Providing for Consideration of H.R. Fire Improvement and Reforming Exceptional Events Act; Providing for Consideration of H.R. Reducing and Eliminating Duplicative Environmental Regulations Act; Providing for Consideration of H.R. Foreign Emissions and Nonattainment Clarification for Economic Stability Act; and Providing for Consideration of H. Res. Expressing Support for Tax Policies That Support Working Families

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, as you know, at the end of March, last month, Speaker Johnson gaveled out this Chamber and sent Members of Congress home for a 2-week recess. He did so despite the fact that the Department of Homeland Security has been shut down for 60 days and counting, despite the fact that President Trump had made a reckless and unlawful declaration of war without congressional authorization, despite soaring gas prices and the ongoing cost-of-living crisis stretching from New York, the home of my distinguished colleague, to Colorado, despite the heat, the drought, and the wildfire records being shattered in the Western United States. Despite all of that, Speaker Johnson made the decision to gavel the House out of session and send everybody home.

Now, we are back. The 2-week recess has concluded. What has the Republican majority decided is the most pressing challenge and issue for this august body to debate?

I will tell you, Mr. Speaker. Apparently, it is a resolution commemorating a bill that Republicans passed last year. That is what we are here to debate.

Republicans control the floor. They could put a bill on the floor to address cost-of-living issues. They could put a bill on the floor to address soaring gas prices. They could put a bill on the floor to address rising healthcare costs. Instead, we are here to debate a commemorative resolution. It is absurd.

I have, over the course of the 7 years that I have had the privilege of serving in the United States House, never seen something quite like this. It doesn't really take a resolution, Mr. Speaker, for them to extol what they believe to be the benefits of the bill that they passed last year, the tax bill, which we will talk about today.

My point, Mr. Speaker, is that this resolution is wholly unnecessary. There are better ways to spend our time.

I heard the gentleman from New York's long description of the many reasons why that particular resolution that I referenced merits this body's passage. What I found interesting is that over the last 12 months that I have come down here to the House floor, I have heard Republicans use the same refrain in describing this bill: the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. It is in the law.

For a year, I have heard nothing but tweets, Truth Social posts, and floor speeches extolling the virtues of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. What is fascinating is that I didn't hear those four words this morning. I suspect I am not going to hear them the rest of today because Republicans spent some time and have come up with a new name--a new name, a rebrand.

This bill that President Trump signed into law, which gave tax cuts to the richest Americans among us, is so unpopular that Republicans decided that they had to change the name.

I hate to break it to you, but I don't think the rebrand, Mr. Speaker, is going to work. I don't think the name is what the American people were frustrated by. What they are frustrated by is a bill that kicked off 15 million Americans from their healthcare, a bill that amounted to the largest cut in SNAP in the history of our country, a bill that added $5 trillion over the next decade to the Federal debt. That is what they are frustrated about.

They can call this bill, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act--what is the name now? Maybe the gentleman from New York will indulge me. The working families tax cut, that is what they are calling it now. I suspect, in a few months, they will change the name again because it is not going to change the unpopularity of their policies.

I know this isn't the only resolution that we are debating today, as the gentleman from New York mentioned at great length. We are going to consider three bills from the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, which seek to amend the Clean Air Act in an effort to scale back regulations that protect air quality from pollutants and polluting industries.

There is no debate that these policies could have wide-ranging implications that would allow large swathes of the United States to be exempt from various rules under the Clean Air Act.

I don't, to be candid, Mr. Speaker, really follow the argument that my friend from New York is making. As I understand it, what he is saying is that there are wide swathes of the country, including in his home State--by the way, this applies to my home State as well--where you have pollution that exceeds the standards that have been set by regulators at the national level. That pollution is causing asthma and respiratory diseases in children.

The solution that they propose is to allow communities that are experiencing this kind of pollution to essentially exempt foreign sources of pollution from those standards so that they don't have to do anything about it.

That is their solution. The air quality is not going to get any better. There will be no prophylactic steps taken by those communities. It is just a way for those communities to no longer have to do anything about pollution. It is absurd, and the American people know it.

Mr. Speaker, I would simply say--and I imagine we will have a robust debate about the three bills and the resolution that I referenced. Fundamentally, I suppose if I were to conclude with one overriding sentiment, it is that I am simply asking my Republican colleagues to get serious.

There are a lot of challenges facing the country. It is a difficult time for the families that I represent in northern Colorado and in western Colorado. Times are tough. This House, I believe, could rise to the occasion and actually work together to get some things done for the American people, for the constituents that we all serve. This is not that.

Spare us the commemorative resolutions honoring bills that you all have passed. Let's just skip those, and let's get back to doing the business that the American people expect us to do.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I am going to urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this rule, and I will reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, a couple of points. First, again, we have heard ad nauseam about the various ways, in the view of my colleagues, that the bill that they passed last year has benefited the American public. I disagree. My constituents disagree, but we are not debating that bill today. We are debating--for those who might be watching this, I encourage everybody to look it up--H. Res. 1156. It is a two-page resolution. It is not particularly long. This resolution does nothing, achieves nothing, and changes nothing. It is a commemorative resolution honoring a law that they passed last year. It is a waste of time.

What are we doing? Seriously. This is how the Republican majority chooses to spend its time?

I wonder, Mr. Speaker, what are we going to do next week? Are you going to introduce a different commemorative resolution that honors maybe this resolution that passes today? Maybe that is what we should count on, I guess.

If this resolution passes today, Mr. Langworthy and I will debate next week a second resolution that honors this resolution.

Give me a break. There are better ways for the House of Representatives to spend its time. These are serious issues.

Stansbury).

Mr. Speaker, just to be clear, I co-chair the Bipartisan Wildfire Caucus. I have worked with my Republican colleagues on a number of wildfire resiliency and forest management bills, proposals, and securing funding. I will not be lectured by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle as they work to defund the Forest Service, literally, about wildfire resiliency and prescribed burns.

There is no question that, at least with respect to the FIRE Act--I understand we are debating multiple bills with respect to the Clean Air Act, but in terms of the FIRE Act, Mr. Evans' bill, it does nothing. I mean, existing processes within the EPA provide for precisely the type of relief that he is seeking in this bill.

The bill is, again, completely unnecessary. It is also not going anywhere. We, of course, know that to be the case. In any event, I digress.

Mr. Speaker, before I yield to the distinguished ranking member of the Appropriations Committee and thank her for her leadership, I might just say, Mr. Speaker, I heard my colleague from New York wax very poetically about the importance of the big or not the Big Beautiful Bill Act--whatever they are calling it now--the working families bill or something like that that they have come up with.

There are 218 Republicans in the House of Representatives, give or take. I presume, given the importance of this commemorative resolution, that there perhaps might be some colleagues who are going to join my colleague from New York to talk on this bill?

Mr. Speaker, might I ask you to pose that question to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Langworthy)? Does he anticipate any colleagues coming to the floor or just him?

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Mr. NEGUSE. Mr. Speaker, I hope he does. I suspect the answer is ``no.'' I suspect that Mr. Langworthy is here alone and that he will be the only Republican who has been tasked with arguing in favor of this really important commemorative resolution that we are all so eager to vote on.

Mr. Speaker, in any event, if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to adopt the Senate amendment to H.R. 7417, the bipartisan compromise bill that the Senate unanimously passed twice now--twice--to fund the law-abiding agencies within DHS.

Mr. Speaker, this is the deal. You know it. I know it. At the end of the day, the compromise legislation that the Senate passed twice was deprived of a vote on this floor by Republicans. Not a single Senator objected to this bill, twice.

The Republican Senate majority leadership authored the motion, but House Republican leadership refuses to take it up. As a result, it is perpetuating the shutdown of DHS by not putting that deal on the floor.

Members who want to end the shutdown ought to join us in defeating the previous question to put this bipartisan compromise on the floor today.

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Mr. NEGUSE. Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro), the ranking member of the Appropriations Committee. We are grateful to her for her leadership.

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Mr. NEGUSE. Madam Speaker, I yield an additional 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Connecticut.

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Mr. NEGUSE. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, a lot of political rhetoric again. I think the American people know the facts. They know that the Senate passed a bill twice on a unanimous basis to fund DHS. It is not complicated. The United States Senate passed the bill. Not a single Senator objected. The United States Senate passed the bill again. Not a single Senator objected. Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, the most conservative Senators in the United States Senate, approved of this bill. They sent it here. It is sitting at the Clerk's desk. If we voted on it today, my guess is 90 percent of the House of Representatives would vote for it. The only reason we are not is because the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, has decided we are not going to vote on it. That is it.

The rest of it, they can try to confuse the American public and describe to them the play-by-play of the last 65 days. Again, it is not complicated. There is a bill sitting at the Clerk's desk to fund DHS that every Republican Senator, every Democratic Senator, and 90 percent of this body support. The only reason we are not voting on it is politics because Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has decided that he won't allow it. That is it.

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Mr. NEGUSE. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I am prepared to close, but I will say that I am doing this very begrudgingly because I was hoping that we might be able to have some colloquies with my colleague from New York with his colleagues on H. Res. 1156. I know how important this commemorative resolution is to the Republican Conference, and I would be loath to deprive my colleague from New York with the opportunity to have a fulsome debate on it.

Is there no Republican in the House of Representatives who is willing to come down to the floor to extol the virtues of the big, beautiful bill--or the working families bill that they have renamed? None, Madam Speaker?

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Mr. NEGUSE. Was that--

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Mr. NEGUSE. Madam Speaker, I wish to clarify something that the Speaker said. That is not the name of the bill. Just to be clear, I encourage anybody who is watching to go online and pull up the bill. It is, I think, about 350 pages. The one phrase that you will not find in the entirety of the bill is ``Working Families Tax Cuts,'' Madam Speaker. It is nowhere.

I checked. I checked yesterday during the Committee on Rules. I checked again before I came to the floor just to be sure, so I don't know where you came up with that name, Madam Speaker. I am not even really sure who has come up with it in the Republican Conference. Somebody, a marketing guru in the Republican Conference I think convinced the Speaker, and I suppose said to him: ``Look, this bill is deeply unpopular. President Trump is deeply unpopular, more unpopular than any President in the modern history of our country. We have got to do something different, and I have got an idea. We will just come up with a new name for the bill; a new name, resolution honoring that new name that will convince them. I am sure that will get the American public on our side.'' Fascinating.

Madam Speaker, week after week, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have opted to take up a variety of legislation. The one common thread is that it fails to meet the moment.

Americans sent us here to work on the issues that they care most about, that have the most impact on their everyday lives: the rising affordability crisis, expanding access to affordable healthcare, protecting our environment and public resources; not to gut air pollution standards and pass commemorative resolutions patting themselves on the back. That is not how Congress should be spending its precious time.

The bills before us do nothing to improve the lives of working families in our country. It is why I would encourage my colleagues to oppose the previous question, the rule, and the underlying bills.

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Mr. NEGUSE. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

The yeas and nays were ordered.

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