Legislative Program

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCALISE. As we, Mr. Speaker, work to reopen the government and to secure the border, clearly, there has been a divide on the other side. We were trying to get some kind of agreement on how much the majority is willing to work with us on, to put an offer on the table.

If you look, Mr. Speaker, last week on Saturday, the President of the United States addressed the Nation and laid out a new proposal. And, Mr. Speaker, what the President laid out was not only a proposal that reopens the government and secures the border, but also offered the suggestion that DACA could be a part of this negotiation, at least to start working on some kind of solution on DACA.

In the past, Mr. Speaker, we were just talking about the request from the Department of Homeland Security, the $5.7 billion that was requested by the people who risk their lives to keep our country safe. Their request, Mr. Speaker, was that is how much it was going to cost to secure the border.

So far, we have not seen a single counteroffer from the majority. In fact, when the President spoke to the Nation at 4:07 p.m., before the President even walked to the microphone at 4:07 p.m., at 4 p.m., the Speaker of the House had already put out a statement opposing the plan that hadn't even been presented.

Mr. Speaker, what I would like to ask the majority leader is, if we are trying to get a resolution and if the President continues to try to lay out alternatives, if the President's latest alternative wasn't even offered until 4:07 p.m., why did the Speaker of the House already reject it before it was even presented? Is there an actual desire to work together to solve the problem, or is the answer going to continue to be no alternative, no alternative?

At some point, we have to get an agreement on how to solve this problem.

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Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman uses terms like ``hostages.'' The gentleman uses terms like ``ransom.'' I was in those meetings in the White House with the gentleman from Maryland and the Speaker of the House. In fact, in our third meeting--by the way, in all three meetings, not one time did the Speaker of the House put any alternative on the table.

President Trump isn't the one who said: I need $5.7 billion to secure the border.

Our experts, our experts at the Department of Homeland Security, who risk their lives to keep our country safe, said it is going to take $5.7 billion to secure the border.

We can all talk about border security, Mr. Speaker. At some point, you have to be willing to put the dollars behind the rhetoric. So when the Department, Mr. Speaker, says we need $5.7 billion, if your side thinks that there is some lesser amount that it is going to take to keep our country safe, then put the amount of money on the table. So far, the only offer that has been put on the table by the Speaker of the House, she said a dollar, and she laughed about it, a dollar. That is the only offer that has been put on the table. It is not a joking matter, by the way. And a dollar is not going to secure America's border. So what amount will the other side agree to?

The President of the United States looked at the Speaker and said: Okay, I will tell you what, we disagree on a lot of this, but I will agree to keep the government open, even with the things I disagree with, for the next 30 days, if, at the end of that 30 days, you are willing to negotiate with me on the wall and the border security.

The Speaker of the House said no. She said no to that offer from the President. She wants to keep everybody hostage. She wants to keep the pay of workers hostage.

In fact, now the Speaker of the House wants to keep the State of the Union hostage. How ludicrous is that? George Washington, in 1790, addressed a joint session of Congress. They were meeting in New York back then. George Washington addressed a joint session of Congress.

This is a constitutional requirement of the President. Historically, for generations now, every single year, for generations--Republican Speaker, Democrat Speaker, Republican President, Democrat President-- the Speaker of the House has invited the President to give a State of the Union.

In fact, that agreement and that offer went out on January 3. The Speaker sent a letter to the President, inviting him to come here in this Chamber and address the State of the Union next Tuesday, and the President accepted that offer. And the Speaker of the House this time, for the first time in the history of our country, rescinded the offer, took it back. She doesn't want the people in this country to hear what the President has to say about the security of this country.

Maybe, Mr. Speaker, the Speaker of the House doesn't want the country to hear the President's message, but do you know what? The people of this country want to hear the President's message and deserve that opportunity. So who is holding whom hostage?

Look at some of the votes. We had a vote today on the House floor to pay everybody, to pay everybody who has worked or who has been furloughed. Those people who are securing our border today without pay, they ought to get paid. We had a vote on the House floor, and we almost got there: 200-214. Mr. Speaker, every Republican voted yes; 13 Democrats voted yes. Last week, only six Democrats voted yes.

The good news is, Mr. Speaker, a growing number of Democrats are recognizing they have to be willing to work to solve this problem and pay people who have worked. So we have had those votes on the House floor.

The gentleman talks about opening government. The gentleman talks about bills they have brought to the House floor that we voted against. The gentleman talks about the Senate bills that were passed. At the beginning, the first week of this new majority, when they brought a bill to the floor to fund what was so-called, or presented as, the Senate bills, some of those bills had passed the Senate, Mr. Speaker, but not all of them. In fact, one of those bills would not have passed the Senate because it would have allowed taxpayer funding to go to foreign government entities that provide abortion.

So let's get this right, Mr. Speaker, and let the Record reflect that the other side was willing to bring a bill to the floor a few weeks ago that allows taxpayer money to go to fund abortion in foreign countries, but they wouldn't put a dime of money in that bill to secure America's border. There was not a dime of money from the President's request to secure America's border, but taxpayer money went to fund abortions in foreign countries. That was in that bill.

Sure, I voted no on that, because those are not the values of this country. Let's be serious about this.

Mr. Speaker, if we want to talk about what it will take to resolve it, I think the gentleman from Maryland and I could come to an agreement. So far, for whatever reason, the Speaker has been unwilling to put a counteroffer on the table.

When you have a negotiation, when two sides are apart--frankly, I don't know why we are apart on this. It is not the President's number. The $5.7 billion request is from the people who are risking their lives to keep our country safe. If they say that is what they need, we ought to take them at their word.

And if we disagree with them, if we disagree, Mr. Speaker, then at least show what their offer is, what their amount of money is, and put that on the table and back it up with something.

If they say the wall is the issue, maybe it is personal, maybe it is because President Trump wanted it. Back in 2006, Chuck Schumer voted for the Secure Fence Act, which would have authorized $50-plus billion to build fencing, which, in essence, is a lot of what the Department is asking for today. If he was authorizing $50 billion--by the way, they didn't put any money behind it.

Again, it is always good to give the Fourth of July speech and say you are for something. Unless you are willing to put the money behind it, you are not there.

So he said $50 billion was okay for fencing, but, today, he is not willing to put a dollar behind, in essence, fencing, or whatever you want to call it.

The President said he is willing to negotiate and let you ban a cement wall. The President said he is willing to do that. Right now, the experts are saying steel slats are the best approach.

The majority leader himself, just a few days ago, said, ``Physical barriers are part of the solution.'' I think we are making headway. The majority leader agrees that physical barriers are part of the solution, maybe because the Speaker is saying that walls are immoral. In some strange way, people who build a house, you could build the strongest door in the world--and I agree, the gentleman from Maryland and I agree on enhancing port security, the points of entry.

We have points of entry all around our country. If you want to come here and seek asylum, if you want to come here and just be a part of the American Dream, like more than a million people a year who we let in, we have that. And we need to bulk that up. There is a lot more we can do with technology there.

But you don't put a door in your house and then leave the windows open. Who would do that? Who would call that security of your house?

What the President is saying is, we have more than 500 miles of area in our country that is not secure. So you have a big door, and we are going to strengthen the door. But if you are going to leave 500 miles wide open, you are going to wonder why people are coming in illegally.

If we are for border security, it is going to take something to actually back that up. I would ask the gentleman: What amount is the majority willing to put on the table for real border security, which includes a physical barrier? And I quote the gentleman again: ``Physical barriers are part of the solution.''

And I agree with the gentleman from Maryland on that. But I guess maybe the question I have is: The experts have told us it is going to cost $5.7 billion to build that physical barrier. How much of that $5.7 billion is the gentleman willing to support?

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Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, let's reflect on why we are here.

We are here because the President said we have a difference of agreement on parts of government. We negotiated over the course of months to fund 75 percent of our government.

The good news, Mr. Speaker, is that the vast majority of our government has been funded, including our troops. Our military are being paid. We were able to come to an agreement there.

The bad news is, Mr. Speaker, we were not able to come to an agreement over the remaining 25 percent. And people around the country, I am sure, wonder: Why can't they work it out?

And I think, Mr. Speaker, you just saw a display of why this can't be worked out. Because, Mr. Speaker, the President of the United States got a request from his Homeland Security officials, people who risk their lives to keep our country safe. They said, Mr. Speaker: It is going to take $5.7 billion to give us the tools we need to secure our border.

And I asked the gentleman just a moment ago, Mr. Speaker, once again, how much are you willing to support if you won't support the $5.7 billion? The entire time, not once did the gentleman from Maryland give a number--not once.

If the gentleman would give a number, I would yield, but there are a lot of other things that he said that need to be corrected that I want to also address.

Is the gentleman willing to give a number over $1, which is the Speaker's number? $5.7 billion, $1. Is he willing to give some number more than $1 that would secure the border?

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Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, I will be happy to tell the gentleman.

I think the gentleman knows, one of the dilemmas we have been facing with negotiations is that the Senate has a 60-vote requirement. The Senate had that 60-vote requirement back when you all were in the majority last time. When we were in the majority, they had that 60-vote requirement as well.

When we were negotiating all of those bills, all the bills that fund our government, we were able to get an agreement on 75 percent of government funding. We had that negotiation with the Senate. We can't just negotiate with ourselves.

As you see, you can pass bills in the House and they go nowhere in the Senate. We brought a bill in December--and, by the way, the gentleman from Maryland said we didn't have the votes, that is why we didn't do it. The Speaker of the House went into the Oval Office and told the President: Your side can't deliver the votes for the $5.7 billion. She said that.

Well, guess what, Mr. Speaker. We did deliver the votes for the $5.7 billion, and we were able to do that all along, but the Senate wasn't there. And why wasn't the Senate there? The Senate Republicans were willing to support that, but Senate Democrats weren't. It is the same dilemma we are in today. The Senate Democrats and House Democrats have refused to negotiate with the President.

I think the gentleman from Maryland knows the legislative process. He has been here enough to know you can't just pass a bill out of the House, and you can't just pass a bill out of the Senate. You have to reconcile the two bills. And even then, you need a bill that the President will sign.

So the legislative process has to play out. It played out for 75 percent of the government, and it is funded. We never got that agreement on the remaining amounts.

We proved to the Speaker and to the President we could deliver the votes to pass the bill to fund the $5.7 billion. The problem has been that this majority, the Democratic majority in the House and the Democratic minority in the Senate have refused to negotiate. They have refused to put a dollar amount.

If the gentleman is willing to start at $1.3 billion--by the way, that $1.3 billion had strings attached, important strings that limited our ability to actually secure the border. In those strings, Mr. Speaker, they actually told the President where he can and can't build wall.

So our security experts are saying, for example, we need to build wall around the Rio Grande. That is where a lot of people are bringing drugs and human trafficking across our country. And yet law says you can't build it there. How ridiculous is that?

So, in our legislation that we passed, we removed that limitation. Why should we be micromanaging the experts who risk their lives and telling them they can't do the things it takes to support the border? That was in our bill.

Current law also prohibits what kind of security, what kind of physical barriers--to use the gentleman's term--can or can't be used. And so our experts say there are some physical barriers that don't work.

Why would you want to spend $1.3 billion of taxpayer money to build things that won't actually work when you can spend the money to build things that actually do work? And again, these aren't the President's designs. These are the experts who risk their lives, who said: This is what we need.

So, yes, Mr. Speaker, we weren't able to get an agreement with the Senate over that 25 percent. We proved we could put the votes together in the House to do it. The Senate couldn't pass the bill. So, ultimately, there was nothing that got to the President's desk on those remaining items, so the President convened us.

The President got all the principals together, Mr. Speaker, and in three different meetings in the White House, not one time--not one time--was a single dollar amount put on the table by the Democrats in the room--not once. So then you can look at other votes, you can look at other plans.

So the President said: Well, if the Speaker of the House won't negotiate, maybe I will bring in other Democrats.

And, by the way, it is a growing list of Democrats who are starting to say we need to address this problem.

I will read from the chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, Mr. Collin Peterson, Democrat from Minnesota: ``Give Trump the money. . . . I'd give him the whole thing . . . and put strings on it so you make sure he puts the wall where it needs to be. Why are we fighting over this? We're going to build that wall anyway, at some time.''

Representative Adam Smith, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee: ``The wall is not in itself a bad idea, it's just--it's been done.''

Representative Cheri Bustos from Illinois: ``If we have a partial wall, if we have fencing, if we have technology used to keep our borders safe, all of that is fine . . . .''

So we see a growing list of rank-and-file Democrats, and even committee chairmen, who are saying let's just do this, and yet the Speaker refuses to do it.

So the President invited some members of the Democratic majority in the House to the White House. The first meeting, Mr. Speaker, some of them didn't even show up. And we want to talk about civility?

We are in a shutdown, and the President of the United States says: I want to bring some Democrats in to see if we can resolve this. Then they don't even show up. And maybe they were told not to go.

So a few days later, the President invites a different group, and in that group we actually did have some Members that went.

The gentleman from Maryland, that day, was on a TV show, and he said--when they were asked do those Democrats who are going to the White House have the authority to negotiate, the majority leader of the House said they do not have the authority to strike a deal.

So now the Democratic majority is telling other Democrats who want to solve the problem and are going to the White House to try to solve the problem, he is telling them they don't have the authority to solve the problem.

So if the gentleman from Maryland is telling other Democrats they don't have the authority to strike a deal, I would ask the gentleman: Who does have the authority to strike a deal?

He is saying that physical borders are part of the solution. The Speaker of the House doesn't necessarily share that view, from the comments I have heard from her.

But if the gentleman from Maryland thinks physical borders are part of the solution, other Democrats want to negotiate a solution, who is authorized? Who does have the authority to strike a deal?

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Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, once again, we are in a government shutdown. I could clearly argue that the gentleman from Maryland voted to shut the government down in December before we had hit an expiration of funding. Before there was a shutdown, we had a bill to fund government and secure the border. My friend can say it was dead on arrival in the Senate. The reason it was dead on arrival in the Senate is because Senate Democrats refused to negotiate over securing the border.

So here we are. We could talk about 2013. We are in 2019, and we are in the middle of a government shutdown that could end tomorrow. The majority just voted to adjourn again. Literally--and here is the quote my friend just said--the gentleman from Maryland said: ``We are not going to talk until the government is open.''

So during the shutdown, the gentleman is not going to negotiate how to get out of a shutdown.

The gentleman wonders why people look and say: why can't you figure it out?

The President has offered idea after idea, and eventually you are negotiating against yourself when the other side says: we are not going to talk until we get everything we want.

Well, do you know what, Mr. Speaker? In divided government, Mr. Speaker, nobody gets everything they want, but you have to start talking today. The 800,000 people who are working or not working and not getting paychecks--which, by the way, we voted again today to pay all of them, we had a vote on the House floor to pay all of them, and we got 13 Democrats to vote for that. Last week it was only six. A growing number of Democrats are recognizing stop all this foolishness of saying: we are not going to talk to you when the President is trying to talk. We are going to reject your offer before you put it on the table. At 4 o'clock Saturday the Speaker rejected an offer that wasn't even proposed until 4:07.

So to say: we are not going to talk while we are in the shutdown, how do we get out of the shutdown unless people are talking?

I think the gentleman from Maryland and I could solve this problem. He quoted: Physical barriers are part of the solution.

I agree with the gentleman from Maryland on that. Unfortunately, the Speaker of the House doesn't agree with that. So rank-and-file Democrats who want to solve this problem are invited to the White House, but told by the Democrat leadership: you are not authorized to negotiate.

So I ask the gentleman from Maryland: Who is authorized to negotiate? And the gentleman from Maryland says: we are not going to talk until the government is back open.

But the government is not open because we are at an impasse, and the way you solve an impasse is to talk. You can't say: ``We are not going to talk'' and expect it just to solve itself and expect the President just to keep offering and offering and offering and the Speaker of the House say: we are not even going to let you come talk to the country; we are not going to let you have a State of the Union; my way or the highway.

That is not how you solve this problem. You have to talk to solve this problem. The country expects you to talk to solve this problem.

It is divided government. Sure, we are not going to agree on everything. Our experts--it is not the Republican Party saying $5.7 billion is what it would cost to secure our border--it is the experts who secure our border who say it is going to cost $5.7 billion.

Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman disagrees with that number, if he doesn't like the color of the wall or the style of the slats and the steel, if he wants to make it out of bamboo, I don't know what the gentleman's offer is because he has never put an offer on the table. But at some point the gentleman has to. He has to put a counteroffer on the table if we are going to get out of this.

I want to get out of this. I voted multiple times to get out of it and to pay people. The gentleman from Maryland can show votes, and I can show votes. Ultimately we need to talk to get an agreement.

So I continue to stand ready, the President stands ready; our minority here in the House and our majority in the Senate stands ready. But if only one side is saying: ``We are going to talk,'' and the other side says: ``We are not going to talk'', that is not going to resolve itself.

We have to talk if it is going to resolve itself, and, hopefully, Mr. Speaker, we do.

I stand ready, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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