Waiving Requirment of Clause 6(a) of Rule XIII with Respect to Consideration of Certain Resolutions

Floor Speech

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Mr. McGOVERN. Here we go again, Madam Speaker. Republicans are, once again, going back on their promises for a more open, more transparent House of Representatives--another martial law rule designed to fix problems of their own doing, another effort to break the rules just to fix their own mess.

And it didn't have to be this way.

For months, we've known that more disaster assistance was needed to address the aftermath of the tragedy in Joplin and, more recently, to address the damage caused by Irene as it made its way from North Carolina up the east coast into New England. Americans respond to natural disasters. That's what we do. We always have. We rise to the occasion when our neighbors are in need. The problem is when politicians start playing politics with people's lives, and that's where we find ourselves today.

Yesterday, the Republican leadership brought a continuing resolution to the floor that not only provided less disaster assistance than that of the Senate, it also offset that funding by cutting a green jobs initiative. It's not enough that we've been in session 261 days without a single jobs proposal from the Republicans. With yesterday's continuing resolution, Republicans actually proposed cutting a jobs program just to make political points with their Tea Party base.

Yesterday, Democrats said enough--enough to the job-killing Republican agenda, enough to the notion that fiscal austerity means turning our backs on people in need, enough to the ``my way or the highway'' attitude that seems to make up the ideology of the Republican leadership.

Yesterday, 48 Republicans joined 182 Democrats in defeating the continuing resolution. According to Politico, it was ``an embarrassing setback.''

Yesterday, Republicans and Democrats said, Don't play games with the lives of Americans.

It's almost as if the Republicans blame the victims of the hurricane and tornado for having the audacity to live in the paths of those natural disasters. So here we are again, forced to consider a martial law rule in an attempt to fix the problems that the Republicans, themselves, created, a martial law rule that not only waives the rules of the House but that also allows for the immediate consideration of a new continuing resolution.

No time to read the bill, even though the Republicans started out the year by promising 72 hours to look at any legislation voted on in the House. No time to read the bill. No ability to amend the bill.

So much for the new open Congress.

It wasn't too long ago that my colleagues on the Rules Committee were touting the new open Congress. Look how far this new Republican House has fallen.

Madam Speaker, it is disappointing that we're here today. It's disappointing that the Republicans are making a mockery of the legislative process. It's disappointing that they continue to choose politics over the American people. The American people deserve better than this.

With that, Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. McGOVERN. I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, I'm a little bit confused. The gentleman referred to the legislation before us that it would provide this for the American people and that for the American people.

The legislation before us is a martial law rule which says that a bill that we have yet to see will be able to be brought up on the floor for same-day consideration. So I don't know what's in the new continuing resolution.

Maybe the gentleman can enlighten us: Do we expect a vote on the continuing resolution today? When can we see this continuing resolution? Does the gentleman have any insight that he can fill us in on and when Members might actually be able to see the bill?

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Mr. McGOVERN. Let me reclaim my time and repeat the question.

The question is that the gentleman on a number of occasions referred to that the bill provides this for the American people and that for the American people when the bill before us is a martial law rule. We haven't seen the continuing resolution. When do we expect to see it? Are we voting on it today?

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Mr. McGOVERN. Reclaiming my time, if I may ask the gentleman one additional question, does he anticipate that the Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing Loan Program will be cut in the new version of the continuing resolution that will be brought before us?

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Mr. McGOVERN. Reclaiming my time, Madam Speaker, just for the record, I would like to have inserted a letter from Paul A. Yost, who's the vice president at the National Association of Manufacturers, and a letter from R. Bruce Josten, who is the executive vice president, Government Affairs of the Chamber of Commerce of the United States, both strongly objecting to the offset that Republicans included in the continuing resolution that we considered yesterday that went down.

One of the reasons there was great objection over this, Madam Speaker, was because this program that was cut actually was a job-creating program putting people to work. I would say to my colleagues, if you want to reduce the debt in this country, you ought to figure out a way to put people back to work; and the way you put people back to work is not cut every single program that provides assistance to business and to people to be able to get on their feet and create jobs.

We have a crisis in this country that is not being addressed by this House of Representatives which has yet to consider a single jobs bill. And instead, we have a continuing resolution that gets brought to the floor that provides less disaster assistance than the Senate bill does to people who are in need and pays for it, offsets it, by cutting a program to create jobs. What sense does that make?

When it comes to disaster relief, we have never, ever, ever offset disaster relief because you can't predict with any accuracy whether there's going to be a tornado next year or a hurricane next year or an earthquake next year.

There are some things we don't offset we should offset; for example, the wars. We've been in Afghanistan for 10 years, and I can't figure out why we're still there, but we're still there. Ten years. I can predict pretty much--very accurately--how much it will cost to stay another year, and yet we borrow that money. We put it on the credit card. We borrow $10 billion a month for military operations in Afghanistan that goes onto our credit card; not paid for. Not paid for.

But when it comes to helping people in this country who have been adversely impacted by a natural disaster, through no fault of their own, who have lost their homes, who've seen their communities devastated, all of a sudden we're here saying we've got to find these offsets. And where do the offsets come from? They don't come from Donald Trump's tax cut. Where they come from is a program to put people to work.

The gentleman, the chairman of the Rules Committee, talks about this great openness that we have in the Rules Committee. I have offered, I think about half a dozen times, an amendment to go after the U.S. taxpayer-funded oil subsidies, these subsidies that we provide oil companies that are making record profits, and we can't even get that issue for a vote on this House floor.

I hope we have enough time to read what's in the bill. I hope that we have enough time to understand what's in the bill. I hope that we meet today. I hope that we meet at a decent hour. But we don't have the answers to any of those questions, and I think that that's unfortunate when it comes to a bill about the funding, the continuing funding of our government.

Again, Madam Speaker, I regret that we are here. I regret that we are debating a martial law rule. We're not debating a continuing resolution right now. It's a martial rule that basically shuts everything down and allows them to bring up a bill any time they want to bring a bill up. People won't even have time to read it. And we'll have that vote possibly today. But again, we don't have any definite commitments from the other side what time or even if it will be today.

I will close by saying, Madam Speaker, that I think it is important that this House gets back to the issue of jobs and protecting and caring for the people here in this country. Our biggest challenges, I'm going to tell my friends on the other side, are not halfway around the world; some of them are just halfway down the block. I regret very much that this Congress has yet to deal with the issue of jobs.

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Mr. McGOVERN. I thank the gentleman for yielding to me.

I just found out some news here in answer to a question I had earlier about offsets. Apparently, according to the National Journal, the Republican leaders are considering tacking on as much as $100 million in additional offsets to their GOP continuing resolution they are bringing to the floor. That is a quote attributed to House Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier. So I just read in the National Journal basically that there will be additional offsets.

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Mr. McGOVERN. Which brings me back to my original point of why it's important for us to see this bill. You say that you want to eliminate waste, but the U.S. Chamber of Commerce says that the Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing program is not waste; it creates jobs. So I don't know where else you're going to cut.

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Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I just want to make sure the record is clear when it comes to Democratic support for the continuing resolution. In his pen and pad press conference, Minority Whip Hoyer said he was ``loath'' to support yesterday's CR, and I have a copy of that press conference and the transcript of the colloquy that went on on the House floor here. So if anybody is interested in reading it in detail, I have it here.

At this point, I would like to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Hastings).

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Mr. McGOVERN. I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I am going to hold this poster up because I want to make sure that it's clear to everybody. I'm going to quote this: ``I will not bring a bill to the floor that hasn't been posted online for at least 72 hours.'' John Boehner, Fox News, ``America's News Room,'' 7/22/2010.

Mr. Speaker, we can have all the verbal gyrations that we can come up with here about how not to kind of get to the point, which is that we're not going to be able to have 3 days or 72 hours or 3 legislative days--or three anything--to look at this bill. And the bill that we're going to be debating later today or tomorrow--we don't really know--is going to be different. And we know it's going to be different because the chairman of the Rules Committee said in an interview that we have online to National Journal that there's probably going to be another $100 million more in offsets. And so where are those offsets coming from?

We know that one of the offsets that was in the continuing resolution yesterday was an offset that actually was a job killer, that actually is something that not only Democrats supported, but the United States Chamber of Commerce supported. Everyone came together and agreed that this is a good program, and it was cut, and it is going to discourage job creation in this country.

So I think it is important to know where these offsets are going to be coming from. And, again, let me repeat what I've said over and over: this has not been a bipartisan process. The only thing bipartisan about this continuing resolution was the opposition to it.

And, again, I would tell my Republican friends that the reason why this promise by Speaker Boehner is important is because we do need to understand what's in the bill. We're beginning to understand that your rules don't live up to what you actually promised.

Mr. Speaker, the other thing about this that I think is important for people to understand is that never, ever, ever have we ever insisted on offsets for emergency spending for disasters. We don't know whether there will be one, two, three, or no emergencies that hit our country next year or the year after or the year after that. Maybe my Republican friends have now figured out a way to predict earthquakes and tsunamis and hurricanes and tornadoes, but we don't know how to predict with any accuracy.

And this notion that we're not going to be there, that we're going to insist on offsets in order to provide people who have been thrown out of their homes, whose communities have been destroyed through no fault of their own, that we can find an offset when we don't need any offsets for nation-building in Afghanistan, that's all on your credit card. There's no offsets needed for that.

Why is it that no offsets are needed to do that kind of stuff, but when it comes to helping people in this country, all of a sudden we become super fiscally conservative? We need to have offsets for everything.

You want to reduce the debt? Put people back to work. That's how you do it. Cutting programs that put people back to work doesn't put people back to work. It slows down the economic recovery.

Here we are in September, and we have yet to deal with a single jobs bill on this floor. I don't know what it's like in California, but I can tell you in Massachusetts, when I go home, people want to talk about jobs and the economy. Yes, they want to reduce the debt, and they understand, by ending some of these wars, by cutting back on some of these overseas bases that we have, by asking Donald Trump to pay his fair share.

There's something wrong in this country when a billionaire hedge fund manager pays a lower tax rate than his secretary. It's like, no, we can't ask that person, that billionaire to pay his fair share. Everything is aimed at working people and those who are most vulnerable.

We should be talking about putting America back to work. We should be debating every day about ways to stimulate this economy, to provide incentives to put people back to work, to find ways to stop incentivizing corporations to send American jobs overseas.

Instead, my friends on the other side of the aisle are protecting all that status quo. I mean, they are protecting those tax breaks, those incentives that encourage jobs to go overseas. Enough. Enough.

I'll close by saying this, Mr. Speaker: When it comes to protecting subsidies for Big Oil companies, my friends are there. When it comes to rebuilding and nation building in Afghanistan, they're there. When it comes to maintaining a Tax Code that allows a billionaire hedge fund manager to pay a lower tax rate than his secretary, they're there. But when it comes to disaster assistance, when it comes to jobs, when it comes to things that matter to everyday people, it is a struggle. It is a fight.

I would urge my colleagues to rethink their priorities, to work in a bipartisan way when it comes to disaster relief and job creation.

Let's bring the President's jobs bill to the floor. If you don't like it, vote against it. But allow us to have the opportunity in this new, open House. Let us bring the President's jobs bill to the floor. Let us see whether we can pass it here. I think if this truly is an open House, we ought to have that opportunity.

I will just say, Mr. Speaker, before I yield back the balance of my time, I don't know when we're going to get this bill. I don't know where the cuts are going to be made. I don't know what other job-creating programs are going to be cut. But again, ``I will not bring a bill to the floor that hasn't been posted on line for at least 72 hours.'' We're not even going to get 72 minutes, in all likelihood.

I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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