Continuing Appropriations Act, 2024 and Other Extensions Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. JEFFRIES. Mr. Speaker, I thank the distinguished gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro) for her leadership and all of my colleagues in government.

I rise today to have a conversation with the American people, so strap in because this may take a little while.

I want to talk about why we are here at this moment on the brink of a shutdown that was entirely avoidable and has been brought to us by the extreme MAGA Republicans, who have decided that rather than pursue the normal legislative process of trying to find common ground; not as Democrats or Independents or Republicans but as Americans.

Rather than try to pursue policy achievements through the normal legislative process, they want to threaten the American people with a shutdown to try to drive their extreme agenda down the throats of the American people.

Why are we here at this moment on the brink of a catastrophic shutdown that will hurt everyday Americans, hurt children, hurt families, hurt older Americans, hurt veterans, and hurt the economy?

Why are we here at this moment when from the very beginning we have said that there is an opportunity to come together in a bipartisan way consistent with the spending agreement that House Republicans themselves negotiated?

From the beginning of this process, we have said nothing more, nothing less--simply keep your word with respect to the agreement that you negotiated.

Just so that the American people understand what we are talking about when we say simply that an agreement was negotiated, how did we get to this point?

Well, heading into the 118th Congress, heading into this Congress, we said that we are willing to find common ground with our colleagues on the other side of the aisle whenever and wherever possible in the best interests of the American people and govern in a bipartisan way in the same way that we governed in the previous Congress where we passed bill after bill after bill to make life better for the American people.

Many of those legislative efforts, whether it was the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act where we created millions of good-paying jobs for hardworking, everyday Americans to fix our crumbling bridges, roads, tunnels, our airports, our sewer and water systems, our mass transportation systems, it was bipartisan; largely Democratic in the House but bipartisan.

We passed gun safety legislation for the first time in 30 years. Why? Because we believe that we should do something about the gun violence epidemic in the United States of America with the fierce urgency of now and not as some of my colleagues want to do--unleash weapons of war that are not used to hunt deer. They are used to hunt human beings and shred children. We worked in a bipartisan way to pass the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, to make progress for the American people.

Then we worked on the Chips and Science Act that will bring domestic manufacturing jobs back home to the United States of America as opposed to our jobs moving in the other direction and to invest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics to ensure that our young people have the skills to succeed in the 21st century economy and are competitive to continue to elevate American exceptionalism. That was done in a bipartisan way.

Now, there were some areas where our Republican colleagues refused to do what was right, in our view, for the American people, and that is why in some instances, we needed to just act, to put people over politics. That is what we did with the American Rescue Plan and the Inflation Reduction Act.

Our bipartisan track record continues. We stood up for the men and women who have served this country and who were exposed to burn pits or toxic substances or Agent Orange.

Through the PACT Act under the leadership of Speaker Pelosi and Chairman Mark Takano, we stood up for our veterans to ensure that millions of them would get the healthcare that they deserve. We got the PACT Act over the finish line. Once again, it was bipartisan in nature.

We understood that there were grave threats to our democracy because of what occurred with the former President of the United States of America who incited a violent insurrection and tried to potentially use some loopholes within the Electoral Count Act to effectively steal the election, undermine the principle of free and fair elections, halt the peaceful transfer of power.

We formed a committee under the leadership of Chairman Bennie Thompson who did an incredible job of presenting the stakes to the American people.

The January 6th Committee explored the consequences of what happens when one individual and people who blindly follow them could undermine the very fabric of our democracy.

It is important to note that the January 6th Committee was also bipartisan in nature. It was bipartisan, and every single witness that was presented worked with the former President.

There is still more that needs to be done in that regard, but one of the legislative results of the January 6th Committee's wonderful presentation and exploration was that we passed reform to the Electoral Count Act to strengthen the institution of our democracy as part of the principle that we will never again allow a single individual sitting at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to try to undermine American democracy. We won't do it. That bill was bipartisan in nature.

We also passed the American Rescue Plan at a moment of great crisis: The very beginning of the previous Congress, in the midst of a once-in- a-century pandemic that cost so many lives, so much pain, so much suffering, so much death.

We moved decisively under the leadership of President Biden to pass the American Rescue Plan which put shots in arms, money in pockets, and kids back in school.

We passed the Child Tax Credit as part of that that reduced child poverty in America by half. Not a single Republican would join us as part of the effort to make sure that the American Dream is alive and well in every single ZIP Code. We reduced poverty.

These were things that were done for everyone, every single American, regardless of ZIP Code: Urban America, rural America, exurban America, suburban America, small-town America, the Heartland of America, Appalachia.

We are committed to putting people over politics. That is what we were able to do with the American Rescue Plan and allowed the United States of America to emerge as the strongest economy of any advanced economy in the world.

That wasn't a guarantee. We know we have more work to do. We know we have more work to do, and we want to get to work.

Instead of getting to work on behalf of the American people, solving problems, joining and partnering with us in a manner that is designed to find common ground, extreme MAGA Republicans have been marching us to a dangerous government shutdown, which we will get to in a moment.

We ended the previous Congress by passing the Inflation Reduction Act, striking a dramatic blow against the climate crisis, setting our planet on a sustainable trajectory forward, the largest investment in combating the climate crisis in the history of the world because we recognize that these extreme weather events will not go away on their own.

America is leading, thanks to our Speaker Emerita and House Democrats and Senate Democrats and President Joe Biden.

In that legislation, we also addressed the issue of healthcare affordability because we understand that the American people are dealing with grave challenges as it relates to their cost of living.

In the Inflation Reduction Act, we began to address that in a serious way; strengthening the Affordable Care Act, lowering healthcare costs, and driving down the high price of lifesaving prescription drugs for millions of Americans. This included taking the price of insulin, which prior to the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, would cost the average American family about $4,000 a year, and we drove that down to $35 a month, and we are just getting started.

That is the track record coming into this Congress as the American people are suffering from what has been characterized as a Republican civil war. Apparently, it is because a handful of the more extreme Members on the other side of the aisle have concluded that what is necessary is to try to hijack the institution, to jam their rightwing ideological views down the throats of the American people because they understand that otherwise, these extreme policies cannot be achieved throughout the normal legislative process.

We are supposed to believe that the chaos, the dysfunction, the extremism is largely a result of the narrowness of the Republican majority.

We had the same exact majority, extremely narrow on the other side of the aisle. Instead of chaos, dysfunction, and extremism, we got things done for the American people--the same exact majority under the leadership of Speaker Pelosi and Jim Clyburn and Steny Hoyer.

That is the context coming into the moment that we are in right now; historic dysfunction that we have seen. We are on the brink of a government shutdown and at the eleventh hour, legislation is dropped on the American people.

We are told that you have 5 or 10 minutes to evaluate legislation that is more than 70 pages long and expected simply to trust the word of our extreme MAGA Republican colleagues. The American people deserve better. They deserve better.

We are working through evaluating that legislation on behalf of the American people. We have not had time to evaluate the bill that was dropped on the American people at the eleventh hour, immediately after what took place yesterday on the floor of the House where extreme MAGA Republicans put on the floor a continuing resolution that imposed 30 percent or more draconian cuts on the American people, including cutting the Social Security Administration by 30 percent, devastating Social Security and the ability of the administration to administer it on behalf of older Americans in this country.

We need time to evaluate whether in this bill that was just dropped upon the American people at the eleventh hour, does it try to cut Social Security because that is what you tried to do yesterday.

We need a little time to evaluate whether you are trying to slash public school funding. Why are we concerned about whether the Republican majority is trying to slash public school funding? Because you put forth a bill that did just that yesterday.

It would devastate the ability of American children all across the country to be able to learn in a manner that gives them the best opportunity to succeed and pursue the American Dream.

Some versions of the Republican spending bills would slash Title 1 funding, which goes to the most vulnerable children amongst us, by 80 percent; effectively shut down public education in many parts of this country.

I think it is a reasonable thing for House Democrats on behalf of the American people to have time to evaluate what you are trying to do with public education in a bill that House Republicans dropped on the American people at the eleventh hour.

We also are very concerned that from the very beginning of this Congress, Republicans had an objective to criminalize abortion care and to impose or march us toward a nationwide ban. We want the American people to understand that on this side of the aisle we don't believe that our colleagues on the Republican side should threaten a government shutdown as part of their effort to criminalize abortion care. That shouldn't happen. That should not happen.

That is what Republicans are trying to do in a Defense bill that they just passed this week. We need an opportunity to evaluate the four corners of a bill that the Republican majority dropped on us at the eleventh hour, and what it does to reproductive freedom. I think that is what the American people would want us to do.

Let us be clear to the American people, House Democrats believe in a woman's freedom to make her own reproductive healthcare decisions. Period. Full stop. The Republican majority wants to undermine reproductive freedom. We are trying to evaluate a bill, dropped on the American people at the eleventh hour, whether anything in the four corners of this bill would undermine reproductive freedom.

Earlier in the year, my Republican colleagues threatened to default on America's debt, which connects to the moment that we are in right now because it ultimately resulted in Republicans agreeing to top-line spending numbers. That is part of what has brought us to this moment.

An agreement was reached in May to avoid any shutdown drama by setting top-line spending numbers at the insistence of House Republicans, who then went into the Oval Office with President Joe Biden, who was negotiating in good faith, and arrived at top-line spending numbers.

The bill was presented on the House floor and more than 300 Members of Congress voted for it, including 149 Republicans, a majority in the Senate that was bipartisan in nature, it was sent to President Biden's desk and signed into law, setting top-line spending numbers as part of an effort to avoid a reckless government shutdown.

It took less than a week for the Republican majority to break its word in the agreement that House Republicans themselves negotiated, which leads us to this moment right now.

The nerve of even threatening a catastrophic default in and of itself highlights the extremism that has permeated this Chamber from the beginning of this Congress on January 3. The full faith and credit of the United States of America and protecting it is a constitutional responsibility that we all have.

By the way, when Democrats were in the majority and someone was in the White House from the other side of the political aisle--someone who we strongly disagreed with, the former President--we raised the debt ceiling three times. There was no gamesmanship, no partisanship, and no showmanship. We raised it three times. That is simply what should have occurred this time around.

As part of extracting policy changes that the American people don't support, we were threatened with defaulting on our debt for the first time in American history: it would have crashed the economy, sent the stock market spiraling downward, and triggering a job-killing recession.

Under the leadership of President Biden, we reached an agreement to avoid a catastrophic default. In that agreement, we protected Social Security, protected Medicare, protected Medicaid, protected veterans, protected public education, protected public safety, protected our efforts to combat the climate crisis, and protected the American people.

As part of that we reached top-line spending numbers that Republicans negotiated. Immediately, the Republicans then broke the agreement to bring us to this point. That is very unfortunate. All of this could have been avoided.

We have a bill in the Senate that shortly would have ended the government shutdown. If in fact, as we have consistently asked for, this bipartisan spending agreement emerges from the Senate and makes its way over to the House, and if you put the bipartisan spending agreement emerging from the Senate on the floor of the House of Representatives and allow for an up or down vote, it will pass, and the extreme MAGA Republican shutdown would end. That is the way to proceed.

Why can't my Republican colleagues commit to doing just that?

Is this really a serious effort to end a government shutdown-- threat--when it is in the DNA of many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to shut down the government?

It is not hyperbole. Let's just check the historic record. In the 1990s, the Republicans shut the government down twice when Bill Clinton was President. The ransom demand at the time was: We want to slash and burn Medicaid and end Medicare as the American people know it. Unless that were to happen, we were told by Republicans that they would shut down the government. That is exactly what happened twice in the 1990s in order to try to slash and burn Medicaid and adversely impact Medicare. It is in the DNA of House Republicans.

How do we know that?

In 2013, the American people were forced to deal with another reckless, dangerous government shutdown. For 14 days, House Republicans shut down the government. Why was the government shut down in 2013?

Because the demand was made, inherently unreasonable, that President Obama should repeal the Affordable Care Act, a signature legislative accomplishment that has been a force for good in the United States of America.

We declined politely to take away healthcare from millions of Americans. We declined politely to allow House Republicans to impose a situation in America where more than 100 million people would have lost their protection for pre-existing conditions. We declined to allow House Republicans to impose an age tax on older Americans, which would have dramatically increased healthcare costs.

Because we have declined to do those things, House Republicans chose to shut the government down in 2013 for 14 days. It is in the House Republicans' DNA.

In 2018 and 2019, we faced the longest government shutdown in American history, 35 days of devastation visited upon the American people, unnecessarily so. What was the extreme ransom demand at that particular point in time?

The demand was to waste billions of dollars of taxpayer money on the former President's ineffective, medieval border wall, which, by the way, he said Mexico would pay for. The House majority at the time turned around and tried to stick the American taxpayer with a bill--an ineffective solution to the issues around immigration that we should necessarily confront.

Because we declined, respectfully, to pay that ransom note and stick the American people with billions and billions of dollars for an ineffective border wall that the previous President promised Mexico would pay for, the Republicans shut the government down for 35 days. It is in their DNA.

The interesting thing about that government shutdown is that while we had taken the majority in January of 2019, the government shutdown started in late December. In other words, the government shutdown started with a Republican in the White House and Republicans in the majority in the House and in the Senate. You shut yourselves down at that particular moment. It is in their DNA.

That is the backdrop and context for how we arrived at this moment. After the district work period throughout the month of August, we came back to Congress ready, willing, and able to get things done for the American people, to find common ground, to put people over politics, which is what we are committed to doing every single day we are here in Washington.

When we came back in September, that is what House Democrats were prepared to do. We were told that to the extent any illegitimate impeachment inquiry would be launched, it would be done only with a serious up or down vote on the floor of the House of Representatives. That is what we were told by House Republican leadership. That is not what happened.

Instead of coming back to Washington in September, knowing we were faced with the possibility of an extreme MAGA Republican government shutdown, and being laser-focused on finding the common ground necessary to fund the government in a way that protects the health, the safety, and the economic well-being of the American people--instead of doing that, without a vote on the floor of the House of Representatives--House leadership announces an illegitimate impeachment inquiry.

There was no evidence of wrongdoing. There was no evidence of an impeachable offense. There was no evidence that any high crimes or misdemeanors were committed by the President. There was no evidence that the President broke the law.

How do we know this?

The Republicans' own witnesses told the American people that 2 days ago in a hearing that House Republicans called.

Mr. Speaker, for 3 weeks, instead of focusing on solving problems for hardworking American taxpayers, House Republicans launched an illegitimate impeachment inquiry when House Republican witnesses have now testified before the American people that no evidence exists to justify impeaching the current President.

That is part of the context of why we are here: House Republicans wasting time doing the bidding of the former President, the insurrectionist-in-chief, who demanded an illegitimate impeachment inquiry be opened.

As opposed to working together to find the common ground to meet the needs of the American people, they have been wasting time and taxpayer dollars on a reckless political stunt. That is why we are at the brink of the government shutting down right now. That was week one when we came back, the week of September 11.

What happened in week two? Week two, the week of September 18, House Republicans, my colleagues, decided that they were going to try to jam extreme rightwing policies down the throats of the American people, strip away reproductive freedom, criminalize abortion care, bully the LGBTQ community, cut public education, cut public safety, cut affordable housing programs, cut the ability for veterans to receive the nutritional assistance that they needed.

Week two they decided, the House majority, Mr. Chairman decided to go to the floor to pass bills that would do nothing to make life better for everyday Americans, do nothing to avoid a catastrophic government shutdown, do nothing to find common ground in a bipartisan way. During the week of September 18, a decision was made to try to jam extreme rightwing policies down the throats of the American people, and not a single bill was passed because House Republicans had an inability to get their act together with each other.

Colorful words were used--I won't use them on the floor; they are in the public domain--as part of a Republican civil war, shooting at each other, fighting each other. Let me make something clear, House Democrats are here to fight for the American people, to fight for the American people. That is what we should be doing; Not fighting each other as part of a Republican civil war.

Last week, time was wasted by our House Republican colleagues fighting each other in what has been described as a Republican civil war--colorful language used not by Democrats to describe what was taking place on the other side of the aisle, but used by House Republicans to describe each other.

I won't call out any individual Members on the other side of the aisle, but former Members, including a former Speaker, Paul Ryan, a good man--I disagreed with him on a whole host of issues, but he believed in the institution--made the observation that House Republicans are dysfunctional and need to get their act together. That is Paul Ryan, former Speaker. That same sentiment was echoed by current House Republican Members.

Last week, they wasted time fighting each other as opposed to finding the common ground necessary to reach a bipartisan spending agreement. The former chair, top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, Rosa DeLauro, has made clear from the very beginning she was ready to sit down and talk to her Republican counterpart anytime, anyplace, ready, willing, and able to find bipartisan common ground. However, we couldn't find a partner on the other side, and so we proceeded in conversation with Senate Democrats, Senate Republicans, and the Biden administration. They were all in alignment in a strongly bipartisan bill to avert a government shutdown earlier this week that passed in a motion procedurally to advance the legislation 77-19, strongly bipartisan.

We were a part of those conversations thanks to Rosa DeLauro. That is a bill that would avoid a government shutdown and meet the needs of the American people in every single way and give us another 45 days or so to work through the normal appropriations process and reach common ground.

However, instead of partnering with House Democrats, Senate Democrats, Senate Republicans, and the Biden administration, House Republicans decided to go it alone, fight a civil war, stand on an island on their own. So last week nothing happened on the floor of the House of Representatives.

That brings us to this week. This week we returned earlier and had every opportunity. We continued to say, we want to partner with our Republican colleagues to find the common ground necessary to meet the needs of the American people and avoid a catastrophic government shutdown that will hurt everyday Americans, hurt children, hurt families, hurt the middle class, hurt all those who aspire to be part of the middle class, hurt working families, hurt veterans, hurt the poor, the sick, the afflicted, hurt the least, the lost, and the left- behind.

We have said from the very beginning that we were ready, willing, and able to find the bipartisan common ground to meet the needs of the American people and avoid a catastrophic government shutdown.

Instead, my Republican colleagues spent this week peddling more chaos, more dysfunction, and more extremism, trying to jam extreme rightwing policies down the throats of the American people, cutting Social Security, slashing public school funding, criminalizing abortion care, including in the Department of Defense bill that House Republicans advanced earlier this week, to restrict military servicewomen from being able to travel in order to seek reproductive healthcare and threatened a government shutdown unless the American people were to be forced to agree with a policy that they don't support. They spent this week doing things like that.

Yesterday, a bill was brought to the House floor to cut spending by 30 percent or more in a manner that would do things like take food out of the mouths of women, infants, and children. We will never let that happen--not now, not ever, not in America. We will never let that happen. That is one of the extreme rightwing policies that my Republican colleagues spent this week threatening to do--threatening to do--taking us to the brink of a government shutdown.

Now, from the very beginning, there was a clear path forward because a spending agreement was reached in May that everyone in this town agreed to abide by as a matter of law: House Democrats, House Republicans, Senate Democrats, Senate Republicans, and President Biden.

Why, then, have we spent the last several weeks here in the House of Representatives trying to break that agreement and threaten a reckless government shutdown which, by the way, will have catastrophic consequences for the American people?

We want the American people to know that we are going to do everything possible to stop extreme MAGA Republicans from shutting down the government. We are fighting on their behalf to put people over politics. That is why we are here. That is why we are making this fight.

We want to do it in a bipartisan way, so we are in the process of evaluating the legislation that was dropped on the American people at the eleventh hour. Once we conclude that expeditious review of the four corners of the legislation, we can make a decision as to the best path forward, when we have said all week that the only path forward is a bipartisan one, is a bipartisan bill working its way through the Senate right now--Senate Democrats, Senate Republicans coming together to meet the needs of the American people. We are evaluating the four corners of the bill to see if it does what is necessary as part of our effort to fight for things like lower costs and better-paying jobs and safer communities, building a healthy economy for hardworking American taxpayers. Why? Because as House Democrats, we are committed to an economy that is built from the middle out and the bottom up, not the top down--not the top down.

Therefore, we are in the process now of evaluating whether there is anything in the four corners of this bill that would impose upon the American people the trickle-down economic scheme that has been such a disaster for the American middle class and for all those who aspire to be part of the middle class.

I think the American people deserve an opportunity for their elected Representatives, Democrats and Republicans, to evaluate the legislation that is in front of us--that is the least that can be done--when we know that for decades House Republicans and my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have imposed big tax cuts that benefit only the wealthiest amongst us and undermine the ability of the American people to truly pursue the American Dream.

It was done most recently in 2017. The House Republican majority's signature legislative accomplishment was passing the GOP tax scam where 83 percent of the benefits went to the wealthiest 1 percent. If at the end of the day this is all about fiscal responsibility, we want our Republican colleagues to explain why, in a bill that benefited only a handful of Americans, did they stick the American people with $2 trillion worth of debt? Because the GOP tax scam was not paid for at all.

House Republicans dropped a bill on the American people at the eleventh hour earlier today, and all we are simply saying is that we want time to evaluate whether there is anything within the four corners of that bill that would try to impose some trickle-down economic scheme.

I have come to the conclusion over the years that trickle-down economics means only one thing for everyday Americans. You may get a trickle, but you are guaranteed to stay down. That is what trickle-down economics is all about.

At the end of the day, we need to just evaluate where we are because House Republicans started this Congress by saying any bill that is brought before the people's House will be done so in a manner that allows for at least 72 hours of review. That was the House Republican policy, 72 hours of review.

Like many other things that have been broken promises throughout this do-nothing Republican Congress, you promised the American people they would have 72 hours to review any bill brought before the American people. You dropped this bill at the eleventh hour today and gave the American people minutes to evaluate it. That is unacceptable. It is un- American. It is unreasonable. The American people deserve better.

The American people deserve better because, at the end of the day, what we are endeavoring to do is to try to figure out where we are at on behalf of our quest to lift up the great American Dream for the middle class and all those who aspire to be part of the middle class, to do things that are pro-American, pro-worker, pro-labor union, pro- entrepreneurial, pro-small business, pro-job creation, consistent with our views that, in America, when you work hard and play by the rules, you should be able to provide a comfortable living for yourself and for your family, educate your children, purchase a home, and one day retire with grace and dignity.

Is that too much to ask? That is what we are fighting for on behalf of the American people. All we want is time, just a handful of moments, to be able to evaluate.

Is there anything within the bill that was dropped on the American people at the eleventh hour--notwithstanding the fact that the American people were promised 72 hours for any bill, let alone consequential legislation. We just want to be able to evaluate within the four corners of the agreement where things are at in terms of uplifting that basic American principle.

As I mentioned at the very beginning of my remarks, House Democrats continue to stand ready to find common ground with our Republican colleagues whenever and wherever possible. However, we will oppose Republican extremism whenever necessary. We will oppose any efforts to cut Social Security and Medicare. We will oppose any efforts to slash public school funding. We will oppose any efforts to undermine American democracy. We will oppose any efforts to flood our communities with weapons of war. We will oppose any efforts to undermine the progress being made on the climate crisis. We will oppose any efforts to undermine the great American Dream. We will oppose any efforts to undercut public education. We will oppose any efforts to walk away from the people who keep us safe at our border and around the United States of America. We will oppose any efforts to undermine the ability of the middle class to continue to thrive in the United States of America.

All we are doing is making sure that we can assess the four corners of the legislation that is before us, avoid a catastrophic government shutdown, put people over politics, and make sure that we can continue the great American Dream; that you don't undermine freedom, you don't undermine reproductive freedom, you don't undermine the things that are necessary for every single American to thrive in every ZIP Code throughout the land, in urban America, in rural America, in suburban America, in small-town America, in the heartland of America, in Appalachia. That is all we are doing.

When we complete our review, we will come back to the floor. We will make a decision. As Democrats, we will continue to put people over politics and continue America's long, necessary, and majestic march toward a more perfect Union.

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