Providing for Consideration of Conference Report on H.R. Department of Defense Appropriations Act, Providing for Consideration of H. Res. Recognizing That Allowing Illegal Immigrants the Right to Vote Diminishes the Voting Power of United States Citizens; and Providing for Consideration of Motions to Suspend the Rules
Floor Speech
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Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 1077 and ask for its immediate consideration.
The Clerk read the resolution, as follows: H. Res. 1077
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Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Torres), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only. General Leave
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Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, yesterday the Rules Committee met and reported a rule for consideration of the conference report to H.R. 6157, the Department of Defense and Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriations Act, 2019, and Continuing Appropriations Act, 2019, and for an additional resolution, H. Res. 1071. The rule provides for 1 hour of debate, equally divided and controlled by the chair and the ranking member of the Appropriations Committee.
Mr. Speaker, the appropriations package in front of us represents the second of what will likely be several appropriations packages to fully fund the government for fiscal year 2019.
This represents the first time in more than 10 years that Congress will send more than one final appropriations bill to the President for signature before the beginning of the fiscal year. In years past, we have relied strongly on omnibus spending bills to fund the government; but now, with the hard work done on both sides of the aisle and in both Houses of Congress, we are returning to regular order and completing spending work through the normal legislative process.
Mr. Speaker, as I have so often said on this floor, the primary obligation of the Congress is to fund the American Government and keep it open and operating. The American people deserve no less. With this package under consideration today, Congress will do just that with respect to 2 of the 12 main spending bills: the Department of Defense and the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and related agencies.
In addition, the bill also includes a continuing resolution extending funding for other parts of the government not covered by this bill or the appropriations bill signed by the President last week.
In passing this bill, we will provide crucial funding for services across broad areas of the government and fulfill our promises to the American people: to patients, to communities, to business owners, to the military, and to Americans of all stripes.
The House is already familiar with this bill from when it was passed in June, and this conference version, agreed to with the Senate, has not substantially changed with respect to Defense. However, it now reflects the combined priorities of the Members of both sides of the aisle and in both the House and the Senate.
Mr. Speaker, in the Defense title of the bill, the conference report appropriates a total of $674.4 billion for the Department of Defense, including $606.5 billion in base funding, an increase of $17 billion above fiscal year 2018, and $67.9 billion in overseas contingency operations and global war on terrorism funding. This increase in funding will help begin to right the wrongs committed against our military readiness by several years of chronic underfunding.
This bill provides an authorized 2.6 percent pay increase for our troops, the largest pay raise in 9 years, and it ensures we will be able to increase our Active-Duty number of military personnel by more than 16,000 soldiers.
The bill provides $148 billion for equipment procurement, including 13 new warships, a number that includes two new Virginia-class submarines and three new littoral combat ships. It also adds 93 new F- 35 aircraft, new transport aircraft, new tankers, and over 100 new helicopters.
The bill also provides $96.1 billion for research and development of new defense systems and technologies, and $243.2 billion for training, maintenance, and base operations, funding that is sorely needed to increase our dwindling readiness to confront threats both at home and abroad.
Mr. Speaker, in the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education title, the conference report appropriates $178 billion, a $1 billion increase over fiscal year 2018.
As the conference knows, I am fortunate to chair the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Subcommittee, and I am very pleased with the results of this year's bill. We were able to increase the budget of the National Institutes of Health by $2 billion to $39 billion, thus ensuring that we will be able to direct significant new dollars to medical research, tackling vexing health problems like Alzheimer's disease, cancer, and the opioid crisis.
Indeed, across the entire bill, we are putting more than $6.6 billion into the fight against the opioid crisis. We are putting $7.9 billion into the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to make sure that we will have the resources available to battle emerging public health emergencies and fight infectious disease. We did all of this while also ensuring that popular programs like Meals on Wheels, which provides meals for our vulnerable senior citizens, can continue to be funded at current levels.
In the other areas of the Labor-HHS title, we have provided $12.1 billion for the Department of Labor, including $3.5 billion for job training, $1.7 billion for Job Corps, and $300 million to help veterans transition into the workforce.
We provided $71 billion to the Department of Education. This includes $12.4 billion for IDEA special education grants to States. We also funded TRIO at $1.06 million and GEAR UP at $360 million, both substantial increases.
These programs are near and dear to my heart personally and help first-generation college students succeed.
We increased the maximum Pell grant award to $6,195, and we provided $1.9 billion for career, technical, and adult education programs. We included significant funding for our youngest Americans, including $10.1 billion for Head Start, $5.3 billion for childcare and development block grants, and $250 million for early childhood programs.
Finally, Mr. Speaker, this bill also includes a provision acting as a continuing resolution, extending some portions of government funding out to December 7. This extension, while not ideal, gives the Appropriations Committee and both Houses of Congress time to come to an agreement on legislation funding the remaining areas of our government. Such an extension fulfills our primary obligation as legislators, which is to fund the government and keep it open and operating.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to take a brief look at what we have accomplished and put these bills in context.
Last week, the President signed into law the first package of three bills for fiscal year 2019, covering Energy and Water, Military Construction and Veteran Affairs, and the Legislative Branch titles. These bills covered just over 11 percent of total discretionary spending.
Today's bill, which covers the Defense and Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education titles, will produce the vast majority of discretionary spending, just short of 65 percent of the total discretionary spending for fiscal year 2019. What is left in the remaining seven titles amounts to just shy of 24 percent of discretionary spending.
We may need to do a short-term continuing resolution for part of the government, but with these bills today, what we will have accomplished is sending over 75 percent of the total discretionary spending to the President for his signature into law before the start of the new fiscal year.
That is an amazing accomplishment, one that has not happened in Congress in over a decade. Indeed, this is the first time in more than 10 years that the Department of Defense will have its full annual funding enacted before the start of the fiscal year. This is the first time in 22 years that the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies will have been funded before the beginning of the fiscal year.
As Chairman Frelinghuysen has said, this is the next step on the return to regular order. Those who would reject this bill because of the presence of a continuing resolution for part of the government are, frankly, throwing the proverbial baby out with the bath water. This bill, Mr. Speaker, is a return to regular order, and we should all be proud of what we have achieved. It also represents a compromise between the two parties in this body and between this body and our counterpart on the other side of the Capitol Rotunda.
Mr. Speaker, today's conference report represents nearly a year of strong work by Congress. I applaud my colleagues for all they have accomplished. This is just the next step, and we will have many things to do before we finish our appropriations work for fiscal year 2019. But for now, I congratulate the House and the Senate for finalizing this package.
I want to take a moment also, since this is the last one of these particular bills that Chairman Frelinghuysen will present, he will have others later, obviously, but he is ending his term, and I want to congratulate our chairman for the outstanding work that he has done, and also that of his strong working partner, Mrs. Lowey of New York, for her outstanding work.
Frankly, since we are dealing with the Labor-H portion, I want to thank my good working partner and friend, Rosa DeLauro, the gentlewoman from Connecticut, for her hard work. I also thank our superb staff, particularly our clerk, Ms. Ross, for her work in ably helping us arrive at a monumental achievement. Again, this is the first time in 22 years that the Labor-H bill has gotten done in full and on time.
Mr. Speaker, I want to begin by thanking my good friend, my colleague on the Rules Committee, for her kind words and her acknowledgment of how many accomplishments there are that both parties have worked hard to achieve in this particular legislation. That is why I am confident that once the bill comes to the floor, we will have a substantial majority of my friends on the other side of the aisle voting for it and a substantial majority of my friends from my side of the aisle joining them in that. That is a good thing. America should be exceptionally pleased with that.
I also want to thank the President, because he is a participant in this. While this bill does represent a compromise, the reality is, particularly in the defense area, we essentially gave the President most of the things that he asked for and worked for, and we brought this. So I think he can take considerable pride in the achievements of restoring the military, because that was his suggestion, his proposal, and he worked to that end.
There are also particular initiatives in the Labor-H portion of the bill that the President deserves credit for. My friend cited the apprenticeship program, a great program. That was a Presidential-level proposal. A lot of the training programs are.
It was this President who declared opioids as a national healthcare emergency. I am proud Congress, on both sides of the aisle, have responded. As my friend knows, there was a budget agreement last year between the administration, the Senate, and the House that actually put an emphasis on more money at the NIH, more money for opioids.
I am the first to acknowledge there is good work and good praise here to go all around for everybody. My friends in the House worked very hard. I have always joked with my good friend, the ranking member, that we always start out on different sides, but for four times in a row now, we have come together for the final package and both supported the legislation that authorized Health and Human Services, Labor, Education, and related agencies. Again, that wouldn't be possible without the leadership of the full committee. That wouldn't be possible without friends across the rotunda.
Far be it from me to overpraise the Senate of the United States, but I have to say that they deserve a lot of praise in this instance, because the leadership of Chairman Shelby and Ranking Member Leahy on that side was exceptionally important to us in reaching a resolution and working through some of the knotty issues.
Finally, I want to thank the President of the United States. We make Presidents go first in their budget proposals, largely so then we can pick them apart later and do what Congress should do, and that is to make the final decisions in this area. But we took the President's recommendations very, very seriously.
There are many good things in this bill, both in the military side and the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education side, that began with proposals of the administration.
I mentioned opioids. I mentioned apprenticeship programs. I could go on. I could mention charter schools. There are many, many proposals out of the administration that are incorporated in this.
The reality is, I think this is actually what the American people want to see. All three of the legs of this stool--the House, the Senate, and the executive branch--cooperating together, compromise, found different ways. We did that within our ranks, within this body between Republicans and Democrats. We did that across the rotunda with our colleagues in the Senate. And we certainly did it working with the President of the United States.
It takes all three of us to get it done. The reality is, this has already passed the Senate in, I must add, an overwhelmingly bipartisan manner, 93 to 7, if I recall the vote correctly. That makes a strong statement as to how well our friends on both sides of the aisle in the other Chamber work.
I think we will have a very strong vote when we get to final legislation. That, again, is something that the leadership on both sides, and particularly in the Appropriations Committee, can take a great deal of pride in.
When we send it down to the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, if the President of the United States doesn't sign it, it doesn't become law. I believe we will get that signature, and I want to acknowledge how hard the President and his team worked with us to arrive at a solution with our friends in both Chambers.
Mr. Speaker, with praise all around, I am going to reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, I want to begin by agreeing with the objective that my friends are laying out but disagreeing with the means by which they are trying to achieve it.
I couldn't agree more that passing the National Violence Against Women Act, or extending it, is the appropriate thing to do. I worked very hard the last time we did the extension.
I actually helped put together a coalition of Republicans that brought down the Republican bill, because we thought the Senate Democratic bill was superior. It extended for the first time opportunities in Indian country for Tribal governments to hold non- Tribal Members accountable for assault.
So this is a cause that is near and dear to my heart. I don't pretend to sit on the authorization committee, which my good friend from Texas does. I am not exactly sure where they are in the process. But as she did say, this is normally bipartisan.
So I look on this as a routine extension while they continue to work through. I think, if we get the legislation to the floor, I have no doubt it will pass in a very strongly bipartisan way.
I will say, if we adopt the strategy my friends recommend, we will, actually, in some ways, hurt the cause that I know she feels so passionately about.
The Labor-H bill actually funds the battered women shelters and the National Domestic Violence Hotline. Those are two important items in here that are actually funded in the bill. If we bring down the bill, we are going to derail the appropriations process for all Defense, for Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies, a lot of these other related programs that are extremely important.
So I have no doubt about the sincerity of my friend's position, but I don't want to, frankly, number one, disrupt funding for very, very important programs that we help, you know, sustain like, again, the National Domestic Violence Hotline and battered women's shelters, and I certainly don't want to defund it for the larger measures here either.
So I think you have to recognize we don't always get everything done on time. I don't think we got VAWA done on time the last time. I know at least it was quite a difficult struggle, but we eventually got there, and we got there with substantial votes from both parties and got it through. I think we will again.
I pledge to work with my friends on the other side of the aisle to achieve that objective. I just don't think, right now, we should derail an $800 billion bill when this bill will actually extend the current legislation and give us the time to finish whatever the differences are, resolve whatever the differences are, if there are any, within the committee and eventually bring it forward.
Again, I think it is a worthy objective. I look forward to working with my friends to achieve it. I just simply don't want to derail this appropriations bill in the course of doing that.
Mr. Speaker, I want to begin by thanking my friend from California. We don't agree on every point here, but we do agree on the underlying legislation. We both, frankly, appreciate the labors of both Democrats and Republicans to come to compromises on an extraordinarily large budget item--65 percent, roughly, of the Federal budget here between Defense, Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies. I share my friend's appreciation and admiration for all that were part of that.
My friend did bring up in her close the concern about two items in a government shutdown. I will remind my friend, it was our friends who tried to shut down the government in the House on the other side of the aisle, and the Democrats in the Senate who actually did shut down the government in 2017. So I always point out both parties have done this. It is never a very good idea. Neither has ever achieved their objectives there, so we are working hard to make sure that doesn't happen. But it wasn't Republicans that shut down the government in 2017. I think it was actually called--well, I won't use the name, but it was actually named after a Democratic Senator. So let's put that aside.
Let's focus. My friend did raise an interesting point on closed rules. And I think, you know, this is something they continue to focus on, and, I think, sometimes lost in this, we ignore the structured rule amendment process that has routinely been used actually by majorities of both sides, to be fair.
If we are going to use that metric for measuring openness, I want to clarify a couple of points for the Record.
Mr. Speaker, 16 of the closed rules cited by the minority were rolling back regulations under the Congressional Review Act, which does not allow for amendments, to ensure that only a majority vote is required in the United States Senate.
Another 12 closed rules were for bills where the minority put out a call for amendments but received no amendments. And if my friends from the other side of the aisle believe that open rules are the only measure of success, it is only fair to clarify for the American people the Democratic majority's record in this regard.
In the 111th Congress, under Speaker Pelosi, the majority had zero open rules. However, as we have already stated in the past, comparing open versus closed rules ignores the structured amendment process. The majority has made it a priority to make in order large numbers of amendments for floor consideration, a majority of those with a Democratic sponsor and/or cosponsor.
In fact, as of September 26, 2018, Republicans in the 115th Congress have provided for consideration of over 1,650 amendments on the House floor: over 750 of those amendments were offered by my friends, the Democrats on the other side of the aisle; over 635 Republican amendments were made in order; and over 280 bipartisan amendments.
So the 114th Congress, the GOP majority has actually allowed over 1,700 amendments to be considered on the House floor, and in the 113th Congress, the Republican majority allowed over 1,500 amendments to be considered on the floor. My friends, the last time they were in the majority, the 111th Congress, offered fewer than 1,000 amendments to be considered.
So there is a case to be made on both sides of these things. I think the majority has tried to move legislation as best they can, but we certainly want the active participation of our friends from the other side, and, quite often, they are very robust in taking advantage of that opportunity. That is a good thing.
Mr. Speaker, in closing, I want to encourage all Members to support the rule. I recognize my friends on the other side probably will not do that, and that is appropriate. The rule debate is normally a partisan divide, and I respect my friend's efforts in that regard.
But I know that many of my friends will support the underlying resolution, and, for that, I express my appreciation, and, frankly, my gratitude for the good hard work that has gone back and forth across partisan aisles. This bill, though, this rule represents the next step toward fulfilling our primary obligation as Members of Congress to fund the government.
For the first time in over 10 years, we will fully fund the Department of Defense before the start of our fiscal year. We will pass a Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies appropriations bill, providing funds for healthcare, schools, medical research, job training, and thousands of other priorities for both parties for the first time in 22 years. And we will enable that the government remains open and operating to provide needed services for our constituents.
So I want to applaud my colleagues on both sides of the aisle for their hard work. I want to thank our friends in the United States Senate who have already completed their portion of this. I want to join my friend in urging the President, assuming we pass this legislation, to sign it and sign it before the end of the fiscal year.
The material previously referred to by Mrs. Torres is as follows:
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