Providing for Adoption of H. Res. Establishing A Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis

Floor Speech

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

I want to thank my good friend, Mr. McGovern, the distinguished chairman of the House Rules Committee, for yielding me the customary 30 minutes.

Madam Speaker, let me quickly respond to my friend's mention about the group that will work on reopening Congress. I look forward to working with my friend and our colleagues on that particular issue.

I do want to point out, it is important to note, last night we actually did function as a committee under the chairman's leadership, and we got our work done. We are on the floor right now getting our work done. The executive branch is in Washington, D.C., right now getting its work done.

The President and the Vice President aren't hunkered down in Cheyenne Mountain. They are in the West Wing working every day. The Joint Chiefs of Staff are in the Pentagon, working every day. Every Cabinet member is working every day.

I just say that to note that other people are able to get their jobs done with appropriate changes and appropriate precautions, so I rule nothing in or out.

I look forward to listening to my colleague, but I do think we are capable of working in the House of Representatives, and I will be extraordinarily cautious about giving up procedures and precedents that are 230-plus years old.

Madam Speaker, we are here today to consider a rule that creates Speaker Pelosi's proposed select committee on the coronavirus pandemic. Earlier this month, Speaker Pelosi announced that she would create this select committee, conveniently ignoring that any such select committee must be established through the Rules Committee and, ultimately, through a vote on the House floor.

Yesterday, the Rules Committee met on extremely short notice to, essentially, rubberstamp the Speaker's action. This was particularly egregious considering that, up until right before we met, we had absolutely no details on the proposal.

In the last month, the Speaker gave the minority no notice of her plans, no indication of her rationale or vision, and was radio silent since her announcement, except for the occasional media mention. In fact, we did not even know we were meeting on this item until the afternoon of the hearing. That is hardly the way to operate on something the Speaker purportedly wants to do in a bipartisan fashion.

Perhaps even more problematic, Madam Speaker, is that I am not sure what the end goal of such committee will be. Speaker Pelosi claims that the proposed select committee will examine all aspects of the Federal response to the coronavirus pandemic and will provide oversight for Federal dollars being spent in response.

But Congress already has significant oversight tools at our disposal. The CARES Act itself established a five-member Congressional Oversight Commission specifically for that problem. That Commission is in addition to Congress' other oversight tools, which include the House Committee on Oversight and Reform and the oversight subcommittees that exist on most other permanent House committees.

If we already have a separate Oversight Commission specifically for the CARES Act and we already have a separate Oversight and Reform Committee and each committee already has separate oversight committees, what, then, is the actual purpose of the proposed select committee?

It is entirely plausible for one to conclude that this new select committee will simply turn into yet another partisan witch hunt aimed at damaging the President.

There may be a time in the future when it makes sense to establish a commission, like the 9/11 Commission, to review the COVID-19 pandemic and the government response. I actually support doing that at an appropriate time. But such a commission needs to be truly bipartisan and devoted to what happened and what we can learn from it to improve government responses for the future. This select committee doesn't meet that test.

Before I reserve my time, later today, the House will be voting on the Paycheck Protection Program and Health Care Enhancement Act. This bipartisan bill is the next step and follow-up to the CARES Act, which Congress passed a few weeks ago.

Today's bill includes $310 billion for the Paycheck Protection Program, a critical program for protecting small businesses and their employees. It also includes $75 billion for hospitals on the front line of the coronavirus pandemic and a further $25 billion for coronavirus testing.

Refilling the Paycheck Protection Program account will help countless small businesses and their employees across the country, including hundreds in my district. Frankly, refilling this important account could not come soon enough. It should have happened a week ago. But I am fully supportive of this important bill, and I look forward to voting in favor of it later today.

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Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I want to thank the Speaker for her kind and thoughtful remarks.

I also want to acknowledge--I am going to follow her example. I think we should keep our mask on when we are doing our normal business but take them off when we are speaking. And thank you for setting that example, Madam Speaker.

With that, I would like to yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Arizona (Mrs. Lesko).

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Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Burgess), my good friend and distinguished member of both the Rules Committee and the Energy and Commerce Committee.

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Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Jordan), my good friend and a distinguished Member.

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Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Comer), my good friend and a distinguished gentleman.

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Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Ferguson), my good friend and the distinguished chief deputy whip of the Republican Conference.

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Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Washington (Mrs. Rodgers), my good friend and a distinguished member of the Energy and Commerce Committee.

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Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Hice), my good friend.

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Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume for a quick response to my friend.

I recall that we requested oversight committees for TARP. That was not allowed by then-Speaker Pelosi. We requested oversight committees for the stimulus package in 2009. That, too, was not agreed to by Speaker Pelosi. So we find this new need for oversight refreshing, but somewhat questionable.

Madam Speaker, I also remind my friend, there are eight existing committees, all of which, by the way, the Democrats control, all of which they chair.

We have confidence in the eight existing committees to do their job. We don't see the need for a ninth.

Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. McClintock), my great friend.

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Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert), my very good friend.

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Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I want to begin by thanking my friend and the Rules Committee as a committee and the staff. We met last night. Obviously, we are all meeting now at an extraordinary time, a very difficult time.

I was very proud of our committee last night, particularly our chairman and our staff for reopening and functioning and producing a contentious item, but a worthy item, to discuss here today. So thank you to Mr. Chairman for his leadership, and I thank our staff and thank our fellow members of the committee.

And I want to thank the body, including the Speaker. We are here today functioning. Obviously, we are taking precautions. Obviously, we are doing things differently. We are a little bit out of our comfort zone as a body. This isn't the way we normally work. But the point is we are here in Washington, D.C., and we are working.

While we disagree very strongly over this particular piece of legislation, later today we will vote in overwhelming bipartisan numbers for another relief package, Madam Speaker, for the American people.

That is the fourth time in a row that we have done it, and we have done it without partisanship. That doesn't mean there wasn't hard bargaining. It doesn't mean that everybody got everything they wanted in the package. Quite the opposite. Everybody gave up some things that they wanted. But at the end of the day, we did come together.

Now, personally, I wish we would have put money earlier in the Paycheck Protection Program, but I certainly don't begrudge the additional money for hospitals and testing. So, hopefully, we can avoid that and keep programs that are working going, fine-tune them where we must.

There are certainly some changes that could be made. But I think, on balance, we ought to look back and say, at a time of great crisis, Congress has continued to function and has come together in a bipartisan manner and has done important work on behalf of the American people.

We have a lot more important work to do. There are many, many challenges that are going to confront us. Secretary Mnuchin sometimes calls the response to coronavirus a baseball game with nine innings. And I suspect that we are completing the fourth inning today, Madam Speaker, with the ultimate passage of the additional resources for the CARES Act.

Again, while we disagree on this one--I want to talk about that in a second--we agree on the most important act of the day, which is getting relief out the door to the American people and sustaining our economy under a time of great stress, helping our healthcare workers who are on the front line, trying to make sure we have the robust testing that is necessary so our Governors can make good decisions when they grapple with the tough issue of how they are to reopen their respective States.

We think, Madam Speaker, the particular item we are considering this morning is simply unnecessary. We have eight oversight committees, all of which, I remind my friends, they control. They are the majority in this body. That is appropriate. They are their oversight committees.

Creating another one we just think is, at a minimum, superfluous; and, frankly, history has taught us it is more apt to be a weapon, in our view, used to attack the President of the United States relentlessly during an election year. I would love to be wrong about that. As my friend Mr. Ferguson said he would be the first to apologize, I will be happy to apologize, too, if I am wrong.

But, even if that were not the case, I would question the need for an additional committee. I simply don't see any need for that. We have committees that do this. We have committees that have a lot of experience in doing this. And, frankly, we have committees that have done it in a pretty bipartisan way in the past. So I would hope we would rely on those committees.

With that, Madam Speaker, I again thank my friend for the debate and thank his side for the spirited participation, but I urge rejection of this particular measure, and I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the rule.

Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

The yeas and nays were ordered.

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