Providing for Consideration of H.R. 1994, VA Accountability Act of 2015, And Providing for Consideration of H.R. 3236, Surface Transportation and Veterans Health Care Choice Improvement Act of 2015
Floor Speech
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Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas for yielding me the customary 30 minutes, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the rule and the underlying bills, H.R. 3236, the Surface Transportation and Veterans Health Care Choice Improvement Act, and H.R. 1994, the VA Accountability Act.
Yet again, we have a grab bag rule that covers multiple bills on wildly different subjects--in this case, transportation and veterans care--in one bill; and yet we have a closed rule that is pushing through a last-minute deal that kicks the can down the road yet again on highway reauthorization when there is reason to believe that, if we simply stayed in town and worked another week, we might be able to work with the Senate to get to an end point with regard to a long-term reauthorization.
The closed rule here limits the discussion of alternatives on the issue of transportation funding. Even worse, the bill has two entirely unrelated aspects. I have never heard of a crazier name than the Surface Transportation and Veterans Health Care Choice Improvement Act.
This is part of the problem of this body over the last several years. Republican leadership has moved towards doing more and more omnibuses and minibuses. That means combining disparate bills--transportation, veterans--into one bill, which isn't healthy for the accountability of this body among the electorate.
If you vote against this bill, for instance, because you don't like the transportation provisions, does that mean you are against veterans? If you don't like the veterans provisions and you vote against this bill, does that mean you are against transportation? How easy it would be to simply have two votes on each of these bills so Members on both sides of the aisle can vote their conscience and our constituents can hold us accountable.
Of course, it is necessary to give the VA the authority to transfer $3.3 billion for healthcare services. There is strong agreement on both sides. We could run the bill through on suspension. We wouldn't even need to open it up for a rule. It would pass with more than a two-thirds vote. But there are problematic additions attached to that part of the bill. It is also combined with yet another temporary fix for our Nation's highway system, instead of trying to stay in town another week and work on a more permanent fix to help meet the needs of the transportation arteries of our country.
As you know, Mr. Speaker, 54 percent of our Nation's major roads and bridges are rated poor or mediocre. Forty-five percent of Americans don't have access to public transit. Congestion produced by our legislative failures here wastes valuable time and money and detracts from the growth of the American economy. It is estimated Americans will lose 8.4 billion hours and 4.45 billion gallons of gas over a decade. That means the average consumer is wasting $800 a year and 5 full days of their life away from their kids, away from their family, simply sitting in traffic. Mr. Speaker, that is unacceptable.
My constituents are no strangers to traffic. If you have been to Fort Collins, one of the largest cities in my district and home to one of our great universities, you will find that on highway 25 my constituents endure gridlocked traffic at rush hour, doubling or tripling their commuting times.
Expansion of highway 25 and high-speed rail along highway 70 and highway 36 have been given completion dates of decades from now--60 years, in some cases. Try to imagine being told your doctor wants to slowly break down blockages in your arteries over a period of 60 years. You won't make it that far.
Our communities need to do something about traffic now. Tourism and commerce are the lifeblood of Fort Collins, Boulder, and our mountain communities like Vail, Frisco, and Breckenridge. For these towns to survive and thrive, we need to tackle our transportation funding needs head-on.
From our other speakers, you will hear a lot about the Export-Import Bank, the one item that somehow, with this grab bag that includes veterans and transportation, there is a strong bipartisan majority for reauthorizing the Export-Import Bank. In fact, 67 Senators in the Republican-led Senate voted to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank, and yet somehow that item didn't make the grab bag.
If Congress fails to act, one of the most important items is it will result concretely in the loss of tens of thousands of American jobs and make American companies less competitive for exports at a time when global competitiveness and the global economy is more important than ever, which was left out of this grab bag of bills.
I understand ideological issues with the Export-Import Bank. In a perfect world, I would agree with my colleagues who argue we shouldn't need to do this kind of effective subsidy for exporters; but if other countries are doing it and it is permissible under WTO and trade rules, we would truly be idiots to unilaterally disarm and not engage in a legal practice that facilitates the credit of American exporting businesses. Effectively, it would lead to the exporting of more jobs overseas and making American companies less competitive in selling their products.
So, by all means, let's have the discussion around multilateral adjustments to the type of credit facilities that countries can engage in with exporting countries, but let's not look at unilateral disarmament that makes America less competitive and destroys jobs.
You will hear a lot about how simple it would be, my colleagues would indicate, to simply get this done before we leave. Isn't it worth another week of our time to save tens of thousands of American jobs?
The second part of the rule, H.R. 1994, the VA Accountability Act, one of the main problems with it is it would create a culture of fear that would imperil the services our veterans need and deserve.
The tragedy in the Phoenix VA system is an example. It became known because of a few courageous whistleblowers. Had this legislation been in place, this tragedy could have been swept under the rug for many more years.
Without whistleblowers and strong whistleblower protections, the VA hospital debacle in my State of Colorado, in Aurora, could have even been a worse situation, if you can imagine that.
This legislation is not just bad for whistleblowers, it is also unconstitutional. Supreme Court case law has clearly outlined the due process that employees have before their jobs are taken away. This bill turns its back on due process and allows any VA employee to be fired on the spot for retribution.
The limited process provided in this legislation is far below the constitutional requirements, which is why the President has promised to veto this bill. All this bill is attempting to do is destroy the whistleblower and professional civil service system and, thus, the livelihood of thousands and the quality of service to our veterans.
The appropriate action is to get the VA to do their job through appropriate legislation which creates true accountability, which this bill fails to achieve, or discuss how we might reform the dollars we allocate to the VA to best serve our veterans, however possible.
We will debate an alternative today by my colleague, Mr. Takano of California, that would retain due process but allows the VA to immediately fire any employee who poses a health or safety risk to veterans. Additionally, it prevents employees from staying on paid administrative leave--even being bounced around the VA--by limiting the time to 2 weeks, a similarity to one of the positive aspects of the bill before us today.
Mr. Takano's legislation, for example, would have allowed the VA to immediately fire those responsible for the Phoenix scandal and kept in place the whistleblower protections that allowed us to find out about the Phoenix scandal.
Mr. Speaker, for these reasons, I oppose the rule and the underlying legislation, and I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to allow the House to vote on reauthorizing the Export-Import Bank, as proposed by Mr. Fincher yesterday. It is the same exact language that passed the Senate by a vote of 67-29.
Mr. Speaker, the Export-Import Bank allows American businesses to compete in global markets and supports hundreds of thousands of jobs.
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Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I strongly urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' and defeat the previous question so we can bring forward the bipartisan effort to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank.
Now, again, I have a great deal of sympathy and respect for my colleagues who believe that these kinds of back-door subsidies have no place in a global trade regime. That is a reasonable and defensible viewpoint.
The proper avenue to advocate for that is multilaterally. There are a lot of ways that companies have and will and governments have and do try to give themselves a nationalistic advantage in international trade.
In the competition between Airbus and Boeing alone, books could be written about the efforts of both sides--whether it is our side through military contracts; whether it is their side, Europe--to give back-door allowable subsidies that put their own companies at an advantage.
If we unilaterally fail to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank, we are putting American exporters at a disadvantage because the dozens of other countries that engage in these allowable kinds of credit facilities will still do so to the detriment of American jobs and American businesses.
We recently had a debate in these very Chambers about trade promotion authority. Soon there will be discussions about TPP and T-TIP.
Where was that discussion around TPA in the instructions to the President about credit facilities and Export-Import Bank and what would and wouldn't be allowable?
These kinds of discussions need to be had multilaterally. To unilaterally disarm makes no sense.
Even if one ideologically believes that we should not be engaging in these efforts, surely what is more important and what trumps that is to make sure that this is not a part of the global trade regime.
So long as it is, for America not to engage in this allowable practice of credit facilities extended through the Export-Import Bank puts American jobs at a disadvantage, will lead to further outsourcing of American jobs and hurt American businesses.
Mr. Speaker, this rule covers two significant, but wholly unrelated, bills.
We have heard arguments here in this limited time, this limited debate, about Federal highway funding, about veterans' care and VA workers, about the Export-Import Bank.
I am sure, Mr. Speaker, that many viewers are confused as to what we are even talking about or how is it even possible that, in 1 hour, we are covering the transportation needs of our country, the VA system, and a program allowable under trade rules that helps make American companies more competitive.
Unfortunately, rather than continuing our work next week, the majority has put several pieces of disparate legislation into a grab bag in a smoky backroom manner that, unfortunately, will continue to fail to address the most important transportation concerns or the already expiration of the Export-Import Bank before this body goes home for a month.
It is unfortunate that, under this rule, this institution is not even allowed to bring forward an amendment we know would pass to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank.
It is a shame that veterans' issues have somehow been combined with a highway issue and a minibus that detracts from transparency.
That is why I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' and defeat the previous question. Vote ``no'' on the rule.
I yield back the balance of my time.
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