an industry down because 
people don't believe in it.
  After September 11, our government came together in many ways, 
politically and policy-wise, to address what had happened. We didn't 
shut down the entire airline industry. We made safety standards at 
airports better so that people who get on a plane feel more comfortable 
that somebody doesn't have box cutters, guns, or knives that can 
undermine the safety of those people and of our country. Then, we got 
planes back up and running very quickly.
  Safety standards are something we both share. But when government 
gets in the way just because they don't agree with what somebody is 
doing, that is a different story. That is the kind of government 
control versus freedom battle that we are seeing play out and will 
continue seeing play out, I am sure, over the next year and a half 
between now and next November.
  Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. HOYER. Madam Speaker, we could go another many minutes, but I am 
going to comment on one of the things the gentleman said about the 
person who wanted to go to work for a company but didn't want to join 
the union and right-to-work. The probability is the reason you wanted 
to work for that company was because the wages were good, the benefits 
were good, and safety conditions were good, which the union got, but he 
or she doesn't want to pay dues to the union. They don't have to join 
the union; they have to pay dues to the union.
  I think it is somewhat ironic but demonstrative that when the 
gentleman speaks of safety regulations, very frankly, Republicans spent 
a lot of time, when they were in charge, passing reductions of 
regulations that we think undermine the safety of consumers, workers, 
and individuals.
  We have a disagreement on that, Madam Speaker, but that is what we 
believe, and that is the tension here. We represent, I think, an 
attitude that we need to make sure that everybody plays by the rules so 
that people are safe.
  In any event, we will discuss that further, I am sure, in the coming 
days, weeks, and maybe years.
  Mr. SCALISE. Madam Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman's comments. I 
respect our ability to have these disagreements but, again, to disagree 
in a civil way where we can at least talk about the policy and keep it 
focused that way and, hopefully, one day address those areas of concern 
that we both share and that we can both solve working together.
  Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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