Providing for Consideration of H.R. Supplemental Appropriations Respect to Consideration of Certain Resolutions Reported From the Committee on Rules

Floor Speech

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Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Raskin), my good friend, for yielding the customary 30 minutes, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, I want to begin by congratulating my friend on his recent appointment to the Rules Committee, where we have already had the opportunity to interact with one another. And I want to again congratulate him for bringing his first rule to the floor as well. I know we are going to have a good relationship in the next couple of years as we work together.

Madam Speaker, we are back here in appropriations; only this time, the majority has taken what was an important, likely bipartisan disaster relief appropriations bill and turned it into a partisan football.

Last night, the Committee on Rules was scheduled to meet on a $12.1 billion supplemental appropriations bill. At the last minute, the majority chose to make in order and self-execute an amendment that would tack on an additional measure, a continuing resolution to fund the government through February 8.

I don't know if I can fully convey how disappointed I am that the majority is seeking to play politics with this important issue and use an otherwise noncontroversial disaster appropriations bill as a vehicle to pass a controversial spending bill that is going absolutely nowhere.

Last year, the Nation faced a wide variety of disasters, from wildfires in the West to hurricanes that hit Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands and the Southeastern United States, and the volcanoes in Hawaii.

When disaster strikes, we have an obligation to help each other. I don't think there is a single Member of the House who would disagree with that fundamental principle.

Before the Rules Committee acted last night, we were on our way to a bipartisan bill that fulfilled that principle. But today, we are considering a partisan bill that will not resolve the shutdown, and it holds up crucial aid for disaster victims.

To that end, Madam Speaker, I have to say that the original version of the bill was actually very good. It took roughly what the House had passed at the end of the last Congress and added to it.

In December, we passed a bill that provided $7.38 billion in disaster relief. The original bill up today would provide $12.1 billion in disaster relief, with additional money going mostly to increase existing accounts and to provide nutrition assistance to Puerto Rico. Frankly, I was prepared to be fully supportive of that measure.

Moreover, I was especially pleased that the majority took the steps toward an open process. They issued a call for amendments, considered them, and made some very good amendments in order.

I want to commend Chairman McGovern for taking these steps and giving Members on both sides of the aisle an opportunity to present the case for their amendments to the Rules Committee and, in many cases, to the full House.

But instead of moving forward on a joint disaster relief bill, the majority decided at the last minute to turn this noncontroversial piece of legislation into a controversial one by attaching a self-executing manager's amendment which adds a continuing resolution to fund the government through February 8.

Madam Speaker, I want to be clear. I want to end the government shutdown as well. I have said countless times on this floor and elsewhere that the primary responsibility of legislators is to fund the government and keep it open. Our constituents deserve no less than the full amount of government services we have promised them.

At the end of December, I voted in favor of a bill that would have done exactly that. It would have funded the government through February 8. It would have funded disaster relief, and it would have provided funding for border security. A majority of the Senate favored that bill, and the President had said he would sign it. Unfortunately, the Democratic minority in the Senate blocked consideration of the bill, a bill that could have stopped this shutdown before it ever happened.

This, now, is the fourth proposal by my friends across the aisle to reopen the government. Tomorrow, we will be likely considering a fifth proposal. Unfortunately, each of these items has in common the same flaws.

The Senate made it clear that it will not take up any spending bill that the President cannot sign, and the President has made it clear that he will not sign any bill that does not address border security. Yet my friends across the aisle continue to put forward measure after measure that simply do not provide funding for border security.

Today, the majority is seeking to one-up itself. They have taken a disaster relief bill to provide funding for victims of hurricanes, wildfires, and volcanoes, and they are attaching to it the same funding bill the House previously passed. The House may have passed it, but the Senate won't, and the President won't sign it.

Why, then, does the majority insist on using disaster victims as leverage to avoid addressing border security?

Madam Speaker, I want to reopen the government. I want us to provide for disaster victims, and I want us to provide for border security. We can accomplish all three of these things. The House can do all three of these things. In fact, the House has done all three of these things as recently as December. Why the majority only wants to accomplish one of those and wants to do so by using disaster victims as leverage is beyond me.

I know my friends think they can force the Senate and the President to bend to their will, but they cannot, and they will not. In divided government, negotiation and compromise are indispensable in governing. So far, my friends have engaged in neither.

Madam Speaker, today, we should be happy to provide needed relief to disaster victims. Instead, we are here on the fourth proposal from the majority on government funding and a fourth proposal that does not address fundamental problems, does not negotiate with the majority, and does not put forward a bill that can become law.

To quote the baseball legend and philosopher Yogi Berra, ``it's deja vu all over again.''

So I would suggest my friends go to the bargaining table with the United States Senate and with the President of the United States and see if they can actually work with the other bodies and help us come to some resolution, the differences between the two.

Madam Speaker, I urge opposition to the rule, and I reserve the balance of my time

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Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I wish to notify the House, Madam Speaker, that if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule that will bring up the appropriations package the House passed in December, including full funding for the government through February 8, $7.8 billion for disaster relief, and $5.7 billion for border security.

Madam Speaker, that is a bill that the Senate will actually take up and pass. That is a bill that the President has said he will actually sign.
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Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, I thank my friend again for the time; I thank him for participating in the debate; and I congratulate him on being close to finishing his first rule.

Madam Speaker, in closing, I want to respond to a couple of things that my good friend said. First of all, he said he brought ``their'' bills to the floor, meaning our bills, I presume. He didn't bring our bills to the floor. He brought Senate bills to the floor.

Actually, those bills are nothing like the bills that the House had passed and, in many cases, are quite inferior to the product that had been jointly compromised between the two bodies.

Just speaking from something I know very well, which is Indian healthcare, the bill that he presented to us had absolutely no House input from either Republican or Democratic Members, had $135 million less for the Indian Healthcare Service, had $26 million less for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. I can go on and on and on.

The bills actually that, frankly, we were pretty close to having conferenced and done were, honestly, quite superior. They had many Democratic and Republican suggestions in them and many Member suggestions. If we passed what the majority is presenting, all we are doing is just turning over the appropriations function of the United States House of Representatives to the United States Senate and saying: We don't really need a House; anything you guys do is fine.

That is the product that has been presented to us. It is not acceptable to our side to simply throw away House prerogatives and positions.

Again, my friends have the majority here. We respect that. They will almost certainly prevail on the rule and on the vote, and I certainly accept that. That is the way this institution works.

But what he fails to tell me is whether or not he is ever going to get the Senate to ever pick this up. So far, he hasn't. This is the fourth attempt. We will see another one tomorrow. Whether or not he can actually produce legislation that the President of the United States will sign, so far, he hasn't. And they are the majority.

Under our constitutional system, passing legislation through the House is simply not sufficient. It has to be able to pass the United States Senate. It has to be signed by the President of the United States, unless two-thirds of the House and the Senate are willing to override his veto. Frankly, I don't think my friends have two-thirds majority here either, and they certainly don't in the United States Senate.

So I have a modest proposal. Probably the people who are producing this legislation here should sit down and talk with the United States Senate ahead of time and say: Can we split the difference here? Can we find some common ground?

Actually, the President did that in December, literally sent the Vice President to the negotiation to say: We would like to get $5 billion. We think that is the appropriate amount. But what if we settle at $2\1/ 2\ billion? The answer was no.

That is a normal, reasonable compromise. It is called splitting the difference. The President tried to do that.

I do commend my friends, because I know they are serious about wanting to reopen the government. We would love to work with them on getting that done, but it is going to entail some compromise.

Frankly, over the next 2 years, if my friends want to get anything done, and I know they do, they will have to compromise.

Been there before. We were in a situation where we were the majority in the United States House of Representatives with a Democratic majority in the Senate and a Democratic President. It took, I will say, some of my colleagues a long time to figure out that we had to have help in the United States Senate, and we had to have a President that would sign bills, and we were going to have to compromise on some things that we thought were fundamentally very, very important.

I suggest my friends learn from our experience in that regard.

Again, I respect the effort to reopen the government. I would love to participate in it. This bill, quite frankly, could have been something that I think would have started us down the right direction, and it almost was.

We had Members on both sides of the aisle that very much wanted to vote for this legislation. Frankly, and again, I commend the chairman of our committee, Mr. McGovern. He set up a process so that we could provide amendments, Member input. We had full consideration of those amendments in the Rules Committee. I would have liked a few more to be made in order, but I can't complain about the ones that were. I think it was a fair process.

Only the Democratic leadership's insistence on putting something that they knew the Senate would not pick up, and they knew the President would not sign, stopped that disaster relief bill. That is all. That literally could have been passed out of here today, could have been passed immediately by the United States Senate, would have been signed by the President, would have gotten us out of this cycle at least a little bit, would have shown us what functioning government actually looks like. But I guess the theater of the moment is more important than actually getting disaster relief to people, so we will go through this exercise yet again.

Madam Speaker, in closing, I urge opposition to this rule and the underlying measure. The majority has taken a noncontroversial, bipartisan, supplemental disaster appropriations bill and has turned it into a political football. Today's bill was originally intended to provide relief for disaster victims, and, instead, the majority has turned it into yet another continuing resolution that is not going anywhere.

This is the same continuing resolution that the House previously passed and that the Senate refused to consider. Whether the Democrats like it or not, they need to engage with Republicans on border security. Instead, they are now bringing up their fourth attempt to pass a government funding bill without border security. And this time, they are using disaster victims as leverage to push their policies.

The majority would be better served to undertake serious negotiations with Republicans over the need for border security and find a way out of the crisis of their making, rather than pushing the exact same bill again.

Madam Speaker, I urge a ``no'' on the previous question, ``no'' on the underlying measure, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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