Promoting Job Creation and Reducing Small Business Burdens Act

Floor Speech

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise today not only in opposition to this legislation but to a process that has been conducted in secret and in bad faith.

Tonight, the House will debate two legislative packages that have been brought to the floor over the objections of the minority and without regard for due process or the opportunity for robust debate.

Mr. Speaker, make no mistake: these measures are being advanced for no other reason than political gain.

The bill we consider presently is H.R. 5405, a newly created package that combines 11--11--separate Republican-authored bills. These complex and wide-ranging measures have been hastily merged together and rushed to the floor for a vote. The expedited process in which the Republicans have engaged, over my objections, have denied Members the opportunity to debate how these pieces will interact with each other and the problems that may occur as a result.

Keep in mind that H.R. 5405 is so far-reaching that it amends the Securities Act, the Commodity Exchange Act, the Securities Exchange Act, the JOBS Act, the Bank Holding Company Act, and the Investment Advisers Act, not to mention that many provisions interact with the Dodd-Frank Act.

With this omnibus proposal touching so many different aspects of our directives and securities laws, Members ought to have the chance to offer amendments on the floor and debate whether this laundry list of provisions is the right approach.

Again, this is a substantial piece of legislation with the package requiring three separate reports by the SEC and another robust cost-benefit analysis.

Keep in mind that the majority is placing all these new rule-writing and reporting requirements on the SEC at the same time that they are denying the Commission the funding they need to do their job efficiently and be the tough sheriff for Wall Street that we need them to be.

I, for one, oppose this last-minute attempt to circumvent the legislative process. At the eleventh hour, it seems the majority is using all the tricks at their disposal to prove to the American people that they are more than the do-nothing Republican Congress. I think the American people are smarter than that.

Again, I think the American people would agree that Members of this House should be afforded the opportunity to discuss what is in these packages, offer amendments, and have a robust debate on these bills.

Tonight, in a mad dash for political victory, that fundamental element of democracy will be thwarted; furthermore, the chairman has broken with the tradition of a bipartisan suspension vote process by putting forth more than 15 pieces of legislation in exchange for one Democratic bill. This is just unacceptable.

Unfortunately, as with flood insurance legislation, the Export-Import Bank, and the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act, the ideological wing of the Republican Party is unable and unwilling to work together to get things done for our Nation's citizens. I am dismayed that they continue to put partisan interests ahead of job creation, certainty for our businesses, and the democratic process.

Mr. Speaker, to preserve the principle of fairness for the minority and to ensure the democratic process continues as it has for centuries, I am, indeed, opposing this legislation as well as the Insurance Capital Standards Clarification Act that we will consider shortly.

I believe that if gone unchecked this type of legislating could increase and soon become commonplace. We must not circumvent our time-honored traditions for political gain.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Some Members will come to the floor, and they will

support this legislation because they may have one bill in this package, and I understand that. Some Members may have cosponsored a bill or worked on one bill. These Members, no matter how well-intended they are, cannot speak to the other 10 bills in the package because they don't know what those other 10 bills are all about.

Many don't have a clue about these other bills. Members will not even remember how they voted for or against bills that have been placed in this package.

What is being asked of the Members of this House is to forget about what really works for all Members. What they are asking Members to do at the last minute, before we close down this session, is to vote for a bill where they have packaged this large number of bills without understanding what they are or what is in them.

Just vote for them because we want a political package that says, ``We are doing something about jobs. We are going to present this as a jobs package. We are going to do more than anybody else for jobs.''

This is unreasonable. It is actually unconscionable. They should not put this burden on the Members.

I am going to ask Members to vote ``no'' on this bill, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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

You have heard from me and Congressman Ellison why this process is a process that we cannot in any way allow to take place without the kind of criticism that we are putting forth about this. This rises to the point of being shameful. This rises to the point of being disrespectful. This rises to the point of placing all of our colleagues in a position where, if anybody asked them about what is in this bill, if any of their constituents wanted to know what they voted on, they would not be able to tell them so.

They would not be able to tell them so because most of the Members, for the most part, that are going to come to this floor and vote on this bill just simply have not had the time, even if they had the background, to look into this bill. They have not had the time to ask others in their caucus about this bill. They have not had time to ask any of the advocacy organizations about this bill, for or against.

Now I understand again, and I want to repeat this, why some Members feel it absolutely necessary even though they don't like it. They have got one bill in here that they have worked on, that they have put a lot of time in and that they believe in, and they want desperately to have their bill passed.

So they are going to swallow what is being done to them in order to get, perhaps, an opportunity to get their bill, but they don't like it. And they will tell you, not on this floor, but behind the scenes, that they don't like it. They don't like the way they are being treated.

As a matter of fact, if we had the time for a real debate on this floor tonight and we asked any of the Members on the opposite side of the aisle to go down and debate these 11 bills that are in this first package, you wouldn't find two or three that would be able to do it. And the same thing on the second bill that is going to come up that talks about some issues in the insurance industry.

This should not happen. And the fact that the suspensions process has been hijacked is something that this floor and this Congress is going to have to deal with for the future. This should not happen.

We know why it was intended, why suspensions are necessary to expedite or when you have noncontroversial bills, but it was not intended for this kind of hijacking. It was not intended where you could take a whole bundle of bills, throw them into one, behind one bill that was hastily put together, that is going to do a lot of damage, and somehow call it a legitimate suspension bill.

So, Mr. Speaker and Members, let this be a lesson to all of us that we are going to have to pay attention to the rules of suspension; and if there needs to be a modification or change that will not allow this kind of thing to happen, some of us are going to have to take up leadership in doing that modification, coming forth with some new kind of ruling that will not allow this to happen.

And more than anything else, if my friends on the opposite side of the aisle get away with this, we can just throw our hands up because what they will do for the future is save all the difficult bills, add to it a bill, and then package them all and put Members in the kind of position that they are trying to put them in tonight.

It is unfair. It should not happen, and I am going to ask for a ``no'' vote on this bill.

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