Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2018

Floor Speech

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Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I rise in support of this amendment. I appreciate the chairman's inclusion of amendments from Democratic Members. I am particularly pleased to see amendments increasing funds for small-business programs that support investments directly into our communities.

Specifically, this amendment boosts funding by a total of $20 million for entrepreneurial development grants. In addition, this package provides increased funding for the Tax Counseling for the Elderly program at the IRS, ensuring that more elderly taxpayers receive efficient and quality tax assistance. It also boosts funding for the Community Development Financial Institution Fund for Native Communities programs.

Another especially effective and much-needed program in this bill is the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Act. This amendment provides an additional $15 million to the amount provided in the underlying bill.

The Drug-Free Communities program, also critically important, benefits from a funding increase.

These are Federal investments that matter, and I support them all.

I would be remiss, however, if I did not point out that some of the offsets relied upon in this en bloc give me pause. Due to the irresponsibly low funding level allocated in the Financial Services bill, it is, frankly, not possible to find pay-fors that will not cause damage elsewhere in the bill. So I look forward to working with my colleagues to find a way to increase the total resources available for this bill as we move forward in the process.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. Chairman, ideological riders have no place on the appropriations bill. The substance of the amendment should be debated as a stand-alone piece of legislation and under the proper committee of jurisdiction.

Unfortunately, the fiscal 2018 Financial Services appropriations bill before us today is already loaded full of policy riders that don't belong on spending bills.

Furthermore, this amendment would block the ability of Boeing to complete the $30 billion worth of aircraft sales to Iran, resulting in the loss of U.S. jobs. It would put U.S. in breach of JCPOA.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

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This is an interesting debate, Mr. Chairman. Normally it would be heard for the would-be candidates for the District of Columbia City Council, but the issues remain far more important.

This amendment would, once again, overreach by prohibiting funds for D.C.'s Reproductive Health Nondiscrimination Amendment Act of 2014.

That law prohibits discrimination based on reproductive health decisions. The Reproductive Health Nondiscrimination Amendment Act protects workers in D.C. from workplace discrimination if the employer disagrees with the employee's use of contraception, in vitro fertilization, and even perhaps a medically necessary abortion. The law prohibits employers from making employment decisions based on reproductive health decisions of employees, their spouses, and children.

Without RHNDA, employers could fire a woman for having an abortion due to rape, fire a man for using a condom, reduce the pay for a parent buying birth control for their child, and decline to hire a woman for using in vitro fertilization. D.C. is protecting workers from losing their jobs if their supervisors do not agree with their most personal decisions. This amendment would strip those protections from D.C. workers.

For those who thought this bill infringed on employers' religious beliefs, D.C. passed a statutory clarification that no employer was required to provide insurance coverage related to reproductive health decisions.
During the congressional review period, the Republican-controlled House passed a resolution disapproving this bill, but the Republican- controlled Senate did not. The Congress had time to act on this issue, and it failed to do so.

D.C. residents should not be subject to endless efforts to overturn their laws. People should be judged at work based on their performance and not on their personal, private reproductive healthcare decisions.

That is why D.C. passed this law.

To my friends across the aisle, I understand they see this as a constitutional challenge, but, with all due respect, they are anti- Federalist and Federalist when it is convenient--and not just because of D.C. It has to do more with issues they don't agree with. They are very much for States' rights and local control unless it has something to do with issues like gun violence or a woman's right to choose. This is inconsistent and, frankly, with all due respect, somewhat hypocritical.

Mr. Chairman, I urge a ``no'' vote on this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment is intended to cut the pay of the IRS Commissioner to zero. It is nothing more than a gratuitous, partisan cheap shot, an amendment offered last year that failed. I know and I am sure there are plenty of people out there who think that Members of Congress should be paid nothing or have their salary reduced to next to nothing because they disagree with them or they don't like their actions.

Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. Chairman, there have been extraordinary attacks on the IRS Commissioner in a wide variety of ranges, but an amendment similar to this failed last year, which meant there were Republicans who opposed it as well as Democrats. There were attempts to offer impeachment on this matter, and those were partisan efforts in a nonconstructive way. This is just one more element toward that end. It is unnecessary.

Mr. Chairman, I encourage my colleagues to vote ``no,'' and I yield back the balance of my time.

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Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Before Dodd-Frank, consumer protection laws were enforced by a patchwork of different regulations, each focused on their own issues.

The CFPB enhanced and simplified consumer regulation, consolidating enforcement into a single authority devoted to all aspects of consumer protection ranging from oversight over mortgages and credit cards to unregulated products previously, like payday and student loans.

The Wells Fargo fake account scandal, which CFPB played a key role in exposing, and the more recent Equifax data breach show precisely why we need a well-resourced and functional CFPB.

By subjecting the CFPB to the appropriations process, the goal is not to provide necessary oversight. Considerable accountability measures already exist. It is to starve them of funding and weaken their ability to do their job. We have seen this before with other financial regulators like the FCC and CFTC, who are still struggling to carry out Dodd-Frank rulemaking.

Therefore, I ask my colleagues to preserve the independence, stand on the side of consumers, and vote ``yes'' on the Ellison amendment.

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Mr. Chairman, this type of amendment bluntly imposes cuts to government function without regard to merit or consequence.

Indiscriminate cuts to the administration accounts in this bill would lead to weakened cybersecurity and increased threat of cyberattacks to the Department of the Treasury systems, poor administration of grants to small businesses, longer wait times for citizens seeking assistance from Federal agencies, longer processing times for issuing Federal payments, reducing the ability of the IRS to detect and deter tax cheats, costly short-term spending decisions, and widespread delays in civil and bankruptcy cases, just as a few examples.
The underlying bill is already dangerously underfunded, having been cut by 6 percent below current levels. Furthermore, the administrative accounts were a large source of this reduction to total funding, and this amendment blindly strips nearly $600 million more out of these offices.

This amendment would not encourage the agencies to do more with less.

Simply put, it would force the agencies and our constituents to do less with less.

Mr. Chair, I strongly urge Members to oppose this amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. Chair, just across-the-board cuts are an abdication of responsibility. It is up to us as appropriators to determine exactly what needs funding and at what levels. For those reasons, I ask my colleagues to oppose this amendment.

Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

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