Solve the DACA Issue
Floor Speech
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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. McCarthy), my friend, for the purpose of inquiring of the majority leader the schedule for the week to come.
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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the majority leader for that information.
Mr. Speaker, throughout the last year, we have continually run up against deadlines on how we were going to keep the government of the United States operating properly.
The omnibus is currently being discussed. The negotiations for the omnibus were made possible by the fact that a significant number of Democrats voted for it, while a significant number of Republicans voted against it. It was a bipartisan statement proceeding.
That omnibus needs to be passed by March 23. We are not scheduled to be here, Mr. Speaker, on March 23. That does not mean that we might not go over, but it means that it needs to pass the House and the Senate and be sent to the President prior to or on March 22.
Negotiations are, unfortunately, not proceeding as effectively as I would hope they would. I am hopeful that there will be a clean bill from either side without any riders that would lead either side to oppose that bill.
Mr. Speaker, let me talk about an issue. First of all, let me say that the leader has announced a number of bills for consideration next week. I venture to say that an extraordinarily infinitesimal amount of the American people have any ideas what those bills do or are urging those bills to be passed. I do not mean that they are without substance. I mean that they are not the issues on the mind of the American people. This is the people's House.
Mr. Speaker, the Speaker appeared on television at a townhall on CNN some 14 months ago. He made a promise at a CNN townhall to a Dreamer that asked him a question.
House Speaker Paul Ryan strongly suggested to that young woman that ``revocation on protection for the Dreamers brought here as children will not be carried out.''
Notwithstanding that, the President of the United States put that Dreamer and hundreds of thousands of other Dreamers--indeed, close to 2 million Dreamers--at risk by withdrawing their protections, which Speaker Ryan indicated would not happen: ``Will not be carried out.''
That was some 6 months ago, Mr. Speaker. Not the CNN; that was 14 months ago.
I have talked to the Speaker, I have brought it up continuously on this floor, and I have been told by the Republican leadership: Don't worry, we have got until March 5 to do something.
I was told that in October, I was told that in November, I was told that in December, I was told that in January, and I was told that in February: Don't worry, we have got until March 5.
March 5 came and went. No action. None.
That Dreamer to whom the Speaker spoke is still at risk, still worried, and still twisting in the wind. Eighty-six percent of the American public, Mr. Speaker, say that that young woman should not be kicked out of the country that she knows: brought here as a child, went to elementary school, middle school, high school; some to college, some practicing medicine, some practicing law, some being social workers, many being teachers.
I was told: Don't worry. They were told: Don't worry, March 5 is a long way away.
It has come and gone.
And we are told this week that we will consider H.R. 1116, the TAILOR Act. I am not sure that any of my constituents have talked to me about the TAILOR Act.
H.R. 4263, the Regulation A+ Improvement Act, I doubt that a single one of my constituents has talked to me about that act.
They are fillers, Mr. Speaker. They are fillers while we fiddle, while Rome burns.
I have asked, Leader Pelosi has asked, frankly, and leaders of the Catholic Church and other denominations have asked to put the Dreamer bill on the floor in the people's House.
The Speaker of this House, when he became the Speaker, said: We will not duck the tough issues. We will take them head-on. Don't worry, we have got until March 5.
March 5 is behind us, and we consider these bills, which I think are filler bills, and controversial bills at that.
We have asked, Mr. Speaker, that the majority party put on the floor three bills on an issue of vital importance to the American people, that every American knows about, that the people's House ought to have the right to speak on, and express the views of the American people and establish policy they support--86 percent of them.
So I will, again, ask the majority leader, Mr. Speaker, to put the Dream Act on the floor; to put Mr. Goodlatte's bill on the floor; to put the bipartisan bill, sponsored by Mr. Hurd from Texas and Mr. Aguilar from California; put them on the floor.
Take the issues. I know they are tough. The Speaker said he wants to take the issues head-on, Mr. Speaker, not duck. Show some political courage. And not only that, respect this institution and every Member in it who wants to express their opinion on this legislation of critical importance to at least 1.8 million Americans, vital to their future, to their life.
And 86 percent of Americans believe they ought to be protected, just as Speaker Ryan pledged they would be 14 months ago when he said revocation of protection for the Dreamers brought here as children will not be carried out. Mr. Speaker, that bill ought to be brought to the floor to carry out that representation and that assurance.
I have been patient. I have talked. I have worked. I have come to meetings. I met with the President of the United States, Mr. Speaker, with my colleague and friend, the majority leader, and Mr. Durbin and others, 25 of us sitting around the Cabinet table, Mr. Speaker, when the President said we will take care of DACA, and he said: You send me a bill; I will sign it, and I will take the heat.
He was not telling the truth, Mr. Speaker, because we had a bill, called the commonsense crowd, about 25 United States Senators brought a bill to the floor. It took care of a couple of the things the President wanted to take care of, but it wasn't good enough for him, notwithstanding the fact he said: You send me a bill. You decide, i.e., the Congress, the coequal branch of government that now stands suppliant in the face of saying we will pass something only if the President will sign it.
That is not what the framers meant, Mr. Speaker. We are a coequal branch, not a subservient branch of the government of the United States.
Mr. Speaker, if we brought those three bills to the floor that I just referred to--the Dream Act, cosponsored by Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican, and Lucille Roybal-Allard, a Democrat; and the Goodlatte bill, sponsored by the chairman of the Judiciary Committee; and a bipartisan bill sponsored by many Republicans and many Democrats, Mr. Hurd, a Republican from Texas, and Mr. Aguilar, a Democrat from California--if we brought those bills to the floor, the problem is they know the Hurd-Aguilar bill would pass, which would reflect the views of 86 percent of the American people.
No, Mr. Speaker, notwithstanding the fact that the American people are overwhelmingly for that, we are going to be considering H.R. 1116, H.R. 4545, H.R. 4263, ignoring that 1.8 million people, ignoring that promise that the Speaker made to that young woman that she would be protected.
The Speaker has told me over and over again: Oh, I want to do this. I want to do that. I am going to have some task force. I am going to do this, that, and the other.
March 5 has come and gone. Nothing has happened.
I used to be the majority leader. I could bring a bill to the floor. If I said something was going to happen, I tried to make sure it happened.
If I sound angry, it is because I am angry. If I sound frustrated, it is because I am frustrated. The people's House ought to be given the opportunity to express the will of the American people on this issue.
There is another issue, and we do have a bill, the so-called Rutherford bill that we are bringing to the floor on suspension. We are probably all going to vote for the Rutherford bill.
But we are going to ignore a bill, as we have been ignoring for years under Republican leadership, a bill that is supported even more than the DACA, Dreamer bills, and that is comprehensive background checks, which clearly will save lives, which will close the loopholes, which will make sure that those with criminal records don't get guns, will make sure that those with mental health issues don't get guns, will make sure that terrorists who can't fly on airplanes can't get guns.
Mr. Speaker, we have been urging and pleading for that bill to be brought to the floor over and over and over again. The National Rifle Association is not for that bill. I can't understand why. Rather, we bring a bill to the floor that will help schools--I think that is positive--do what they can do right now.
Should we help them? Of course. But we ought not to pretend that we are doing something to make our children safer in their schools, to make concertgoers safer at their concerts, to make churchgoers safer in their church, to make people who go to a nightclub safer in that nightclub, to make people who go to shopping centers safer in those shopping centers. We ought not to pretend the Rutherford bill is going to do that.
Will comprehensive background checks do it all? It will not. There are other things I think ought to be done. But at a minimum, the American people think that we ought to make sure that everybody who purchases a weapon has a background check to make sure that they are not a criminal, somebody with a substantial mental health problem that makes them unsafe to own a gun, spousal abusers.
Mr. Speaker, the bills we are going to consider next week I am sure have some merit from some perception, from somebody's perception, but the two bills that I have just discussed are on the minds of the American people, and millions are at risk if we do not pass legislation dealing with that issue.
I do not criticize the Rutherford bill, but it will not solve the problem, and everybody knows it will not solve the problem; nor, frankly, will universal background checks in and of itself solve the problem, but experts say it will save thousands of lives over time. It would have saved lives in Charleston, South Carolina, the nine people killed in Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
Mr. Speaker, I like to work in a bipartisan way, but that requires respecting one another. My Republican friends wrote a book in which they were very critical of the way we ran the House because it wasn't open and transparent. I would ask them to reread that book. I have read it.
My friend is smiling.
In that book, they really wanted to change the way this House runs, make it open and transparent, take the tough issues head-on. That is what the Speaker said.
Mr. Speaker, they are not taking the tough issues head-on. They are hiding from the NRA. They are hiding from some of their hardline people who want to kick people out of America, who want to take that lamp that the Statue of Liberty holds high and bring it down.
Yes, I am disappointed. Yes, I am angry. Yes, I am frustrated. I came to this body to express my opinion on the important issues confronting my country and to try to make it better.
Mr. Speaker, I would plead with the majority leader to perhaps delay those four bills. Rutherford's could be on suspension. It won't take much time. Delay those three bills that a miniscule amount of Americans, there may be 100, there may be 200 Americans who would be concerned those bills aren't brought forward, and put on the floor the three bills I referred to--the Dream Act, the Goodlatte bill, and the Hurd-Aguilar bill--and let the people's House express its opinion. That is not an unfair request.
And let the background check, universal background check bill come to the floor, and let the House vote. I know that there are some Republicans who don't want to vote on that bill because the public is so overwhelmingly for it and they may upset the NRA. That is what this business is about, Mr. Speaker, expressing openly and clearly what we think the policies of our country ought to be to make our public better, to make our country safer.
Mr. Speaker, I would end on those two issues, and I yield to my friend, the majority leader.
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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time to just make a correction.
I said a significant number of Democrats voted for it and a significant number of Republicans voted against it.
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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, the majority leader talked about a lot of issues, one of which was NICS. What he didn't say was they put a poison pill in the Fix NICS bill, which is why so many of us voted against it on concealed carry. There is a disagreement in this House on that. We disagree, for the most part, on that provision. We don't think that makes America safer. There are differences of opinion on that.
My suggestion to the majority leader is, the Rutherford bill is on the floor. By unanimous consent, let's put the Fix NICS bill in the Rutherford bill without the poison pill in it.
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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, my question was, will you agree--you talked a lot about NICS and where it is failing, and we can fix it. We agree with that.
So what I am asking you--you put the Rutherford bill on. I think most of us are going to vote for the Rutherford bill. Maybe all of us will vote for the Rutherford bill, which says let's help schools make themselves more safe.
Why should anybody be opposed to that?
What I say to you is: you just spent a significant amount of time talking about how we could make the NICS process work better, but that many of us voted against it and it hasn't moved in the Senate.
I guarantee you--I don't know that I can guarantee you, but my thinking is: if you do the Rutherford bill, and if you add in the Fix NICS bill--not with concealed carry, but the Fix NICS bill that you talk about in the Rutherford bill-- I will work with you to get that passed in the United States Senate, and I think we will be successful.
My question to the majority leader: Will you agree to a unanimous consent request to add the Fix NICS bill into the Rutherford bill on the suspension calendar?
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Mr. HOYER. The answer is no, Mr. Speaker. The answer is no, because we want to continue to have that on which we agree defeated by that on which we do not agree. That is the pattern. And when the gentleman says all those bipartisan bills, there were some, obviously, Democrat votes on many of those bills, I am sure.
Mr. Speaker, I didn't hear a word about a bill that has the majority's support on the floor of the House of Representatives that I spoke about, and that is Hurd-Aguilar. Mr. Goodlatte, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee said if Goodlatte was put on the floor, it will lose 50, 60, 70 Republicans. Mr. Goodlatte said that, and that was passed out of the Judiciary Committee. It hasn't been brought to the floor because it would fail.
Hurd-Aguilar, which has not been considered by the committee, but which has the majority of votes on this floor, that bill has not been brought up; just as the bill that passed the United States Senate 5 years ago, to deal with so many of the problems that immigration confronts us with, including security at the border, 5 years, has not been brought up. March 5, nothing happened. Come and gone.
The majority leader spent a lot of time, Mr. Speaker, talking about things that are important but were not on the subject because he doesn't want to deal with the subject. Apparently the Republicans don't want to deal with the subject and they won't put it on the floor. They are obstructing the will of the American people and they are putting thousands and thousands and thousands of people at risk.
The majority leader, with all due respect, is wrong. All of the DACA recipients are not protected, and many of them are not signing up again because they are afraid their government will come after them. They feel they were flim-flammed.
I disagree with the majority leader, Mr. Speaker. Many of us believe what the President did is absolutely legal. It is consistent with what Ronald Reagan did, with what George H.W. Bush did, with what Bill Clinton did, and what George W. Bush did.
Every President, since I have been serving here, has modified immigration consistent with their executive authority. There was nothing mentioned about the quote of the Speaker that was clearly directed at this young woman to say that revocation of protections for the Dreamers brought here as children will not be carried out.
Nobody can sign up for DACA protection now under the court order-- nobody. You can re-up, but you can't sign up--1.8 million. The President of the United States, Mr. Speaker, sent a message down here, or maybe he tweeted it, they would agree to 1.8 million and a pathway to citizenship, parenthesis, if you agree with this, if you agree with that, if you agree with the other.
That is not what was said at the White House, Mr. Speaker. I agree with the majority leader. He brought up some other points, said we need to agree to discuss those. I agreed to discuss them. I didn't agree to agree to them, nor did anybody else in that room. And the President of the United States, 25 Members of the House and Senate sitting around the Cabinet table, said: Are we agreed that we are going to solve the DACA issue first?
Not a single Member demurred. Not a single Member said no--not a single one, Mr. Speaker, yet we can't get that bill to the floor. And the majority leader says: Oh, well, we are bringing up a bill that will create jobs.
I am for doing that. And, frankly, if we do that the week after or the week after that--frankly, I don't know the bills well enough to be speaking about them with much depth of information as to how they were voted on in committee, but my inkling is that the majority Democrats--I don't know what is in there, in these bills--may well have voted against them. Most of those bills coming out of committee are pretty partisan.
We didn't discuss the three bills that I brought up. The majority leader didn't mention them. They have bipartisan support on two; and one, the chairman of the committee admits, does not have the votes on this floor. He would get no Democratic votes, and he would lose a substantial number of Republican votes, and the majority leader knows that, Mr. Speaker.
And we talk about NICS. I want to fix NICS. I don't want concealed carry to be part of that. And I regret that the majority leader would not agree to let's fix NICS and put the Rutherford bill through. That would pass the Senate, but he has got a bill over there he knows won't pass the Senate but maybe it makes a good talking point.
Mr. Speaker, I don't know what we have to do. We have been waiting a long time, not just the 6 months since September, waiting for March 5 to come and go. We have been waiting for a long time to have bills on the floor with an open amendment process so we can, in fact, do the people's will on immigration and on protecting our students and our families and our citizens from the irresponsible use of guns.
We are not against the responsible use of guns. We believe the Second Amendment protects people on owning handguns and hunting guns; but the Supreme Court, in the Heller decision, said there are things that the community could do. There are things that the government can do to protect its people and to make sure that gun use, within the framework of the Second Amendment, is responsible.
I don't know what we have to do, Mr. Speaker. I don't think anybody doubts that the Hurd-Aguilar bill has the majority votes in this House. I would urge people to, if they believe in this issue, sign a discharge petition. They refused to bring the Export-Import Bank bill to the floor for 1\1/2\ or 2 years. Some of the leadership weren't for it. As a matter of fact, the two highest weren't for it. But 127 Republicans to 117 Republicans, they were for it, and over 300 votes were for it, and they would not bring it to the floor short of a discharge petition.
That is not transparency; that is not openness; that is not taking the tough issues head on. That is obfuscating. That is undermining democracy in the people's House. If the gentleman wants to respond, I will yield to him. If not, I will yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. HOYER. I did not.
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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time. With all due respect, Mr. Speaker, I indicated to the leader what I said, and I knew what I said, and I know what the facts are. The Republicans could not pass that bill on their own. There were over 60 Republicans who voted ``no'' on that bill, and they got 167. You may have given me--or 170.
That is, Mr. Speaker, almost 50 short of passage. Mr. Speaker, I will tell you, when I was majority leader, we didn't get much help from the other side, and we always had 218 to pass what we wanted to pass on our side. Seventy-three of our Democrats voted for it, which is why it passed. Not the majority, because the majority of us were so frustrated.
Again, the majority leader has not spoken to the bills. He has spoken about what we have passed. And the CHIP bill, by the way, was brought up weeks after its authority expired. Weeks after it expired.
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Mr. HOYER. He says it was because of our committee. I will tell you, Mr. Speaker, we can't stop anything in committee. They have a majority on every committee and can bring a bill up tomorrow--the next hour if they decide to do so.
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Mr. HOYER. No, after.
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Mr. HOYER. It expired on September 30. You didn't bring it up until weeks after that.
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Mr. HOYER. I have consulted with the staff person for whom you have great respect and affection, and she says that I am right. Now, she is my staffer, so maybe she is somewhat biased, but I will tell you that we believe we are right on that.
But that is not the point, Mr. Speaker. The point is not what we have done in the past--particularly what we have done. And we all are for CHIP. That is not the point. The point is we have two critical pieces of legislation this House must address and that the overwhelming majority of the American people think we ought to address and think we ought to pass and are for. And I don't mean 51 percent or 52 percent of them. I mean 86 percent of the people or more. It is not a close question.
And rather than talking about, well, we did this, we passed 5,950 bills, I am not talking about those bills. I am talking about bills we haven't brought to the floor, Mr. Speaker, that we haven't allowed the House to consider; that we have hundreds of thousands of kids, young people who we respect and who are teachers, are doctors, are workers in our factories making a difference, working in restaurants and hotels.
I was with the Chamber of Commerce in Maryland just the other day, and three different CEOs came up to me and said: We have got DACA people working for us and doing an excellent job, and they are worried that they are going to be kicked out of the only country they know.
But we talk about NICS, and we talk about this, that, and the other. Bring those bills to the floor. That is what we are asking for. We want that respect. We want that respect for this institution.
Mr. Speaker, I am going to yield to the majority leader again. It is those two bills that we believe would pass with significant majorities in this House--the three bills, and we can choose between them. We have offered the queen of the hill, with the explanation for those who may be watching and not bored stiff. One of those three bills that I have mentioned, one a Republican bill, the other two bipartisan bills, Ros- Lehtinen-Roybal-Allard bill and the Hurd-Aguilar bill, both of those bills are bipartisan. Certainly one of those will get a significant majority of this House, and I am not denigrating the bills.
I may or may not be for them that are on the schedule, but there are no issues that the country feels are more important right now than background checks, and there is no issue more timely than fixing--as the Speaker pledged to do 14 months ago, putting at risk that young woman and hundreds of thousands of other individuals in our country similarly situated. That is what we ought to be doing.
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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, the leader spoke in a very calm and reasoned way. I will do the same.
As an aside, I will tell you the CHIP bill passed on November 3, over a month after its authorization expired.
Mr. Speaker, the majority leader talks about coming to compromise. I went down to the White House. Mr. Durbin and I talked about whether we would go to the White House. We went to the White House out of respect for the Presidency, out of a hope that the discussions that we had at the White House would lead to resolution of a serious issue threatening hundreds of thousands, indeed, close to 2 million individuals who know America as their country and who 86 percent of Americans think ought to stay here in America.
In that meeting, Mr. Speaker, the President of the United States said--and he said it on television. You don't have to take my word. There is a video record of what the President said. What he said is we would take care of the DACA issue, consistent, Mr. Speaker, with what Speaker Ryan said to that young woman when he said that the revocation of protections for Dreamers brought here as children will not be carried out.
There was no parenthetical addition, if we do X, Y, Z, A, B, C, D, W. There was no parenthetical phrase. He said: We will not put you at risk, young woman, and those similarly situated.
We have a bipartisan coalition on this floor, but the leader speaks about going into a room--if you want to have a pejorative, a back room, privately--to try to resolve issues not directly related to the DACA protectees.
They are here. The President said they ought to stay here. And the President made a representation, Mr. Speaker, that if we passed a bill, he would sign it. But as the Senate considered a compromise piece of legislation, agreed to by Republican Senators and Democratic Senators, just a few hours before it was brought to the floor, the President said he would veto it. That was not what he said on television in the White House. He said that he would take the heat, if heat there is, and sign the bill that we sent down.
Now we have a Speaker of the House and a majority leader of the Senate who say we won't send something down to the President unless he agrees to sign it, meaning that the House and Senate will not act independently of the President's imprimatur. How sad a position it is that the people's House and the United States Senate have subjugated themselves to the President of the United States.
I presume, Mr. Speaker, that prolonging this discussion apparently will make no difference. But, Mr. Speaker, our side of the aisle represents just short of 50 percent, maybe 48 percent, of the American people. Mr. Speaker, we are saying let us consider. Let us have on this floor--not in a back room, not in somebody's office, not somewhere privately--on the House floor, the people's floor, let us vote.
Let the American people see who raises their hand ``aye'' and ``nay'' on propositions that have been worked on in committee, the Goodlatte bill, and for months between Republicans and Democrats, bipartisan bills. Let the people speak through their Representatives. Don't bottle it up in somebody's office. Let the people's House work its will. Have the courage to pursue that which you said you would do and take the tough issues head-on, not duck them.
Mr. Speaker, I would hope, on behalf of that 86 percent of the American people who support the Dreamers, and even more who support comprehensive background checks, that we have the ability to consider those bills and consider them next week.
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