Congressional Black Caucus

Floor Speech

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Mr. HORSFORD. Let me thank my good friend and the coanchor for this hour, the gentleman from the Empire State, Mr. Jeffries.

Every time we have the opportunity to come to this floor, it is a humbling experience. And to all of my colleagues, led by our chair, the Honorable Representative from the State of Ohio, the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, Marcia Fudge, thank you for your leadership and for demanding that we have an opportunity to be heard in this very important Special Order hour. I want to thank all of my colleagues who have come here tonight.

Tonight, at some level, my heart is heavy because, as many of my colleagues have expressed tonight, we came to Congress to get things done on behalf of the American people and the constituents that we serve.

We understand, as Congressman Jeffries just indicated, that this is a divided government. As the minority, we have to work within this honorable institution to try to advance the issues that we feel are important, but what we do not believe is that the majority should be able to unilaterally obstruct a governmental process that is the foundation of our democracy as a nation.

So tonight, this is a very important discussion because later this week, if the Speaker and the majority House Republicans have their way, they will do for the first time in history something that has never been done, which is to sue the American President because they don't agree with him.

This lawsuit, the Speaker Boehner-House Republican lawsuit against the President, has been characterized by many. USA Today's editorial board said ``it was a political sideshow.'' At a time when the American people are urging us to act on a number of important and serious and time-pressing matters, you, Mr. Speaker, and House Republicans are sacrificing precious taxpayer resources and time when we could be tackling a number of important issues that the American public want us to tackle.

Now, I just held a telephone town hall last week in my district. I had over 4,000 people on this telephone town hall. My district covers 52,000 square miles. It is a diverse district. Not everybody agrees with the President or his positions. But not one person on that call asked me to support you, Mr. Speaker, or the House Republicans in suing the President. In fact, many of them said, how is it that you have the authority to unilaterally act to obstruct this process and to deny the important issues that so many of us would like to have come before this body for an up or down vote? We understand that we are in the minority and we may not win, but in this democracy, the minority deserves to be heard.

Now, unfortunately, this body is about to take a 5-week recess. My constituents don't really understand how, after we have really accomplished very little, we can now take a ``recess,'' and the thing that you want to act on this week is to sue the President. Well, that shouldn't be. We shouldn't be going on recess, we shouldn't be wasting taxpayer money or time on frivolous, baseless lawsuits, because we have plenty of work to do.

So my question, Mr. Speaker, is: Whose side are you on? Are you on the side of the majority of Americans who want us to jump-start the middle class, to maybe pass the Make It in America job creation agenda, or the infrastructure bills that are so desperately needed? Whose side are you on, Mr. Speaker, when Americans have demanded a raise so that they can have their wages keep up with the cost of living? Whose side are you on, Mr. Speaker, when you have already denied the extension of unemployment insurance benefits for over 3.5 million Americans since last December--33,800 Nevadans who are struggling, at no fault of their own, who need a bridge just to stay afloat? Whose side are you on? Are we going to honor our veterans and fix a broken VA system? Are we going to pass the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act to ensure that our most sacred Democrat right, our right to vote, is protected?

I know you want to recess so you can run home and have elections, but people need to vote, and we need to make sure that that right to vote is protected. So we need to pass and reauthorize the Voting Rights Act. Why can't we bring that bill up this week, Mr. Speaker?

Mr. Speaker, whose side are you on when, overwhelmingly, the American public has asked us to pass comprehensive immigration reform, to secure our border, to actually put the necessary resources on the border, and to make sure that no other children are torn away from their mothers and their fathers?

So while House Democrats are working on these important issues, and many, many others, the American people just simply don't understand how it is that this week, of all weeks, the majority would decide in this House to spend precious time and resources suing the American President for the first time in history.

Instead of doing any of this, House Republicans are focused once again on partisan stunts that contribute nothing to the well-being of our Nation. Voting to sue the President is an insult to the hardworking American families who need this Congress to act, act on something, on anything, and to let us have an up-or-down vote.

Now, this lawsuit undermines what little remaining respect this House has left. So as new Members, we are pleading: give us our Congress back, let us work with our colleagues who want to work with us. There are Republicans who support some of these bills, but the leadership, the Speaker, and the House Republican leadership, won't let them. That is the truth.

Now, my colleague has talked about the fact that there is very little constitutional basis for this lawsuit. Let me just add a couple to those remarks. Constitutional law experts have weighed in. Laurence Tribe of Harvard University Law School described the lawsuit as a ``wholly meritless attempt to invoke the jurisdiction of the Federal judiciary.''

Charles Tiefer of the University of Baltimore Law School called the lawsuit an ``embarrassing loser.''

The whole process leading up to this lawsuit has been tainted by partisan tactics as well. Just last week, Ranking Member Representative Louise Slaughter and other members of the Rules Committee introduced 11 amendments during markup of this baseless, unnecessary lawsuit against the President, and their only request was to allow more transparency and accountability if this were to go forward on how much money is being spent--taxpayer money, by the way--in funding this lawsuit.

So whose side are you on, Mr. Speaker, when you talk about fiscal responsibility and you won't even disclose or allow the rules of this vote to have a level of transparency or accountability?

Let me just highlight a few of the amendments that these Democrats proposed:

Requiring the House general counsel to disclose how much has been spent on the lawsuit each week;

Prohibiting the hiring of any law firms or consultants who lobby Congress, because if they lobby Congress for a living, Congress shouldn't also be paying them on the side;

Prohibiting the hiring of any law firm or consultants who lobby on the Affordable Care Act implementation, or who have any financial stake in implementation of the Affordable Care Act;

Requiring disclosure of all contracts with lawyers and consultants 10 days before they are approved, requiring disclosure of where taxpayer money paying for this frivolous lawsuit is coming from, and which programs and offices' budgets are being reduced to pay for it.

These were the commonsense amendments that House Democrats on the Rules Committee proposed, and on a party line vote 7-4, the House majority, the Republicans, denied these commonsense transparency and accountability measures to be included.

So what is the rush? It shows that the Rules Committee Republicans are not serious. They are not serious about making this a transparent process because they know it is nothing more than a waste of time and money. This is a stunt, but it is a stunt that has a price, and the American public deserves to know just how much this is going to cost.

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Mr. HORSFORD. To the gentleman from New York, as you indicated, this frivolous lawsuit really should not be entirely surprising, and we should not underestimate the lengths that the House Republicans are willing to take against this President.

This week, it is a vote to sue. After the recess that we shouldn't be taking, maybe it is impeachment proceedings, so this is a very serious issue and one that I wish every Member of this body will take seriously because what the Speaker and the House Republicans are asking us to do is a direct affront to our constituents who elected us to do a job.

Republicans can disagree with the President. That is not shocking, nor is it inappropriate. There are plenty of differences that divide many of us here in Washington--many of them, needlessly so--but Republican opposition during this Presidency has hit historic levels.

Many of my colleagues this evening have talked about the obstruction that has occurred from the very day this President was being sworn in by those in the majority in this body who have attempted to block him.

I believe in an America that still can do good things and big things. I believe in an America that honors its institutions and respects them. I believe in the institutions of these offices, even when I may not agree with the person who holds that position, but what I cannot do is stand by as a Member of Congress, someone who is here to serve the 700,000 people from my district who elected me, and to allow the Speaker and House Republicans to tear down this institution. It is too honorable.

The work we are supposed to be doing is too great. It is significant to the lives of the people who are counting on us to do something that is important to their lives.

So, again, I ask, Mr. Speaker: Whose side are you on? Because there is nothing in this lawsuit that is going to create a job, educate a child, help a small business owner, address the issues of health care in this country, fix what is broken with immigration; there is nothing this week that you or the House Republicans are doing with this baseless lawsuit that is going to solve a problem.

In fact, it is going to create new problems--constitutional problems--and it is going to create a debt that this institution and future generations will have to cover.

So we are here, raising our voices against what we believe to be an affront to the integrity of this body as a whole and to bring a focus back to the issues the American people so desperately want this Congress to work on.

So we are here tonight. We will be here working and willing to work. We are willing to cancel our recess to stay here and do the American public's business because that is what they expect us to do.

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