January 11, 2019 - Issue: Vol. 165, No. 6 — Daily Edition116th Congress (2019 - 2020) - 1st Session

[Pages H505-H510]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          LEGISLATIVE PROGRAM

  (Mr. SCALISE asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, I yield to my friend from Maryland (Mr. 
Hoyer), who is the majority leader of the House, for our first official 
colloquy.
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. We have 
reversed positions, of course. For a number of years now I have had the 
privilege of having a colloquy with Mr. McCarthy who was then the 
majority leader. So Mr. Scalise has now undertaken my role, a role 
probably he didn't welcome, but I know that he will do well as minority 
whip.
  As majority leader I am still here doing the colloquy, and I am proud 
to be doing it with Mr. Scalise who is an outstanding Member. I 
congratulate him on his position and look forward to working with him 
through the years toward trying to create agreement, consensus, and 
action by the Congress on behalf of the American people.
  Mr. Speaker, on Monday, the House will meet at noon for morning-hour 
debate and 2 p.m. for legislative business with votes postponed until 
6:30 p.m.
  On Tuesday and Wednesday, the House will meet at 10 a.m. for morning-
hour debate and noon for legislative business.
  On Thursday, the House will meet at 9 a.m. for legislative business 
with last votes no later than 3 p.m.
  We will consider several bills under suspension of the rules. The 
complete list of suspensions, as is the natural order, will be 
announced at the close of business today.
  In addition, Mr. Speaker, we will consider H.R. 268 which is the 
Disaster Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2019. Chairwoman Lowey 
released this legislation last week. It will provide relief and 
recovery assistance for Americans affected by recent hurricanes--some 
of which were historic in their power and devastation--wildfires, 
typhoons, and other natural disasters.
  Mr. Speaker, we will also consider additional legislation related to 
fiscal year 2019 appropriations.
  We are on day 21 of the shutdown. The House Democrats will continue 
to work so that it comes to an end as soon as possible.
  Members will also be advised that additional legislative items are 
possible. I might add to that, it is possible we will deal with one, 
two, or three of the appropriation bills that haven't been passed, but 
it is also quite possible that, hopefully, we will deal with the 
balance of the appropriation bills which have not been enacted. We will 
have to see what transpires over the next 24, 48, 72, or 96 hours. 
Hopefully, we will be able to move forward to get our Federal employees 
back to work.
  Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Maryland. I 
appreciate his kind remarks and would return those as well.
  The gentleman is well-versed at this process and is a noble battler 
in the debate of ideas. I look forward to having continued 
conversations about, not only the areas where we may have some 
differences, but how we can find common ground. The gentleman is very 
good at working with both sides to find common ground, and, obviously, 
right now we are in the middle of one of those differences that 
hopefully can get resolved.
  As we have been in these meetings at the White House with the other 
leaders, both House and Senate, Republican and Democrat, the 
unfortunate thing is that we have been at an impasse. The President, 
through his Department of Homeland Security, has made a formal request 
and a detailed request for the amount of money it will take to secure 
our border; to properly give our agents--the people who are risking 
their lives to keep our country safe--the tools they need. It requires 
a lot of things. It might require more border patrol agents, more tools 
and technology, but clearly also physical barriers. That seems to be 
the area where we have had an impasse.

                              {time}  1230

  I know that as the President put a formal offer on the table backed 
up by the experts at the Department of Homeland Security for what it 
will take to secure the border, up until this point, we haven't seen a 
formal proposal response to counter that offer, if, in fact, the 
gentleman's side does agree that we need to secure the border. The 
President has made a formal request that came from our experts at the 
Department of Homeland Security.
  The only offer I have seen put on the table is the Speaker's offer, 
and I am not even sure if it was serious, when she said she would 
support $1. Now, I know the gentleman from Maryland would hopefully 
recognize that $1 is not a serious counteroffer.
  The President has had multiple meetings at the White House and has 
continued to extend an invitation for whenever there is a serious 
counteroffer that can be backed up with an explanation of how that can 
actually secure our border, if, in fact, that is the objective of the 
other side.
  Can the gentleman from Maryland share with me when that counteroffer 
will be made, when a formal, serious proposal to get our government 
back open and secure our border will be put on the table?
  Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman for his observations.
  Of course, as the gentleman knows, we have and continue to be and are 
today even more so concerned about the fact that the President of the 
United States has taken hostage the Government of the United States and 
shut it down. As a result, what we have asked for before we get into 
serious negotiations is to let us open up the government; for, after 
all, when we have border security being our focus, nobody that is 
protecting the borders for the United States of America is getting 
paid. The morale is low; the apprehension is high; and we believe very 
strongly that the first step we ought to take is open up government.
  Then, as the gentleman well knows, we have articulated on numerous 
occasions--and I hope the gentleman believes we are honest. And when 
the gentleman reviews the record of when we were in charge of the House 
and the Senate, we made very substantial investments in border 
security, as I think probably the gentleman knows.
  Furthermore, we have been ready to support and offered the bills that 
the Republicans have passed. And, in fact, I think the minority leader 
in the Senate said that he would accept the number that the President 
suggested, and

[[Page H506]]

we made some counteroffers. They were rejected.
  In fact, Senator McConnell believed he had an agreement with the 
President on keeping the government open. He sent us a bill to do just 
that in the waning days of December, and as the minority whip well 
knows, that bill was not taken up on the floor of this House.
  In fact, a bill which had been pending for 11\1/2\ months in 
committee first came to the floor with 10 days left in the year. That 
bill included a number far above the number that the President 
originally asked for and far above any number that had been discussed. 
Although it passed the House, the House knew then, very well, that it 
did not have the votes in the Senate to pass, and it did not pass. As a 
result, the government shut down.
  And we continue to be in a place, as we said at the White House, to 
negotiate on border security to secure our borders, to protect our 
people from those who would come across our borders to commit crimes, 
protect against drugs being imported, protect against the trafficking 
of human beings. We all share that view: Republicans and Democrats. The 
issue is how we most effectively accomplish that objective.
  Pending that, the government, as we took power--and it was our 
responsibility--what we have done over the last 2 weeks is to pass, 
essentially, your bills. I don't know how we can be much more 
bipartisan than that than to pass your bills.
  Mr. SCALISE. Reclaiming my time, those were not our bills. The House 
had a negotiation going on with the Senate. The Senate, as the 
gentleman knows, passed some bills--not all of the bills that were 
brought to the House floor, but brought some bills that were different 
from the House bills. As you know, when the Senate passes a bill and 
the House has a different version, you go to conference committee. You 
don't just say: ``We are going to take the Senate bill.''
  Also, as you brought that bill to the floor, the Speaker, the 
majority leader brought to the floor as part of that package a bill 
that did not pass the Senate floor, a bill that would have reversed the 
Mexico City policy. That change was dramatic because that would have 
allowed taxpayer money to go to foreign government entities that 
provide abortion.
  It has been the policy of this country, since Ronald Reagan went to 
Mexico to deliver that speech and create the Mexico City policy, that 
we don't give taxpayer money to fund abortion. And I know that has gone 
back and forth through different administrations.
  This President has made it very clear that he will strictly enforce 
the Mexico City policy. That bill on the floor would have reversed it. 
That is not language that passed the Senate floor.
  In addition to that, if you go back throughout these negotiations, at 
the very beginning, the President has been talking about a crisis at 
the border. The crisis at the border is very real. In our first meeting 
with the leaders in the Situation Room at the White House, both the 
Speaker and the minority leader of the Senate interrupted the Secretary 
of Homeland Security every time she tried to go through this new crisis 
that we are seeing.
  It is not just the drugs, which are dramatic and we need to stop. It 
is not just the human trafficking, which is dramatic and we need to 
stop. It is not just the murders that are happening. There are murders 
that happened in so many States.
  In your State of Maryland, just recently, someone who is in this 
country illegally from El Salvador was sentenced to life in prison 
without parole in Montgomery County, Maryland, for the murder of 
someone, and he had no remorse for his crime.

  We just saw a police officer in California who was murdered by 
someone who came back and forth through this country illegally multiple 
times because we don't have physical barriers to secure our border.
  So that presentation was interrupted, and we never got through the 
full presentation; but ultimately, the Secretary of Homeland Security 
has laid out why we have a crisis at the border, and it needs to be 
resolved, and they went into a detailed breakdown of costs to secure 
the border.
  So at issue right here, now, is a difference in amount. If your side 
truly does agree that we have to secure our border, which I have heard 
the Speaker, the minority leader, and others say they need to secure 
the border, yet they haven't been willing to agree to more than $1 in 
the request that has been made by the administration to secure the 
border.
  So the real question is, at the heart of this debate, if we are all 
for border security, we can talk about border security.
  In fact, back in 2006, President Obama, when he was a Senator, talked 
about the need for securing the border when he voted for the Fence Act. 
The minority leader, Mr. Schumer, at the time voted for the Fence Act. 
That language, the language--and you can call it whatever you like: a 
fence, a wall, cement, steel slats. But ultimately, it is law, language 
that allows what can and can't be built.
  The language that Minority Leader Schumer at the time voted for in 
2006 would have given the Department of Homeland Security many of the 
tools they need in language, but not the money. And so now we are at a 
point where, if it is all of a sudden he is against that kind of 
physical structure that he was for in `06, he ought to explain why, and 
so should others who have maybe changed their position.
  But if the language in 2006 would give the Secretary of Homeland 
Security the tools they need and the authority they need to actually 
start securing the ports of the border that are between ports of 
entry--we have ports of entry, and everybody knows where those are. And 
we, by the way, stopped a lot of really bad people from coming into our 
country at ports of entry. What we don't know is how many people come 
through the areas where we have no ports of entry, where we have no 
borders.
  Everybody recognizes that you can't just stop people at the points of 
entry and then have no protection in the hundreds of miles--we are 
talking about over 500 miles of unprotected area of this country on the 
southern border where there is a crisis that is growing every single 
day.
  And if we acknowledge that--now, I know the minority leader and the 
Speaker went on TV the other night and said it is a fabricated crisis. 
How could you call this a fabricated crisis when you see deaths, when 
you see over 90 percent of the heroin that comes into this country and 
kills Americans every single day is coming across our southern border. 
That is not a fabricated crisis. Those are real serious things that are 
happening, that are bad.
  There are good people who come to this country. America is the 
greatest country in the world for letting people in legally. We let 
over a million people into our country legally every single year, and 
it enriches our country. It is a legal process. And there are millions 
of people waiting to come to this country the right way.
  So while we recognize that greatness of our country, we also 
recognize that there are people who are bad people who come into our 
country every single day as well, and we need to have the tools to 
secure our border so we can stop that.
  So the real question is: How much money is the other side willing to 
support to actually secure the border?
  If the department that is tasked with keeping our country safe is 
saying they need $5.7 billion, if you agree to a smaller number, if you 
want to put on the table a smaller number--it is not $1, and let's at 
least recognize that was an insult. So if it is not $1, then what is 
the amount you will support and put on the table to start a real 
negotiation to solve this crisis?
  I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. President, the Government of the United States 
partially has been shut down. That is the issue here. We can have the 
debate that the gentleman just discussed--not a word about opening up 
the people's government, not a word about 800,000 people who are not 
getting their salaries, not a word of the financial instability that he 
is subjecting 800,000 people to, ``he'' being the President of the 
United States. They are being held hostage for the ransom of doing what 
they believe is the right thing to do on border security.
  However, Mr. Hurd says--a Republican who has more border mileage on

[[Page H507]]

the border than any other congressional district in America--what the 
President wants to do is not the right thing.
  Senator Ron Johnson says a similar quote. Lindsey Graham said he 
thought it was a bad investment. Now, he didn't say it yesterday or the 
day before. He said it about a year ago.
  Mr. SCALISE. Reclaiming my time, Lindsey Graham did say we need to 
build the wall. Lindsey Graham has a different solution, I am sure, 
than the gentleman from Maryland. So let's be clear.
  And I was speaking to Senator Graham last night about this. He wants 
to start building the wall. And clearly, your side has not been 
willing.
  And the President, by the way, in the meeting in the Oval Office, in 
the Situation Room, 2 days ago looked at the Speaker directly and said: 
Okay. We don't agree even on some of these other areas of government 
that haven't been open, but if you will agree to work with me on the 
wall, I will support another 30 days of keeping all government going, 
even on the areas we disagree, but to open everything up and continue 
negotiations on the wall. And the Speaker said no.
  We could have everything open today, but the Speaker is the one who 
is being held hostage by the far left elements of your party because 
she is yet to agree to anything, not putting more than $1.

  She said on TV last week she would support $1. That is an insult. And 
I have yet to see, in any of the meetings I have been in, her 
willingness to support more than that.
  And so we could have everything opened today. That offer has been put 
on the table. The President, himself, has said you can write the 
definition of the wall. You can ban cement wall. The President has 
already acknowledged he would be willing to support that. He would be 
willing to support a lower number if you can justify how it secures the 
border, but that offer has never been put on the table.
  We could end this crisis today. Twenty-one days in is too long. And 
there is a solution. But the solution includes, it is not going to be 
your way or the highway. You can't say: ``No, we want everything or 
nothing.'' You have got to be willing to put something on the table 
that will secure the border of this country, or just say you are not 
for border security. But you can't say you are for border security and 
then not agree to more than $1.
  I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. HOYER. The government is shut down. There is no excuse for that. 
But the President wants his way, and he has taken 800,000 people 
hostage, and the ransom he demands is his wall.

                              {time}  1245

  Nancy Pelosi has nothing to do with shutting down this government. We 
have passed bill after bill over the last 2 weeks to open up this 
government.
  If the minority whip thinks it is good for border security not to pay 
people who are protecting the border, he and I differ.
  Let me tell you what Mick Mulvaney said. Now, he wasn't there last 
night, and I talked to Senator Graham last night. He made the statement 
that I just reflected to you.
  Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney said, in 2015--I understand it is 
not when he is working for the President, who is paying his salary--
``To just say build the darn fence and have that be the end of an 
immigration discussion is absurd and almost childish for someone 
running for President to take that simplistic of a view.''
  He said that on WRHI on 8/25/15. Look it up.
  The government is shut down. If the minority whip will look at the 
record, we funded more money for border security in 2009 than was 
funded in the next 7 years under Republican control.
  They didn't bring their bill, Mr. Speaker, to the floor until 11\1/2\ 
months had passed. But now border security has to be done right this 
second or we are going to close down government, keep it shut, and keep 
hostage 800,000 people and millions and millions and millions of 
Americans who rely on the services of government.
  A, we are for border security. We do not want people coming into this 
country who are not authorized to come into this country.
  B, we care about crime. We care about drugs. We care about investing 
money to stop drugs coming into the country and to treat those who are 
afflicted with drugs.
  The record reflects that, Mr. Speaker. But the record also reflects 
that the Republicans have, over and over and over again, used the 
shutting down of government, the taking hostage of the people's 
government, to get their way.
  Newt Gingrich did it first for a long period of time in 1995 and 
1996, 21 days. We are going to surpass that this time. He did it 
because President Clinton said: I am not going to allow you to cut 
education spending for the people of United States as deeply as you 
want to cut it.
  Then Senator Cruz came over here and talked to the so-called Freedom 
Caucus and said: Unless Obama agrees to repeal the Affordable Care Act, 
we are going to shut down government.
  And they shut down government. Very frankly, when we tried to open it 
up, the minority whip didn't vote to open it up. So maybe he doesn't 
care about opening up government, paying people who are working for the 
people of the United States. I don't know.
  Then, just recently, a few weeks ago, when they came to the end of 
the fiscal year, they had not done their job. The Republicans are in 
charge of the Senate; they were in charge of the House; and they have 
the Presidency of the United States.
  So we did a CR, and we voted for it because we didn't want to shut 
down government. Then we came to the December date to which that CR 
ran, and, lo and behold, the majority leader of the United States 
Senate sent us over a bill. It was not our bill; it was a bill from the 
Republican majority leader. It came here under unanimous consent. Their 
Republican-led Senate sent it here, and, lo and behold, the leadership 
in the House would not take up that bill.
  Why? The President, who had told Senator McConnell he would sign it, 
changed his mind. Whether it was Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Rush 
Limbaugh, I don't know who the principal adviser in that decision was, 
but one person communicated: I won't sign that bill.
  So the Republican leadership decided: We won't put that bill on the 
floor.
  They put a bill on the floor--they said over and over and over again: 
This week, we put bills on the floor that wouldn't pass the Senate.
  They put a bill that they knew would not pass the United States 
Senate on the floor, sent it over there. It didn't pass, and government 
has been shut down.
  The gentleman continues to want to talk about, can we negotiate? We 
can negotiate. The President walked out. He walked out because Nancy 
Pelosi, when asked, ``Thirty days from now, will you support the 
wall?'' said, ``No.''
  The President had a tantrum, and he walked out. He said: Well, this 
is a waste of my time.
  This is not a process where the President tells us to do things. As I 
recall, Mr. Speaker, the Constitution of the United States, Article I, 
says we are the policymakers; we are the ones who pass the laws; we are 
the ones who say what the executive department carries out as policy.
  So we ought to pass these bills. Then, yes, we ought to deal, 
honestly and openly and together, to make sure the borders are secure.
  The gentleman said the immigration system does not work; it is 
broken. He is absolutely right. The Senate, 5 or 6 years ago, passed a 
bill, in a bipartisan way, with over 62 votes, 14 Republicans, and sent 
it to the House under Republican leadership 6 years ago. They have 
never brought that bill to the floor. We have pleaded with them to 
bring that bill to the floor to fix the immigration system. It has 
never come, Mr. Speaker, to the floor of this House.
  But what we should never do, we should never take hostage the 
government of the United States, the employees who toil every day on 
behalf of the policies that we adopt and on behalf of the American 
people. We should never take them hostage and say: If you don't do what 
I say to do, we are going to keep them in an unpaid status, working if 
they are critical employees and locked out if they are not.
  Mr. Speaker, it is very, very unfortunate that we find ourselves in 
this position. I would urge that the Republican

[[Page H508]]

whip, who is my friend and whom I respect, talk to the President of the 
United States and say: Let's open up the government. Mr. Hoyer has told 
me we will sit down and have a rational, reasonable fact-based, expert-
based discussion on how, in fact, we accomplish the objective we all 
say we want to accomplish, and that is to make our borders secure.

  We are prepared to do that, open this government.
  Mr. SCALISE. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman is 
finished. We will, obviously, have more time to go back and forth on 
this, but let's keep in mind a few facts.
  First of all, the last shutdown of the United States Government was 
dubbed the Schumer shutdown because the Senate minority leader wanted 
to force his way on DACA.
  Mr. HOYER. Will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman for one moment.
  Mr. HOYER. Does the gentleman remember how long that lasted?
  Mr. SCALISE. Oh, it lasted very shortly because the gentleman from 
New York realized he was on the wrong side of the issue, just like 
right now your side is on the wrong side of this issue opposing border 
security.
  Let's be very clear what the fight is about, and it shouldn't be a 
fight. It is a fight because the President has said: Here is a proposal 
that my Department of Homeland Security has brought that said these are 
the tools they need to keep the country safe with a crisis at the 
border.
  It can't be denied. I know some on your side want to deny it. I don't 
think the gentleman from Maryland denies it. But, clearly, when the 
Senate minority leader and the Speaker of the House go on national TV 
and say it is a fabricated crisis at the border, the American people 
see what is happening at the border. We can debate how best to solve 
it.
  The President, through the Department of Homeland Security, has put 
down a proposal of what it is going to take. This is not a new idea.
  Obviously, the President ran on this as a front-and-center issue. He 
not only ran on it, but he was elected by the American people as 
President to carry out border security and build a wall. It was part of 
the national debate.
  I know some people on your side don't even want to recognize that 
that election occurred and the result, but it happened.
  Mr. HOYER. Oh, no. I think there was an election, and he did raise 
that question. As I recall, that is why I am the majority leader and 
you are the minority whip.
  Mr. SCALISE. You were not the majority leader when that happened. He 
was elected on that. We were still in the majority.
  Let's remember why we are here. To think that this is some new idea 
the President is bringing forward is ignoring the history, and let's go 
through some of that history.
  Obviously, it was front and center in the presidential election, and 
he was elected in large part on building a wall to secure our country's 
border.
  Then we go to the first spending bill as he was President, and we had 
a disagreement. There were a lot of things that we were in disagreement 
on.
  We wanted to rebuild our military, and we finally came to a 2-year 
agreement to do just that. It was critically important to start 
rebuilding the military of this country that was decimated, to give our 
men and women in uniform who risk their lives for our country a much-
needed pay raise. We finally did that.
  In that negotiation, the President wanted and he was talking about 
$25 billion for full border security, to build out the full 550 miles 
that are not secure right now, and they are well identified. The 
gentleman from Maryland knows those areas where we haven't built walls. 
Sure, we have got some money to build walls. There is about 120 miles 
of wall being built, wall that is not all cement. Some of it is steel 
slats.
  Let the experts figure out the best way to secure our border. We are 
not the architects of the border. Let the experts be that.
  But there is some wall being built, but not enough, especially in the 
areas where Federal law today prohibits wall from being built.
  You want to know how ridiculous some of the laws are right now that 
we are trying to change? Federal law prohibits the President from 
building walls in the most cost-effective way, in the most efficient 
way. Why would we have those kinds of prohibitions in law?
  We passed a bill through the House before the shutdown happened. You 
voted no. A lot of your side voted no. I think all your side, in fact, 
voted no. But it was a bill the President would have signed that would 
have given him the tools he needs to secure the border.
  It went over to the Senate. The reason it didn't get to the 
President's desk is not because there wasn't Republican support. They 
have a 60-vote rule in the Senate.
  I can disagree. You might even disagree, I don't know. I disagree on 
that. On appropriations bills, they should at least let the majority 
rule so we can properly govern this country in a more efficient manner. 
But they have a 60-vote requirement.
  So the Senate minority, the Democrats in the Senate, all voted 
together to block it, and that led to a shutdown. That bill would have 
kept the government running and secured the border, but Democrats voted 
no in the House, Democrats voted no in the Senate, and so we have a 
shutdown.
  How are we going to get out of this? How are we going to get it 
resolved? We can talk about hostages. We can talk about the people on 
your side of the aisle who refuse to support any border security with a 
dollar amount behind it. You can use words all day, but words don't 
secure our borders. Borders secure our border. Walls and barriers 
secure our border.
  The President has said that you can call it and define it whatever 
you want. He has been very flexible in wanting to negotiate. But in 
every one of those meetings, there has not been a counteroffer put on 
the table by your side.
  If we want to resolve the crisis, it involves both sides coming 
together. The President is already out there publicly, in our meetings, 
saying he is willing to negotiate and come to a different place.

  You should work with your side to come up with definitions, to come 
up with a different dollar amount. But it has to end in securing our 
border. If we all agree on that, it has to end in the actual language 
and dollars to accomplish that objective.
  The President said: I will give you 30 more days. Even though we 
don't agree on some of these other things, I will agree to sign that 
into law, if you will agree to work with me on the wall.
  The Speaker said no. It was the Speaker who said no, not the 
President. That is why we are at day 21.
  We didn't even need to be at day 1. We passed a bill out of the 
House. The Senate killed it because every Democrat voted no.
  So here we are. Republicans and Democrats and everybody in this room 
know how we can solve this problem, but it is not by you all sitting 
there and saying we only are going to support a dollar and nothing 
more. Real money has to be put on the table to solve the crisis.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. HOYER. We could go on and on, Mr. Speaker. The fact of the matter 
is the Senate sent us a bill to keep the government open. They passed 
it unanimously, under Republican leadership. The President said he 
would sign it. He changed his mind, and this House folded. And the 
Republicans who were in charge at the time wouldn't even put the Senate 
bill on the floor.
  We are not prepared to be bludgeoned by taking hostage 800,000 people 
who work for the Federal Government and who are not now being paid, 
some of whom are working.

                              {time}  1300

  And, ironically, they are working to protect the border and to make 
sure our planes are flying, to make sure people who fly on planes are 
not in danger.
  We want the President of the United States to open up this 
government. We want the Republicans to help us open up this government. 
We just passed four bills that are the Senate bills. Senator McConnell 
is not going to take ``yes'' for an answer because the President tells 
him: I am not going to sign those bills.

[[Page H509]]

  Let me tell you something, Mr. Speaker. I have been a Member of this 
body for some period of time, and I served with George Bush. He was 
President of the United States, and we had a Democratic House, and we 
didn't have a shutdown. He signed appropriations bills. We worked 
together. We respected one another.
  I would hope, Mr. Speaker, in closing, that the whip would, in fact, 
help us open up the government, and then we are prepared to sit down--
he knows me--and talk about how we make our borders secure and protect 
our people and, yes, give humanitarian services to those who are 
seeking asylum, running from violence and mayhem and murder. We are 
prepared to do that. We want to do that.
  I would hope the whip, I would hope Senator McConnell, who was quoted 
just a few years ago as saying, ``shutdown is a failed policy''--
shutdowns ought not to occur. Adults who are responsible ought not to 
allow that to happen, realizing full well that in order to preclude 
that from happening, compromise is absolutely essential on both sides.
  President Trump is the President of the United States. We have to 
work with him to compromise, to come to agreement. But there are an 
awful lot of Republicans--I quoted Will Hurd; I quoted Ron Johnson; I 
quoted some other Republicans--an awful lot of Republicans who think 
the President has the wrong idea. And, frankly, as Mr. Mulvaney said 
during the course of the campaign, it wasn't a very realistic idea.
  But, that aside, it is time for us to open up the government, and 
then we will have an extensive discussion, as we must, as we should, in 
the best interests of the American people, to keep our borders secure 
and keep them safe.
  Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. I know that we are 
closing this. I do want to go back.
  Last year, when the President signed the omnibus bill to keep the 
government open, at that time he said: This won't happen again. He laid 
down a marker last year that, okay, he will go along with a bill that 
is far short of what he needs to secure the border, but he wasn't going 
to do it again. That was a year ago.
  So everybody has known that this issue is going to have to get 
resolved because lives are at risk. The President, like we did, took an 
oath to protect this country. That is what this is about. We surely 
want to open up all areas of government, but keeping the border secure 
is part of that. And so when the President signed the bill last year, 
he said: It is not going to happen again.
  Now, obviously, when we came to this year, there were some people 
telling the President the votes weren't there to put the money in place 
to secure the border. In fact, the now Speaker, when she was minority 
leader, went to the White House and told the President: The votes 
aren't there in the House to fund your request for the wall.
  Mr. HOYER. How many Republicans were in the House at that point in 
time?
  Mr. SCALISE. We had over 218, clearly.
  Mr. HOYER. You had 240-plus.
  Mr. SCALISE. Good for you, and, obviously, things have changed.
  But when the minority leader then told the President the votes 
weren't there to fund the wall, maybe the President took her at her 
word and thought that was an accurate assessment of the House. It 
turned out she was wrong. We passed the bill to fund the President's 
request.
  The House had a difference with the Senate. It is surely not the 
first time in this country's history where the Senate passed one bill 
that was short of what we needed to secure the border, and we came back 
and passed a bill to fully fulfill the President's request to secure 
the border. So we ended up at an impasse not because there weren't 
enough Republican votes, but because there were no Democratic votes to 
do that. And now we are here today.
  Let's talk about quotes. He wants to quote Republicans. I will quote 
a Democrat. I won't tell you who it is first.
  In 2006, when there was a bill to put $50 billion in place, over 25 
years, for border security, this Democrat in the Senate said it will 
authorize some badly needed funding for better fences and better 
security along our borders, and that should help stem some of the tide 
of illegal immigration in this country.
  That was in 2006, for over $50 billion for border security, and the 
Democrat who said that was then-Senator Barack Obama. So you can quote 
Republicans. I will quote Democrats.
  Mr. HOYER. That bill passed, did it not?
  Mr. SCALISE. That bill passed, but it didn't put the money there, and 
that is why we are here.
  And again, he can talk and give great speeches and say we need $50 
billion, but if you don't appropriate the $50 billion, the money is not 
there to actually build the fencing that is needed.
  Mr. HOYER. Was that bill brought up in the House?
  Mr. SCALISE. And so now we need to talk about how to fund the wall, 
how to fund the structure, call it what you will. And again, the 
President, himself, has said you can title it however you want. You can 
ban cement fencing.
  But at the same time, what Barack Obama and Chuck Schumer voted for 
in 2006 is the authority to build what is needed, but they didn't put 
the money there. It is time to finally back up the word. It is hot air 
until you put the money on the table.
  So the money has been put on the table by the Republicans, at least 
an offer, backed up with real data of where the money would be spent to 
secure this country. There has not been a counteroffer.

  So let's talk now about the final issue, and that is adjournment.
  I know later today the House will be voting to adjourn. Last week, 
the House, under the Democratic majority, as you proudly talk about the 
fact that you all are in the majority, you all voted to adjourn. We 
voted not to adjourn.
  We should stay here to get this job done, to finally have a real 
negotiation to solve our differences. We can solve our differences, but 
we are not going to solve them by continuing to adjourn every weekend 
when we should be negotiating and getting the government back open and 
securing the border.
  On this final thought, would the gentleman address the vote, the 
motion that will be made later to adjourn that we oppose?
  I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. HOYER. The gentleman has a different concept of negotiating than 
I do. If somebody takes somebody that I care about hostage and says now 
I want to negotiate with you, it is not a negotiation. That is a 
demand. That is a ``if you don't do it, I am going to harm people.''
  When you said the President of the United States said: This is the 
last time I am going to open up government, I am going to sign an 
almost overwhelmingly supported piece of legislation by Republicans and 
Democrats--George Bush never did that. I don't ever remember Ronald 
Reagan doing that or George H.W. Bush doing that or Bill Clinton doing 
that. They did it when it was a close vote, but not when it was 
overwhelming that we ought to open up the government.
  As long as hostages are held by your opponent, you are not 
negotiating. You are subject to being demanded, ``Do what I say.'' That 
is not the democratic process, and it is harming, literally, millions, 
tens of millions of people in the process in order to get his way. I 
have not seen that before.
  The other two shutdowns were legislative shutdowns. There is no doubt 
this is an executive shutdown, and you just said it: I will never sign 
something like this again unless it gives me what I want.
  Frankly, that is what we saw in the negotiations over the 3 days we 
were there. The last day, of course, was about a 10-minute day because 
the President stomped out.
  Mr. Scalise, all I can tell you is I share your view of the 
objective, but because we don't agree with the same ways and means to 
accomplish that objective, shutting down government ought not to be the 
alternative. The alternative ought to be to keep talking and getting to 
a place where I think you and I both want to get, where these borders 
are secure, where people are not being transported across it for human 
trafficking purposes, where murderers don't come across the border.
  But there is a surge right now across our border, and that surge is 
of mostly

[[Page H510]]

mothers and children seeking asylum, coming to ports of entry--not 
across any fences or borders, coming to ports of entry. The border 
guards are telling us they are turning themselves in. They want to, 
because they are seeking refuge from a country that has purported to be 
a country of refuge, that raises a statue in New York Harbor to send 
that message. But we need to make them known to us when they come into 
the country. We agree on that.
  So, rather than all this rhetoric back and forth, Mr. Speaker, it is 
a simple proposition. Senator McConnell has said, unless the President 
says he will sign on opening up the government, he won't put it on the 
floor. That is the only person who is stopping you, because we have 
sent bills.
  Mr. Cole of your side said: I don't like the bills because they are 
only Senate bills. We don't like them either, but we like, less, 
government being shut down. We like, less, 800,000 people being put at 
risk. We like, less, the anxiety that we are causing our Federal 
employees in terms of the financial stability of their homes and their 
ability to put food on their tables and pay their mortgage and pay 
their rent.
  Surely--surely--we ought to be able to come to agreement that that is 
not what we ought to inflict to get our way. I hope we open up our 
government.
  Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Maryland.
  And when you look at the women who are coming across through this 
trek to try to cross the border, first of all, asylum has been offered 
by Mexico to all of the people as part of that caravan. Thousands of 
people were offered asylum, work permits--turned it down. There is a 
legal way to seek asylum.
  It seems to me, if another country offers you asylum and you want to 
leave your country, you take the asylum, but they turned it down. But 
the women who are coming over, Doctors Without Borders has done a study 
and said that over 30 percent of the women who are on this trek have 
been sexually assaulted or worse.
  We should all want to address this crisis. There is a way to solve 
the crisis. If we talk about hostages, both sides can use terms. But 
when the President of the United States and the White House look at the 
Speaker and say, ``I will sign a bill that contains things that we have 
yet to negotiate that I don't agree with; I will sign it if you agree 
to keep negotiating,'' and the Speaker of the House said no, that is 
the my-way-or-the-highway approach that is wrong.
  The President has put multiple things on the table, has offered to 
negotiate on terms, on dollars, on every front, and not one 
counteroffer. That has got to change. We can solve this crisis, but it 
is going to involve both sides being willing to put something on the 
table to solve the border security crisis. I hope we can get there, and 
we will keep working at it.
  I appreciate the comments and the thoughts of the gentleman from 
Maryland, and I truly do believe that he wants to solve this. We have 
some differences. Let's keep working and get it done.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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