Providing for the Consideration of Senate Amendments to H.R. 3457, Space Launch Liability Indemnification Extension Act

Floor Speech

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Madam Speaker, yesterday, the Rules Committee met and reported a rule for the consideration of H.R. 3547. The rule authorizes the chairman of the Committee on Appropriations to offer a motion that the House concur in the Senate amendment with the House amendment consisting of the text of the fiscal year 2014 omnibus appropriations bill.

The rule provides for 1 hour of debate, equally divided between the chairman and ranking member of the Committee on Appropriations. Additionally, the rule conforms the title to the content of the bill by providing for the passage of an enrollment correction after the adoption of Chairman Rogers' motion.

Lastly, Madam Speaker, the rule provides floor management tools to be used during next week's recess.

Madam Speaker, I want to commend my good friends Chairman Rogers and Ranking Member Lowey for bringing to this House a bipartisan bill that brings to a close the fiscal year 2014 appropriations process while maintaining the Republican commitment to fiscal responsibility.

Since Republicans took control of the House, we have cut discretionary spending 4 years in a row--the first time since the Korean war. At the same time, this bill provides no new funding for the Affordable Care Act and also includes a pension fix for medically retired personnel and survivor benefit plan annuitants. While there is still work to be done to ensure that we honor the service of our veterans and military retirees, this is a good, bipartisan first step.

Madam Speaker, I know many of my friends here voted against the Ryan-Murray compromise budget, and they voted against the fiscal cliff deal of 2011. However, look at where these pieces of legislation have brought us. We have cut discretionary spending 4 years in a row, to a level $164 billion below the fiscal year 2008 level, the last year of the Bush Presidency. That is a feat to be commended. We have dealt with tax expenditures, in part, as a portion of the fiscal cliff deal. Yet, despite this progress, we still have not been able to close over $600 billion of our annual budget deficit.

Madam Speaker, discretionary spending has paid more than its fair share in dealing with our budget deficit. Entitlements such as Medicare and Medicaid spending and other mandatory programs must be reformed in order to put us on a path to a balanced budget.

With the passage of this omnibus, which releases us from the threat of a government shutdown, we are showing the American people that we actually are capable of working in a bipartisan manner. I hope in the future we can work to capitalize on our bipartisan success and bring America's bloated debt and deficit under control.

Madam Speaker, passing this rule and this omnibus spending bill is the responsible thing to do. It is the thoughtful thing to do. As opposed to lurching from crisis to crisis, this omnibus is carefully crafted over a period of many months. And it sets priorities, controls spending, and reasserts congressional authority over the appropriations process far more effectively than yet another continuing resolution ever could.

Many of our colleagues have not seen regular order in the appropriations process. And, sadly, until the Senate is able to pass bills for us to conference together, I think we will be forced into relying on omnibuses in the future. But this is not a continuing resolution. The Ryan-Murray agreement gives us a reasonable foundation for our work in fiscal year 2015.

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I want to thank my friend for his support of what is a bipartisan bill, a bill for which the President of the United States also issued a statement of support. We appreciate that. I would suggest that we are actually doing what my friend quite often suggested we do--work in a bipartisan manner and arrive at a common solution.

I would add one thing to my friend's description of the 1990s. We ought to give a little bit of credit to the Republican majority who actually voted for those agreements--when most Democrats did not--that balanced the budget, and particularly Speaker Gingrich, because, with all due respect to President Clinton, he never once submitted a balanced budget.

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I would like to make the point that this legislation is genuinely bipartisan. The legislation that my friends have asked for consideration was not within the scope of consideration of this legislation. I have no doubt it is being dealt with in the Senate right now, but it is simply not appropriate, in my opinion, to bring it into this debate, particularly since we are under time constraints. Were we to fail to pass this rule and the underlying legislation in a timely fashion, we would risk a government shutdown, which I know my friends on the other side of the aisle want to avoid as much as we do.

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Madam Speaker, I want to remind my good friend that this legislation is comparable, and this is actually under consideration in the United States Senate right now. Frankly, my friends on the other side of the aisle control the majority there.

I would also like to remind them that when the President first raised this issue about a week before the end of the year, the Speaker said, If you will help us find a way to pay for it, we will consider it. So far I don't recall that that offer has been taken up in any serious way by anybody.

The cost of this is extraordinary: $25 billion over a year; a temporary 3-month extension would cost between 7 and 8. We are trying to deal with what have been, really, deficits that have been extraordinary. This program has been extended for 5 years.

Again, we would love to continue our dialogue with our friends. We hope something productive happens in the United State Senate. For now I am going to keep the focus where it belongs. That is on this omnibus spending bill, which is a bipartisan accomplishment, which the President has urged that we pass, which I know many of my friends on the other side also favor.

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Madam Speaker, I want to remind my friends--and I have no doubt about my friend's compassion, I genuinely do not. We have had the opportunity to serve together on the Rules Committee. I would argue the compassionate thing to do here would be actually to start creating jobs.

This recession ended in 2009. It has been a lot of years. We have 140 pieces of legislation stacked up in the United States Senate waiting for the Senate to act on that we think would generate jobs, everything from Keystone pipeline to enhanced energy production. There is a disagreement, but I think if the Senate would act proactively we would actually do what I know we both want to do and create jobs.

The other thing I would suggest, I have some sympathy with my friends on the other side of the rotunda in my party. They have not been allowed to present any of their ideas or any of their amendments on the floor. I think they would probably like to work with our friend in that regard, let's just see.

Again, I would suggest today we should concentrate on the thing that we know we can do in a bipartisan fashion: pass an omnibus spending bill that will prevent a government shutdown and will provide a firm foundation for our economy that both sides and the President of the United States have agreed is the right thing to do for the country.

You usually make progress one step at a time. It seems to me that is an important step and a step we ought to make today by passing the rule and the underlying legislation.

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Madam Speaker, I remind my friends on the other side of the aisle that supposedly we are in the 5th year of a recovery and that we have extended these extraordinary benefits for 5 years at the cost of hundreds of billions of dollars.

Now, the Speaker has indicated that if our friends, either the administration, our friends on the other side of the aisle, or our friends in the Senate have an idea how to pay for this extension, he would give it due consideration. So far, it doesn't appear that such an idea has been forthcoming.

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Madam Speaker, in a few moments, I will offer an amendment to the rule. The amendment is necessary due to a late request submitted by the administration to ensure that the fix for disabled military retirees works as it was intended. The amendment was fully vetted by the relevant House and Senate committees, majority and minority, and the administration. The

Congressional Budget Office has confirmed that the change does not affect the cost of the bill. This amendment will ensure that we properly execute the agreed-upon compromise.

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