[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 15]
[House]
[Pages 21399-21404]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                FUNDING BILL IS REFLECTION OF PRIORITIES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2015, the gentlewoman from New Jersey (Mrs. Watson Coleman) 
is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.


                             General Leave

  Mrs. WATSON COLEMAN. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all 
Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and 
to include any extraneous material on the subject of my Special Order.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentlewoman from New Jersey?
  There was no objection.
  Mrs. WATSON COLEMAN. Mr. Speaker, if a funding bill is a reflection 
of priorities, then the omnibus that we are considering right now is 
the clearest snapshot of what is wrong with our Nation.
  We are talking about lifting a 40-year ban on the export of crude 
oil, risking thousands of jobs and rising gas prices for working 
families immediately after joining the most important climate agreement 
ever created.
  We are expected to swallow tiny increases to the programs working 
families need and rely on while we make permanent tax cuts for 
corporations and millionaires that we have not paid for. We are 
expected to cheer the extension of vital programs, like the child tax 
credit, when that credit has not

[[Page 21400]]

been indexed to cover the rising costs families face.
  Mr. Speaker, these are games. After only a year in Congress, I am 
tired of playing them. We like the word compromise. It implies that we 
have done something good, that we have worked together.
  If we pass this bill, we will have worked together to keep America 
down for generations to come. We are patting ourselves on the back for 
making it out of sequester, but the incremental spending increases in 
this omnibus funding package do nothing to make up for the past 5 years 
of cuts.
  We have spent so much time digging ourselves deeper and deeper into a 
funding hole that this omnibus seems like level ground. The fact is it 
is not. It is far from it.
  Regardless of how nice funding increases may sound, the foundations 
of the American Dream are crumbling beneath our feet right now with 
stagnant wages, struggling schools and a wealth gap that is only 
getting bigger.
  Working families need funding that supports their needs. They need a 
Tax Code that promotes the middle class. They need tax credits and 
funding for programs to help cover the outrageous cost of child care 
and preschool education, costs that outstrip tuition at public colleges 
in 31 of our 50 States. They need funding for higher education that 
would allow them to graduate without debt.
  They need more support for our highways, our bridges, our rail 
systems, and broader infrastructure, the kinds of projects that create 
good-paying jobs and make every community stronger, the kinds of 
projects that cause people to feel confident that they have enough 
security in their future and enough money in their pocket to spend some 
of it and help to stimulate the economy and to create many, many, many 
ancillary jobs and small business needs. They need a lot more than what 
is being offered in this legislation.
  A funding bill compromise should not compromise the needs of families 
across the country who are relying on us to get this right. Any 
extension of tax credit needs to be protected and uplift every 
American. We can't afford to pass them without a plan for them.
  Mr. Speaker, we have labored over many things in this House. We have 
spent a long time talking about less important issues. But we are being 
confronted right now with a humongous bill that has broad implications 
on communities that are vulnerable for the next several generations. We 
are asked to support a piece of legislation that does not seem to 
address, from a proportionally equal perspective, those needs.
  I want to take a moment now to just draw the House's attention to 
this front page story in Politico. It headlines ``Congress' half-
trillion-dollar spending binge.''
  What is fascinating about this is that my colleagues on the other 
side of the aisle, the folks that are responsible for this spending 
binge, are always the first to condemn government spending.
  Now they want to spend billions of dollars on special interests 
without supporting Pell grants, without supporting our Historically 
Black Colleges and Universities, without supporting the programs that 
combat poverty like WIC, without supporting the working families in 
this country and supporting the needs that they have in order to 
prosper.
  Their prosperity helps guarantee the economy's prosperity because the 
revenues generated from the things that we do to uplift our working 
families gets put back into the economy and creates a better, fairer, 
and larger economy.
  The numbers in this omnibus lie. They sound like increases, but they 
do nothing to pull us out of the rut that the past 5 years have left us 
in. I know that there are many of my colleagues who feel this same way.
  We look at the modest increases that may be associated with the 
childcare tax credit. We look at modest increases that may be applied 
to a housing program. We look at modest increases that may be applied 
to several programs that, if there were sufficient revenue associated 
with those programs, would indeed make a difference in these 
communities.

                              {time}  1515

  But the proportionality of priority in this omnibus bill and in our 
effort today and tomorrow does not speak to our acknowledgment that it 
is the majority of people, that it is the middle class, the working 
class, and, yes, even the most vulnerable that we are leaving behind.
  We can do better than that. Mr. Speaker, we need to do better than 
that because we are better than that.
  There are several glaring omissions in the omnibus bill, but none are 
more illogical than our failure to support Puerto Rico. It is 
unfathomable that we are unwilling to support a U.S. territory in a 
financial meltdown just as we offer permanent tax breaks for 
corporations and special interests who don't even need our help. We are 
leaving the citizens of Puerto Rico woefully in need. This is not fair. 
This is un-American. This is not who we are.
  What is our responsibility to the citizens of Puerto Rico who won't 
have access to good hospitals and medical care and Medicare? What about 
the children, almost 56 percent, who live in poverty? What are we 
saying to them? What we are saying in this bill that is before us this 
day coming forth that is expected to move forward in this House is that 
we are still only concerned with elevating the status, the well-being, 
the security, and the happiness of those who already have a lion's 
share of all of it.
  Mr. Speaker, we are better than that. We have a responsibility to 
speak up, protect, preserve, and ensure opportunity for all. That is 
what we have been elected to do.
  I want to take a moment to talk about the giveaway to oil companies 
that we have in this omnibus. There is nothing positive about this for 
working families. Ending the 40-year ban on crude oil risks our energy 
security here at home. It threatens our environmental leadership, and 
it takes away jobs from American workers.
  We didn't pass legislation to create more access to oil in this 
country simply to be able to provide wealthy companies the opportunity 
to sell it abroad at a higher price, to bypass our refineries, to sell 
crude oil in other countries and have them benefit from the jobs that 
we fought to create through legislation that we passed. That is 
illogical. That is counterintuitive to why we did what we did in the 
first place. But yet it is in this bill.
  Yet the glaring priority of the wealthy multinational corporations 
versus the interests of the everyday working families is just in your 
face--unacceptable, totally unacceptable. It serves no purpose that I 
can identify other than to further appease another of the special 
interest groups so dear to my colleagues on the other side of the 
aisle, but it does nothing for the economy of the United States of 
America and for the working families here. I guess I shouldn't be 
surprised because it is not the first time, and I doubt that it will be 
the last time.
  Mr. Speaker, we can go on and on and on, and I will have additional 
points that I would like to raise with regard to this omnibus bill, but 
my friend, my colleague from the great State of New York, Congressman 
Hakeem Jeffries, has come here to share his perspective on the impact 
of this omnibus bill.
  With that, I yield to my colleague.
  Mr. JEFFRIES. I would like to thank the distinguished gentlewoman 
from New Jersey (Mrs. Watson Coleman), from the Garden State, for her 
tremendous leadership throughout the course of this year as it relates 
to presiding over the Congressional Progressive Caucus' Special Order 
hour, where week after week you have been able to illuminate for the 
American people some of the challenges that we face here, trying to 
enact policies that make sense for hardworking Americans, for working 
families, for low-income folks, for the middle class, for seniors, for 
the most vulnerable amongst us.
  For just a moment, I wanted to reflect on one particular aspect of 
the omnibus bill that I find troubling, and that is the failure to do 
what is necessary to help put the people of Puerto Rico--United States 
citizens--on a trajectory that will allow them to achieve some manner 
of economic stability moving forward.

[[Page 21401]]

  Now, I never practiced criminal law. I am a lawyer, attorney, but I 
understand that there are sometimes crimes of commission--that is when 
you affirmatively do something that is damaging--and then there are 
crimes of omission. I think that the greatest omission as it relates to 
this $1.1-plus trillion spending bill is the failure to do anything to 
help deal with the economic crisis that exists right now in Puerto 
Rico, a crisis, by the way, that, in large measure, has responsibility 
right here in the United States Congress.
  In 1996, we began a process of a 10-year phaseout of provisions in 
the tax law that were put into place in order to help the economy of 
Puerto Rico. That 10-year phaseout ended in 2006. Over that period, it 
witnessed a dramatic disinvestment of corporate entities from the 
island of Puerto Rico toward the mainland and other places. A massive 
number of jobs were lost. That phaseout was completed in 2006. Puerto 
Rico has been in a deep recession ever since.
  Now, every other citizen of the United States of America who lives in 
the 50 States here lives in a municipality that has bankruptcy 
provisions available to it to help it restructure its debt when 
necessary. The people of Puerto Rico, again as a result of a law 
enacted here in this Chamber in 1984, have been denied bankruptcy 
protection.
  Fundamentally, all the people of Puerto Rico were asking for is to 
make sure that those citizens who live on the island can be put in the 
same place--not better--the same place as every other United States 
citizen so that they can avail themselves of bankruptcy protection to 
enable them to restructure their debt in a way that makes sense, that 
allows them to pay their teachers, their police officers, their 
firefighters, and others. And yet, when all that was done, all the acts 
of commission, with a $1.1-plus trillion agreement, we couldn't help 
the people of Puerto Rico by simply putting them in the same place 
through restructuring provisions in a manner that would give them an 
opportunity without a single cent of taxpayer expense to be in a better 
place?
  The people of Puerto Rico participate in the military, die in foreign 
conflicts of the United States of America at a rate higher than those 
in the 50 States, yet they are compensated, from a Medicaid 
reimbursement standpoint, around 40 or 50 percent--if not more--less.
  We don't have enough time to go through how policy set here in the 
United States Congress has devastated the people of Puerto Rico 
economically for the last few decades, but it does seem to me that we 
could find some way to deal with this issue. We found a way to give 
away billions and billions of dollars to big oil companies as it 
relates to lifting the prohibition on the export of crude oil, but we 
couldn't find a way to help the hardworking people of Puerto Rico. 
Shame on us here in the United States Congress.
  Lastly, it is my understanding that the Speaker, who I take to be a 
man of his word, has said, well, we are going to deal with this issue 
in the next 90 days. But here is the problem. On January 1, there is a 
significant amount of money that Puerto Rico owes that it cannot pay, 
so the island can't wait until March 31 for the Congress to try to work 
this out. The promissory note is not good enough.
  As an African American Member of Congress, I am reminded of the 
speech that Dr. King gave in 1963 right outside these Halls on The 
National Mall. He talked about the fact that the eloquent and 
magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of 
Independence were a glorious promissory note: We hold these truths to 
be self-evident . . . all men are created equal . . . endowed by their 
Creator . . . the ability to pursue life, liberty, and the pursuit of 
happiness.
  But century after century, decade after decade, that promissory note 
essentially was handed over to the African American community as a 
check stamped ``insufficient funds.'' I just can't, with all or any 
degree of confidence, suggest that we could credibly say to the people 
of Puerto Rico and to those individuals of Puerto Rican descent that I 
represent back home in Brooklyn and in Queens that this so-called 
promissory note issued is going to result in us taking any action 90-
plus days from now.
  I just hope that there is a way for us to find some measure of 
resolution before we ultimately vote on this omnibus bill to deal in 
good faith with the people of Puerto Rico--United States citizens--who 
deserve our attention.
  Mrs. WATSON COLEMAN. My colleague has spoken so eloquently about the 
impact of the omission of Puerto Rico in the omnibus bill and what it 
does to the territory of Puerto Rico and the citizens that are there. 
My colleague has spoken eloquently as to the proportionality questions 
in this omnibus bill, in general, that would not only negatively impact 
Puerto Rico but Puerto Rican and other citizens here in the United 
States of America; whole communities, whole cohorts of working class 
families.
  Would my colleague just use a little bit of his time to talk about 
that issue of fairness and proportionality that I have heard you so 
eloquently speak about.
  I yield to the gentleman from New York.
  Mr. JEFFRIES. The big question I think that we face here, earlier 
today we voted on a tax extender package, $600-plus billion. None of it 
was paid for, at least as it relates to what was done today.
  I think reasonable people understand that making these tax breaks 
permanent in a way where they were not paid for ultimately is going to 
blow a tremendous hole in the deficit. As we move forward, the people 
who will pay for the tax cuts that were passed out of this House 
earlier today, hundreds of billions of dollars--notwithstanding the 
earned income tax credit and the child care tax credit that, of course, 
many of us support--the people who will pay for it will be the poor, 
the sick, the afflicted, working families, those who need assistance. 
In good conscience, there is no way that I could support the tax 
extender package and go back home to my community and say we have just 
done a good thing.
  As it relates to the omnibus, I think we all have to ask the 
question, if the plus-up in the omnibus is somewhere in the 
neighborhood of $31 billion or $32 billion in additional spending, yet 
we understand that in the tax extender package hundreds of billions of 
dollars were unpaid for over a 10-year period and, ultimately, someone 
is going to pay the price for that--that is one of the reasons why we 
got something like sequestration. We got jammed as a result of tax cuts 
that were not paid for in 2001, tax cuts that were not paid for in 
2003, a failed war in Iraq, a failed war in Afghanistan. None of that 
was paid for. Ultimately we find ourselves in fiscal difficulty. Who 
pays? The most vulnerable in America. That is how we got sequestration.

                              {time}  1530

  So I am not convinced that we are not going to find ourselves in a 
similar situation moving forward as a result of what was done with this 
tax extender package today.
  I am in the process of continuing to review the omnibus bill and 
trying to weigh and balance the equities. I will tell you, though, that 
the failure to do something for the people of Puerto Rico is greatly 
troubling, because it doesn't cost the taxpayers anything, and the fact 
that some of the programs of importance to urban America, like 
Historically Black Colleges and Universities, may not have received the 
resources that some of us think they deserve, and we have got concerns 
as a result of some of the foreclosure prevention issues in some other 
areas.
  We are all going to have to take a look at the equities, but it is 
clear that we should be able to do much better for the American people, 
for those that we have come to Congress to represent, for those who 
have disproportionately borne the burden of reckless and irresponsible 
fiscal policies over the past decade or so. And let's just hope that we 
can proceed to do things differently in a way that benefits those we 
represent here in America.

[[Page 21402]]

  So I thank the distinguished gentlewoman for the opportunity to speak 
further on this issue. I also want to acknowledge my good friend, Keith 
Ellison, who is a tremendous champion for working families all across 
the country.
  Mrs. WATSON COLEMAN. I appreciate that and I thank my colleague and 
friend.
  I appreciate your perspective on the proportionality issue. Who is 
going to pay? We are going to pay. Who is going to pay when the bill 
comes due? It is the working families. It is the most vulnerable. And 
let us not get so excited about a $30 billion increase when we 
recognize we have been under sequestration. What does that mean?
  I thank the gentleman for sharing his time with us.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Ellison).
  Mr. ELLISON. I thank the gentlewoman, who has done an awesome job 
holding down the Progressive Special Order Hour. It has been to the 
benefit of everyone who listens.
  Mr. Speaker, it is important for all of us involved in this debate 
and every American to understand a concept known as starve the beast. 
It is a conservative concept. And what it really means--and I would 
like everybody to be clear--is that the conservative wing in our 
country wants to shrink the size of government so that a big 
multinational oil company will never have to worry about an EPA 
regulator because the government will have so little money, they won't 
have an EPA regulator.
  The starve-the-beast concept means that a big bank won't ever have to 
worry about a bank regulator saying: Hey, Mr. Banker, you cannot do 
that with the American people's money. You have to be fair; you have to 
be proper and right with the people's money. Because we will shrink the 
government to be so small and so weak that there won't ever be that 
regulator who will say to the big banks: You cannot do that.
  Starve the beast means that the largest private sector elements in 
our country can escape the accountability the government provides 
through the people who inspect the water, the people who inspect the 
meat, the people who inspect the air quality. It is the people who 
inspect all these things. And when the public interest runs afoul of 
the private gain, the private gain will prevail because the public 
won't have the wherewithal and the resources to say no, or you have to 
readjust this, or you have to operate at a higher standard of quality, 
or anything like that.
  Now, how do you get this starve-the-beast strategy in play? Well, one 
thing that you do is you have unpaid-for tax cuts. You get these tax 
cuts in place and they are all good if you say: Isn't this great? Don't 
you want to escape paying taxes? Who likes paying taxes? Nobody.
  So people say: Okay. Good. We are going to get out of having to pay 
taxes. How nice. But then you don't pay for them. Then what happens to 
the budget? Well, you have got a big hole in the budget because the 
revenue you were counting on is not there. Then you use the public 
relations to say that raising taxes is just the worst thing anyone 
could ever do at any time in their life. They say this three-letter 
word of taxes--really, a four-letter word--and I will let your 
imagination go from there--and then, because they have made raising 
revenue utterly radioactive, all we can do is cut.
  And so what do we do? Well, we cut education funding. We cut Meals on 
Wheels. We cut the National Institutes of Health. We cut, cut, cut all 
this stuff that ordinary citizens rely on until we get to the next 
rounds of tax cuts.
  By the way, when it comes to tax cuts and conservatives, if the 
economy is doing really well, they need a tax cut. If it is doing 
really bad, the solution to that is what? A tax cut. And if we are just 
doing average, well, why not have a tax cut? It is almost always unpaid 
for.
  And if you look at it over time, there is this pattern of 
irresponsible tax cuts, deficits, cuts to fix it, more tax cuts, 
deficit, more cuts to fix it. Never do we raise the revenue we need in 
order to meet the needs of our society.
  Who gets hurt? Not the country club set. It is people who need the 
government to function on their behalf or people who drink water every 
day and who need an inspection of it, people who like to breathe clean 
air, people who might want to eat some meat that has been inspected, 
people suffering from a serious disease like Alzheimer's or Parkinson's 
who might need the National Institutes of Health to put forth a grant 
which will help.
  So what does that all have to do with this discussion? Well, today, 
we just passed a bill that gave $600-some billion worth of unpaid-for 
tax cuts and made them permanent. We created a structural deficit that 
is even worse.
  Now, they are going to give it back a little bit. A little bit. We 
give away $600 billion, they give us $30 billion, and voila, we are 
supposed to be happy about that.
  There is a concept known as Stockholm syndrome. Your captor holds you 
in control. After they have held you a little while, they give you a 
few little chits. Then they make you think that when they give you even 
a little drop of water, they are so benevolent.
  I will never forget that we never should have had sequester in the 
first place. We never should have had sequester. We had a hostage-
taking situation where Republicans were literally threatening to 
default and renege on the full faith and credit of the United States by 
busting the debt ceiling. And if we did not give them back all kinds of 
cuts and concessions, they would bust the debt ceiling.
  So then we entered into this deal where we had some cuts in the 
beginning, and then they said: We are going to set up a special 
committee, three Republicans in the House, three Republicans in the 
Senate, three Democrats in the House, three Democrats in the Senate. 
And this committee was supposed to come up with some targeted cuts to 
reduce the deficit, which they said then was just the worst thing in 
the world, and that is to ever have a deficit.
  Then they got in that committee and instead of upholding their pledge 
to protect and defend the United States, they upheld their pledge to 
not raise taxes to certain political figures in our landscape. The 
whole committee failed. And it was contemplated that if this committee 
cannot come up with targeted cuts, then there will be across-the-board 
cuts on both sides, also known as sequester.
  You know what? That committee really never had a chance. I wish we 
would have known then that that committee was always a sucker deal, 
because they were clinking the champagne glasses when that committee 
failed because they knew it was going to be across-the-board cuts. They 
said: It is going to be domestic discretionary, which you liberals 
like, and there are going to be cuts to the military, which us 
conservatives like--which is a sort of a gross overgeneralization and 
not exactly accurate, but that was the rough approximation.
  What we never accounted for is that in 2001, the U.S. military budget 
was already about $290 billion. By the time we got to sequester, it was 
about $700 billion. They could stand some cuts, but the programs that 
the average citizen needed that were going to be ravaged could not.
  And so that you know, no sooner than the sequester went into effect, 
we had people saying: Oh, we can't do these military cuts. It can't 
happen. It won't happen. They had their friends and their advocates, 
even though they had been getting fat for years, but what about Meals 
on Wheels and education funding and environmental protection? That was 
attacked.
  So what does that mean about today? What it means about today is 
this: We have seen more taxes, more things given away. I definitely 
think that some of the things that were made permanent today are good 
tax treatments. I am for research and development. I am certainly for 
child credit and the EITC. But they should be paid for, because if they 
are not paid for, they are going to come out of another part of the 
budget next year.

[[Page 21403]]

  Oh, and by the way, how come tax extenders don't have to be paid for, 
but anything that regular people need must be paid for? Why do we have 
to find offsets for unemployment insurance, but not for things that Big 
Business needs? It is utter hypocrisy.
  I just want to tell you, Mr. Speaker, for the folks who are 
listening, that there is a very important thing that Speaker John 
Boehner said when the Republicans took over a few years ago. They came 
out with this big, ugly budget to cut all these things that Americans 
really rely on to prosper and grow, and we wouldn't pass their House 
bill. And so Speaker Boehner said: If they won't take it one big loaf 
at a time, they will take it one slice at a time. And boy, if that 
promise has not been kept.
  We absolutely have to turn around and say no to this starve-the-beast 
philosophy. We have to turn it around and start meeting the needs of 
the American people.
  Taxes are the price we pay to live in a civilized society. If you 
don't like taxes, move to Somalia, where you won't have to pay any. 
Good luck. But in America, where we pay taxes that pay for schools, 
that pay for more clean water, highways, police, and fire, we have got 
to stop and stand against this false claim that there is something 
wrong with taxation.
  Let me just wrap up on one point. I know we have got to move on--we 
have got other great speakers who I actually want to hear from myself--
but I want to make one very quick comment as I listen to my colleagues 
and prepare to take my seat, and that is about one of the things we are 
going to be dealing with tomorrow.
  Now, we talk about this tax extender thing and the omnibus as if it 
is two different things. It is actually one big thing. That is the 
truth.
  One of the elements of the omnibus tomorrow--which is pretty ugly--is 
lifting the oil export ban on crude oil. According to the Energy 
Information Administration, lifting the ban will increase oil industry 
profits by more than $20 billion annually.
  Now, the big companies that make all these extra profits, I think 
they have their favorites in the House of Representatives. And not too 
many of them sit over here. Probably a lot of them sit over there.
  I will also say that it will cut refinery jobs, it will make us more 
dependent upon foreign oil, and it will increase more fossil fuel. This 
is absolutely the wrong thing. The only virtue of it is that a small, 
tiny, select number of people are going to get $20 billion. And I am 
disgusted by it.
  By the oil industry's own expectations, this action will lead to more 
than 7,600 additional wells being drilled each year and more fossil 
fuels. According to the report from the Center for American Progress, 
repealing the ban would result in an additional 515 metric tons of 
carbon pollution each year, roughly equal to 108 million more passenger 
cars or 135 coal-fired power plants. It will cost jobs in refineries. 
It will do real damage to Americans. And yet this is what is on the 
docket tomorrow.

                              {time}  1545

  Now, are there good things on the docket tomorrow? Yes, there are. I 
will leave it to other people to decide whether it is worth it to pass 
a monstrosity like this.
  So I will say: Always know that sometimes when you are in the game, 
somebody else playing has an overall long-term strategy, and if you are 
just playing minute to minute, you are going to be no match for them.
  Understand starve the beast. Don't play the game.
  Mrs. WATSON COLEMAN. I thank the gentleman very much for sharing his 
wisdom with us and his perspective on those issues that we are 
confronting in the very near future.
  Mr. Speaker, could you tell me how much time I have left?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Kelly of Mississippi). The gentlewoman 
has 23 minutes remaining.
  Mrs. WATSON COLEMAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield to my colleague from 
Georgia (Mr. Johnson).
  Mr. JOHNSON of Georgia. I thank the gentlewoman.
  Today, we are just about ready to vote on an omnibus spending bill, 
which is a part of the tax extender bill that we, or that some passed 
today. I did not vote for it. I was opposed to the tax extender bill, 
which added $622 billion to the Nation's long-term debt, unpaid for, 
and largely tax cuts to the wealthy.
  There are some features in the tax extenders bill that were 
appealing. For instance, it enhanced the child tax credit. It made it 
permanent, along with the enhanced earned income tax credit. Those are 
important for middle class people, working people. Those are very 
important, and we did the right thing on those.
  But, unfortunately, they represented a small part of that $622 
billion, two-thirds of which was a giveaway to the wealthy through 
various tax loopholes. So Congress did that dirty deed today, and it 
blew a hole in the Nation's long-term debt.
  And you know what is going to happen? Because while you have reduced 
the amount of resources that the Federal Government takes in to be able 
to give back to the people who are governed, in the form of 
transportation dollars, healthcare dollars, education dollars, national 
security dollars, things that we have to pay for; in other words, you 
can't have the freedoms that we enjoy and the prosperity that we all 
enjoy, without having a government that lays down this infrastructure, 
and that is what our tax receipts pay for.
  We have been cutting Federal revenues since 1980. It has been almost 
40 years we have been on an incessant cutting of government. We have 
been spending a lot of money. We have been spending without paying for 
it. That is what has created the debt, largely because of wars, 
unfought wars, and tax cuts.
  So while we have things to pay for, we haven't been paying for them 
with tax moneys. We have been paying for them with the promise of 
taking in tax moneys, and we continue to increase the debt by cutting 
taxes.
  So how do you then pay for the government that we need when you are 
cutting these taxes? Well, we pay for this government every year when 
we have these spending bills that come up, and they tend to always come 
up at the end of the year, when everybody is ready to go home, and when 
government is about to shut down because it hasn't been funded.
  So what did we do this year? We did the same thing we did this year 
that we did in previous years, and that is to wait till the last 
minute, put together a 2,000-plus-page spending bill, and then we 
spring it on Members of Congress in the dead of night, and give us 2 
days, 2 full days to be able to read through it, and then vote on it. 
We are scheduled to vote on it tomorrow.
  It is not a great way of doing bills in this country, and that is 
what we have been doing, giving away resources. We did that today. 
Tomorrow we will pass this spending bill. They call it two bills, but 
really it is one bill that has been split into two parts. The first 
dirty deed was done today. The next dirty deed will be done tomorrow, 
the spending bill.
  Now, the spending bill has a lot of stuff in there that should not be 
in there. Why should you have a spending bill, and then you turn around 
and give away the Nation's resources, the Nation's oil? You're going to 
remove a 40-year prohibition on the production of crude oil to be sent 
overseas for refinement. You are going to remove that ban in a spending 
bill that was unleashed on us just 2 days ago, 2,000 pages, a spending 
bill.
  But why are you giving a break to the oil industry? Why are we going 
to vote to remove that ban on sending our precious oil offshore to be 
refined, thus costing us good middle class jobs here in America?
  Those refinery workers, they are going to lose their jobs because we 
are going to allow the oil to be exported so that it can be refined in 
a foreign nation by workers who are not paid commensurate to what we 
are paid over here, and then we are going to import our own oil back 
into our country at a

[[Page 21404]]

higher price. It doesn't make sense, ladies and gentlemen.
  We need to be weaned from foreign oil, and we do that through 
producing our own oil. But if we are going to then send our oil 
overseas to be refined, then the only person, the only folks that are 
getting rich off of that are the oil companies. They have been getting 
rich for a long time, and we are giving them another opportunity to 
make billions and billions of dollars more. It is the oil that belongs 
to this country. And so it is wrong that we do that.
  This is one of the features in our spending bill tomorrow, and I 
disagree with that. I think most Americans probably do, and many 
Members of Congress do also.
  But, yet, there will be many who will pass this bill just simply to 
get out of here and keep the government open, and that is not a great 
way of doing business. That is not the way we should do business in 
this country. America deserves better. The citizens deserve better.
  Mrs. WATSON COLEMAN. I want to thank the gentleman from Georgia. I 
appreciate his comments and thank him for sharing his wisdom and 
experience with us.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to my classmate and colleague from Arizona (Mr. 
Gallego).
  Mr. GALLEGO. The omnibus has been billed as a compromise, but in 
reality it is packed with Republican policy provisions that only 
compromise our values.
  The omnibus bill should be about funding the government, not about 
pushing through policies that would never receive enough votes to pass 
on their own. Asking us to support this bill is asking us to support 
bad policy.
  Among the legislation's many serious shortcomings is its failure to 
address the mounting fiscal crisis in Puerto Rico.
  Mr. Speaker, the people of Puerto Rico are American citizens. They 
vote in our elections. They swear allegiance to our flag, they fight, 
and they die in our wars. Yet, at a time when massive bills are coming 
due, this Congress has turned its back on Puerto Rico.
  Including a provision in the omnibus to allow Puerto Rico to 
restructure its debt wouldn't cost the American taxpayer one penny. We 
did not put that in. Every single State in this union can access the 
protections afforded by chapter 9. Puerto Rico is unfairly denied this 
ability. That is simply unfair, and our refusal to come to the island's 
aid is un-American.
  Mr. Speaker, the omnibus will also deal a blow to our efforts to save 
our planet. Less than a week after reaching a historic climate change 
pact in Paris, Republicans want to undo the progress made by giving Big 
Oil a major victory, while leaving our brothers and sisters in Puerto 
Rico behind.
  Lifting the oil export ban on the heels of new studies warning 
against the drastic rates of warming of lakes across the country and 
around the world is a major blow to all efforts made in Paris.
  According to the Energy Information Administration, lifting the ban 
will increase gross profits of the oil industry by more than $20 
billion annually, at the direct expense of America's wildlife and 
natural resources. By the oil industry's own projections, lifting the 
ban will result in more than 7,500 additional wells being drilled 
annually, resulting in the degradation of more than one million square 
acres of wildlife habitat.
  Increasing drilling without protections for wildlife, and without 
permanently reauthorizing the Land and Water Conservation Fund, takes 
us backwards and will harm domestic jobs, while exacerbating the huge 
challenges we currently face in preserving our outdoor heritage and 
tackling climate change.
  Mr. Speaker, Democrats are being asked to supply two-thirds of the 
votes for this bill, but this agreement does not reflect even two-
thirds of our values. We should reject this bad deal for Americans.
  Mrs. WATSON COLEMAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my 
time.

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