Dhs Cyber Incident Response Teams Act of 2019

Floor Speech

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Mr. HOYER. Madam Speaker, I rise and thank Chairwoman Lowey and Ranking Member Granger for the hard work that they have done, and all of their staff.

The staffs, I know, have been working around the clock on both sides of the aisle. I want to congratulate the staff director for the extraordinary work and leadership she has shown to get us to this objective.

I rise in strong support of this legislation, of both of these packages, which will fund all 12 bills before the end of the calendar year, unfortunately, not by the end of the fiscal year.

I would have been very happy to get all of this done by the end of the fiscal year, and we did our work in a timely fashion; but, unfortunately, the Senate did not pass any of its bills prior to the end of the fiscal year, and, therefore, it was impossible to get that done.

I want to thank Senator Leahy and Senator Shelby, as well, for the work that they have done.

I want to thank all of those who worked together, focused. There was some talk, I know, about going into next year, but this is the right thing to do. This is what the American people expect us to be doing.

This will provide our country with the certainty needed to carry out its work serving the American people and to continue making long-term investments in our national security, public health, public safety, and economic growth.

Indeed, the Appropriations Committee members and staff worked hard to produce appropriations bills that the House passed in June, when we passed bills to fund 96 percent of the government by June 26 of this year. Sadly, the Republican Senate, as I have said, and the Trump White House failed to do their jobs for months, necessitating two short-term delays that brought unnecessary uncertainty.

As a Member who has served on the Appropriations Committee for more than 36 years--although many of those years I have been on leave--I know how much work is involved in reaching agreement on funding bills.

Nobody, not one of the, I guess, 433 of us who are here, got everything that they wanted or believes this is a perfect bill, but it is a work product worthy of the Appropriations Committee, the House of Representatives, and this country. It makes compromises, which are absolutely essential. It takes a lot of late hours, caffeine, and placing trust in colleagues across the aisle to achieve that objective.

What Appropriations Committee members and staff have negotiated with the Senate and White House, as I said, is not perfect. The chair does not think it is perfect. The ranking member doesn't think it is perfect. I am sure there is nobody on either of the committees who thinks it is perfect, but it achieves key priorities and will avert a damaging government shutdown and give certainty to agencies as they move forward in the next 9 months of the fiscal year as to what resources they are going to have available to get their jobs done.

I know there is a lot of weeping and gnashing of teeth about how awful the CR is for the Defense Department. I agree with that, but there ought to be a lot of weeping and gnashing of teeth about the adverse effect on nondefense agencies, because the effect is the same: uncertainty and an inability to operate in any kind of regular order fashion.

This bill does not give President Trump additional border security funding over last year, but it does give him what he had last year. That is a compromise. People on my side are not happy about that; people on Ms. Granger's side, I am sure, are not happy about that. But it is a compromise, and it does continue critical investments in fighting poverty and expanding opportunities in communities across the country.

Specifically, this bill increases funding for Head Start, National Institutes of Health, and initiatives to promote clean energy and a healthier environment--important victories for those items and the working Americans we are fighting to protect every day.

This bill includes funds to secure our elections against foreign interference and provides funding to study the effects of gun violence in our communities.

Ms. Granger mentions it raises the military pay, but it also raises the civilians on parity, a policy that we pursued for many, many years. It is good for our staff. It is good for the Federal employees, and it makes us competitive in the ability to retain people whom we need.

It raises the cap for staff pay. Now, maybe we ought to hide that, but, very frankly, our staffs are underpaid. The hours, the talent, the intellect, the commitment, the patriotism they bring to their jobs, we don't compensate them properly.

We are not competitive, certainly, with the private sector, but we are not competitive with the executive department, and we lost good people. So I applaud the committee for that action. This comes just a week after we were able to secure a victory by extending paid parental leave for Federal civilian employees across all agencies in the annual defense authorization bill.

Critically, these appropriations bills have buy-in from the administration, having been negotiated by Secretary Mnuchin on behalf of the President. There is no legitimate reason that these bills would be vetoed, and my expectation is that they will not be vetoed, so we will pass them through the House. Hopefully, the Senate will pass them in the next 72 hours and send them to the President and he will sign these bills.

All of us ought to be proud of the fact that we got that done by the end of the calendar year.

Again, let me stress, my objective will be, next year, to get that done by the end of the fiscal year. I can't remember when we last did that, but I will tell all of my colleagues that that will be my intent to set that as an objective as it was to subject December 20 as the deadline for getting these bills done.

I strongly urge the President to sign these bills. Federal employees in my district and in every congressional district in the country deserve better than to be told to go home without their paychecks.

Madam Speaker, 800,000 people who work for us--we are the board of directors--we told 400,000 of them: You are not critical. Go home. Stay there. You can't come to work legally even if you wanted to.

And to 400,000, we said: No, you are critical. Come to work, but, by the way, we are not going to pay you.

Now, they believed and we did, in fact, pay them retroactively, but that ought not to be the way you operate any small, medium, or large business, much less one of the largest enterprises on the face of the Earth--I guess, the largest enterprise.

So I hope all of my colleagues, Democrats and Republicans, will join me in voting for these appropriations bills, these 12 bills, quite frankly, the only bills that have to pass. There are a lot of other bills that ought to pass from a policy perspective, but the government doesn't shut down if they don't pass, whether it is a tax bill, an environmental bill, whatever bill.

Let's send a resounding message of support to make it clear that this is the bipartisan path forward to avoid a shutdown and do our jobs for the American people.

Again, I congratulate the chair; I congratulate the ranking member; and I am so pleased that they are together. I join them in asking every Member to vote for these bills. It is our job. It is our responsibility. It is our duty.

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