Providing for Consideration of H.R. Limit, Save, Grow Act of and Providing for Consideration of H.J. Res. Disapproving the Rule Submitted By the Department of Commerce Relating to ``Procedures Covering Suspension of Liquidation, Duties and Estimated Duties in Accord with Presidential Proclamation
Floor Speech
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Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 327 and ask for its immediate consideration.
The Clerk read the resolution, as follows: H. Res. 327
Resolved, That upon adoption of this resolution it shall be in order to consider in the House the bill (H.R. 2811) to provide for a responsible increase to the debt ceiling, and for other purposes. All points of order against consideration of the bill are waived. The amendment printed in the report of the Committee on Rules accompanying this resolution shall be considered as adopted. The bill, as amended, shall be considered as read. All points of order against provisions in the bill, as amended, are waived. The previous question shall be considered as ordered on the bill, as amended, and on any further amendment thereto, to final passage without intervening motion except: (1) two hours of debate equally divided among and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on the Budget or their respective designees and the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on Ways and Means or their respective designees; and (2) one motion to recommit.
Sec. 2. Upon adoption of this resolution it shall be in order to consider in the House the joint resolution (H.J. Res. 39) disapproving the rule submitted by the Department of Commerce relating to ``Procedures Covering Suspension of Liquidation, Duties and Estimated Duties in Accord With Presidential Proclamation 10414''. All points of order against consideration of the joint resolution are waived. The joint resolution shall be considered as read. All points of order against provisions in the joint resolution are waived. The previous question shall be considered as ordered on the joint resolution and on any amendment thereto to final passage without intervening motion except: (1) one hour of debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on Ways and Means or their respective designees; and (2) one motion to recommit.
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Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, for purposes of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to my good friend, the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern), the distinguished ranking member of the Rules Committee, pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, during consideration of this resolution, all time is yielded for the purposes of debate only. General Leave
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Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, last night, the Rules Committee met and met and met and reported out a rule providing for the consideration of H.R. 2811, the Limit, Save, Grow Act of 2023, and H.J. Res. 39, a joint resolution of disapproval that ends President Biden's rule protecting Chinese solar manufacturers that are illegally violating U.S. trade law.
The rule provides for consideration of H.R. 2811 under a closed rule. It provides 2 hours of general debate and one motion to recommit. The rule also provides for consideration of H.J. Res. 39 under a closed rule with 1 hour of general debate and one motion to recommit.
Mr. Speaker, earlier this year, the United States Government hit our statutory debt limit of $31.3 trillion. That is an astonishing number. It is over 120 percent of our annual gross domestic product.
This level of spending is simply unsustainable, and the American people know it. Three out of every four Americans support taking action on the national debt. They know that if we do nothing and keep moving forward as we have been doing, the result will be leaving a huge burden for our children and grandchildren; a pile of debt, a weak economy, and a broken currency.
You would think, given all that, the staggering reality, that President Biden and congressional Democrats would acknowledge the need to do something to address this problem. You would think they would be open to doing what we have done many, many times in the past: to couple needed fiscal reforms with an agreement to lift the debt ceiling. You would even think that President Biden, who himself personally negotiated several debt ceiling increases over the years, would be willing to sit down with us and talk.
Instead, we have heard none of this. No, we will not negotiate with you. No, we will not talk about the Federal budget. No, we won't look at commonsense reforms. No. No. No.
Instead, President Biden and congressional Democrats insist it is their way or the highway. There will be no reforms, no changes to Federal spending, not even clawing back the unspent pandemic relief funds that are no longer necessary.
With the passage of the Limit, Save, Grow Act, the House will stand with the American people who desperately want us to fix our national debt problem. That fix starts here in today's bill.
Mr. Speaker, our second item for today, H.J. Res. 39, is a joint resolution of disapproval of a Biden administration rule that would suspend import duties on solar panels made with components from the People's Republic of China.
Mr. Speaker, Communist China does not play by the same rules as the rest of the world. Chinese leadership will do whatever it takes to advance the Chinese Communist Party's interest to the detriment of the American economy.
China has been unfairly subsidizing the production of solar cells and modules and dumping them on the U.S. market at below cost. It should come as no surprise that China is also attempting to get around the existing import duties by routing their subsidized solar components through four countries: Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam.
Instead of holding them accountable for their actions, President Biden suspended the penalties for 2 years, presumably to appease climate activists who have no interest in America's job creators and manufacturers. If the House does not act, China's bad behavior will go unchallenged, and American solar manufacturers will continue to get a raw deal.
Mr. Speaker, we must stand up to Communist China. We must call out their inappropriate behavior on the global stage. When it is called for, we must protect American manufacturers against unfair competition. H.J. Res. 39 will accomplish all of these goals and will do so in a bipartisan manner.
Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting this rule and the underlying legislation.
I have great respect for my friend, Mr. McGovern, but, of course, most of the things he mentioned simply aren't in the bill.
What really happened last night is that we have been trying to get you guys to negotiate for weeks and for months. We are going to raise the debt ceiling, something we said we were going to do and do in the legislation, and here is our opening offer.
Where is yours? We don't have one. We don't have one from the President. We have a Democratic Senate that can't produce one. So, we are going to put the ball over and see what you guys are actually going to do with it.
I remind my friends on the other side of the aisle that the work requirements we are including in this legislation are, in fact, less strict than the ones that then-Senator Biden supported in the 1990s. We should be helping people attain self-sufficiency as opposed to having them simply depend on the Federal Government.
That doesn't seem like a radical idea. That seems like common sense to me, and I think most Americans anyplace in the country would support it.
Mr. Speaker, my friend is concerned about the Social Security Act. We have a bill on that, a bill very similar to what President Biden himself voted for when he was in the United States Senate, both the creation of a commission and its final results. I invite my friend to look at it. Perhaps he would join it, and it would be inherently bipartisan.
My friend made the point that inflation is a global phenomenon. I agree. It absolutely is.
Mr. Speaker, if you screw up the greatest economy in the world, then it has global consequences. That is exactly what my friends did.
Don't take my word for it. They were warned by Larry Summers, the Secretary of the Treasury for Bill Clinton, a distinguished economist. They were warned by Steve Rattner, who managed the auto industry under President Obama. They were warned by Jason Furman, who was the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to President Biden.
If my friends pass something as large as the American Rescue Plan, then we are going to have inflation within a year. We did.
If my friends would listen to their own economists, then we could have avoided this, and we might not have had to take the drastic action we are today.
Mr. VAN ORDEN. Mr. Speaker, my favorite part of this building is not the rotunda or Statuary Hall or even this Chamber. It is a simple quote painted above a door downstairs. It is, ``When tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of human civilization.'' It was written by Daniel Webster in 1840. It is just simply time for some more truth- telling.
It is disingenuous to say publicly that we are ``all of the above'' for American energy if we do not embrace biofuels.
Simultaneously, it is disingenuous to set policy that de facto abolishes petrochemicals and yet admits that we will be dependent on them for at least another decade. Both positions have been made in this Chamber.
I find this to be either duplicitous or foolish, and I choose to be neither.
Our first President, who overlooks this body, was clear about public policy and agriculture. ``It will not be doubted . . . agriculture is of primary importance. In proportion as nations advance in population and other circumstances of maturity this truth becomes more apparent, and renders the cultivation of the soil more and more an object of public patronage.''
This was written 9 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and when Washington says ``more and more'' he acknowledges that agriculture has always been an object of public patronage and must always be.
The initial writing of this bill did not acknowledge that. It did not stand with the farmers, and I will always stand with our farmers.
Early this morning, our Conference made great strides in recognizing our farmers by including elements of my amendment that protect our corn growers and biofuel industries.
With that said, if this final bill as returned from the Senate includes further provisions that do not show the proper respect for our farmers, our national security, or the future of nuclear energy, I will not vote for its passage. There will be no further negotiations from my office.
To be clear, I voted for Kevin McCarthy for Speaker because I believed that he was the person called at this moment to lead this Conference and this body, and I don't feel that my 15 votes were in error. I have full confidence that he will take the opportunity to keep his word to this body and to the American people, and this confidence was earned by his willingness to remove several devastating provisions from this bill.
I remind my friends, as Members of this body, we did not take an oath to the Republican Party or the Democratic Party, we didn't take an oath to the President. We all took the same oath to the Constitution. With this oath came a responsibility to the people that we represent.
In reference to this current discussion on the debt ceiling, our first President articulated this in a manner that for such a young country can only be described as timeless: ``No pecuniary consideration is more urgent than the regular redemption and discharge of the public debt. On none can delay be more injurious or an economy of time more valuable.''
By President Biden refusing to negotiate with this body, he is adding to a growing train of usurpations of the constitutional authority vested in us by the people that sent us here to represent them. This is no more appropriate now than it was when Thomas Jefferson wrote it.
It is our obligation to get Speaker McCarthy to the table. It is Speaker McCarthy's burden to get the President to a place that can both meet our collective obligations articulated by George Washington and to secure the future for both our progenitors and our progeny.
I will support this bill. I will vote in favor of it, and I encourage all my colleagues to join me in doing so.
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Mr. COLE. I did not blame all inflation on President Biden. He had a lot of help. He had a Democratic House and a Democratic Senate that worked with him to get there, so he certainly didn't do it on his own.
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Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Madam Speaker, in response to my friend's statement, we are certainly not trying to extort anything from anyone. Quite frankly, it is my Democratic friends who are trying to extract something from us that they can't get for themselves. If you believe a clean debt ceiling is the way to go, pass one in a Democratic Senate. You can't do it. The reality is there has to be a negotiation here. What we have said is: Hey, we are in good faith extending the debt ceiling; we are doing it in this bill. We have a lot of Members who have never voted to do that, who are actually doing it.
Here is our opening position in the negotiation. What is yours? We haven't heard that. It is just simply, well, give us what we want and pass the President's budget. If they genuinely want to talk, we are giving them the opportunity to actually do that.
I remind my friend, we look forward to discussion, but the first step is to raise the debt ceiling. That is what we are going to do here, then we will see what the Democrats do in the United States Senate in response. Then we can all go to conference and talk this thing out and hopefully come to a bipartisan solution.
The hysterics and theatrics might make good print. That is not the reality of the process here. We are operating within the spirit of the process. We hope our friends do the same.
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Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Madam Speaker, I think if you happen to be listening to the debate, you might get confused. It is as if we are going to impose our will on somebody.
The reality is the Democrats control the United States Senate. The Democratic President of the United States has a veto that he can sustain in either Chamber.
What we are saying is let's sit down and talk things through, and here is our opening position. That is all that is going on here.
We are not in a position here to do what my friends did last time, and that is both what they regret losing and fear might someday come to pass.
The last time my friends didn't have to negotiate 2 years ago, what did they do? An explosion of spending that generated the worst inflation in modern American history; the worst inflation in over 40 years.
Looking around this Chamber, I think I am probably the only one here old enough to remember it.
The reality is they took a crisis that was ending and used it to justify $1.9 trillion worth of spending that many of their own economists warned them would lead to inflation. They jammed it through without a single vote.
The next year, they called something an Inflation Reduction Act that we all know was a climate bill. They crammed through another $500 billion worth of spending.
That doesn't even include plussing up the regular discretionary accounts of the United States. My friends own the inflation that has impoverished every single American.
Every American family is worse off, not better off, given the economic stewardship of this administration and, frankly, the Democratic Congress.
We look forward to the debate. We look forward to something my friends aren't used to doing, that is actually negotiating, and that is what we are talking about.
We are going to extend the debt limit, just as we said we would. Here is our negotiation. Here are our ideas where we can save money. Do you have any ideas where we can save money?
Let's talk about that because you can't get what you want. You can't pass through a Democratic Senate a clean debt bill.
If you can't do it there, you are certainly not going to do it here, so let's begin the discussion sooner rather than later.
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Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
My friend and I have had a very long day and have spent a lot of time together.
Madam Speaker, I have no further speakers, and I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.
I begin by thanking my friend for engaging, as he always does, in a spirited debate. We don't agree on a lot of things, but I admire my friend's passion and appreciate his partnership on the Rules Committee, both when I was in the minority and now that I am fortunate enough to be in the majority.
We do look at the world a little bit differently. My friend worries about a $2 trillion tax cut which, by the way, was stretched out over 10 years, much of which paid itself back in economic growth, but forgets about a single bill that spent $1.9 trillion last year that they managed to do.
Look at the results. When the President walked in pre-COVID, the economy had the lowest unemployment rate in 50 years, growing.
Even after going through that, the Biden administration walks into a V-shaped recovery and a 1.4 percent inflation rate.
In less than 2 years, they managed to flatten that out and give us the highest inflation rate in over 40 years.
How did that happen? That happened by unrestrained Democratic spending, out-of-control budget proposals by the President, a Democratic Senate, and a Democratic House that wouldn't say ``no.''
Well, those days are behind us. I understand the agony of my friends, that they actually have to sit down now and talk with the Republicans and come to agreement.
Now, we have come forward with a proposal that we think makes a lot of sense. My friend is worried about us driving up the debt.
Why are we passing an extension of the debt ceiling? That is exactly what this legislation does. We are saying we just want to talk. Here is our opening proposal.
We don't expect you will take everything or agree with everything. We know you control the United States Senate. We know the President of the United States has a veto, but you are going to talk with us, and you are not going to get a clean debt ceiling.
We are not going to give you what you can't get yourself in a Democratic United States Senate. We are going to have a real discussion about what we need to do as a country.
Now, my friend says we have different values. In some ways, we do. We have a common commitment to the institution. We have a common belief in democracy. I think we believe in civil discourse, even when we disagree.
We have many things beyond that that we agree on, but we do differ in some ways. We believe we ought to live within our means, and that is a good thing to try and do.
We think the American people ought to be able to keep more of their own money to spend on their own family and their own investments.
We are willing to put some ideas forward how to do it. We think out- of-control spending is going to make life worse.
The cruelest tax of all is inflation. My friends are worried about the poorest of the poor. I know that is sincere.
I also know the inflation that this Democratic House and Senate of 2 years ago and the administration inflicted on the American public is a curse to the poorest of the poor.
Let's sit down, find some common ground. We have done it before. We act as if it is extraordinary to actually debate around debt ceiling spending restraints.
That is the way it is normally done, particularly in divided government. That is what the American people have given us. I suspect they want us to work together.
We have done our part of the bargain. We will finish that out today. We will extend the debt ceiling, as we promised we would do.
We will put forward a series of suggestions and proposals. We think they are good. Our friends won't agree with them all, but at the end of the day, they are going to have to come to the table.
If they can't pass a clean debt ceiling--or if you can pass a clean debt ceiling in the Senate, go ahead and do it and come to the table with that, but I don't think you will be able to.
We are going to sit down and find some ways to begin to restrain this out-of-control spending, and we are going to do it because there is a Republican majority in the House that demands that we do it; that we begin to live responsibly; that we not inflict inflation on the American people; that we prioritize our spending in some reasonable and rational way.
The material previously referred to by Mr. McGovern is as follows:
An Amendment to H. Res. 327 Offered by Mr. McGovern of Massachusetts
At the end of the resolution, add the following:
Sec. 3. Immediately upon adoption of this resolution, the House shall proceed to the consideration in the House of the resolution (H. Res. 178) affirming the House of Representatives' commitment to protect and strengthen Social Security and Medicare. The resolution shall be considered as read. The previous question shall be considered as ordered on the resolution and preamble to adoption without intervening motion or demand for division of the question except one hour of debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on Ways and Means or their respective designees.
Sec. 4. Clause 1(c) of rule XIX shall not apply to the consideration of H. Res. 178.
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Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time. I urge the passage of the rule and the underlying legislation, and I move the previous question on the resolution.
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