Providing for Consideration of H.R. Debt Management and Fiscal Responsibility Act of and Providing for Consideration of H.R. Scientific Research in the National Interest Act
Floor Speech
(Mr. McGOVERN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)
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Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Sessions), my good friend and distinguished chairman of the Rules Committee, for yielding me the customary 30 minutes.
I rise in strong opposition to this rule, which provides for the consideration of H.R. 3293, a bill to hamstring the National Science Foundation and its gold standard review process; and I rise in strong opposition to H.R. 3442, a misnamed debt management bill that provides Congress with no new information about the debt limit and that does nothing to actually prevent default.
Despite a promise from Speaker Ryan and House Republican leadership for an open and deliberative process, this rule makes in order only 14 of the 47 amendments that were submitted on both pieces of legislation to our committee--only six amendments for the Science, Space, and Technology Committee's bill and eight for the debt limit bill. Democrats on the Rules Committee offered an open rule so that both Democratic and Republican Members could have an opportunity to make their views known on this bill, but as has become the custom, the Democrats voted for an open process, and every single Republican voted against an open process.
Members should have the opportunity to offer their ideas on the House floor, and we should be having a robust debate on these issues. Here is a crazy idea, Mr. Speaker: Maybe, if we actually opened up the process and allowed for a full debate, we could actually pass bipartisan legislation that would move through the legislative process and then go on to the President's desk where he would then sign it into law. Yet, for the most part, my friends on the other side of the aisle don't seem interested in working with Democrats to advance common goals that will actually help the American people, and the legislation before us today is no exception.
H.R. 3442 requires the Secretary of the Treasury to appear before Congress and submit a report on the administration's debt reduction proposals. I have got some good news for my friends. The Treasury Secretary already regularly meets with Congress to discuss the debt limit, and the President offers proposals to address the debt and the deficit in his annual budgets. I would say to my colleagues on the Republican side that it is okay--you can ask questions. That is what hearings are for. You can ask questions about the debt and deficit reduction.
In fact, just yesterday, President Obama sent his fiscal year 2017 budget request to Congress, which included over $2.9 trillion in deficit reduction over the coming decade--this on top of the $4 trillion to $5 trillion in deficit reduction already achieved since 2010. If my friends are interested in hearing about these proposals to reduce our deficit, perhaps they should reconsider their unprecedented and insulting decision to exclude the OMB from testifying on the administration's budget proposal. Such a contemptuous attitude demeans Congress and the American people.
In addition to its annual budget, the administration also provides the information requested by H.R. 3442 in the form of the Mid-Session Review, of the Daily Treasury Statement, of the Monthly Treasury Statement, of the Monthly Statement of the Public Debt, of the Schedules of Federal Debt, and of the Financial Report of the United States Government.
The Treasury manages our debt, but it is Congress that holds the power of the purse. It is our responsibility to raise the debt limit when it is reached, and I would point out that it is the legislative decisions made by Congress that determine the level of debt.
I say to my Republican friends, if you don't want to deal with the issue of raising the debt limit, then don't accumulate all of these bills. The debt limit debate is about making sure we live up to our financial obligations, the obligations that this Chamber agreed to.
Last night in the Rules Committee, we had a debate about deficit reduction and how to deal with the debt. Members on both sides of the aisle offered suggestions on ways to reduce our deficit, and that is an important discussion we should be having because it is a big issue. Yet this bill is not about deficit reduction; it is not about trying to get our debt under control; and it is not a serious attempt to help us avoid future default. The Republican majority has threatened default on at least three separate occasions: in 2011, when default was narrowly avoided with the Budget Control Act; in 2013, when Republican extremism led to a government shutdown, costing our fragile economy $24 billion and 120,000 private sector jobs; and this past fall, when Democrats helped to pass the bipartisan budget agreement despite opposition from two-thirds of the Republicans in this Congress.
I would like to point out what is missing in this bill that we are going to be talking about later on this week. The report required by this legislation would exclude the most important information Congress needs when the debt limit is reached, which is an analysis of the catastrophic consequences of default. If this were a serious attempt to address our debt, I would think that the majority would want to know which bills the Treasury would need to stop paying if Congress failed to raise the debt limit. Would veterans stop receiving their benefits? Would Medicare providers stop being reimbursed? Would students stop receiving Pell grants? The chairman of the Rules Committee said in his opening statement that the American people want us to do something. I agree.
This is not doing something. This is trying to point the finger somewhere else so that we can avoid responsibility for doing our job.
If we were serious about this issue, maybe we ought to think about actually passing legislation that would help reduce our deficit and pay down our debt. Maybe we ought to be talking about comprehensive immigration reform. CBO says that we would save hundreds of billions of dollars for our National Treasury if we actually did that, did something positive to resolve our immigration crisis and, in doing so, we would save all this money that could go to reducing our deficit.
Maybe one of the things we ought to be talking about here is actually not passing tax breaks for wealthy people that we don't pay for because that adds to the bills that we accumulate here in Congress. If you want to give Donald Trump another tax cut, pay for it. That is all.
Maybe we ought to talk about dealing with the issue of these war costs. I mean, we can't even come together and actually debate and vote on an AUMF as these new wars are popping up all over the world.
By the way, if we did, maybe we could talk about the cost, which, by the way, a big chunk of these war costs aren't even paid for. They are put on our credit card. I mean, the only people sacrificing in these wars are the men and women who we put in harm's way and their families. The rest of us do nothing. We don't even ask the American people to pay for it.
Well, here is an idea: if people don't want to pay for these wars, maybe we ought not to go. Just putting them on our credit card should not be an answer. Those are the kinds of things we should be talking about here today if we were serious about getting our budget under control.
Simply put, Mr. Speaker, this legislation is duplicative, unnecessary, and a waste of time. It does nothing to prevent future Republican threats of default, and I strongly oppose this effort.
This week, also, Mr. Speaker, House Republicans are bringing to the floor H.R. 3293, another antiscience piece of legislation. Now, some might call this a thinly veiled attempt by the majority to dictate what the National Science Foundation spends their funding on, but there really isn't even a thin veil trying to cover up what this is. This is a blatant attempt to coerce the NSF into only funding projects that fit into the Republican political messaging agenda.
The NSF receives upwards of 50,000 proposals a year. Out of all these proposals, only about 20 percent end up receiving funding. The NSF puts the applications through a rigorous process of peer review in order to determine which proposals they will fund.
I would like to emphasize the fact that this is a peer review, not a congressional review. It is a peer review. Congress does not review these applications because the vast majority of us are not scientists. I am not a scientist. I don't think many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are scientists.
The NSF review process is also designed to be confidential in order to protect against any internal or external bias. Injecting congressional interference and disruption into a well-functioning process will have a drastically negative effect.
Now, it should come as no surprise that a big part of the Republican majority's argument is that the NSF is focusing too much of its funding on projects studying climate change. I tried to figure out what the hook was, and I found that that is it.
I have said this here before, and I will keep saying it until we stop debating these ridiculous bills. We know that climate change is real. We see it. We live it. The scientific community overwhelmingly has verified it. Climate change is not a theory. It is not a hoax. It is not some silly fantasy. The NSF should be funding research that is directed toward understanding and mitigating the effects of climate change.
The majority on the Science Committee has been on a crusade to inject itself into NSF's independent grant review process. The committee has demanded an explanation on how roughly 40 studies could possibly serve our national interests. Now, we have seen time and time again that basic research leads to positive, life-changing outcomes never imagined by researchers.
Congress certainly does not have the experience or the knowledge to predetermine the future value of a research project. Just because the title of a project doesn't sound particularly overwhelmingly impressive doesn't mean it isn't, and we have a gazillion examples of that in the research that has been done in the NSF.
It is best to leave the scientific review process in the hands of our world-class scientists who resoundingly oppose efforts to interfere with NSF's rigorous review process. I join them in strong opposition to this bill.
Now, once again, Mr. Speaker, we are on the floor debating two bills that are going nowhere. Each bill has received a veto threat from the White House because this is not serious legislation. Mr. Speaker, this is just more political fodder for the right wing of the Republican Party, sound bites for my friends on the other side of the aisle to use while on the campaign trail to attempt to sound like they are dealing with issues in a serious manner when, in fact, they are not. It doesn't matter what year it is. The American people elected us to solve problems, not pad Republicans' political talking points.
I ask my colleagues to oppose this restrictive rule and the two partisan pieces of legislation.
Maybe I can clear all this up so we don't have to debate this bill.
The gentleman asked a question about extraordinary measures that the Secretary of the Treasury could potentially use to deal with the debt ceiling. I would just tell him that they are defined in statute, and we will happily provide him a copy of the statute so that he can understand that.
I would go back to what I said in my opening statement that, if we are serious about dealing with our deficit and our debt, then maybe we ought to be thinking in these terms, about actually not accumulating all these bills that get us to the point where we have to raise the debt ceiling.
I mean, we in Congress--not the administration, but we in Congress-- accumulate all these bills and all these financial obligations. Once you do that, you have to pay for them. Our constituents, when they accumulate credit card debt, they have got to pay it. They just can't not pay it because they don't want to. So we have to start behaving like adults here and understand that we need to pay our bills.
I would suggest to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle that one way we might want to save some money and not add it to the deficit or to our debt is to stop giving Donald Trump tax cuts that you don't pay for.
If you want to have tax cuts for wealthy individuals, fine. Pay for them. Don't not pay for them. Stop subsidizing big oil companies in this country.
Maybe there was a time when we first started exploring for oil that you could make the case that taxpayers ought to be subsidizing oil companies. Not anymore. Not with global warming and certainly not when they are making zillions of dollars a year in profits. Maybe we could take that money and put it toward deficit reduction.
Or maybe we could pay for these wars that everybody seems to want to commit our young men and women to. If you want to go to war, you ought to pay for it, not just put it on a credit card. If you are not prepared to do that, then end these wars.
But just putting in danger the lives of our brave men and women and just accumulating all these massive bills that there is no accountability of I think is unconscionable.
Having said that, Mr. Speaker, I now yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Welch).
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Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, let me just say I have the greatest respect for my colleague from Pennsylvania, but the reason why we oppose this is because it does nothing.
Actually, it attempts to pin the blame on the Secretary of the Treasury, but the reality is--and I want to repeat this for my colleagues on the other side of the aisle--that Congress' decision on revenue and spending policies ultimately determine the level of debt and when the debt limit is reached. It is our responsibility.
What we object to is that, instead of debating concrete issues to reduce our deficit and reduce our debt, we are involved in this kind of debating a nonissue, a bill that does nothing, that will do nothing to reduce our deficit, reduce our debt, and is a complete waste of time.
At this point, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Connolly).
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Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, how much time do I have remaining?
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Mr. McGOVERN. I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to defeat the previous question. If we can defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to bring up a bill that would help prevent mass shootings by promoting research on the causes of gun violence, making it easier to identify and treat those prone to committing these acts.
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Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, again, I oppose both H.R. 3442 and H.R. 3293.
Again, on H.R. 3442, if we are serious about deficit and debt reduction, then we ought to be talking about substance and something real, not some sound bite where Members of the House can point to the administration to say it is all their fault.
The reality is, it really is the fault of all of us, when you come down to it, because this is the place where spending decisions are made, where tax policy is made.
If my colleagues do not want to raise the debt ceiling, then don't accumulate all these bills. It is Congress that does this. When you accumulate all these bills and you have to raise the debt ceiling, it is irresponsible to all of a sudden say that we don't want to do it and then to default on our debt.
As I mentioned before, back in 2013, when Republican extremism actually shut the government down, it cost our economy $24 billion and 120,000 jobs.
Now, $24 billion may not seem like a lot to my Republican friends, but I assure you that it all starts to add up. Those 120,000 jobs that were lost is all lost revenue coming into the government which would go to paying down our deficit and debt.
If you really want to deal with this issue, then let's talk about things like paying for these wars that no one seems to want to pay for. Let's talk about not enacting tax breaks and tax cuts for wealthy individuals and not paying for it. Let's talk about reeling in some of these excessive subsidies to Big Oil and to other big corporate interests in this country. Let's talk about passing comprehensive immigration reform, which, again, the CBO has said would save us hundreds of billions of dollars that we could put toward getting our fiscal house in order.
Those are real things. This is just talk for the sake of talk. I guess maybe it is a good press release; but, quite frankly, I think our time would be better spent doing something else.
Again, on H.R. 3293, the so-called Scientific Research in the National Interest Act, I take great exception to those who question the integrity of the NSF. The National Science Foundation has integrity, in my opinion, beyond question. The work that they do is extraordinary. The work that they do leads to all kinds of benefits not only for the people in this country, but for the environment and people all over the world.
I think the scientists who work there are having their reputations questioned by the introduction of this legislation, never mind us even considering it here today. I think you are diminishing the incredible work that they do.
I get it. For some reason, my Republican colleagues can't admit that we have a thing called climate change going on around the world. So any time anybody talks about climate change, you go after whatever department or agency it is. You attack them. You try to cut their funding. You try to question their integrity.
Well, I hate to tell my Republican friends that climate change is real. The overwhelming science says it is real. If you don't appreciate that, maybe you ought to go back to school and take a science class.
When we talk about the lack of accountability and the lack of proper stewardship of what we are supposed to be doing here, that is one area where I think we have let the American people down; indeed, the world community.
We are sitting here debating whether it is even an issue--which the American people can't believe--while things continue to get worse.
I would say to my Republican friends: admit it; climate change is for real. You are on the wrong side of public opinion. When you try to claim it is a hoax, you are on the wrong side of the scientific community and you are on the wrong side of history.
One final thing, because I couldn't help but take note that my colleague from Texas kind of took a jab at Massachusetts over home heating oil. I would say to the gentleman a couple of things. One, Massachusetts is leading the Nation in terms of investments in renewable and green energy. I am really proud of what my State is doing.
I would say one other thing to the gentleman from Texas, and that is that his State--Texas--generates 10 times more emissions from heating oil, compared to Massachusetts. So I would urge him to get his State's emissions under control for the sake of our planet.
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Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
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Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.
A recorded vote was ordered.
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