[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 166 (Friday, September 24, 2021)]
[House]
[Pages H5159-H5164]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               {time}  1200                      
                            LEGISLATIVE PROGRAM

  (Mr. SCALISE asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute.)
  Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, I rise to inquire of the majority leader 
the schedule for next week.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield formally to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. 
Hoyer), my friend, the majority leader.
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, on Monday, the House will meet at 12 p.m. for 
morning-hour and 2 p.m. for legislative business, with votes postponed 
until 6:30 p.m.
  On Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, the House will meet at 10 a.m. 
for morning-hour and 12 p.m. for legislative business.
  On Friday, the House will meet at 9 a.m. for legislative business.
  Mr. Speaker, the House will consider several bills under suspension 
of the rules. The complete list of suspension bills will be announced 
by the close of business today.
  Mr. Speaker, the Budget Committee has announced a markup for the 
Build

[[Page H5160]]

Back Better Act for tomorrow and Saturday. It is my intention to bring 
it to the floor next week.
  This legislation will help move tens of millions of Americans closer 
to economic security while also making transformational investments in 
making childcare more affordable, helping Americans access healthcare, 
and addressing climate change with the seriousness that it deserves and 
demands.
  On September 27, pursuant to the rule passed on August 24, the House 
will consider the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. This 
legislation passed the Senate on a bipartisan basis last month and 
would create millions of good jobs all across America by investing in 
critical infrastructure.
  That bill and the Build Back Better America Act are the essence of 
the vision and program that has been proposed by President Biden, 
which, as I said, will grow millions of jobs and make the lives of 
Americans more secure and safer.
  Mr. Speaker, if time allows, the House may also consider three bills 
from the Committee on Education and Labor:
  H.R. 3110, the PUMP for Nursing Mothers Act, which amends the Fair 
Labor Standards Act to provide workplace protections for mothers to 
pump breast milk in the workplace.
  H.R. 3992, the Protect Older Job Applicants Act, which allows 
applicants to bring a disparate claim under the Age Discrimination in 
Employment Act of 1967 when they experience age discrimination while 
seeking a job.
  In addition, H.R. 2119, the Family Violence Prevention and Services 
Improvement Act of 2021, which modifies, expands, and reauthorizes the 
fiscal year 2026 Family Violence and Prevention Services program, which 
funds emergency shelters and supports related assistance for victims of 
domestic violence.
  Mr. Speaker, lastly, there may be additional legislative items as 
possible and as necessary.
  Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman.
  As it relates to the reconciliation bill that the Budget Committee 
will be taking up tomorrow, the initial estimates on that bill are that 
it would, roughly, add up to be about $3.5 trillion in new taxes and 
spending.
  There are now estimates that that number will mushroom to well over 
$4.2, $4.3 trillion or higher, but we still don't have a CBO score on 
the lion's share of that legislation. The word we are getting from CBO, 
it may be weeks or months that we would get that score.
  Does the gentleman know what the timeline is for getting an actual 
estimate from CBO on what the cost of that legislation is and will be, 
come tomorrow, when the Budget Committee takes it up?
  Mr. HOYER. The Budget Committee is going to take it up tomorrow. They 
don't need a CBO score for that. The Budget Committee chairman is 
seeking a CBO score as soon as that can be attained, but I don't know 
that particular date that that will occur.
  Clearly, this bill has been under consideration for a very long 
period of time, and the President proposed it a very long time ago, in 
the early part of this year. So it is something that the CBO has been 
considering, that the committee has been considering. Hopefully, the 
CBO can produce a score relatively quickly. But I don't, in answer to 
the gentleman's question, have a specific time or date.
  Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman.
  Then last week, I think we had about a dozen committees in Congress 
that took up different parts of that bill. Unfortunately, it seems that 
the cost keeps going up.
  Could we get an assurance that before the bill actually comes to the 
floor for a vote before this House, we would get a CBO score to know 
how many trillions of dollars in new taxes and in new spending would be 
included and voted on before the House?
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, it is my expectation that we will be getting 
a score. I want to tell the gentleman it is also my understanding that 
the expenditures that will be proposed will be paid for.
  Mr. SCALISE. And, obviously, paid for would include new taxes--
  Mr. HOYER. New revenue.
  Mr. SCALISE.--including things like that are in this bill. There is a 
tax on natural gas, which every family in America that uses natural gas 
to heat their homes in winter or cool their homes in summer would have 
to pay.
  I know that President Biden had committed that nobody making under 
$400,000 would pay any new amount in taxes. Clearly, that provision of 
the bill would violate President Biden's pledge.
  I am not sure if the gentleman anticipates new taxes like that being 
removed from the bill so that the President's pledge would not be 
violated.
  If you have any insight on that, I would be happy to yield.
  Mr. HOYER. As I said, the Committee on Ways and Means and the 
Committee on Finance have worked on revenues to pay for what we are 
going to buy so that we do not create additional debt. That is my view, 
that they continue to have that intention.

  There are use taxes on a lot of things, and there are also corporate 
taxes in that bill. There are some additional revenue items in that 
bill as well. But I can't tell you exactly because they have not 
offered a manager's amendment, which I expect to have offered at the 
Committee on Rules. That does not come out of the Budget Committee, as 
the gentleman knows.
  The Budget Committee is going to put together the 12 bills and send 
them to the Committee on Rules, and then the Committee on Rules will 
act on them. I expect a manager's amendment, but I cannot predict for 
the gentleman what that manager's amendment will be at this point in 
time.
  Mr. SCALISE. Does the gentleman know if there is a possibility that 
the bill before the Budget Committee tomorrow, because they did 
expedite that hearing--just yesterday, there wasn't supposed to be a 
Budget Committee on Saturday to take up the reconciliation bill, so, 
clearly, it has been sped up. Is that because there is a possibility 
that the reconciliation bill could be voted on before the House next 
week?
  Mr. HOYER. It is possible.
  Mr. SCALISE. Does the gentleman have any idea on when we would find 
that out?
  Mr. HOYER. Well, we have to see what the Budget Committee does 
tomorrow.
  Mr. SCALISE. Well, I will be watching, for sure.
  Mr. HOYER. We all will.
  Mr. SCALISE. We all will.
  On Monday, the schedule shows that the infrastructure bill is 
supposed to be coming up before the House floor. Is that going to be 
for debate and consideration, or will there be an actual vote on Monday 
night on the infrastructure bill?
  Mr. HOYER. We will have to see how the debate goes on Monday, see how 
long that takes.
  Mr. SCALISE. Well, we will be very involved in that debate as well.
  As it relates to the next few weeks, there has been some talk that 
possibly the week of October 4 or beyond may be taken back as district 
work schedules to come back here.
  Does the gentleman have any insight into what the schedule holds from 
October 4 and beyond?
  Mr. HOYER. I have advised Members that, obviously, we have a lot of 
work to do and that we have scheduled a number of workweeks, committee 
workweeks--which, by the way, I think have been very successful. We 
started those in June of last year, and I think they worked out very 
well, giving the committees an opportunity to meet uninterrupted by 
having to come to the floor.
  With votes, as we know, we continue to have the challenge not only of 
COVID but the variant, an additional illness spike, so we are still 
having votes longer than we otherwise would have. So I think that those 
work periods have worked very well, and there are some scheduled for 
October.
  But I have also advised Members that we have a lot of work to do, and 
if we need more legislative time, we will provide for that, and Members 
will get sufficient notice for that. But I did want to put them on 
notice that we may have to have more floor time than is currently 
provided for by the committee workweek schedule.
  But as soon as we have a sense of when those days will be needed, we 
will let Members know.
  Mr. SCALISE. Well, we know that next week we anticipate, as the end 
of

[[Page H5161]]

the fiscal year comes, that there would be the continuing resolution 
possibly coming out of the Senate.
  I know when it came out of the House, it was very clear that the 
Senate was not going to entertain the debt ceiling as part of the 
continuing resolution. So, clearly, the Senate is going to have to 
resolve what happens with the debt ceiling, although we have been told 
extraordinary measures would continue through October. So that is not 
as looming of a deadline as the September 30 government funding 
deadline that the CR would be involved with.
  I know, on our side, we were very disappointed to see when something 
had to be pulled out on Tuesday, whether it was going to be the Iron 
Dome funding or the debt ceiling. Knowing that the Senate was not going 
to process the debt ceiling as part of that instrument, it would have 
seemed, to keep that on track, to remove the debt ceiling and deal with 
that separately, as the Senate ultimately will have to, and then keep 
the CR with the Iron Dome funding moving forward on something that 
could be a bipartisan vote.
  Obviously, that didn't happen Tuesday. I would expect we will see 
something very different happen in the Senate. They may send that back 
to us sometime next week.

  Does the gentleman have a timeline for what we should expect on 
legislation dealing with the funding of government prior to the 
September 30 deadline?
  Mr. HOYER. Well, obviously, the government funding authority ends on 
September 30 at midnight, the end of the fiscal year, and it would be 
our intention to deal with whatever bill the Senate sends back to us--
if, in fact, they do not take our bill--as soon as it comes to us.
  We believe that it is absolutely essential not to shut down 
government, which is costly, disrupts the lives of the American people 
and those who are expecting services, and is irresponsible.
  Even more irresponsible is not increasing the debt limit. I have been 
saddened on a regular basis that our Republican colleagues are prepared 
to vote for debt limits when you have a Republican President and not 
when you have a Democratic President, as if somehow it is the President 
that creates the debt.
  The President doesn't create the debt. The Congress creates the debt. 
This is not for debt that we may create in the future. It is for debt 
that we have already created, either by cutting taxes, therefore 
cutting revenues, or by spending money.
  As you know, the debt limit was substantially increased under the 
Trump administration in a bipartisan way. But unlike this year, 
Democrats joined with Republicans to ensure that the full faith and 
credit of the United States of America was not put at risk. And the 
President of the United States signed that legislation, a Republican 
President.
  So it is, I think, very sad that our Republican friends did not join 
every Democrat in saying we will not put at risk the full faith and 
credit of the United States for debts that have been incurred.
  Now, I have been here for some time, and just in terms of the public 
debt going up, under Bush 1, it went up 55 percent; Clinton, 37 
percent; Bush 2, 86 percent; Obama, 88 percent; Trump, 39 percent.

                              {time}  1215

  Now, obviously, those figures all are based on a lower base than 
their successor had, but it is interesting that under Ronald Reagan, 
the debt went up 189 percent, and he signed every one of those. And he 
also urged us not to put the credit at risk.
  In addition, on September 8, 2017, the Republican-controlled House 
voted 316-90 to suspend the debt limit through December 8, 2017, under 
a deal endorsed by President Trump. The ``yea'' votes included Majority 
Leader Kevin McCarthy, Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady, and 
Conference Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers.
  Again, on September 8, the Republican-controlled Senate voted 80-17 
to suspend the debt limit through December 8, 2017. The ``yea'' votes 
included Majority Leader McConnell, Majority Whip Cornyn, Finance 
Chairman Hatch, and GOP Conference Chair John Thune all voting in favor 
of that.
  In addition, on February 9, 2018, a year later, the Republican-
controlled House voted 240-186 to suspend the debt limit through March 
1, 2019. Voting ``yea'' were Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Majority 
Whip   Steve Scalise, Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady, GOP 
Conference Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers, all voting for the measure.
  Leader McConnell has stated that it would be irresponsible not to 
extend either the date or the amount of the debt limit. The business 
roundtable has said this: Failure to let the U.S. Federal debt limit to 
meet the U.S. obligations would produce an otherwise avoidable crisis 
and pose unacceptable risk to the Nation's economic growth, job 
creation, and financial markets. Goldman Sachs has essentially said the 
same thing, the American Bankers Association, and numerous other 
organizations that I can mention.
  So I am sorry that earlier this week the Republicans voted 
unanimously against keeping the government open and making sure that we 
did not compromise the full faith and credit of the United States of 
America. But I will assure the gentleman, as soon as a bill is sent 
back from the Senate, that we will take that up. I hope it is a 
responsible bill.
  I hope it does what Senator McConnell, under President Donald Trump, 
said ought to be done. Perhaps now that we have a Democratic President, 
somehow the fiscal responsibility does not seem as important as it did 
when Donald Trump was President, and I think that is unfortunate.
  I, personally, by the way, think that the debt issue is a phony 
issue. There are only very, very few countries that have a debt limit. 
The debt limit is decided when we spend money or cut revenues, not in 
some other venue. And once we do that, the assumption ought to be, and 
I think has been, that we are going to pay our debts as a country.
  And the only time we came close to not doing that was about a little 
less than 10 years ago, and for the first time since I have been a 
Member of Congress, which is over 40 years, the rating of the United 
States was reduced, minisculely, but nevertheless reduced. A shocking 
consequence of playing games with the debt limit.
  So I would hope that my friend would urge his party to not treat this 
as either a political issue or partisan issue, and would treat it as 
the issue it is, an issue of the fiscal responsibility and full faith 
and credit to the United States of America.
  Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, I want to remind the gentleman that if you 
go back, both Republican and Democrat Presidents, whether it was a 
Republican Congress or a Democrat Congress, you had budget agreements 
that involved both agreements on spending and on debt. Bipartisan 
agreements.
  The gentlemen should also recognize that this year there has been no 
such effort to reach out to the Republican side to get agreements. The 
gentleman is well-aware that under President Biden, while he promised 
during the campaign that he would work with everybody, he would work 
with Republicans, work with Democrats, instead, it has been a go-it-
alone strategy on spending and on debt.
  Very much to our opposition, we were against the trillions of new 
spending. We weren't consulted about the debt.
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, I will yield, but I first need to point 
out, because the gentleman did mention, that when we cut taxes, the Tax 
Cuts and Jobs Act, that cutting taxes reduced revenue to the Treasury. 
Maybe under a liberal ideology that is the thought process of how 
economics would work, but that is not how economics worked, and it is 
not how reality worked.
  When we cut taxes, we actually kick-started our economy. We brought 
millions of jobs back to America, and the Federal Treasury took in more 
money. Cutting taxes brought in more revenue to the Treasury. In fact, 
if you go look at States like New York that raised taxes to try to go 
after millionaires and billionaires and picking winners and losers and 
dividing people, as they raise tax rates, they see people moving out of 
their State, less revenue.
  In America, when we saw higher and higher tax rates ultimately 
getting to a 35 percent corporate rate, highest in the industrialized 
world, what we also

[[Page H5162]]

saw was great companies moving out of America, out of America to be 
able to stay afloat, not to avoid paying taxes. They were still paying 
taxes. They were just moving to other countries where they could remain 
competitive because they could no longer remain competitive in America.
  It was by the hundreds that we would see what are called inversions, 
great companies moving out of America. Now, on the left, every time 
they would move they would wring hands and call the company's name. We 
would call the companies, and say, Why are you leaving? They didn't 
want to leave. They wanted to stay afloat so that they didn't have to 
fire the thousands of America workers they had. They wanted to stay 
viable.
  So when we cut taxes, do you know since the day the Tax Cuts and Jobs 
Act was signed into law, there has not been a single inversion in 
America. Not a single American company moved out of America. In fact, 
the opposite. We saw companies by the droves moving back in. We saw 
jobs by the millions coming back to America.

  So, again, to give an economics lesson, when we cut taxes the Federal 
Treasury actually took in more money, not less, because people created 
more jobs in America. They brought jobs back to America.
  Companies increased wages. In fact, the biggest wage earners--and you 
can go look at the Department of Labor statistics--the bigger wage 
earners were lowest-income workers. All that goes away if this bill 
coming before the Budget Committee tomorrow is to pass. I hope it 
doesn't. But if it does, every economics expert that looks at the 
success of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act has also recognized that it will 
lead to millions more jobs leaving America if they raise those rates.
  If you put a natural gas tax on families, estimates are over a 12 
percent increase in household electricity rates on families which, by 
the way, would hit lower-income people the hardest. That is the reality 
of tax increases and tax decreases.
  So that brings us to the debt ceiling. The reason we voted against it 
were many. One was that, for whatever reason, the majority party 
decided to gut the Iron Dome funding that was initially in the bill; a 
billion dollars to allow Israel to replenish the Iron Dome missiles 
that were used defending themselves against terrorist attacks from 
Gaza, fueled by terrorist organizations, and backed by proxies like 
Iran. That is one of the driving reasons that you saw all of those 
``no'' votes.
  But if you also look at where the debt came from, it came from very 
partisan policies. There are 14 different bills this year where the 
majority party waived the PAYGO rules. PAYGO was a policy that said, 
you pay as you go. You want to pass policy, you want to spend money, 
pay for it.
  It is a pretty commonsense idea, except on 14 different pieces of 
legislation this year, the Democrat majority waived PAYGO, racking up 
trillions in new debt. We didn't vote for this spending. If the 
majority party wants to go it alone and have a partisan spending spree 
that jacks up trillions of new spending and debt, then it is incumbent 
upon the majority party to go address the debt ceiling consequences 
that were created by this reckless spending.
  Fourteen different times your party waived PAYGO. We didn't vote for 
that. But then you want us to pay for it? That is not how this works. 
If the majority party wants to work with us on a budget agreement, we 
are right here. We have never been asked to be a part of a budget 
agreement. We surely weren't consulted about the spending because we 
opposed those levels.
  There were things we wanted to do, including on some of the relief 
packages where we felt, let's focus in on helping people who are 
struggling, not paying people not to work, not bailing out States that 
are flushed with multi-billion dollar surpluses, while sending that 
bill to our kids.
  That is not responsible, but that is what the majority party did. And 
as they jacked up all that spending, they jacked up debt and bumped us 
against the debt limit. We are not going to be a part of that because 
we didn't agree with the spending. We weren't consulted on the 
spending.
  If your party wants to spend money, your party ought to be 
responsible enough to deal with the consequences of it. We are more 
than happy to work with you on how to solve this spending and debt 
problem in a bipartisan way, and I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman.
  It is hard to respond, Mr. Speaker, to a not-responsive issue on why 
we are not voting to extend the debt limit. McConnell said he wasn't 
going to vote for the debt limit long before there was anything about 
Iron Dome. In fact, we passed Iron Dome. We passed it overwhelmingly 
with over 420 votes. It is now over in the Senate, and I hope they pass 
it immediately, which would, by the way, be faster than they would have 
done the CR.
  Having said that, the gentleman voted for $5 trillion of debt in 
2020. It wasn't paid for. We were confronting a great crisis called 
COVID-19. And in a bipartisan way, we passed $5.4 trillion of spending, 
the largest amount of spending, I think, in any year that I have been 
in this Congress.
  We did it in a bipartisan way with the expectation that we would 
borrow that money to meet the emergency that confronted us, and that we 
would pay for that debt. It didn't have anything to do with politics. 
It didn't have anything to do with who was President of the United 
States. And all that verbiage was to mask the fact that, frankly, my 
Republican friends don't like voting to pay the bills.
  They do like to cut revenues, whether or not they balance the budget. 
And the good news, from their standpoint, was they inherited an economy 
that was going up incrementally every year.
  The gentleman talks about jobs on his tax bill. Under President 
Obama, who inherited a tanking economy from George Bush, not 
withstanding the tax cuts that they had effected, during the Obama 
administration we created 10,838,000 jobs. During the Trump 
administration 6,688 net jobs. About 35 percent less. But that is 
irrelevant, it is a smokescreen. It is to distract.
  The fact of the matter is we have incurred debt, we have incurred it 
in a bipartisan way. Whether the objective was defense or whether it 
was domestic or tax cuts, we created the debt on behalf of the United 
States of America. We borrowed money and we said to our creditors: we 
will pay you back.
  It had nothing to do with Iron Dome. The Republicans had said if the 
debt limit was in there, they weren't going to vote for it. They were 
not going to take responsibility for the debt that they, in a 
bipartisan way, $5.4 trillion last year, incurred, signed by Donald 
Trump.
  Donald Trump could have stopped every nickel of that money from being 
spent. He did not. It was a bipartisan agreement.

                              {time}  1230

  I believe, although I don't have the figures in front of me, that Mr. 
Scalise voted for every one of those bills. He can correct me if I am 
wrong on that.
  But the debt limit is a pretense that somehow if you vote against 
raising the debt limit you will somehow, Mr. Speaker, solve the debt 
problem of the United States.
  No. The way you solve that is paying your bills.
  I would urge the gentleman--I don't know what is going to come back 
from the Senate, but I will tell you, Mr. Speaker, my experience has 
been, particularly over the last, about 15 years, it has been Democrats 
who have responded to the fiscal responsibility call of Republican 
Speakers--Mr. Boehner and Mr. Ryan--who couldn't get the majority of 
Republicans in their own party to vote for their bill exercising fiscal 
responsibility. I am proud to say that Democrats were there on behalf 
of bills sponsored, essentially--I don't know the name of the sponsor 
on the bill--but supported by both Speaker Boehner and Speaker Ryan. I 
don't have those figures in front of me, but I can bring them up 
perhaps next time we talk.
  So I would urge my friend, let's get off this political Biden this 
or--I don't even know if any of those bills have passed because I don't 
know what list he is reading from, but, Mr. Speaker, he lists the names 
of bills in Congress.
  We passed the rescue plan but got no Republicans on that.
  Why?
  Because we were over having a Republican President. So now a 
Democratic President was trying to make

[[Page H5163]]

sure that this country didn't fall through the floorboards, that our 
small businesses didn't fall through the floorboards, that our families 
and individuals didn't fall through the floorboards, and that our 
childcare providers didn't fall through the floorboards. So they were 
through voting for those bills. They were voting for them when Trump 
was President but stopped voting for them when Biden was President. I 
get that. But the debt limit is about all of us. It is about our 
country.
  Very frankly, as Goldman Sachs and the Business Roundtable and others 
have said, it is about the global economy. It is about jobs. It is 
about working men and women having jobs and America being competitive 
with the rest of the world. That is what the debt limit is about, and 
that is what the Business Roundtable is saying, not one of our spokes-
organs. That is what the Chamber of Commerce is saying.
  So, yes, we can argue the specifics, the 4 million less jobs were 
created under Trump than were created under Obama. We can talk about 
that. We can talk about a larger debt under Trump in terms of actual 
dollars. I am not going to talk about that.
  Why?
  Because we incurred them together because we needed to do so because 
our country was in trouble and our people were in trouble.
  So I will tell the gentleman we are going to--his question was, in 
case we all forgot it, we probably did--that we are going to deal with 
the bill that comes back because we are absolutely committed to making 
sure that the full faith and credit of the United States is not put at 
risk.
  Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman.
  I do need to correct the Record because the gentleman implied that 
the relief packages from 2020 were part of the debt ceiling that is 
being raised in the current legislation that is moving forward. That is 
just not accurate.
  I have seen talking points out there, but Mr. Speaker, if you look at 
the trillions that my friend and I supported that were good policy, 
that was included in the debt ceiling negotiation from last year. It 
was in there. It was part of the debt ceiling negotiation from last 
year. That was passed on a bipartisan basis.
  What we are talking about for this year, including the $1.9 trillion 
that was not a bipartisan package, is new debt. What is being 
anticipated in the $4 trillion, $5 trillion-dollar-package that the 
Budget Committee is taking up is going to be new debt that would be 
included in the debt ceiling negotiation that my friend would expect us 
to vote for.
  We don't support that new spending and that new debt. We did support 
the spending and the debt from last year in the relief packages that we 
all supported--and we paid for it--in the debt ceiling negotiations 
from last year. The gentleman might have different talking points, but 
that is a fact. It was legislation that was voted on in a bipartisan 
fashion.
  Mr. HOYER. I have different facts.
  Mr. SCALISE. It was voted on on a bipartisan basis and was passed by 
Congress. Where the debt ceiling is today is ultimately going to be 
negotiated in the Senate, but it won't be in the bill that was sent 
over to the Senate on Tuesday.
  The Senators have made it clear. They don't have 60 votes for that 
bill. It is a 60-vote bill. They might have to take it up under a 
reconciliation package. That is for the Senate to decide. Maybe in the 
next few days the Senate will decide that and send it back, but that 
was not something that anybody expected the Senate to pass when it left 
the House on Tuesday.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  I will not characterize the substance of that argument. However, I 
believe it has no merit, Mr. Speaker, none, zero, zip.
  It is as if we Democrats, when we voted three times to assure that we 
didn't violate the debt limit under Donald Trump, as if we would say: 
Well, this is not our debt, this was, after all, the debt of the tax 
cut of 2017, so we shouldn't pay this.
  In fact, the debt, of course, like family debt, is not necessarily 
for the car, for the mortgage, or for the clothes that we bought for 
our children to go back to school. It is a cumulative debt, a 
cumulative debt that--by the way, under Democratic Presidents since 
President Truman--were increased 24 percent; under Republicans since 
Truman, 45 percent.

  It would be ridiculous, Mr. Speaker, for me to say: Well, I am only 
going to pay for this debt, that debt, and this debt that I agree with.
  Of course, the $5.4 trillion that Mr. Scalise and I voted for in 2020 
is a part of the debt that we need to have to service now. In fact, 
what we of course did, we didn't increase the debt limit per se because 
politically that was very controversial because people demagogue it. So 
what we did was we changed the date, which is a ruse, which is a 
political sleight of hand. It has the same exact effect.
  So, Mr. Speaker, with all due respect, the argument that it is not my 
debt and your debt and this--in fact, most of those bills haven't 
passed and haven't created any debt yet. I don't know the list, so I 
don't know whether they have been passed or some have passed. I 
presume, obviously, the rescue plan did pass, it wasn't paid for. Of 
course, it was approximately 30 percent of what Mr. Scalise and I voted 
for in 2020.
  But, nevertheless, the debt is the debt; and not to support making 
sure that America legally can pay that debt is irresponsible.
  Mr. SCALISE. Again, this will continue as we see whatever comes out 
of the Budget Committee that will be trillions. We know it is 
trillions. We just don't know how many, maybe 4, maybe 5 trillion in 
new debt that the date that was put in the legislative text--it wasn't 
an amount, it was a date that the majority party included--in December 
of 2022 that maybe that changes in the Senate, but it would include the 
trillions, not only that were included in the $1.9 from earlier this 
year that was partisan, but also on this tax-and-spend bill that is 
moving through Budget tomorrow.
  I would like to ask one final question about other potential 
legislation for next week. I know the gentleman and I have had 
conversations in the past about bills that maybe aren't currently 
scheduled that could be, some of them have been added to the schedule, 
not all.
  We know there is a crisis at our southern border. There are a number 
of legislative instruments that have been filed to try to confront it. 
I haven't seen any of those come to the floor. They are surely not 
listed for next week, but there are a number I would at least like to 
bring to the gentleman's attention to see if they could--as we are 
watching the border get even more out of hand--potentially give tools 
to the President to address it in a way where he is not addressing it 
today.
  We know there has been a bill by Ms. Herrell, the number of that bill 
is H.R. 471, the PAUSE Act, which would allow for enforcement of Title 
42 in a way more clear than the administration has expressed their 
abilities.
  We also have H.R. 4828 by Mr. Katko which gives even more additional 
tools to help secure the border.
  I would hope the gentleman would look at those legislative 
instruments. As there are maybe more days we will be here than there 
are legislative instruments anticipated, these could be other bills 
that we could take up that would deal with very pertinent and serious 
problems that our country is facing that aren't being addressed.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. HOYER. I don't know the status of those bills. I will check on 
the status of those bills.
  Let me say, Mr. Speaker, there is a tragedy occurring at our border. 
There are people in grievous circumstances and in unbearable danger in 
their home countries. That has been a case for some period of time, and 
we have some very bad people taking advantage of that and promising 
them a free route to America, taking advantage of that pain, that 
suffering, and that fear that so many people have, in this case 
Haitians who fled their own country, presumably many of them after an 
extraordinary earthquake and they are living in places that are not 
their homes.
  We all talk about it, and we all believe that America is the greatest

[[Page H5164]]

country on the face of the Earth. It is. Therefore, it is not 
surprising that people who are in pain and grieving and are concerned 
for the future of their children want to come to the United States of 
America. But, clearly, we cannot take all of the people who would like 
to come to America.
  Therefore, we need a system because America is made up of immigrants. 
It has been made strong by immigrants. It has been made successful by 
immigrants. It has been made a great country by immigrants.
  My own father came from Denmark at the age of 32 in 1934. Almost 
everybody who serves in this House, some are immigrants themselves who 
came themselves to the country. Some at 2 years of age and some at 
other ages.
  The gentleman is correct. We need to deal with this. We need to deal 
with it in a humanitarian way, in a way that honors our values and 
respect for individual lives and individual persons. That is one of the 
great, great differences that we celebrate in America, the importance 
that we put on the individual.

  We said that we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are 
created equal--today we clearly would say all men and women--and 
endowed not by us, not by our Constitution, and not by our laws, but by 
God. We have some of God's children who are fearful, scared, and 
running, running to a safer place. And that place for almost all the 
world is America.
  So we have a responsibility, Mr. Speaker, to adopt a rational, 
comprehensive immigration reform regime where people will know the 
rules of coming to America. They will know the rules of how you apply, 
how you are processed, and how you are vetted. Whether you are coming 
here because you just want to come to America to succeed and to make 
your family live in a better neighborhood called America, or you are 
coming because your family and your are unsafe in the country in which 
you then reside, we need comprehensive immigration reform.
  I would be glad to work very closely with my friend, the Republican 
whip from Louisiana, on seeing if we can get to that place because we 
have all been talking about it, all of us.
  I think there is not a person in this room--I don't know about in 
this room, but over the years--who hasn't said our immigration system 
is broken, who hasn't said we need secure borders, who hasn't said we 
need secure borders and reveled in the fact that we are a nation of 
immigrants who have made us stronger so that we can get to a place 
where we pursue a rational policy for implementing that concept.
  So I will tell my friend, I will look at those two or three pieces of 
legislation he mentioned and talk to the committee chairs about their 
status and let the gentleman know.
  Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that, and I look forward to 
having those conversations with the gentleman from Maryland on that and 
all the other issues that will come before us next week.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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