Providing for Consideration of Senate Amendment to House Amendment to Senate Amendment to H.R. Legislative Branch Appropriations Act, and Providing for Proceedings During the Period From August Through September 2022
Floor Speech
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Mr. RESCHENTHALER. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Madam Speaker, I thank the distinguished gentleman from New York (Mr. Morelle), my good friend, for yielding me the customary 30 minutes, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Madam Speaker, the rule before us today provides for consideration of the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022. After conference negotiations failed on a package to counter the malign actions of China, the Senate drafted this legislation to send billions of taxpayer dollars in the form of subsidies and tax credits to a single industry.
Democrats' reckless spending policies led to this record-high inflation that is crushing American families and small business. The government should not be spending hundreds of billions of dollars to provide subsidies benefiting one industry.
This legislation comes to the House just 1 day after Senate Democrats announced a deal to tax American manufacturers and energy producers, which will increase the cost to American families and worsen our supply chain crisis.
They also want to hire 87,000 new IRS agents, and let's be honest about this. Those agents will do nothing more than target American families and small businesses.
They also want to spend $369 billion on their radical, far-left, Green New Deal agenda. There can be no doubt that this latest iteration of Biden's build back broke agenda will cause inflation to skyrocket even further.
The Biden administration is deflecting on our Nation's recession. They are classifying Biden's economic crisis as a ``transition'' to slower growth. While they are doubling down on their disastrous policies, they are devastating everyday Americans.
It is time my colleagues across the aisle abandon their socialist pipe dream and actually work with Republicans to get our economy back on track.
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Mr. RESCHENTHALER. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Madam Speaker, I don't disagree that these chips are important to the U.S. economy and many manufacturers. What I take issue with is the fact that we are putting even more money, billions of dollars, into an economy that is already suffering from record-high inflation.
It is unsettled whether this will even make a difference. It can be argued that chips were already going to come back anyhow, and it is not just me saying it. I have an article right here from The Economist, not exactly a rightwing publication. It was published on 10 July of this year. ``When the chips are way down: After a turbocharged boom, are chipmakers in for a supersize bust?'' That is the headline.
It goes on, saying: ``Surging supply and softening demand are bringing the pandemic's superstar industry back to Earth.''
My question is: If this industry is already coming back, if it is already as important as we think it is, why do we need to inject billions of dollars into the economy that is just going to further the economic crisis we are already in?
I know my colleague from North Carolina was talking about how to spur research and development. I can tell you how to do it: You cut taxes. You cut regulations.
If you look at the TCJA, this was a huge win for U.S. research and investment: 25 percent higher than in the years prior, reaching an all- time high in 2019 of $584 billion and 3 percent of GDP.
If you want to stimulate the economy, you can do it by reducing taxes and reducing regulation, not by picking winners and losers.
To talk more about this point, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from the great State of Texas (Mr. Burgess), my good friend and fellow Rules Committee member.
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Mr. RESCHENTHALER. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Madam Speaker, just a point of clarification. This is just an authorization. We will still wait a year anyhow to appropriate these funds, so trying to act like we have a gun to our head right now and this is a do-or-die moment is completely illusory. Again, this is just an authorization.
Additionally, I agree with my friend from New York on two points. Number one, we have got to be competitive with China.
Number two, the semiconductor chips are important for the economy.
But the way to compete with China is not to emulate the policies of a Communist police state. The way to compete with China is to unleash the American economy, to get back to our Western roots of free-market capitalism. If we want to bring more businesses onshore, if we want to fix our supply chain crisis, we can start by reducing the burdensome regulations that are crippling American businesses. We can reduce our income tax and our corporate income tax to make us more competitive globally, and we can do something to make sure we have cheap, reliable, abundant energy resources, such as exploiting our natural gas reserves and perhaps investing in nuclear power.
But to sit here and say that we are going to compete with China by doing what the Chinese do and having some bureaucratic monster in D.C. pick winners and losers for a particular industry is not a winning proposition.
What will beat China and keep us competitive with China is getting back to what made this country great in the first place, and again that is free-market capitalism.
Let's talk about inflation because, again, this is going to put billions of dollars into the economy, which will make this situation worse. Americans are facing the highest inflation in over 40 years. This is literally the worst inflation in my lifetime. This morning we learned that GDP has decreased for a second quarter in a row.
Yet, the Treasury Secretary wants to downplay Biden's economic crisis by redefining recession, which for decades recession has been defined as two quarters of negative economic growth. Instead, Secretary Yellen and the leftists across the aisle want to play Orwellian and change the definition to ``a period of transition.'' Even the extreme liberal think tank, The Brookings Institution, acknowledged we are in a recession, but it seems, again, my colleagues across the aisle have forgotten basic economics.
House Republicans want to set the record straight. That is why if we defeat the previous question, I will personally offer an amendment to the rule to immediately consider House Resolution 1290, a resolution affirming the longstanding definition of a recession.
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Mr. RESCHENTHALER. Madam Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Schweikert), my good friend and the sponsor of this resolution, to explain the amendment.
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Mr. RESCHENTHALER. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Just to clarify, this is not an either/or choice here. If we defeat the previous question, we can consider the resolution of my good friend from Arizona to actually define recession, and then we can take up the underlying bill. Again, this is a false choice saying it is one or the other. We can do both.
People may ask, Why is it necessary to define recession? It is necessary because the party across the aisle are trying to redefine recession. But I shouldn't be surprised. Because remember, this is the same party that tried to tell us that women are now known as birthing people. It is the party that all during the summer of 2020 told us that violent rioting and looting was mostly peaceful protesting. Now they are trying to tell us that a recession, which has been defined for decades as two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth, that that is now called a transitionary period.
So it is an absolute necessity that we define recession so that we have clarity in language.
Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Rodney Davis), my good friend and the ranking member on the Committee on House Administration.
Mr. RODNEY DAVIS of Illinois. Madam Speaker, I thank my good friend Mr. Reschenthaler from Pennsylvania for yielding. He is right that it is disinformation. It is disinformation. We should defeat the previous question so that we can go back to what defined a recession and what has defined a recession for decades.
Democrats have to stop playing games, playing games with misinformation and disinformation. Now, we have got another game being played with this rule today.
This is a rule, as my good friend from New York talked about, that is going to allow a bill to come to the floor that has some very good bipartisan provisions. I think many Republicans would support a lot of the provisions in this CHIPS bill.
The problem is, why in the world does the majority have to continue to play games instead of actually working with us and doing anything in a bipartisan manner?
Tucked into this rule is a provision that will completely eviscerate the intent of a rule that was negotiated in a bipartisan way by Republicans and Democrats that if a Member of Congress was able to secure 290 cosponsors on a bill, he or she would have then been given the right, as a Member of this institution, to have that bill debated and voted on, on the floor of the House of Representatives.
I remember Democrats and Republicans standing up and touting this provision, that this is going to bring power back to every Member of Congress. Until today--until today when the Rules Committee decides to turn this provision off, to deny the 294 cosponsors of the Social Security Fairness Act that is in place because all 294 of us want fairness for our retired teachers, our retired firefighters, and our retired police officers. They are turning off this rule for one reason and one reason only, to not have a vote on the floor like they promised us they would do.
We followed their rules. And what did Democrats do? They changed the rules in the process.
Do you want Republicans to vote for legislation in a bipartisan way when you play games like this? Well, don't be surprised when there are a lot of noes popping up on the board today for a piece of legislation that I think a lot of Republicans would normally support.
It is games like this that hurt the retirees the most. Democrats for decades have promised retired teachers, firefighters, police officers, and other public employees--they promised those individuals that they would do something to fix these egregious provisions, the Government Pension Offset and the Windfall Elimination Provision in the Social Security Code.
This is their shot--this is your shot, Madam Speaker, to get the majority----
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Mr. RESCHENTHALER. Madam Speaker, I yield an additional 1 minute to the gentleman from Illinois.
Mr. RODNEY DAVIS of Illinois. Madam Speaker, this is the majority's shot to live up to the promises the Democrats have made for decades to those who have been begging for a solution. All you have got to do is take this rule back, remove this turn-off provision, allow the consensus calendar to continue as it was intended to continue when this rule change was negotiated.
If I was a bipartisan member of the Problem Solvers Caucus, I would be coming to the floor screaming. What I want to do is I want every single cosponsor of H.R. 82, the Social Security Fairness Act, to consider--all 293 others besides me--I want you to consider voting against this rule. Because if they can turn this off and they can change the rules midgame, then why celebrate a bipartisan success story that was put in place in 2019? Stop playing politics.
Madam Speaker, Members of the majority, quit playing games, vote down this rule, and change this provision.
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Mr. RESCHENTHALER. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Rodney Davis) for the purpose of a rebuttal.
Mr. RODNEY DAVIS of Illinois.
The sheer fact that this so-called turn-off provision is nonchalantly just used as--well, it wasn't part of the consensus process, but let's pound our chest and say we created the consensus calendar process to begin with, so we are great. Well, when you disrupt the consensus process, you are not great. You are actually changing the rules midgame.
Really, here is the kicker: There is talk about us having to come back to do a few votes while we are in the midst of August. The way this rule is written, those days won't even count toward the consensus calendar.
Rest assured, there is no other reason that the Democrats and the majority on the Committee on Rules are doing this than to stop the progress of actually addressing the Social Security Fairness Act.
We have 294 cosponsors. We played by the rules. Democrats changed the rules midgame. And you trust this majority to actually put a bill together that is going to stop China from dominating the chip production industry in the globe when they play games like this?
That is what the American people are sick and tired of. That is why that is an outgoing majority. That is why we are going to have a new majority. It is games like this that have to stop being played when you talk about bipartisanship, but you don't actually govern in a bipartisan way.
Today is another shining example of that. Again, 294 cosponsors. We play by your rules, we play by the majority's provisions, and you change the rules midgame. I certainly hope our umpires tonight at the Congressional Baseball Game are better at actually codifying the rules that exist.
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Mr. RESCHENTHALER. Madam Speaker, I am prepared to close, and I yield myself the balance of my time.
Madam Speaker, my good friend from New York was talking about jobs and the promise of more jobs with this act. We have heard this before. The American Rescue Plan. We sat here and debated that, and we were told by the leftists across the aisle that this was going to create 4 million new jobs. You know what didn't happen? We didn't create 4 million new jobs. And that is not me saying that. That is a study from the American Enterprise Institute, which found that the American Rescue Plan failed to create any of the 4 million new jobs that Big Government Democrats had promised.
While we are talking about stats and figures, let's put a real cost to the inflation and the pain that is being inflicted on the American people by injecting billions of dollars into the economy. So let's put real numbers on it. Inflation will cost the average American household more than $6,000 a year. That is so high that if you have had a constant salary for the last year, you have essentially worked for more than a month without pay.
So, let me ask this: If you are sitting here watching at home, could you take one paycheck from this year, one paycheck, and just throw it out the window? Probably not.
Now, if you are part of the coastal elite and the woke, yuppie, Zoom class that is the base of the Democratic Party, you might be able to afford that. You might just go to two Pilates classes a week instead of four. You may not take that second trip to Europe. You may scale back at Whole Foods. You have that luxury if you are part of the woke Democratic base. But if you are somebody in Pittsburgh who is a retired steel worker that is on a fixed income, this hurts you. You don't have that disposable income. If you are a natural gas driller in Oklahoma that has to drive to a drill site every day to actually produce something, you have to fill your tank with gas. You don't have the option to sit at home and pretend you are working on Zoom. If you are a woman that has to drive, for example, to a diner to work a shift, you don't have the luxury of not doing that. You have to bear the burden of the inflation; again, the inflation that is being caused by the radical left policies of the Democratic Party.
Yet, despite this real economic pain, Democrats continue to want to put billions of dollars in the economy, billions in corporate handouts. They want to undo Republican tax cuts and policies that actually led to the lowest unemployment rates we have had in 50 years.
So, rather than forcing Americans to pay for their radical socialist agenda, my colleagues across the aisle should use the time to work with Republicans on policies that American families will benefit from and allow American companies to actually compete in a global economy. And we can do that all simply by reducing regulation and reducing taxation. And how about we unleash our domestic energy supply?
So I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the previous question and ``no'' on the rule.
Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time
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Mr. RESCHENTHALER. Madam Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
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Mr. RESCHENTHALER. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
This will be a 5-minute vote.
The vote was taken by electronic device, and there were--yeas 216, nays 208, not voting 6, as follows: [Roll No. 403] YEAS--216 Adams Aguilar Allred Auchincloss Axne Barragan Bass Beatty Bera Beyer Bishop (GA) Blumenauer Blunt Rochester Bonamici Bourdeaux Bowman Boyle, Brendan F. Brown (MD) Brown (OH) Brownley Bush Bustos Butterfield Carbajal Cardenas Carson Carter (LA) Cartwright Case Casten Castor (FL) Castro (TX) Cherfilus-McCormick Chu Cicilline Clark (MA) Clarke (NY) Cleaver Clyburn Cohen Connolly Cooper Correa Costa Courtney Craig Crist Crow Cuellar Davids (KS) Davis, Danny K. Dean DeFazio DeGette DeLauro DelBene Demings DeSaulnier Deutch Dingell Doggett Doyle, Michael F. Escobar Eshoo Espaillat Evans Fletcher Foster Gallego Garamendi Garcia (IL) Garcia (TX) Gomez Gonzalez, Vicente Gottheimer Green, Al (TX) Grijalva Harder (CA) Hayes Higgins (NY) Himes Horsford Houlahan Hoyer Huffman Jackson Lee Jacobs (CA) Jayapal Jeffries Johnson (GA) Johnson (TX) Jones Kahele Kaptur Keating Kelly (IL) Kildee Kilmer Kim (NJ) Kind Kirkpatrick Krishnamoorthi Kuster Lamb Langevin Larsen (WA) Larson (CT) Lawrence Lawson (FL) Lee (CA) Lee (NV) Leger Fernandez Levin (CA) Levin (MI) Lieu Lofgren Lowenthal Luria Lynch Malinowski Maloney, Carolyn B. Maloney, Sean Manning Matsui McBath McCollum McEachin McGovern McNerney Meeks Meng Mfume Moore (WI) Morelle Moulton Mrvan Murphy (FL) Nadler Napolitano Neal Neguse Newman Norcross O'Halleran Ocasio-Cortez Omar Pallone Panetta Pappas Pascrell Payne Perlmutter Peters Phillips Pingree Pocan Porter Pressley Price (NC) Quigley Raskin Rice (NY) Ross Roybal-Allard Ruiz Ruppersberger Rush Ryan Sanchez Sarbanes Scanlon Schakowsky Schiff Schneider Schrader Schrier Scott (VA) Scott, David Sewell Sherman Sherrill Sires Slotkin Smith (WA) Soto Spanberger Speier Stansbury Stanton Stevens Strickland Suozzi Swalwell Takano Thompson (CA) Thompson (MS) Titus Tlaib Tonko Torres (CA) Torres (NY) Trahan Trone Underwood Vargas Veasey Velazquez Wasserman Schultz Waters Watson Coleman Welch Wexton Wild Williams (GA) Wilson (FL) Yarmuth NAYS--208 Allen Amodei Armstrong Arrington Babin Bacon Baird Balderson Banks Barr Bentz Bergman Bice (OK) Biggs Bilirakis Bishop (NC) Boebert Bost Brady Brooks Buchanan Buck Bucshon Budd Burchett Burgess Calvert Cammack Carey Carl Carter (GA) Carter (TX) Cawthorn Chabot Cheney Cline Cloud Clyde Cole Comer Conway Crawford Crenshaw Davidson Davis, Rodney DesJarlais Diaz-Balart Donalds Duncan Dunn Ellzey Emmer Estes Fallon Feenstra Ferguson Fischbach Fitzgerald Fitzpatrick Fleischmann Flood Flores Foxx Franklin, C. Scott Fulcher Gaetz Gallagher Garbarino Garcia (CA) Gibbs Gimenez Gohmert Golden Gonzales, Tony Gonzalez (OH) Good (VA) Gooden (TX) Gosar Granger Graves (LA) Graves (MO) Green (TN) Greene (GA) Griffith Grothman Guest Guthrie Harris Harshbarger Hern Herrell Herrera Beutler Hice (GA) Higgins (LA) Hill Hinson Hollingsworth Hudson Huizenga Issa Jackson Jacobs (NY) Johnson (LA) Johnson (OH) Johnson (SD) Jordan Joyce (OH) Joyce (PA) Katko Keller Kelly (MS) Kelly (PA) Kim (CA) Kustoff LaHood LaMalfa Lamborn Latta LaTurner Lesko Letlow Long Loudermilk Lucas Luetkemeyer Mace Malliotakis Mann Massie Mast McCarthy McCaul McClain McClintock McHenry McKinley Meijer Meuser Miller (IL) Miller (WV) Miller-Meeks Moolenaar Mooney Moore (AL) Moore (UT) Mullin Murphy (NC) Nehls Newhouse Norman Obernolte Owens Palazzo Palmer Pence Perry Pfluger Posey Reschenthaler Rice (SC) Rodgers (WA) Rogers (AL) Rogers (KY) Rose Rosendale Rouzer Roy Rutherford Salazar Scalise Schweikert Scott, Austin Sessions Simpson Smith (MO) Smith (NE) Smith (NJ) Smucker Spartz Stauber Steel Stefanik Steil Steube Stewart Taylor Tenney Thompson (PA) Tiffany Timmons Turner Upton Valadao Van Drew Van Duyne Wagner Walberg Walorski Waltz Weber (TX) Webster (FL) Wenstrup Westerman Williams (TX) Wilson (SC) Wittman Womack Zeldin NOT VOTING--6 Aderholt Curtis Frankel, Lois Hartzler Khanna Kinzinger
So the resolution was agreed to.
The result of the vote was announced as above recorded.
A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.
Stated for:
Ms. LOIS FRANKEL of Florida. Mr. Speaker, had I been present, I would have voted ``yea'' on rollcall No. 403. Members Recorded Pursuant to House Resolution 8, 117th Congress Babin (Weber (TX)) Bass (Neguse) Blumenauer (Beyer) Bourdeaux (Correa) Boyle, Brendan F. (Neguse) Bush (Bowman) Carter (LA) (Neguse) Carter (TX) (Weber (TX)) Cherfilus-McCormick (Neguse) Crist (Wasserman Schultz) DeSaulnier (Beyer) Evans (Beyer) Gosar (Gaetz) Green (TN) (Fleischmann) Guthrie (Barr) Huffman (Neguse) Jones (Beyer) Joyce (PA) (Keller) Kahele (Correa) Kirkpatrick (Pallone) Levin (MI) (Correa) McBath (Bishop (GA)) McNerney (Pallone) Meeks (Velazquez) Moore (WI) (Beyer) Rice (SC) (Meijer) Ruppersberger (Trone) Rush (Bishop (GA)) Sires (Pallone) Stevens (Kuster) Stewart (Crawford) Taylor (Weber (TX)) Thompson (CA) (Beyer) Vargas (Correa) Walorski (Banks) Williams (GA) (Neguse) Wilson (SC) (Norman)
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