Repeal of Senate Notification Requirements Relating to Legal Process on Disclosures of Senate Data

Floor Speech

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Mr. KILEY of California. Mr. Speaker, this who-wants-to-be-a- millionaire provision created by U.S. Senators for themselves, and themselves alone, is outrageous. I will, of course, be voting to repeal it today.

We also need to ask how this was allowed to happen, and I have to tell you, it doesn't help that the House wasn't even here. For 6 straight weeks, House leadership decided to cancel our sessions, every oversight hearing, every markup of legislation, everything. Why? To this day, there has been no coherent rationale offered.

Throughout this time, I warned that this was not only holding back our own legislative priorities but was also making the House irrelevant in any deal to reopen the government. Of course, that is what ended up happening. The Senate never passed our CR. They negotiated their own deal. After 50 days away, the House was brought back for one fly-by vote to ratify what the Senate had come up with as our only opportunity to reopen the government.

The Senate was so thoroughly convinced of the House's irrelevance that they thought that they could literally insert a self-enrichment scheme into the legislation and get away with it. By the way, they still might get away with it because while we are passing a bill to repeal it today, that still has to pass the Senate.

We need to pass this in the House today. We need to insist that this provision be included in a must-pass bill going forward so that it cannot actually be utilized. More than that, we need to start reasserting ourselves as a House, reclaiming our authority under Article I and giving the American people the representation they deserve.

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