Providing for Consideration of H.R. Federal Information Systems Safeguards Act of and Providing for Consideration of Motions to Suspend the Rules

Floor Speech

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Mr. POLIS. I rise in opposition to the rule and the underlying bill, H.R. 4361.

Once again, this rule is not open. It does not make in order all amendments that were offered at our meeting yesterday. It makes in order some of them, but not all of them. In fact, much less would be offered here on the floor if we allowed this under an open rule where Members would have the opportunity to offer germane amendments while we were having the debate.

This is a silly bill. It would simply attempt to prevent the President from being President for the rest of his term of office. We elect Presidents of the United States to 4 years in office. I understand the gentleman from Georgia may not have voted for this particular President. There have been Presidents in the past that I haven't voted for, but according to our Constitution, their term is 4 years.

It is a particularly silly effort because it is a bill that requires the President's signature. Of course, the President, rightly so, has said that he will veto it. Why would a President support a bill that says: I am agreeing to not do anything for the final 6 months of my Presidency?

This bill is really more of a talking point just trying to further delegitimize the current President of the United States. It is part of a systematic effort throughout this great President's time in office to delegitimize him and prevent him from doing the duty to which he was elected, to serve as our Commander in Chief and chief of the executive branch in government which, of course, involves rulemaking authority, which has always been the prerogative of the executive branch.

Now, we can write tighter legislation, and we probably should. That is a matter of legislative prerogative to prevent future Presidents of both parties from interpreting the authority we give them in ways that are contrary to this body's goals. But you certainly can't fault a President when you leave them the discretionary authority in bills that pass this body to become law simply trying to make them work.

Now, this is a messaging bill, again, to delegitimize the President. Well, it turns out that we Democrats have our own messaging that we want to do as well, and we are going to be spending a lot of our time here today, as we have been, talking about meaningful legislation to address gun violence.

Americans have demanded meaningful action on gun violence in the wake of the worst mass shooting in America's history at the gay club in Orlando just recently, and continual violence and the threat of terrorism continue to be a scourge in our communities.

Now, before heading on the holiday break, my Democratic colleagues took strong, necessary action with regards to their actions on the floor. The demands are simple, and a number of my colleagues will talk about them. One, a vote on a bipartisan bill that the President would sign if it reached his desk that would simply expand background checks, which my home State of Colorado has already done.

But, again, until we close this gun show loophole, even residents of my State that are convicted felons, who, through due process of law, lost their right to bear arms, can simply drive an hour to Wyoming and go to an open-air gun show without any background check. Even though they are a convicted felon, they can purchase a weapon.

So we do need a better system of background checks, and, of course, a bill to address people that are on the terrorist watch list from acquiring arsenals to commit terrorist acts.

Enough is enough. Every single one of my colleagues has a personal experience with these kinds of incidents in their district. Communities have suffered long enough, and, frankly, it is time for action. We can't only do moments of silence; we need to take action.

Of course, this bill we are considering is just a continuation of the Republican effort to delegitimize President Obama at the end of his term, just as many of my colleagues from the other side have attempted to do throughout his presidency.

Do you know what? President Obama was elected. Do you know what? President Obama was reelected. He is the President. He will be President until January when we inaugurate a new President. Taking actions like denying him even hearings or votes on Supreme Court nominations or passing a bill saying that Federal agencies have to stop their work just because you don't like who the President is is really disrespectful to our constitutional system of governance.

This bill would virtually prevent the President of the United States from doing his job by stopping all rules regardless of when the rules were proposed or how long they have been working on various regulatory improvements.

It also has several provisions that are needless or antagonistic toward Federal employees. For instance, if Federal employees are underperforming or defrauding, we need to make sure that we have the tools to make personnel decisions, and this bill prevents that.

Many of the majority claim that some of these ideas come from the business community. But, of course, it is not a practice in the business community to demean employees and then turn around and ask them to do more for less.

Instead of wasting time on this bill that is never going to become law--it is not going to pass the Senate; if somehow it did, the President would veto it; it is not going to become law--let's start work on bills that, for instance, make it harder for terrorists to acquire arsenals to commit acts of terror, and to make sure that convicted felons can't simply cross State lines to acquire a weapon that would be illegal because there is no background check and so there is no way of finding that out.

Those are the kinds of things we need to do. Let's get back to work.

I think it is obvious that this bill is targeted at the current President, Barack Obama, because it affects him during the period between the next election and when the next President, whoever she is, takes office next January. Clearly, that is the President that it is targeted after. I have never heard these Republicans have the same concerns about either President Bush or any prior Presidents, as has been done systematically against this particular President, that prevented him from doing his authority that this body has sent him bills to do. He is doing his job, and we should let him do his job until the next President takes office.

Mr. Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, we will offer an amendment to the rule to bring up the nonpartisan no fly, no buy legislation that will allow the Attorney General to bar the sale of firearms and explosives to those on the FBI's terrorist watch list.

The Republican majority refused even debate closing this glaring loophole for the first half of the year. Only after Democrats took action did the Republicans decide to propose a toothless version of this bill that will do nothing to keep our communities safer.

This country can't wait any longer for Congress to take meaningful action on this issue. We are happy to have a discussion if we want to talk about how we can have better transparency and oversight of these lists and ensure that due process is followed. Democrats care a lot about those issues, and we are happy to join those discussions and work out any issues that might exist in a bill that really is common sense.

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Mr. POLIS. Esty), to discuss our proposal, one of our leaders on this effort.

I thank the gentleman from Georgia for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, our time is spoken for, so I appreciate our being able to ask some questions even if we weren't able to complete them on our time. I think the gentleman from Florida's point was that many of the arguments by the gentleman from Georgia can be applied to the need to actually prevent terrorists from acquiring arsenals to commit terrorist acts.

Are we concerned about cybersecurity?

Yes. Again, our time is spoken for.

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Mr. POLIS. No. I will be happy to enter into a discourse with the gentleman on his time, but I have a number of speakers here.

I want to be clear. We would rather have this debate time under the rule for a bill that allows for the consideration of the no fly, no buy bill; but given that that rule hasn't come up before the Rules Committee yet, this and the 1 minutes and the sit-ins are, really, the only alternatives that are left to what I believe to be a majority of this body that cares a lot about keeping weapons out of the hands of terrorists.

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Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I say to my friend from Georgia (Mr. Woodall) that I don't think anybody is saying that this will somehow solve the issue of violence in this country. We all know that is a complicated issue. There are economic factors. There are social factors. But it should be common sense that terrorists shouldn't be able to assemble arsenals to commit acts of mass violence against our fellow Americans.

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Mr. POLIS. We have a lot of speakers, hundreds of them. As much time as you want to give us, we will be happy to use.

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Mr. POLIS. Eshoo).
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Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, we have many more speakers, but we are out of time. I yield myself the balance of my time to close.

Jonathan Blunk, A.J. Boik, Air Force Staff Sergeant Jesse Childress, Gordon Cowden, Jessica Ghawi, Navy Petty Officer Third Class John Thomas Larimer, Matt McQuinn, Micayla Medek, Veronica Moser-Sullivan, Alex Sullivan, Alex Teves, Rebecca Wingo, those are the victims of the Aurora shooting.

Jennifer Markovsky, Ke'Arre M. Stewart, Garrett A. Swasey, those are the victims of the recent shooting at the healthcare clinic in Colorado Springs.

It is time for action. As we stand here today, we are still reeling from the deadliest mass shooting in our country's history at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, targeted against the gay community.

It is time for action. It is our duty in Congress, our moral duty as parents, sisters, brothers, husbands, and wives to protect our fellow Americans. We can do that and protect the Second Amendment. We can and must do both.

Vote ``no'' on this rule and the underlying bill. Demand the leadership of this House bring up the bipartisan background check bill and the no fly, no buy bill to prevent terrorists from assembling arsenals to kill our fellow Americans.

Personal liberties and public safety are not mutually exclusive. We can protect both.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

The yeas and nays were ordered.

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