Providing for Consideration of Senate Amendment to H.R. 3547, Space Launch Liability Indemnification Extension Act; Providing for Proceedings During the Period from January 17, 2014, through January 24, 2014; and for Other Purposes

Floor Speech

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Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, what we have before us can be described--very charitably--as a mixed bag. This is a 1,500-page bill that nobody has actually read. This is, by the way, two-sided. It came before the Rules Committee less than 24 hours after it was filed. Because of this rule and the process used to create the bill, no Member, Republican or Democrat, will have the opportunity to amend it or change it in any way.

To top it all off, the legislative vehicle that the Republican leadership is using to rocket this bill over to the Senate is H.R. 3547, the Space Launch Liability Indemnification Act. No wonder the American people think Congress is living on another planet.

When people talk about regular order, this ain't it.

But we are where we are. And I do want to thank Chairman Rogers, Ranking Member Lowey, and the House and Senate appropriators for their hard work in putting the underlying omnibus appropriations bill together.

I will support this bill, very reluctantly, because the alternative is far worse--yet another Republican shutdown of the government, yet another unnecessary economically devastating and politically motivated mess, yet another attempt by congressional Republicans to damage an economy still struggling to recover from the worst recession in our lifetimes.

So, yes, I will vote for the bill, but we need to curb our enthusiasm. The numbers in this bill are awful. They may be slightly less awful than the Republican sequester numbers, but they are still awful.

Fewer kids will be cut from Head Start, but we are nowhere near meeting our educational needs. More funds will be provided for critical medical research, but not enough. There will be more funding for LIHEAP for our cities and towns and for antihunger programs. While it begins to undo the sequester, it does so for only 2 years. We need to get rid of it forever--permanently.

With this bill, we are waist-deep instead of neck-deep in manure. Hooray, I guess.

Even so, I am sure that many Tea Party members of this House will vote against this bill today because they still think it spends too much. All of the right-wing outside groups who really call the shots around here are whipping hard against it.

But more importantly, Madam Speaker, what is missing from this bill or from the Republican leadership's agenda is any acknowledgment of the immediate problem of millions of people who are losing their long-term unemployment benefits.

On December 28, 1.3 million unemployed Americans saw their long-term unemployment insurance expire, including more than 58,000 in Massachusetts. Since then, unemployment insurance has expired for an additional 72,000 more Americans each week. Yet the Republicans continue to do nothing.

Let me remind my colleagues how we got here.

After a difficult economic period in the early nineties and prolonged budget fights, President Clinton left us with a budget surplus, a surplus that was then squandered through unpaid-for wars and reckless tax cuts championed by President Bush and the Republican Congress. The Clinton surplus turned into a then-record deficit that was exacerbated by the global recession that started at the end of the Bush administration.

Six years after President Bush left office, we still have an unacceptable level of unemployment and an economy that is getting better for some while, at the same time, leaving many behind. And that is where unemployment insurance comes in.

This program is a lifeline for millions of people who lost their jobs--for most, because of the recession and not because of any issues regarding job performance.

Unemployment insurance helps millions of families pay their bills and put food on their tables, things they could do if they had jobs, but they can't because they are unemployed.

Yet Republicans in the Senate continue to filibuster a bill to extend unemployment insurance, and the House Republican leadership refuses even to consider any bill. We can't even get a bill on this floor so that Members of both sides of the aisle can have a chance to express their views. It is shameful, it is unconscionable, and it hurts our economic growth.

Madam Speaker, this isn't about some abstract piece of Federal policy. This is about the lives of our own citizens. It is about our neighbors who are simply trying to get by. It is about people who are willing to work but need help until they find a new job. They deserve a hell of a lot better than they are getting from this Congress.

Madam Speaker, I urge that we defeat the previous question. If we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule that will allow the House to hold a vote on a clean, 3-month unemployment insurance extension. This has been introduced by my colleague from Massachusetts, Congressman Tierney. If Congress doesn't act, over 18 million Americans will be denied the vital relief that they so greatly depend upon.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of the amendment in the Record, along with extraneous material, immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Massachusetts?

There was no objection.

Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I will again, before this debate is over, remind my colleagues to vote ``no'' and defeat the previous question.

Let me just close, again, by saying we need to move this process forward. I expect that that is what this omnibus will do. But we are about to leave for a break, starting tomorrow, one of the many breaks that the Republican leadership constantly gives us. So we are going to leave town, and meanwhile all these millions of Americans who are depending on us to help them get through this difficult time are just going to be left alone. We are going to turn our backs on them. That is, to me, unconscionable.

I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to stand with us and defeat the previous question so we can deal with this issue of unemployment insurance.

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

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Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, let me just say to my colleague from Oklahoma, we are not asking to amend this bill. We are asking for the right to be able to bring up a bill that would extend unemployment insurance.

Let's be clear so everybody understands this. The majority, if they agreed, could allow us to bring this up at any time. We could have this debate right after we pass the omnibus. So there is absolutely no reason at all that we shouldn't have the right to be able to debate the issue of extending unemployment insurance to millions of our fellow citizens who are looking to us for help.

It is very challenging during these economically difficult times to be able to find employment, and we have many of our citizens who have tried but have been unsuccessful in finding employment. They ought to be able to support their families through this difficult time. All we are asking for is the right to be able to bring this up and vote on it. We are not talking about delaying passing the omnibus bill. We are talking about unemployment insurance. We are talking about doing our job and not skipping town and going home for a week while people who are unemployed and have lost their benefits have nothing.

With that, Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Tierney), whose legislation we could bring up, if we were to defeat the previous question, to extend unemployment insurance for the millions of Americans that have been impacted.

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Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, before I yield to the next speaker on our side, I think it is important to point out that, yeah, the Democrats do control the majority in the Senate, but a majority of Republicans right now are filibustering consideration of extending unemployment insurance, led by Mitch McConnell, the Republican minority leader.

Maybe rather than waiting for them we can show some leadership here and demonstrate to these millions of Americans who have fallen on tough times that somebody cares; that we are not just going to let them just dangle and be without any kind of compensation during these difficult times; that we are going to step up to the plate and let them know that we understand that the economy is still going through hard times and that there is a need to extend this benefit.

I don't know how we can just turn our backs on these people who are struggling. I mean, our job here is to help people, not to ignore their problems, not to turn a cold shoulder when they fall on difficult times. We all know we are emerging from one of the worst economic crises in our lifetime. These aren't normal times. So we ought to be there to provide some help. Let us show them a little compassion. I don't think that that is unreasonable. I don't care what your ideology is. We ought to not turn our backs on those who are unemployed in this country.

With that, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Nevada, (Mr. Horsford).

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Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman from Oklahoma's comments, and I appreciate his expressing the frustration of the minority in the Senate not being able to express themselves, to be heard. I feel that same frustration here because we now have just completed a year in which I think that there have been more closed rules than any other time in history. So I think we all on the minority side here understand what it feels like to be shut out.

At this point, I would like to yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Roybal-Allard).

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Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, let me just remind my colleagues that Republican President George Bush extended unemployment benefits on a number of occasions, never paid for it; and I don't recall my friends on the other side of the aisle raising a big to-do over that.

But the bottom line is to simply say that, well, we have extended it multiple times, so tough luck to these people who are still struggling in this difficult economy is unacceptable. How can we do that? We are here to represent these people and to make sure that they have enough to get through these difficult times until the economy gets better so they can get a job.

This should not be controversial. This shouldn't be a big deal. I am stunned that extending unemployment insurance to the unemployed in this country is a controversial issue. Only in this Republican-led House of Representatives are our priorities all messed up. Nobody talks about pay-fors for tax cuts for Donald Trump or subsidies to Big Oil or any special deals for corporate donors to the Republican National Committee. No one says a word about that. But when it comes to extending benefits to unemployed Americans, we are going to find pay-fors.

Well, do you know what? Let's take the initiative in this House to figure out how to get this thing done rather than leave town tomorrow and we don't come back for a week and a half and just leave these people hanging.

With that, Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Meeks).

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Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, just to kind of summarize here, my colleagues are being asked to vote on this, over 1,500 pages that nobody has read. And again, coming from the party that talked about reading the bill, I am a little surprised that they wanted to present it this way. But I am urging my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the rule simply because, under the process that we have before us, nobody has an opportunity to amend anything in this bill or change anything. I am willing to bet that in a week or so we are going to read an article about something that was in here that nobody even knew about, and if they did, they would have wanted it out of the bill. So I think the process that my Republican friends have utilized in this House of Representatives really is very disappointing--the number of closed rules, the way they have shut down debate, and even the way we have gotten to this point. So I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the rule.

At the end of the day, people are going to have to vote for this bill anyway because the alternative is shutting the government down or going back to the sequestration levels which my Republican friends embraced, which were unacceptable--so unacceptable they couldn't pass a Transportation appropriations bill on this House floor. They couldn't bring an HHS bill to this floor because the numbers were so unacceptably low that even their own Members couldn't deal with voting for a bill like that. As far as the underlying bill goes, I think the best that can be said about it is it begins to chip away at sequestration. The numbers are still awful, but the alternative is even worse.

I would also urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the previous question so we can bring up a bill to extend unemployment insurance for those who are unemployed. I am fascinated by the debate on the other side of the aisle saying we are reluctant to do it because we have done it a number of times. That seems more important to my Republican colleagues than whether or not people are in need, whether or not it is necessary to extend these benefits to keep families afloat.

Because Congress failed to act, more than 1.3 million struggling unemployed Americans were cut off from extended emergency unemployment benefits in the middle of the holidays. We all went home for Christmas, and the gift we gave to these struggling Americans was we cut off their unemployment compensation. Another 1.9 million Americans will lose this support in the first half of this year if we don't do anything.

Too many families are still struggling to rebuild and regain what they had before the economic crisis. It is both unfair and devastating to cut off these benefits at the time of a 7.0 percent unemployment rate. We should not leave Washington tomorrow, on a Thursday, and go home for a week and a half and not address this issue. To blame the Senate, maybe it is an easy way to just kind of brush this off, but the bottom line is in the Senate, if you want to be of any help, talk to the minority leader who is leading a filibuster so that this can't be brought up over in the Senate.

But that is no excuse for us in the House not to act. That is no excuse for us to turn our back on millions of Americans who desperately need our help. They are going through difficult times. Our job here is to help people, not just those who are well off, not just those who have super-PACs or who write out checks to campaigns. Our job is to help everybody, and that includes those who are the most vulnerable in this, those who are struggling during this difficult economy.

Madam Speaker, I include for the Record an editorial that appeared in The New York Times, entitled, ``No Jobs, No Benefits, and Lousy Pay.'' I will also include for the Record an article, entitled, ``New Economic Analysis: $400 Million Drained from State Economies in Unemployment Benefits This Week Alone.''

By not extending unemployment benefits, we are not only hurting these families who are unemployed, we are hurting our local economies. We are hurting the economy of this country. We need to get our priorities straight here. Our job is to stand up for those who are in need. On too many occasions, this Republican-led House has turned its back on those who are most vulnerable.

So I urge my colleagues, both Republicans and Democrats, to vote ``no'' on the previous question. This is our only opportunity before you go home on a recess to be able to deal with the issue of extending unemployment insurance. Vote ``no'' on the previous question so we can bring up the extension of unemployment compensation so we can help millions of families in this country who are desperately in need of help.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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