Mr. Speaker, I am not going to have the opportunity very often, so I want to make sure I do it while the gentleman and I are together today to tell him I agree with absolutely everything Mr. Morelle had to say. It doesn't happen very often on the Rules Committee.
If you are ever having a good day and you need to bring some discord into your life, I want you to head upstairs to the third floor, where there is a 9-to-4 majority-minority distribution, and you can find discord up there every day of the week. It doesn't matter whether it is Republicans leading the institution or Democrats leading the institution.
Last night, we had a chance to come together and talk about something that unites us all; but I oppose the rule today, Mr. Speaker, because this is a bill that passed the Congress last year, and when we passed it last year, we passed it unanimously through the Veterans' Affairs Committee. All the Republicans and all the Democrats voted ``yes.'' Then we brought it to the House floor, and we passed it unanimously here on a voice vote.
But the difference between the bill we have before us today and the bill we had before us last year is that, when we made new promises to our veterans for much-needed benefits last year, we went and we found ways to pay for those promises--not controversial ways, not divisive ways, but ways that we agreed to unanimously at the committee and the full House level. When the bill reappeared this year, those pay-fors were miraculously absent.
I am concerned about that for two reasons, Mr. Speaker, and I think this body should reject this rule and give us a chance to improve this bill. We tried to improve it with an amendment last night, and the amendment was nongermane.
For folks who are new to the institution, understand that, if the committee that sends the bill to the House floor decides they are not going to pay for it, then any effort to try to pay for it is nongermane. So, once a committee sends a bill that is flawed to the Rules Committee, unless there is a waiver of the House rules to allow a pay-for amendment, pay-for amendments are not in order.
So what happens is we are making a new commitment of about $120 million to our veterans, a wonderful commitment.
Again, I agree with absolutely everything the gentleman from New York had to say. His heart for veterans is pure, and his words were true.
But that $120 million commitment we are making, Mr. Speaker, gets folded into the Veterans' Affairs budget that we don't increase by one penny, which means we now have to go cut $120 million worth of other veterans' benefits in order to pay for this veterans' benefit.
That is not what anybody on this floor wants to do. In the Budget Committee today, we were talking about the caps, talking about how to deal with caps. Nobody wants to dip into the already promised benefits that we have made to American veterans.
But the mystery to me is that, in this Chamber that America perceives as being so divided, in this town that America perceives as being so broken, we came together last year, unanimously, to do it the right way; and with new House leadership this year, Mr. Speaker, we have instead chosen to do it the easy way.
I think our veterans deserve better, but, more importantly, I know the Members of this institution can do better. We have, and we can again.
I hope my friends will reject this rule and give us a chance to go back, pay for this, make sure there are not unintended consequences of cutting other veterans' benefits that every man and woman in this Chamber supports.
It is not like me to correct the Chair because he serves the entire House, but, I will tell you, it is entirely possible that Mr. Morelle and I could yield each other time back and forth today. That is the nature of this institution's support for veterans.
And, I have to tell you, that is what hurts me the most about the way this bill has come to the floor. My friend is exactly right, Mr. Speaker, when he says that the CBO says this: There is no direct spending in this bill at all.
I just want you to think through that with me. We are promising veterans new benefits that cost money, and the scorekeeping institution of the United States House of Representatives says this bill will cost nothing.
Now, why is that true? It is true because there are other laws on the books, the budget caps that are on the books that say: If you add one penny of veterans funding in this category, you have got to cut a penny from this category.
When we did this bill last year, we all recognized that. I am not telling anybody anything they don't already know, and it pains me to see the defense of this bill as ``we didn't have to,'' ``they didn't make us,'' ``it is not required.'' All of those arguments were true last year, too. They didn't make us. We don't have to. It is not required.
It is just the right thing to do. And we came together, and we did it.
You have a different vantage point of this Chamber, Mr. Speaker, than I do. From your chair, it may look like that bipartisanship breaks out across this Chamber in mass quantities every day of the week, but, from my position behind this podium, we don't find that many things that both spend money and save money, those things that make new promises while revising old promises that weren't working as well, those things that make promises today but pay for them today instead of passing the bill on to our children and grandchildren.
And we did that together last year. We did it together. How can folks forget? Yes, we have lots of new freshmen in this Chamber, but we came together last year, unanimously, to do this bill right, to tell veterans: We do want to serve you better; we are going to create a new benefit; and we are not going to force cuts to other benefits as a result.
I am not going to give up on bipartisanship breaking out in this Chamber again and again and again, and I am certainly not going to give up on the bipartisan commitment that we have to serving our veterans. There are only so many days in a year. There are only so many weeks in a Congress. We cannot waste them doing a halfway job when we could have done the job right.
In this case, it is not as if we don't have a roadmap of how to do the job right. We did it. It is not as if we thought about doing it; we voted unanimously together to do it.
Yet, in this new day, we have chosen a different path, an inferior path. I just challenge my colleagues, as Paul Ryan used to say: Raise your gaze. This is a good idea. This is a good programmatic policy. But we need to pay for it, not cut veterans' benefits in order to squeeze it in.
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Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I would welcome my friend to close, but, in the spirit of bipartisanship, I will be happy to begin that process.
It is a different job in the minority. The power that Mr. Morelle has to open this debate and close this debate, it lends credence to his words. As I stipulated at the beginning, everything he said was true. It is what he didn't say that we can do better on.
I will say this one more time because, again, for new Members of this Chamber, you may not understand how the Rules Committee works. If a committee does not pay for legislation, if a committee just makes promises and does not find a way to pay for it, it is not appropriate, under House rules, to then try to add a pay-for. It requires a waiver from the Rules Committee of House rules in order to include a pay-for in a bill that is not already paid for. We offered that amendment last night. It was rejected on a party-line vote in the Rules Committee. Mr. Speaker, if we defeat the previous question today, we will offer a solution.
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Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, the amendment that we will offer if the previous question is defeated would add the language that, by collecting fees on housing loans that would pay for this new childcare benefit so that we don't have to go deep into the Veterans' Affairs budget, cutting other benefits in order to pay for this, so we don't have to violate budget caps and borrow from our children and from our grandchildren, so that we can make promises to men and women who deserve and need this benefit and know that we have come together and done the heavy lifting to pay for it today.
I hope my friends will unite, as we did last year, in approving this funding language, unite in defeating the previous question, so that I can bring this amendment up and we can do this in the same honorable, bipartisan, collaborative way that we unanimously passed this very same language just a few short months ago.
I urge my friends: Know that we can do better.
Mr. Speaker, while I contemplated yielding back, I am going to reserve my time just in case there are any more speakers who have been affected by my words and want to come and join this effort that we have today.
Mr. Speaker, it is troubling to me that we have those things that divide us, that permeate these conversations that could be uniting. Again, I don't think we have that many opportunities where we are able to come together as an entire institution unanimously to support legislation, so I deeply regret we have missed that opportunity.
I want to encourage my friends on the other side of the aisle not to fall under the same trap that I think Republicans fell into just 8 short years ago. Every single conversation we have now in the Rules Committee, the tax cuts come into it.
The fact that so many of my Democratic friends didn't want tax cuts for the American people isn't a mystery to me. I got not one Democratic vote on the entire bill. I get it. One team thought it was a good idea, one team didn't, but we cannot use that disagreement as an excuse not to do the very best that we can on each and every bill going forward.
I will give you that example from the Republicans experience. I was categorically opposed to the Federal takeover of healthcare that was the Affordable Care Act. I was categorically opposed to the way that small businesses lost options. And my friends that were promised they could keep their doctor and they could keep their plan, those promises were broken.
But I still came together with my Democratic friends on the floor to find additional dollars for veterans healthcare and plus-up those accounts, to find additional ways to serve veterans who had not been served through healthcare and plus-up those accounts. The fact that we disagree on really big important issues does not mean we cannot come together and do the very best that we can.
And with that in mind, I want to give credit where credit is due. I have talked a lot about how we unanimously passed this bill last Congress. It is true. We unanimously passed it out of committee, and we unanimously passed it on the floor of the House. But what that means is, it came to the floor of the House on the suspension calendar, which meant no amendments were made in order.
The way that my friends on the other side of the aisle have brought the bill up, amendments are made in order, and the Rules Committee made 21 different amendments in order. We passed the bill unanimously under our leadership, but there was not an opportunity to improve it.
My friends on the other side have chosen a different path that does allow an opportunity to improve it, but doesn't allow the opportunities that I am seeking to pay for it.
I don't have to demean my friends or their intentions because their intentions are pure, and they are thoughtful, honorable Members of this institution. The fact that we disagree about policy does not mean we have to disagree about the motives of one another. And when we have these opportunities to do not just good but better; not just good, but good in a way that we don't pass the bill on to our children and our grandchildren, we take care of that bill today.
I will close with this, Mr. Speaker. Again, I can't disagree with any of the words my friend from New York tells because the half of the story that he tells is absolutely true. This is an authorizing bill where we make a new promise to veterans.
If this bill passes the floor of the House today, it then goes to the Appropriations Committee to fulfill this promise that we all celebrate today, and the Appropriations Committee will have not one new penny to pay for this new promise.
We have all been in this business long enough to know what happens to promises that folks don't put any money behind and what happens to promises that don't get paid for. The law prevents the Appropriations Committee from funding this new promise, unless they cut dollars from existing veterans promises today.
This bill is doing all the right things for all the right reasons. Let's not make another veteran have to pay in a cut for what we are promising to one of his brothers or sisters in a new benefit.
Defeat the previous question; allow us to pay for this bill; and let's put our money where our hearts and our mouths are.
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Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
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