Providing for Consideration of Senate Amendment to H.R. United States-Mexico Economic Partnership Act; Providing for Disposition of Senate Amendment to H.R. Purple Book Continuity Act of and for Other Purposes
Floor Speech
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Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Shalala), my good friend, for yielding me the customary 30 minutes.
Madam Speaker, we are here today to consider a rule that provides for consideration of a package of items that are of great importance to the country.
The House amendment to the Senate amendment to H.R. 133 includes not only a bipartisan omnibus appropriations bill covering the remainder of fiscal year 2021, but also a $900 billion bipartisan pandemic relief package to provide help to millions of Americans who have suffered as a result of the pandemic.
It also includes a bipartisan compromise addressing surprise medical bills, something that has been a priority for both parties.
Finally, it includes a number of end-of-the-year tax and healthcare- related extenders that are critical to those they serve, especially during a pandemic.
While I know that we are all thrilled to be here today to bring these items to the floor, I am frustrated that it has taken this long to reach this deal, and I know the American people share that frustration.
The reality is that we could have had this deal months ago on a pandemic relief package, and we could have had this deal. Individual components could have been passed across the floor in July of this year. Instead, Americans were left to suffer. All the while, jobs were being lost and businesses being closed; all the while, small businesses across the country were forced to make difficult decisions about which employees to keep and which staff to let go; all the while, a deal was available here in Congress that could have extended unemployment insurance and extended the Paycheck Protection Program, a program which Democrats in the House rejected extending 41 times.
These two key backstops could have helped millions of Americans. Instead, Democrats chose to play politics and chose not to take yes for an answer. But now that the election is over and the end of the year is at hand, suddenly there is room for a deal, a very bipartisan deal that was on the table all along and that could have been passed into law months ago.
Madam Speaker, for today, we will look past that. Though this overall bill is massive, I think it is easiest to digest if you consider it in three separate sections:
Section 1 is the bipartisan, bicameral omnibus appropriations bill, which will include our appropriations work for fiscal year 2021. The appropriations process works best when it is bipartisan, and with today's bill, we have accomplished that end.
Once we step past the partisanship, we are able to work together and reach a deal that will fully fund the government for the fiscal year. Our constituents deserve no less.
Madam Speaker, the deal before us covers all 12 spending bills and it ensures that taxpayer dollars will go where they are needed most. In particular, I am pleased that this bill includes key provisions supporting our response to the pandemic, like $20 billion for coronavirus vaccines, an increase in funding for the National Institutes of Health, and a further $3 billion to rebuild the Strategic National Stockpile of medical supplies and personal protective equipment. It fully funds our defense needs and ensures a 3 percent pay raise for all military personnel. It continues to fund needed improvements for border security. And, perhaps most importantly, it maintains all pro-life protections, as has been the case in previous years. And the harmful, partisan riders that appeared in Democratic partisan appropriations bills from earlier this year have been removed.
Madam Speaker, I think it is worth noting that this bill came about as a result of regular order. The Committee on Appropriations produced each of the 12 appropriations bills from a regular committee process. Members were given the opportunity to amend, question, and fully examine most of the bills on the floor, and the House and Senate met together to conference the bills into a final product. This demonstrates how powerful and effective regular order can be.
Madam Speaker, the second piece of this bill is the $900 billion pandemic relief package. For all of 2020, Americans--and indeed the world--have lived under the specter of this pandemic. It has touched every American's life in some way or another, but many Americans have been hit harder than others.
Millions have caught this disease, and hundreds of thousands have died. Millions more have lost their jobs, and millions have seen their wages or earnings cut. This has been a crisis that touches us on so many levels. A health crisis is bad enough, but adding an economic crisis on top of it makes this year the toughest that many of us can remember.
The coronavirus relief package before us will do several things to ease the burden on all Americans. It will extend the Paycheck Protection Program and will ensure that many small businesses will be able to keep their employees on the payroll. It will extend expanded unemployment insurance, thus providing more funds to unemployed workers to help make them closer to whole. And it will provide economic impact payments of $600 to almost every American, except those with high incomes.
Though I expect this may not be the last time Congress responds to the COVID pandemic, I hope that in the future the Speaker will embark on a different path of resolution. A relief package like this one may not have been everything that both parties wanted, but a compromise deal that provides real help to American workers is better than no deal at all. And that compromise could have and should have been reached months ago. I hope the majority will remember that going forward.
Madam Speaker, the third section of today's package is a number of miscellaneous bipartisan items, including a bill intended to address the problems of surprise medical billing. This is a problem that is known far too well by many Americans.
You see a doctor or you visit an emergency room, and only learn after the fact that a medical professional you saw during your treatment is outside your insurance network. This can lead to a wildly expensive bill for the patient, who may not have had any choice in the matter.
The bipartisan bill before us today will help solve this problem. It will ensure that the patients will only be responsible for covering the portion not covered by their health insurance at in-network rates when they don't have the ability to choose an in-network doctor, like in emergency situations. The bill also will make pricing more open and transparent and will require insurers to notify patients in advance if they are going to receive out-of-network care.
These reforms will give patients and consumers more choice and will make sure that they are not subjected to massive, surprise bills, ones that patients frequently have not planned for.
Madam Speaker, I applaud my friends on the Committee on Ways and Means, the Committee on Energy and Commerce, and the Committee on Education and Labor for coming to this important compromise, and I look forward to supporting its passage in law.
Madam Speaker, finally, I take a moment to acknowledge my very dear friend, Representative Donna Shalala, who is managing her final rule on the floor today. I have always enjoyed my interactions with my friend and it has always been a pleasure serving with her on the Committee on Rules. She has been a helpful ally when we have agreed and a worthy opponent when we have not.
Much more importantly, she has always been, first and foremost, a public servant. She was a public servant before she arrived in Congress. I have no doubt she will continue to be a public servant when she leaves. We have all benefitted from her leadership at the Department of Health and Human Services during the Clinton years, from her many years as a leader in educational institutions, from her tireless participations on countless boards and commissions and committees, all of which were rendering important service to our country.
Madam Speaker, I am going to miss my friend on the Committee on Rules. This Congress is going to miss her, but I know the country is going to continue to have the benefit of her splendid service and insight.
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Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Arizona (Mrs. Lesko), my good friend and distinguished colleague on the Committee on Rules.
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Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Chabot), my very good friend and the distinguished ranking Republican member of the Small Business Committee.
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Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Burgess), my very good friend and a distinguished member of the Energy and Commerce Committee and the Rules Committee.
Mr. JOHNSON of South Dakota. Mr. Speaker, I think it was Winston Churchill who said you can always count on Americans to do the right thing after they have exhausted all other options.
You know, Congress looks that way to me from time to time. This is not the process or the timeline or the structure I have argued for. This COVID-19 package doesn't have all the provisions that I have asked for. It is clearly not a perfect bill.
Yet, it is the targeted and focused relief that our country needs. It follows the framework that a bipartisan group of eight Senators and eight House Members, including myself, unveiled a few weeks ago.
We knew then that it was not a perfect bill, but we knew it was the way forward. I am proud of the role that I have played and that the Problem Solvers Caucus has played in breaking this gridlock. I am proud of the role that we have played in making sure that our economy and our schools can stay open and that our testing and our vaccine deployment can be ramped up.
Madam Speaker, this has been a messy week, but this is a good day for America.
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Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Barr).
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Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Madam Speaker, I just want to quickly respond to my friend from California. It is just, frankly, not accurate to say Republicans did nothing.
The reality is Democrats in the Senate did nothing. They were offered a bill about the size of this bill. Actually, it was a little bit larger--as I recall, it was about a trillion dollars--than this bill, and they wouldn't allow it to come to the floor to be heard.
This deal has been on the table since July. My friends chose to hold it up, for whatever reason--be it political or in hopes of getting a better deal--and they prolonged the suffering of the American people, and I regret that.
But we are here today. We have worked together. We have got all the appropriations bills done. I am proud of that. We have got a good relief package here. I am proud of that. We have taken care of some important issues.
I see my friend, the chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means. He had a lot to do with that, on surprise medical billing. That is a bipartisan accomplishment and achievement.
So let's build on the things that we have and see what we need to do in the next Congress.
But, again, for one side to point fingers at the other here is just simply, in my view, not appropriate.
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Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Madam Speaker, I beg to differ with my good friend from Massachusetts. It wasn't Republicans who did nothing; it was Democrats who did nothing.
The Senate actually offered a trillion-dollar package in July. We are here approving a $900 billion package today.
The President of the United States offered a $1.8 trillion package at one point. We are approving a $900 billion package today.
Now, we may do more later, but the reality is my friends drug this out all summer long. We could have had a package very similar to what we had many months ago. That would have helped unemployed Americans. It would have helped Americans with small businesses. It would have reassured the economy. My friends chose not to do that.
I am glad, since the election, they have decided to bargain in good faith. We have bargained in good faith. We have what we think is a good product in front of us. But if we want to write history, we have a considerably different version of it than has been portrayed on the floor here today, put in front of the American people.
Madam Speaker, I also just want to add for the record that, while we are busy bashing the President, I haven't heard too many people thank the President of the United States for Operation Warp Speed, unprecedented triumphs to actually deliver a vaccine in less than a year. All the critics said, not possible. The President deserves credit for that, and so does his administration.
That is something that all of us, regardless of party and partisanship, should be proud of; and, frankly, it is something we owe the President a great deal of gratitude for.
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Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
I want to agree with the distinguished gentlewoman from Florida, my good friend, about the investments in NIH. I want to remind her that it was Newt Gingrich and John Porter who doubled the NIH during the Clinton years, who actually put more money in there than the administration requested.
I will also remind my good friend that when I was chairman, we put more money in than the Obama administration requested; and we continued to do more money than the Trump administration requested, which actually requested some cuts.
So the reality is that Congress--on a bipartisan basis, I must say, because I had the support of my ranking member, now our distinguished chairwoman of the Labor, Health, and Human Services Subcommittee, Rosa DeLauro, in those decisions--Congress, but particularly Republicans, have made those investments over the years.
And I think the country--I agree with my friend--has reaped enormous benefits from that. I hope we continue down that road in the next Congress with the next administration. I am looking forward to that possibility. But I simply wanted to let the record reflect what the contribution from our side of the aisle has been in that regard.
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Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
I want to remind my friends who engage in revisionist history, we haven't held anything up. The Senate put a $1 trillion offer on the table back in July. My friends didn't think that was good enough. The President put a $1.8 trillion deal on the table. They didn't think that was good enough.
We are here now with a bipartisan, good bill. We may need to do more later. We will see. But the reality is our friends held unrealistic positions with a lot of policy riders on them that they knew were never going to be accepted, and they did that throughout the election season.
Fine. The election is over. All of a sudden we are back and we are able to compromise after the election. It would have been better for the American people had we done that back in July. My friends chose a different path, but I am glad they have changed their mind since the election. I am glad we have something in front of us that is genuinely bipartisan. We will pass it on a bipartisan basis today.
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Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.
Madam Speaker, I begin by saying what a privilege it has been to serve with my good friend from Florida these last 2 years, not only in Congress, but most especially on the Rules Committee. And what a particular pleasure it is for me to have the opportunity to manage and work with her on her very last rule on the floor.
In closing, Madam Speaker, I thank all my colleagues for their consideration of this bipartisan package. Though it has taken us a long time to get to this particular point, it is a real bipartisan compromise. And I think, at the end of the day, it will pass with a substantial bipartisan vote and it will benefit every American.
The package today will fully fund the government through September 30th of 2021, and will ensure that taxpayer dollars are spent where they are needed most. I think that is an important point because, lost in all of this, the appropriations process has actually done what it was supposed to do.
I compliment my friends on the Appropriations Committee; particularly our distinguished chair, Mrs. Lowey, and our distinguished ranking member, Ms. Granger. They brought all 12 bills through the committee. They got a full committee process. They were reported out of committee. Ten of those bills came to the floor. On the floor, those bills got full consideration. We sat and bargained with our friends in the United States Senate, and now I have brought these bills back. That is the way Congress ought to work. I am proud the Appropriations Committee worked that way.
We also will be taking up in this particular bill a pandemic relief bill, ensuring extensions for programs like unemployment insurance and the Paycheck Protection Program, which will protect millions of Americans who have lost their jobs and lost income as a result of this pandemic.
The package is a very important package. And we have some disagreements on it. We have had some back and forth on it in the last several months, but still, at the end of the day, we have come together, we have done something important, and I think we have set the stage for perhaps something later in the next Congress. We will see. But this is an important relief measure for the American people, and I certainly urge all my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support it.
Finally, the package also includes a bipartisan compromise on surprise medical billing and a number of issues to provide targeted tax relief to people who have suffered through the coronavirus crisis and particular industries. I think that is appropriate. I thank my colleagues on both sides of the aisle and multiple committees that have been part of that particular compromise.
Madam Speaker, it is often said on this floor that it is not a perfect bill, but a $900 billion relief package that is badly needed to the American people close to Christmas Eve is something that every Member on this floor ought to be proud of, and I hope every Member in this Chamber will see fit to support.
Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the rule and, most importantly, to vote ``yes'' on the underlying measure.
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.
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