Providing for Consideration of H.R. 2596, Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2016

Floor Speech

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Mr. DOGGETT. Friday, this House sent a strong message to the Fast-Trackers: Not so fast.

Forty-eight hours ago, Republican leaders were telling the world that, at this moment, we would be voting to approve Fast Track; but now, the Fast-Trackers have become backtrackers, pushing back the vote.

The only reason that they seek this postponement in this rule of up to 6 weeks is that they do not have the votes to approve Fast Track today, and the only way they can get those votes today is to use this strange shenanigan of connecting it and cloaking it in a rule for the authorization of our intelligence agencies.

After Friday's Fast Track vote, one official said those who ``vote against this Trade Adjustment Assistance are adding their names to the death certificate for [it].'' Well, let's play it straight for a change. TAA is not authorized now. It expired last year. Its future depends, not upon this authorization, but upon an adequate level of funding.

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act, and many more have not been authorized for years, but they continue to operate perfectly well, based upon appropriated funds. This TAA argument is phony.

Really, it doesn't take much intelligence to see what is happening here. These Fast-Trackers are desperate, and this postponement vote for this extent, of this nature, is unprecedented in the history of this Congress. It has never happened before in American history that someone has asked to postpone a vote for up to 6 weeks.

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Mr. DOGGETT. And understand what that means. Understand that they are looking for the ideal time--morning, noon, or night--to muscle through a broken trade policy that a majority of this House and of the American people do not want.

This rule provides that the Speaker at any time of day can come with no notice, no debate, and say, we are voting to send this bill to the President's desk.

What really needs adjusting is not trade assistance but the no-compromise, no-amendment attitude on trade that gives us broken trade policies.

This vote wouldn't be so close if this process hadn't been so closed.

Reject this rule. Vote for democracy. Don't change the precedents of the House. Don't let this be muscled through.

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Mr. DOGGETT. Does this rule provide any notice to Members of the House, or can this be entirely a surprise attack? Can they come out here on the floor at any time, perhaps when the floor is as empty as it is now, and give no notice to the Members of the House that they are about to move to send this bill to the President's desk, have absolutely no debate on that rule, but then have a vote here, perhaps a day when some Members are out on important business in their district, basically picking the best time because they are so desperate to force through a bill that they know a majority of this House does not support and that the American people don't support because it will just foist off on us a broken, failed trade policy that does not respect the interests of the American people? Is that what is happening here?

Mr. HASTINGS. That is certainly allowed. Anytime before July 30, the measure could be brought to the floor, and it could be brought to the floor without any notice to the membership because it is a motion to reconsider. It is a part of this particular rule sought by the Speaker of the House, I might add, and therefore it could be brought at any time under the aegis of the Speaker's authority.

Mr. DOGGETT. Was the gentleman present in the Rules Committee when every single constructive improvement to this fast-track bill was rejected by the Rules Committee--not with your vote, of course--but a majority of the Rules Committee said ``no'' to telling the Members of this Congress as much about this deal as the Vietnamese Politburo already knows, saying ``no'' to at least meeting the standards on the environment that the Bush administration agreed to, saying ``no'' to putting the foreign corporations on the same level as our American corporations and businesses so that foreign corporations wouldn't have an advantage to come in and attack health, safety, and environmental rules that might be established by the Congress or the State of Florida or a city like San Antonio or Austin? Because under this fast-track bill, we are headed toward jeopardizing those rules, those State laws, and those Federal laws that deal with the needs of the American family and letting these foreign corporations circumvent them as they did in Canada, recently, to demand millions of dollars of taxpayer money for a decision locally to just prevent the expansion of a quarry. We can't have that happen. But the Rules Committee would not allow us to address those problems.

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