Providing for Consideration of H.R. Further Extending Government Funding Act; and for Other Purposes

Floor Speech

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Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Torres), my good friend and not only fellow member of the Rules Committee, but fellow appropriator, for yielding me the customary 30 minutes, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, today's rule covers one item, a continuing resolution to fund the government and keep it open and operating through February 18, 2022.

While I am grateful that we are taking steps to avoid a government shutdown, I am disappointed by the solution before us, yet another short-term funding bill with full-year funding negotiations no closer than they were a few months ago or a few weeks ago.

Mr. Speaker, today's resolution is the second continuing resolution we have had to pass to cover fiscal year 2022. Sadly, I expect it will not be the last. This state of affairs was absolutely avoidable and reflects poorly on the Democratic leadership.

I have often said that government funding is the most fundamental responsibility of Congress. Unfortunately, we are nowhere close to a full-year appropriation funding deal. We are no closer to an agreement today than the last time we passed a continuing resolution in September. The reality is that the reason we are having to consider another continuing resolution today is because of the majority's insistence on focusing on partisan priorities rather than on the critical business of governing the nation.

For months, the majority's focus has not been anywhere near where it should have been. Instead of reaching a full-year deal on government funding or even a top-line agreement on funding levels, the majority has insisted on working on other partisan matters.

Since the passage of the last stop-gap funding measure, House Democrats have focused solely on their massive reconciliation bill, month after month, focused on enshrining partisan policies into law. These efforts may satisfy their progressive base, but they fail the American people as a whole.

The majority currently controls the House, the Senate, and the Presidency, and if they can swing the votes, they can pass whatever they want into law. But with that ability also comes a grave responsibility, a responsibility to govern the country. Unfortunately, the majority has been abandoning that responsibility.

Mr. Speaker, October 1 marked the beginning of fiscal year 2022. By rights, the House and the Senate should have both passed our standard 12 appropriations bills through both Chambers of Congress and into law by that date. But since we did not, a continuing resolution was necessary.

Now we are on the second continuing resolution of this fiscal year, and in all likelihood, a probable third one is coming in February, unless my friends on the other side actually start negotiating in earnest. At this point, we are unfortunately no closer to passing these 12 bills or an omnibus spending bill than we were back on October 1.

This is truly a failure to govern. While the majority focuses on a push to make the government bigger and bigger, they are failing to fund the government which already exists today.

What happens as a result? We move from continuing resolution to continuing resolution, getting no closer to a final spending deal. Not involving Republicans until the very last minute and just expecting us to indefinitely support CR after CR is no way to govern, and frankly, the failure to have any conversations about how to come to an agreement on a full-year appropriations bill is indefensible.

While I am sure former President Trump will be pleased to know his last budget continues on almost a year after he left office, there is real work that can and should be done.

But what is perhaps the most frustrating has been the way in which the majority has bungled reaching a relatively simple deal on this particular continuing resolution. Knowing full well that this Friday's deadline was coming up, the majority instead dithered for months on their reconciliation package.

This week, finally acknowledging that real discussions needed to be had with Republicans, the majority instead continued to twiddle their thumbs. Indeed, Republicans in the House were completely shut out of this process, leaving us all in the dark about the nature of today's bill until this morning. Once again, the majority has chosen to go it alone rather than choosing to work across the aisle.

The majority is well aware that their current stance on a larger deal is dead on arrival in the Senate. As long as they continue to insist on omitting the historically bipartisan pro-life protections which have existed in law for more than 45 years, Republicans cannot and will not support bills that end these protections, and the Senate will not pass them.

But that is not the only point of disagreement. The majority has been unwilling to fund our Nation's defense at the levels agreed to by the authorizers and appropriators in the House and currently being debated in the Senate. These increased levels are necessary to ensure continued defense readiness worldwide, especially given the ongoing tensions in places like Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Afghanistan, and the Taiwan Strait.

But instead of governing and seeking to address these challenges, the majority is pandering to the most extreme elements of their Caucus, trying desperately to pass bills that lower defense spending levels and omitting key bipartisan pro-life protections from appropriations bills. And instead of governing, the majority holds the American people hostage under the threat of a government shutdown, dragging the country from one self-inflicted crisis to another.

Mr. Speaker, the sooner the majority gets serious about reaching a full-year deal, the better for the country. There are real, damaging consequences to the failure to pass full-year appropriations bills, both at home and abroad, and the sooner the majority brings its attention back to the critical business of governing the country, the better off we all will be.

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

If we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment on the rule to immediately bring up H.R. 6056, the Parents Bill of Rights Act.

Mr. Speaker, education is one of the most important issues that we face today. Determining how our children will be educated determines the future fate of our Nation.

Unfortunately, many school districts have been ignoring the wishes of parents or, worse, telling parents they cannot play a role in their child's education.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe made Democrats' position on education clear when he said: ``I don't think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.'' I couldn't disagree with him more, and thankfully, neither could Virginia voters.

Instead, H.R. 6056, developed by Education and Labor Committee Republicans, would enshrine a list of rights into law to make clear to parents what their rights are and clear to schools what their duties to parents are.

These rights include the right to know what their children are being taught, the right of parents to be heard, and the right to protect their child's privacy.

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Mr. COLE. Letlow), the sponsor of H.R. 6056 and a member of the Education and Labor Committee.
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Mr. COLE. Foxx), my very good friend and the ranking member of the Committee on Education and Labor, for further explanation on the previous question.

Mr. Speaker, the bill in front of us, in some ways, is a simple bill. It is a continuing resolution. It goes for a certain amount of time. Sadly, it reflects the basic failure of this institution to focus on its job.

We have had more than a year to deal with what we should be dealing with, the passage of the budget. We extended--I actually voted for the extension--the last continuing resolution to provide time.

Now, my friends knew at the beginning of this process the number of things that they had to do. They knew if they took out the Hyde language and those protections that they would never get a deal. Yet, they did that anyway.

They did that without consultation. They did it in committee. They had the votes. They had every right to do it. They also knew at the end of the day they were going to have to have bipartisanship on appropriations bills. They will not pass in the Senate because of the filibuster. There is sufficient support on both sides of the aisle.

Every single Republican in this Chamber actually supported the reinsertion of the Hyde amendment in the legislative process, telling our friends: If you take this out, we are not going to be working with you until it is restored.

So far, we have not seen any effort to do that.

Mr. Speaker, my friends on the other side also put in lots of poison pills--again, lots of things that they knew Republicans would not accept. That is fine in a reconciliation package. They really don't need our votes. That is not true in an appropriations bill.

It is my understanding that both ranking members in both Chambers on the Committee on Appropriations said: Look, we are not sitting down to negotiate until the Hyde protections are back in.

They are historically bipartisan. They have been there 45 years. Most of my friends on the other side of the aisle have voted for them over and over and over again, whether they liked them or not.

Frankly, if you are going to have to get a bipartisan deal, when you put partisan pills in, you know you are going to have to take them out at some point. You might as well do it at the beginning of the session.

We also have had no engagement from either the administration or our friends on the other side about any spending limits whatsoever. What is our top-line number? Nobody has been willing to sit down and talk about that. Quite frankly, that is a problem.

Mr. Speaker, we probably ought to be looking at that, as we have done in previous years over multiple years going forward. We could also make adjustments if we are in a crisis. We have done that before. But we had a framework that we could operate under, and it has actually facilitated the appropriations. I would recommend to my friends that might be something they want to talk about with both sides.

But in the end, the deal here is not hard to see. The deal involves three simple things. There are lots of details, lots of other things to be negotiated.

First, defense spending is going to have to come up. That is not just Republicans telling you that. The Democratic-controlled House Committee on Armed Services and the Democratic-controlled Senate Committee on Armed Services both put in $25 billion more than in the President's base budget or in the bill that our friends passed out of committee but never brought to this floor because they don't have the votes to pass it. So that is one.

Number two, my friends, in the 12 bills that they have passed through the Committee on Appropriations--and I commend them for that--raised domestic spending by 17 or 18 percent. That number is going to have to come down. We can talk about how much, and we can talk about where, but it is way too much, and it is way out of balance.

And number three--and my friends were told this over and over and over again--if you take out the Hyde protections on life, there will be no Republican votes for your bill. Now, we can pass continuing resolution after continuing resolution. After all, that is Donald Trump's last negotiated budget, the budget you got when you had a Republican President, Republican Senate, and a Democratic House.

Mr. Speaker, quite frankly, many of my friends on my side of the aisle would prefer that. I would prefer a deal. I would prefer a more robust defense budget. I am willing to talk about some of my friends' domestic priorities--quite frankly, some of which I share and would support and have in the past. I am also, though, not prepared to yield on the Hyde amendment, and my friends know that.

Mr. Speaker, we know what a deal is: more defense; less domestic spending; removal of poison pills; restoration of historic, bipartisan protections on life. Do those things and we can have a deal, I think, pretty quickly. Stay where you are at and we will not have a deal, and we will be right back here in February, doing another continuing resolution.

The most basic responsibility of Congress is to fund the government. Unfortunately, we are no closer to a full- year spending deal that we truly need. My colleagues in the majority have wasted months focusing on other matters--notably, a wildly expensive and unrealistic reconciliation spending package--rather than doing the hard and essential work of governing the Nation. I urge my friends in the majority to rethink that course.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the previous question and ``no'' on the rule, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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