Providing for Consideration of H.R. Securing Growth and Robust Leadership in American Aviation Act, and Providing for Consideration of H.R. Schools Not Shelters Act
Floor Speech
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Ms. SCANLON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Indiana for yielding me the customary 30 minutes, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, with the two bills under consideration in today's rule, we have a striking example of the best and worst that this Chamber can produce.
The first bill reauthorizes the Federal Aviation Administration for another 5 years. That bill is the product of bipartisan negotiations between the members of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. It was debated and amended in committee with the full participation of all members, Republicans and Democrats, and it passed out of that committee with unanimous support--unanimous support.
So this FAA bill is an example of how the legislative process can and should work when Members of Congress seek results and are willing to work together to address the interests of the American people.
The other bill in today's rule could not be more different. It is an unserious, hyper-partisan proposal from rightwing extremists designed to sow division and fear by pushing false narratives about immigrants and what is happening in our public schools.
In a truly bizarre twist for the party of small government, this bill would have the Federal Government dictating to our local governments and schools what they should do with their buildings.
All of this is done under the guise of solving a fake crisis manufactured by Republicans, both by sending migrants to cities run by Democrats in a failed attempt to score political points and, more importantly, by refusing to come to the table and genuinely address the critical need for substantive reforms to our immigration system.
If everyone would follow the lead of our colleagues on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, and if our rightwing colleagues could drop the heated rhetoric and partisan nonsense, there are many solutions that Republicans and Democrats could work on together to serve the American people, and we would welcome that opportunity.
I will return to this point, Mr. Speaker, but first let's talk about the two bills.
H.R. 3935, the Securing Growth and Robust Leadership in American Aviation Act, will reauthorize the FAA for 5 years and make a variety of much-needed improvements to the laws governing aviation in the United States.
I am encouraged by many of the policy wins that Democrats achieved in the bill, including policies to increase funding for airport infrastructure, increase the scope of projects eligible for funding, hire more air traffic controllers, and grow the talent pipeline for hiring and training the next generation of pilots, mechanics, and aviation manufacturing workers.
This bill also takes some much-needed steps to improve the passenger experience. The bill requires airlines to reimburse passengers for hotel and meal costs when their flight is canceled or significantly delayed.
It requires airlines to allow families to sit together, and it requires airlines to make accommodations for passengers traveling with wheelchairs or other assistive devices, and to compensate those travelers if their property is damaged.
While this bill is good, it is far from perfect. I recognize that when you negotiate, Mr. Speaker, you don't always get what you want. However, Mr. Speaker, when you negotiate with this House Republican majority, it is not only that you don't get what you want, it is also that you get less than what is needed to actually fix the problem at hand.
Mr. Speaker, anyone who has taken a flight knows the sorry state of our Nation's airports. While our country was once First in Flight, our airports are now collectively second and third rate, and that is a policy choice by Congress.
Over the past 30 years, we have underfunded our airports, forcing them to get by on inadequate budgets and limited revenue streams. The result is crystal clear to anyone who flies: old, crowded airports, large backlogs in runway maintenance, and a passenger experience that is often unpleasant from the moment you try to check in, Mr. Speaker, until you arrive at your destination. We did hear a fair amount of commentary on that from our colleagues in the Rules Committee last night.
The passenger experience at many U.S. airports is eclipsed by virtually every other airport in Europe and Asia, and there is no good excuse for that.
Beyond the benefits of improving the flying experience for American travelers, having first-class airports should be a point of national pride. We are not putting our best foot forward when foreign tourists visit the United States, the richest country on Earth, and the first thing they experience is a crumbling, unattractive, and inefficient airport.
The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act made a massive investment in our Nation's airports, and dozens of projects have broken ground as a result. However, the IIJA was a onetime investment and gives us about 5 years of boosted airport funding. We need to build on the success of that bill, not rest on our laurels and pretend that this short-term fix was a long-term solution to decades of underinvestment.
In addition, I would have liked to have seen stronger protections for workers and consumers. I strongly oppose the provision in the bill to raise the pilot retirement age to 67, and I would have liked to have seen reforms to organize and form a union and to hold the airlines accountable for junk fees, delays, and cancellations.
However, Mr. Speaker, again, I recognize that any bill of this sort is a compromise, and in a compromise you have to work with others who don't share your beliefs, and you can't always get your own way.
It is important to pass this bill in a timely way so that we are able to maintain and improve our aviation functions without a lapse.
Mr. Speaker, the other bill in today's rule is the so-called Schools Not Shelters Act or, as one of my colleagues called it, the defund our schools act.
This bill is a monumental waste of the House's time and taxpayer dollars. It is nothing more than an attempt by House Republicans to double down on their demonization of immigrants. The House had this same debate last month when Republicans brought to the floor a poorly drafted and fact-free resolution to the same effect.
Now they have turned that resolution into a bill so they can continue their failed efforts to sow fear of immigrants in order to score political points. This bill does nothing to address the needs of communities facing an influx of migrant families or to solve the problems facing our schools. It is nothing more than another vehicle to create division and stoke culture wars because that is the point.
Starting with the last administration, rightwing Republicans at the State and Federal level have abused migrant families and children fleeing poverty and violence to manufacture a crisis using them as pawns to score points.
For example, if Greg Abbott, the Governor of Texas, was genuinely unable to safely shelter migrants, he could have reached out in good faith to State and local leaders around the country to collaborate on solutions instead of shipping migrant families to those places without any notice or coordination.
He could have reached out to the Biden administration for additional resources, and he could have come to Congress and asked for emergency funding.
Instead, when faced with all those options, Governor Abbott decided to mislead or trick migrants and ship them to other parts of the country with no coordination or communication to the receiving communities.
One of the destinations chosen by Governor Abbott, and Governor DeSantis as well, was Philadelphia. I met some of those migrant families last winter. During the week between Christmas and New Year's when temperatures were at or below freezing, they sent buses of families and children to Philadelphia. These families arrived in T- shirts and sandals. They had no jacket and no gloves, and they were dropped off on the street at 6 a.m. and in the middle of the night.
If not for the mercy and decency of our city officials, charities, churches, and advocates, those poor souls would have been left on the street in the middle of winter.
These are human beings. These are families with children. They are people escaping horrors that apparently our colleagues can't even imagine. I still struggle to process the willingness of those Republican Governors to harm people and the willingness of our colleagues to enable them.
While those Republican Governors thought that everyone shared their contempt and disregard for the humanity of these families, they were dead wrong. All over the country, the cities that have received these migrants did so with open arms and worked in unison with their faith communities, with volunteers, and with advocates to find solutions rather than to inflict further harm.
They refused to play this sick game. They welcomed the migrants with compassion. I continue to be inspired by the fundamental decency and kindness of the Americans who mobilized to help migrants come to our shores yearning to breathe free, as we have throughout our American history.
We are the country we are today because of the innumerable contributions of immigrants from all over the world. So instead of debating rightwing messaging bills to posture for the Republicans' extremist base, we should be using our time to pass a clear, legal, and efficient path to work, residency, and citizenship.
We need to pass the American Dream and Promise Act again to provide Dreamers with a pathway to citizenship. However, our colleagues are not offering solutions to our immigration challenges, they are just offering complaints. They don't have a single, serious proposal for how we can address the needs of our immigration system.
It is particularly galling that they have tried to reframe their active mistreatment of migrant families as a threat to public schoolchildren calling to defund public schools in retaliation against local governments for addressing the mess that Governor Abbott created.
As my colleague, Mr. Neguse, pointed out in the Rules Committee hearing last night, the House majority has made clear its priorities: pushing unserious bills like this anti-immigrant bill while failing to address the actual issues facing our public schools, including teacher pay, student achievement gaps, gun violence, and hunger--daily hunger-- for schoolchildren.
Later this week when Republicans host their press conference to celebrate passage of this bill, all these problems will still exist.
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Ms. SCANLON. Mr. Speaker, I am so sorry my colleague across the aisle misunderstood me. The fake crisis I was referring to was the crisis that this defund our schools bill is seeking to address, which is the use of active public school buildings to house migrants.
That is a fake crisis. It is actually not happening across the country, and it was brought up only after the Texas Governor sent migrant families unannounced to New York State.
Obviously, we have an issue with the amount of migration occurring throughout our hemisphere and the impact on our communities. I would gladly work with anyone to make sure that all of our communities, whether in Texas or New York or Philadelphia or Martha's Vineyard or anywhere across our country have the resources they need to feed and clothe the hungry and unsheltered people in those communities.
Barragan).
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Ms. SCANLON. Mr. Speaker, as I suggested, this is just about rightwing messaging, pushing a false narrative that anybody is advocating for an open border--they aren't--while still refusing to come to grips with what do we do with the people who come here? What do we do with the people who are here?
If there are solutions, we would love to work together on them. One of them appears to be providing enough resources for our communities to feed and house folks.
Mr. Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to provide for consideration of a resolution which unequivocally states that it is the House's duty to keep our sacred promise to American workers and seniors to protect and preserve Social Security and Medicare and reject any cuts to those essential programs.
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Ms. SCANLON. Escobar) to discuss this proposal.
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Ms. SCANLON. Mr. Speaker, I find myself in complete agreement that we should be addressing the actual issues, like student achievement, that are impacting our students, but, obviously, this bill does none of that.
Leger Fernandez), a distinguished member of the Rules Committee.
Ms. LEGER FERNANDEZ. Mr. Speaker, I completely agree as well that we do have an issue that we must address in terms of improving our education system, investing in our students, investing in our schools, but does this bill do this? Absolutely not.
Last night in Rules, we actually had the debate about the fact that in the Education Committee, what has come out so far is nothing that addresses reading, math, STEM.
What has come out so far is the kitchen sink of culture wars, and our families do not want culture wars in our schools. They want us to focus on learning, on making sure that our students cannot just survive but thrive.
So here we are, standing on this floor once again to debate a bill that would defund our schools and dehumanize asylum seekers and immigrants.
I remind my colleagues that one of the first asylum seekers that we know about was when a mother put her young baby into a raft, into a basket, and sent that baby down the river, and he was saved. His name was Moses.
Asylum seekers today are doing the same. They are trying to flee incredible violence and get refuge here in the United States.
Republicans stated last night that the academic success and safety of our students must always be placed first. No exceptions.
If it is no exception, then why are we not addressing gun violence which is the biggest cause of death and injury for children in school, and, sadly, also in their neighborhoods?
This bill does nothing to address gun violence even though more than 344,000 children directly experience gun violence; even though in just 6 months this year, we have already had 188 school shooting incidents with 143 victims in our schools. When will you take up saving our children in our schools by addressing gun violence?
So rather than making sure our students can thrive and stay alive in schools, this bill would defund our schools with an empty gym. That is all we are talking about; an occasionally empty gym used on the coldest winter night or hottest summer day to shelter asylum seekers who have already been processed through the system. At this point in time, they are actually around. They have a legal pathway that they are seeking.
Republicans have decided to politicize the border and immigration. They ignore the fact that apprehensions at the southern border are down by 70 percent. They are down by 70 percent because of Biden's policies.
Ms. LEGER FERNANDEZ. Yes, we have a broken immigration system, but whose fault is that?
Last Congress, we passed several bipartisan immigration bills, including the American Dream and Promise Act and the Farm Workforce Modernization Act.
Did any of the Republicans pushing this bill vote for those, vote for the problem solvers? No.
I will end with this: Matthew 25:35 reminds us: ``For I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me.''
I ask my Republican colleagues to show the same humanity in this bill and vote against it.
As I was listening to some of the prior speakers, I started to understand why we have this defund the schools bill before us today. It is based upon a whole bunch of misunderstandings.
The idea that migrants who are in the position where they are potentially being housed in our communities, these folks have, in fact, been vetted by our immigration agencies.
Second of all, no Federal school funding can be used for that purpose. That funding is already restricted, and if it were to be used for the purpose of housing migrants, it could be immediately clawed back.
Again, this is a bill that accomplishes nothing and is based on a series of alternative facts, and I strongly urge that we reject it and the rule.
Mr. Speaker, we heard the gentleman describing parents of schoolchildren being frightened, upset, and agitated because their school needs, their education needs, their needs for food or remedial education, are not being met.
I remind my colleagues that they hold the majority. They are able to bring forward those bills and have the committee work to address those needs, but, again, the bill before us today does none of that.
We would love to work together in a bipartisan manner, as the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee has done, to present a really good, forward-looking bill to address our Nation's aviation needs. We would just like to extend that ability to work on solutions, as opposed to culture wars, throughout the work before us for the good of the people.
Mr. Speaker, what we are seeing this week is a tale of two Congresses, one that is capable of working across the aisle to solve real problems but one that is increasingly held hostage by forces more interested in culture wars and punching down on vulnerable people to score political points.
I ask my House colleagues, again, to follow the example set by the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee as well as the House Armed Services Committee. I think this building and our country work a lot better when Members put their heads down and work on solutions to the problems facing the country. I would like to think there are many Members in both parties who would agree with that view. However, we learned a lot last week from Kevin McCarthy and the most extreme members of the Republican Party.
Since the first day of the 118th Congress, particularly on the Rules Committee, we have heard countless lofty speeches from our Republican colleagues about the need for more transparency in our processes, for more amendments to be considered on the floor, for more debate, and for more rank-and-file Members to have their priorities considered by the whole House.
Last week, House Republicans had the chance to stand behind those words and instead blocked over 1,000 amendments submitted to the NDAA.
Today's rule and the amendments allowed on it were negotiated behind closed doors--not between Democrats and Republicans but between Republicans and the most extreme members of that party.
Next week, Kevin McCarthy has already signaled that he is abandoning his commitment to consider appropriations legislation under an open rule.
It has become increasingly clear what the real deal is. It is an open rule for the rightwing Freedom Caucus and a closed rule for everyone else, including many Republicans who do not endorse the chaos and antidemocratic impulses pushed by the far-right members of their party.
Despite the griping about regular order and empowering individual Members, this Congress remains enthralled by a power grab--plain and simple--by the most extreme members of the Republican majority.
We can now expect Speaker McCarthy to fold at the first sight of trouble, meaning that the House is now run by its loudest and most extreme Members.
Beyond being an embarrassing way to run a democratic institution, this arrangement only serves to weaken the House and all but guarantees that the Senate will jam us on big legislation like appropriations, the NDAA, and the FAA reauthorization.
Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to oppose the previous question and the rule, and I yield back the balance of my time.
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Ms. SCANLON. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
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Ms. SCANLON. Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.
A recorded vote was ordered.
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