Government Shutdown Prevention Act of 2011
Floor Speech
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Mr. CLYBURN. Madam Speaker, I yield myself 4 minutes.
Let's do a quick review of the year. It's been 13 weeks since the Republicans took over the majority. Leading up to that point, we heard a mantra, ``Where are the jobs?'' So you might expect that on day one of the 112th Congress, they would bring a jobs bill to the floor. But no. What the Republican majority did with great fanfare was to conduct a reading of the Constitution and, as if our oath of office wasn't enough, also implemented a new House rule which required legislation to be accompanied by a ``statement of constitutional authority.'' In fact, my fellow colleague from South Carolina, Joe Wilson, read aloud Article I, section 7. What does it say?
``Every bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it becomes a law, be presented to the President of the United States; if he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it......''
Ladies and gentlemen, we all learn in grade school how a bill becomes a law, but we'll get back to that in a moment.
So 13 weeks ago when the Republicans took the majority, up to that point all we heard from them was ``Where are the jobs?'' So, then, what was the first bill we were asked to vote on? The first bill was to repeal the health care law.
Democratic policies created more jobs in the last year than the Bush administration created in 8 years. Since health reform became law, 1.1 million private sector jobs have been created.
One-fifth of those new jobs, over 200,000, have been in the health care industry. So, repeal of the health care law would end jobs, not create jobs.
Then surely, at some point in the last 13 weeks, the Republican majority would have brought to this floor a jobs bill. Three months and no jobs bill. In fact, we've passed three bills that will destroy more than 1 million jobs, which brings us to this moment, the so-called Government Shutdown Prevention Act of 2011, and article I, section 7 of the United States Constitution. I've read it, but I want to repeat a certain portion of it:
``Every bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate shall, before it becomes a law, be presented to the President of the United States.''
But the bill before us today, not a jobs bill, says that if the Senate doesn't act prior to the expiration of the continuing resolution, that H.R. 1, a budget bill passed only by the House, will become the law of the land.
It's very simple. That is unconstitutional. We do not have a unicameral legislative body.
Then what did they cite on the statement of the constitutional authority that must accompany each bill? There are a lot of words that only a parliamentary expert could understand.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mrs. Biggert). The time of the gentleman has expired.
Mr. CLYBURN. I yield myself an additional minute.
But if you ask my daughter's eighth grade class that visited us here earlier this week, they will tell you that that's not how things work under our Constitution.
But don't listen to me or the eighth graders at Dent Middle School. Listen to what some of your colleagues in the other body had to say. So our colleagues in the other body had made it very clear. Senator Coats of Indiana: ``My reaction to that is ultimately the whole body, including the executive branch, has to sign on here or we're just whistling in the wind.''
Senator Alexander of Tennessee: ``To be the law of the land, a bill has to pass the Senate and be signed by the President.''
One of our own, the Appropriations Subcommittee Chair, Representative Mike Simpson, after laughing out loud, said, ``If we can do that, can't we just deem the budget balanced?''
Madam Speaker, I know it's April 1, so maybe that's the point. I ask my colleagues on the other side to let's quit this joke and get serious.
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