Providing for Consideration of H. Con. Res. Expressing the Sense of Congress That the Report of Special Counsel Mueller Should Be Made Available to the Public and to Congress, and Providing for Proceedings During the Period From March Through March 2019

Floor Speech

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Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, today, I rise in opposition to the rule providing for consideration of H. Con. Res. 24 to release the special counsel's investigation report, a report that, I may note, has not yet been issued.

The resolution we are considering here today will not change the law; it will not increase transparency; and it will provide no new benefit to the American people. Quite simply, this resolution merely states current law. This resolution simply restates current Department of Justice protocol.

We had a Member here in this House who was also a physician and who was a member of the other party, former Congressman McDermott of Washington State. I remember one time Republicans offered a sense of Congress resolution that had something to do with taxes. The gentleman took to the floor of the House and said, if you want to do something about taxes, do something about taxes, but a sense of Congress resolution, why you might as well be sending a get-well card to the IRS.

That is the force with which we are exercising our congressional time today. Speaker Pelosi and the Democratic leadership have decided to use valuable legislative time to consider a resolution that changes nothing and does not serve the American people.

In the time that we have spent debating this resolution, we could have been discussing more serious matters before this body. Let's just run through a few of them.

The Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act has been brought to the floor 17 times, yet the current Democratic leadership refuses to bring up this legislation for a vote. I might remind the body that this bill is not about abortion but saving the lives of children who are, in fact, born alive.

You know, I don't make it a habit of watching ``60 Minutes'' on television, but last Sunday night, ``60 Minutes'' had a news story on the dramatic advances in the treatment and perhaps--perhaps--inching towards a cure for sickle cell disease.

Sickle cell disease is a painful condition I witnessed many times as a resident at Parkland Hospital back in the 1970s.

For years, sickle cell received very little attention. Now, I am happy to say in the last Congress, under the leadership of Danny Davis of Illinois, our subcommittee worked on and passed his bill dealing with sickle cell. It finally was passed by the Senate in October of last year, and it was signed into law by the President last December.

As a consequence, the push for sickle cell research has continued. The 21st Century Cures Act, which this Congress worked on at the end of the previous administration, certainly can be given some credit for that. But, I have to tell you, it was dramatic to have the Director of the NIH interviewed on ``60 Minutes'' talking about a cure for sickle cell.

So our work that we do here is important. It does impact the lives of real people, and I think that is just one dramatic example.

Well, another example was the first tax reform, 31 years, that was signed into law last year, and here we are a month out from tax day. We could use this time to strengthen the progress we made on the tax reform that was passed last year.

In the last Congress, we helped American people keep more of their hard-earned money. We should be working to continue that momentum, perhaps make those tax cuts permanent for the middle class.

We could be discussing the Democrats' government-run, bureaucratic, top-down healthcare plan that would strip hardworking Americans of their private health insurance and offer less coverage at more expense to American taxpayers, but we are not.

Today, we could be talking about patent abuse entities, so-called patent trolls, particularly troublesome in the eastern district of Texas, where most of those cases are litigated.

The House could be considering the Troll Act, legislation that I have introduced for three terms of Congress to limit patent assertion entities and protect Americans' intellectual property.

We could be using this time to discuss our Nation's critical need for border security to protect the American people and defend our borders.

In February of 2019, the shortest month of the year, only 28 days, more than 75,000 people that we know of crossed the border without legal status, in excess of a 100 percent increase from the same period last year. People argue whether that is an emergency. I believe that it is, but we could be talking about that.

In a week in which more than 150 lost their lives, we could be using this time to discuss aviation safety and does Congress need to do anything further to ensure the continued safety of the American traveling public.

So time and again, we found that Members on the other side of the dais are far more interested in discrediting the President than working on policy that will help the American people, this President who, in the first 2 years and 2 months of this administration, has probably been more productive than any Presidency in the last 50 years.

And, finally, Mr. Speaker, we could be using this time to address the false and misleading comments that a member of the Judiciary Committee made about the Department of Health and Human Services.

Last month, a Member of this House grossly mischaracterized the work being done by the Department of Health and Human Services to care for unaccompanied alien children by stating that the Office of Refugee Resettlement created ``an environment of systemic sexual assaults by Health and Human Services staff on unaccompanied alien children.''

Mr. Speaker, that accusation is false, and it was made without that Member ever having visited an ORR facility. Those comments are a discredit to the effort by dedicated personnel of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, those employees who deal with a problem that dates back to the Obama administration when the Office of Refugee Resettlement was unprepared for the task.

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Mr. BURGESS. If Democrats don't like the work that the Office of Refugee Settlement is doing, you are in the majority. You have the ability to introduce legislation and pass legislation to do something different.

Instead of standing here today discussing this superfluous resolution, the Democrats could be using this time to change a law that they clearly don't like.

Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record a letter from the agency's Administration for Children and Families regarding this issue.

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Mr. BURGESS. So here is the bottom line: House Democrats do not like the President of the United States, and we know that.

Less than 3 months into the 116th Congress, the Democrats have shown that they will work against President Trump to the detriment of the American people.

We are here in the United States House of Representatives to serve the American people, and the legislation we are considering here today will not do that.

President Trump has urged us at the State of the Union, asked all the Members present, to reject the politics of revenge, resistance, and retribution and embrace the boundless potential of cooperation, compromise, and the common good. I also believe this is possible, and I recommend we get on with the task.

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