September 12, 2019 - Issue: Vol. 165, No. 146 — Daily Edition116th Congress (2019 - 2020) - 1st Session

[Pages H7690-H7696]
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 the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. 
Hoyer), for the purpose of inquiring of the majority leader the 
schedule for the week to come.
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  Mr. Speaker, on Tuesday, the House will meet at 12 p.m. for morning-
hour debate, and 2 p.m. for legislative business, with votes postponed 
until 6:30 p.m. On Wednesday and Thursday of next week, the House will 
meet at 10 a.m. for morning-hour debate, and 12 p.m. for legislative 
business. On Friday, the House will meet at 9 a.m. for legislative 
business, and last votes are expected no later than 3 p.m.
  We will consider several bills under suspension of the rules. The 
complete list of suspension bills will be announced by the close of 
business tomorrow.
  The House, Mr. Speaker, will consider a clean continuing resolution 
to fund the government past September 30. While the House did its work, 
and sent 10 appropriation bills to the Senate, funding 96 percent of 
the government--the first time that is been done in over three 
decades--I am disappointed that the Senate failed to pass a single 
appropriation bill. Not one.
  Not only that, they haven't filed any until just the other day when 
we got back from the summer break.
  I am disappointed that the Senate failed to introduce a single 
appropriation bill for the first time in more than three decades. So 
that while we were very successful, the Senate failed to move forward.
  Therefore, as we wait for them to complete their work so that we can 
begin conference negotiations, a continuing resolution will be 
necessary to prevent another government shutdown like the one we 
experienced earlier this year.
  In addition, the House will consider H.R. 1423, Forced Arbitration 
Injustice Repeal Act, called the FAIR Act, and the legislation would 
eliminate forced arbitration in employment, consumer, and civil rights 
cases so that Americans, as they have under the Constitution, would 
have the right to seek redress of grievances through the courts.

[[Page H7691]]

  This would restore access to justice for millions of Americans who 
are currently locked out of the court system and are forced to settle 
their disputes against companies in a private system of arbitration.
  Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, as it relates to the funding of government, 
I know that it is important that as we finally got an agreement a few 
months ago to come up with a 2-year budget process where we agreed on 
numbers of funding, especially for the Defense Department which needs 
that certainty, they don't want these short-term CRs. They need the 
long-term certainty so they can go out and acquire the kind of 
equipment we need to keep our men and women in uniform safe to 
effectively do their jobs in a safe manner.
  One of the things I would point out, as the gentleman talked about 
the Senate process, let's be clear that the House bills that were 
passed out moved on a very partisan basis. There were no bipartisan 
agreements as you passed the bills out of the House.
  The Senate does work differently. The Senate has to have a 60-vote 
margin to get any bills moved, so they have been in negotiations to try 
to get, not a partisan agreement but a bipartisan agreement, and, 
unfortunately, so far, they have had a lot of problems with some of the 
Senate Democrats who try to put poison pills in those budget talks that 
would ultimately not yield something that can get signed into law and 
would not comply with the 2-year budget agreement that we reached.
  So I would encourage both on our side, there should have been a 
bipartisan agreement on the bills that are moved through, and at least 
there are some talks going on, but they haven't resulted in bipartisan 
legislation that can get signed by the President.
  The Senate needs to do the same thing. And so we are beyond the time 
for partisan differences. Now is the time where we need to come 
together and agree on those things that we can put in a bill that can 
get signed into law. Drop this idea of these poison pills that 
everybody knows will gum up the works. Let's get the certainty that we 
deserve for a full budget process for the year.
  We are not there yet. If we have to do a short-term budget agreement 
or short-term CR, then that is one thing that we may consider next 
week. We haven't seen the final details, of course. It would have to be 
clean with no poison pills attached to it. But, hopefully, that yields 
talks that are truly bipartisan, which we haven't, unfortunately, seen 
to this point.
  So I would hope that we can get beyond that next week. It gives us 
more time to have real negotiations that can result in something that 
can get signed into law and give certainty to our men and women in 
uniform and all of the other agencies that rely on us doing that work 
on a bipartisan basis.
  I would like to shift gears and ask the gentleman about the United 
States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, USMCA. I yield to the gentleman if he 
has something to add to that.
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  I understand the gentleman said a lot of things about reaching 
bipartisan agreements and all of this sort of stuff, and the Senate 
needed 60 votes. They didn't introduce a bill. Not a single 
appropriation bill was introduced.

                              {time}  1215

  They had the same 60-vote requirement last year, and they passed a 
lot of bills last year. The reason they didn't pass bills is that the 
President of the United States wouldn't come to the table and agree on 
caps. They could have done the same thing we did.
  We are an independent branch of government. We are the Article I 
branch of government. We appropriate money. We spend money. But the 
Senate has not done its work.
  If you brought the bills to the floor and couldn't get 60 votes, we 
get it. But I will tell my friend that there is great frustration. For 
the first time since my friend has been a Member of the Congress, we 
passed 96 percent of the funding for government by June 30, otherwise 
known as 3 full months before the end of the fiscal year, giving the 
Senate a lot of time.
  But, no, we had to wait and wait and wait until the President sent 
down Secretary Mnuchin, and we finally made an agreement on 302(a)s, in 
other words, the caps, what we were going to spend.
  With all due respect to all this talk about bipartisanship and that 
we need to work together, that is, of course, true. It was not true in 
the Congresses when my friend's party was in the majority. The 
Republicans passed partisan bills, and they went over to the Senate. 
The Senate didn't take them, and we went back and forth.
  There has been no back and forth. We did our work, and although the 
Republicans disagreed with the numbers publicly, privately, very 
frankly, a lot of my friend's Members told me the numbers were pretty 
good numbers, and they liked them, including defense. We passed a 
Defense bill with a substantial increase for our troops, readiness, 
operations, and training.
  I say that to Mr. Whip not to criticize my friend but to simply say 
that of all this verbiage about being nice to get together and do 
something, the regular order is we pass bills, the Senate passes bills, 
and then we have a conference. Unfortunately, we have gotten away from 
that, which I think is very bad for the House, the Senate, and the 
American people.
  We cannot go to conference if the Senate doesn't even pass a bill, 
doesn't even introduce a bill, waiting on the President of the United 
States to say, ``Simon says.''
  We can't get a bill supported by 90 percent of the American people, 
comprehensive background checks, which 90 percent, a majority of my 
friend's party, a majority of my party, and a majority of independents 
thinks makes common sense. We passed it in February, and we can't even 
have it on the floor in the United States Senate.
  Not only are they not doing appropriations bills, but they are not 
doing any other bills either. They spend all their time on judges.
  We are a little frustrated on this side because we have done our 
work. Ninety-six percent of government is funded, and, yes, there could 
have been differences of opinion. They should have passed bills and 
said, no, we don't agree.
  Mr. Speaker, the problem they would have had, I tell my friend, is 
that they didn't want to have bipartisan bills because, yes, it would 
have required them to get 60 votes, and they didn't want to make the 
compromises necessary to get 60 votes.
  We are here, just a little more than 15 days before the end of the 
fiscal year, and the Senate has not passed a single bill while we have 
funded 96 percent of government. This CR is necessary. Nobody wants to 
shut down government, I hope. Hopefully, the CR will not have anything 
that either party will disagree with, and we will extend some things 
that need to be extended because we haven't acted upon them in a timely 
fashion. But I am hopeful that the CR will get to the Senate, that we 
will pass the CR, that there will be no drama, and then, as the 
gentleman suggests, and I agree with him, that we will sit down in a 
bipartisan way and try to reach agreement on each 1 of the 12 
appropriations bills and either put them separately or in a minibus or 
omnibus and pass them to fund the government and not have what we had 
last year and into the first part of 2017, a shutdown of the Government 
of the United States. That was not good for the people of our country, 
not good for our government employees, and not good for the Congress of 
the United States to be unable to do its work, resulting in a shutdown 
of government.
  I appreciate the gentleman's sentiment about doing things in a 
bipartisan way, but you can't do things in a bipartisan way if they 
don't come to the floor. If the leader over there doesn't have 60 
votes, then he needs to reach a compromise because we need to get our 
business done. We passed all of our bills. Some were not partisan, I 
think, in many ways, but there was a determination not to vote for them 
because we hadn't reached a caps number. I think that was unfortunate 
because I think, as someone who served on the committee for 23 years, 
Mr. Speaker, we passed our bills in many, many instances--most 
instances--in a bipartisan fashion.
  I didn't want the comment to go not responded to, in terms of the 
Senate's refusal and unwillingness to act and do its business. And here 
we are, not a single bill--not one--has been passed through the 
committee.

[[Page H7692]]

  The gentleman's party has the majority on the committee. At least my 
friend could report them out of committee and then work on getting 60 
votes.
  Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, there were a number of items that my friend 
brought up. I will start with the government shutdown that the 
gentleman referred to last year. When we were in the majority last 
year, we passed bipartisan bills to fund over 70 percent of the 
government prior to October 1--no shutdown--more than 70 percent of the 
government that we worked with Democrats and President Trump to get an 
agreement on, including defense, so our men and women in uniform did 
not have that uncertainty and had that full year of funding. All of 
that was worked out.
  Clearly, we had a difference of agreement over the Homeland Security 
Department because of funding for border security. The government 
shutdown was clearly over whether or not we were going to have a secure 
border and all the things that were involved, including physical 
barriers. We resolved it, and the President was able to get over $4.5 
billion of new money to continue putting that physical security in 
place to secure our Nation's border. That took a few more months, but 
we resolved it.

  Keep in mind, over 70 percent of the government was fully funded 
prior to the end of the fiscal year, working with Republicans and 
Democrats in the House and Senate.
  As the gentleman brags about passing over 96 percent of the bills out 
of the House, it has to be noted that the majority didn't work with 
Republicans to do it. The easy thing is just to say that we will just 
talk amongst ourselves, knowing it will never get signed into law. Of 
course, a partisan bill is not going to get signed into law when you 
have a President of the different party or when you have a Senate 
controlled by a different party.
  The Senate works differently than us. We can have that debate for 
another day. We would probably both agree on a lot of the differences 
we have with how the Senate operates. But because of their 60-vote 
requirement, they know nothing is going to pass unless they have 
Republican and Democratic agreement in those negotiations.
  Let's be clear about what is bottling up those negotiations. There 
are Senate Democrats in Democratic leadership on the Democratic side 
who are offering up things that everybody knows are poison pills that 
would not get signed into law.
  They are at an impasse. They need to break that impasse. That is 
their issue. But, Mr. Speaker, you can talk to some of the Senate 
Democrats who are trying to offer up things that everybody knows will 
not happen or become law or pass over there, but both sides need to 
come together.
  Mr. Speaker, when you pass an NDAA bill--and the gentleman from 
Maryland knows this. The National Defense Authorization Act is a bill 
that a Republican-controlled House or a Democratic-controlled House, no 
matter who has been in charge, we have come together always. Every 
single year that we have moved an NDAA, it has been bipartisan. This is 
the first year that the majority broke from that.
  The majority passed a partisan bill on defense knowing it was never 
going to become law but not working with Democrats and breaking the 
tradition that every year we have followed, that Republicans and 
Democrats would come together and say that we have all of these other 
differences--and there are a lot of differences that we have that we 
need to work through. We might get some; we might not get others. But 
we put defense on the side and said that this is one where we will come 
together, Republicans and Democrats in every year we did it, including 
last year when we were in the majority.
  This year, the majority did not. They broke that tradition. It is 
unfortunate because, again, that will never become law.
  My friend can brag they got it done, but they got something done that 
will never get signed into law and broke a tradition that we have 
always had that that bill was bipartisan, making sure that we work 
together to take care of our men and women in uniform in a way that 
they deserve and in a timely way.
  I would hope that we would get those things done before October 1. 
But we all know what came out of this House is not what is going to be 
a final product.
  Let's work better to get these addressed, working with Members of 
both parties and the President, who, by the way, did agree with us on 
the numbers. We are in agreement. The House, the Senate, and the White 
House have finally agreed on the numbers.
  Now it is up to us in the Congress to come to an agreement. It is not 
just, hey, we passed our bill with just members of our party. It is 
going to have to mean people work together through those differences as 
we have done in the past.
  Sometimes we disagreed. Seventy percent of government was funded last 
year prior to October 1. Ultimately, we got agreement on the rest.
  Does the gentleman have anything else to say on that before I move 
on?
  Mr. HOYER. Will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. SCALISE. I yield to the gentleman from Maryland.
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, the defense bill passed this House with 
almost every Republican voting against it. It was a bill that provided 
$733 billion, a figure that the Joint Chiefs of Staff suggested 
publicly. It was a figure that I know personally was a figure that was 
deemed acceptable by the leadership of the authorizing committee and 
the appropriating committee on the Republican side. The rhetoric was 
totally partisan.
  We have now made a deal, and we are now going to save defense because 
we did $5 billion more. The figure last year, of course, was somewhere 
around $700 billion, a little over.
  I will tell my friend that we believe on our side of the aisle that 
the opposition to the defense bill was totally partisan, no attempt at 
bipartisanship. Yes, the Republicans had some success in getting 
bipartisan bills through. Why? Because we were prepared to vote in a 
bipartisan way.
  That is the difference. We were prepared to vote in a bipartisan way. 
We were prepared to accept my friend's party was the majority.
  Mr. Speaker, we understand when you are in the minority you work to 
get the best objective you think is possible. We did that, and the 
gentleman, Mr. Speaker, says that they got bipartisan bills done 
because Democrats voted for them, including me. But I know the number 
was an acceptable number, and it was a number suggested by the Joint 
Chiefs of Staff. Yet we heard rhetoric after rhetoric of how this was 
letting down the Defense Department.
  What did they do? They made a deal, not $733 billion, $738 billion. 
My goodness, what an extraordinary difference. They voted against 
funding the men and women in uniform, funding operations, and funding 
overseas contingencies.
  I hope that we get off this. If you want to talk bipartisan, act 
bipartisan, Mr. Speaker. Talk is cheap. It was clear that Democrats, in 
fact, when the Republicans were in the majority, did vote on a number 
of occasions, not every occasion, for bipartisanship. But you can't 
have bipartisanship if you don't introduce a bill.
  Mr. Speaker, the Republicans have the majority in the United States 
Senate on the committee. They don't need 60 votes in the committee. 
They don't need 60 percent. They don't need two-thirds. All they need 
is a simple majority to pass a bill out of committee, as the gentleman 
pointed out when he said we did fund some pieces of government before. 
Why? Because we got bipartisan agreement.

                              {time}  1230

  And I have never seen, as I say, in three decades, the Senate fail to 
even introduce an appropriation bill prior to the end of July.
  I hope the Senate will move with some degree of alacrity. I hope that 
we will get to agreement on these 12 bills. I hope that we will fund 
the government and not have a shutdown, as we had the last time. The 
first time it has ever happened in a new Congress where the government 
was shutdown--all over the wall--which a number of Republicans have 
said is not a useful thing to do.
  I won't name them. I am sure the minority whip, the Republican whip,

[[Page H7693]]

knows a lot of them. They served in this body. Some are chairman of 
committees over there now.
  So I am hopeful that we will move together on the appropriations 
process and do our business, do it on time, as we have done here in the 
House so that the American people can be well-served.
  Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, let's be clear on the funding of 
government. From last year, we did fund over 70 percent of the 
government, and we didn't play a partisan game with our Nation's 
defense.
  This bill, the NDAA, you can talk about what both sides should do.
  Mr. HOYER. Will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. SCALISE. Let me make this point, because you have made some 
points that aren't completely accurate.
  The number we agreed upon--but if you say, Okay, we agree on a 
certain spending level, that is one part of the debate. But you then go 
put policies in the bill at that level that undermine, not only our 
beliefs of what is best for national defense, but what the President 
needs to do to be able to do his job to secure our border. You did that 
in the bill knowing that that would make it partisan. It was a 
bipartisan bill, and then you added provisions, like things that would 
undermine the ability to secure America's border in that bill knowing 
it was partisan.
  If you took that out, you knew it would have been a bipartisan bill, 
but you left it in. And that is a pattern we have seen from Speaker 
Pelosi's majority this year.
  We had a bill in the Committee on Energy and Commerce to lower drug 
prices--a major problem in this country. Republicans and Democrats 
worked for months and came up with a bill in the committee of 
jurisdiction to solve the problem and lower drug prices.
  And you know what happened? It was a unanimous vote--unanimous vote.
  People looking at Congress going, Wow, here in the year 2019, on a 
major issue like lowering drug prices, Republicans and Democrats came 
together and figured out a way to lower drug prices, and the vote was 
unanimous.
  You would figure we would put that on suspension the next day to pass 
it out, so we could get it signed by the President as soon as possible 
and lower drug prices as soon as possible.
  And you know what happened? It just happened a few months ago. As 
that bill came out of committee unanimously to lower drug prices, the 
Speaker made a decision that she was going to put a poison pill in it--
after it came out of committee, before it was voted on on the House 
floor--knowing what that would do.
  And it immediately became a partisan bill because you put something 
in that you knew was not going to get Republican support. And so the 
bill passed out of the House. And you can brag you passed it, but it is 
not going to go anywhere.
  It will not become law, but we had a bill that was unanimous out of 
committee to lower drug prices. It would be signed into law today if 
you wouldn't have done that. But you wanted to play political games, 
and it has happened over and over.
  And so you can talk about what you passed, but when there was a bill 
that was unanimous out of the committee of jurisdiction, where doctors, 
people in the healthcare professions, people in business, people on 
both sides of the aisle that know this issue figured out a way to put 
all of their differences aside and pass a bill to lower drug prices, 
you had to make that partisan after it came out of committee 
unanimously.
  That is what has been done over and over that undermines the ability 
for us to get our job done. We could have gotten that done. It could be 
signed by the President today, and we could all hail that as a major 
accomplishment.
  That is just one example, and it is happened over and over again, and 
it shouldn't happen that way.
  So, yes, we need to move this process along, but we move it along by 
working together. Defense could have been done in a bipartisan way. The 
things that were added in that you knew would make it partisan 
shouldn't have been put in that bill. It had never happened that way 
before, ever.
  We had always passed a bipartisan NDAA bill through the House, and 
this is the first year that didn't happen. Drug pricing could be 
solved, but it hasn't happened yet. It should happen. I hope we get it 
done, but it should have been done in a partisan way when the committee 
figured out a way to do it unanimously.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Maryland.
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. 
Scalise) for yielding.
  We can discuss all sorts of bills, but we discussed the 
appropriations process. And the gentleman expressed how they were able 
to pass 70 percent of funding of the government because they had the 
Defense bill and the Labor-Health, which are the two biggest bills, 
passed and signed by the President.
  Why were they able to do that, Mr. Speaker, when it requires 60 votes 
in the Senate? They didn't have 60 votes in the Senate because 
Democrats acted in a bipartisan way to affect that end.
  This year, we have had no opportunity to do that. We have had no 
opportunity to conference on our bills. Republicans lead the Senate, 
passed your bills, and if you can't get 60 votes, yes, you would have 
to compromise in the Senate.

  You didn't compromise when you were in charge, frankly, on an awful 
lot of things that had closed rules, more than any other Congress, so 
we didn't have an opportunity to even amend.
  But that aside, when you claim that you passed those bills you did, 
and the only reason you could do it is because the Democrats acted in a 
bipartisan fashion because you did not have the votes to pass them on 
your own, you needed Democratic votes. Democrats gave you those votes 
because we knew that in order to get things done you had to move in a 
bipartisan fashion.
  That is the only way you were able to do it. We have not been given 
the opportunity in the United States Senate because there are no bills 
yet to consider, except for the last 3 days the bills came forward.
  But for the first 9 months of the year, no bills came forward, Mr. 
Speaker, not one.
  Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, I would hope those Senators on both sides 
of the aisle, as they are having negotiations--and, yeah, they don't 
have a bill, but they are negotiating. And there are Senators that know 
that some of the provisions they are insisting upon are things that 
will not become law because they undermine our Nation's security. And 
yet, they keep insisting. And so they are not at an agreement, but they 
need to keep working just like we need to work in a bipartisan way on 
those issues. And they will get resolved if we do that.
  And, again, I think if you go look at the example of what the House 
Committee on Energy and Commerce did on lowering drug prices, it is a 
great model to follow.
  That bill should have been brought to the floor. That bill should not 
have been changed by the Speaker at the last minute to become partisan, 
and now it is not law.
  I would like to move on to something that has been troubling that we 
have been seeing out of the Committee on the Judiciary, and that is 
this drumbeat towards impeachment. It seems like there is an 
infatuation by this majority to impeach the President of the United 
States, whether or not the facts are there. And so there was the 
Mueller report that went on for years.
  And all of these members--chairs of your own committees--saying there 
was evidence that they had, and it was going to show the President 
colluded here and there. And then it turned out to be false; there was 
no collusion.
  We know that. The report showed that. Russia tried to interfere with 
our elections when Barack Obama was President. Maybe they should be 
investigating why he didn't do more to stop the Russians from trying to 
interfere with our elections, but there was no collusion.
  So instead of saying, Okay, that is it, move on--as the American 
people would like to see us do--maybe that committee that has 
jurisdiction over the border, over immigration law, that has serious 
problems that should be worked out in a bipartisan way, and could be 
worked out in a bipartisan way, but it is not, because the committee of 
jurisdiction is infatuated with impeaching the President.
  In fact, the chairman of the committee just said today: This is 
formal

[[Page H7694]]

impeachment proceedings. The chairman of the committee said that today, 
as they are having a hearing on impeaching the President without even 
evidence to impeach him. There is nothing to impeach him on. They have 
Articles of Impeachment drawn up with blanks that they are just looking 
around to fill in on this witch hunt, and they are just going to look 
and look and look.
  Imagine if somebody said, We are going to target a person and we are 
going to try to indict him. We don't have anything to indict him on, 
but we are going to write up an indictment and then look around and 
look around and hope to find something.
  And that is what is going on in the Committee on the Judiciary. So 
they had this hearing today. They changed the rules. They had this big 
drama. The media is all covering it. The chairman says: This is formal 
impeachment proceedings.
  And then you look at the rules that they brought forward. The rules 
that they brought forward allow the chairman to do things he can 
already do. It was a farce. It was a farce to try to appease the 
radical left base that wants to impeach the President, even though 
there is nothing to impeach him on. And instead of just giving it up 
and focusing on their job, the things they should be focused on, they 
are just going to keep meandering around on this witch hunt.
  And I know some in your majority--maybe even the majority leader 
himself--are trying to distance themselves from it because they know 
the American people think that it is lunacy to be wasting time trying 
to impeach the President, even though there is nothing to impeach him 
on and just driving around on a witch hunt.
  And so I guess the real question is, if the chairman of the 
committee--your chairman--today, said: This is formal impeachment 
proceedings. He talked about, hopefully, by the end of the year they 
will vote on Articles of Impeachment--``hopefully,'' by the end of the 
year.
  There is nothing to impeach him on, and yet they are going to 
actually go out on a witch hunt and say, We are going to look for 
something, and by the end of the year, we hope to impeach the 
President.
  So I would ask the gentleman: Are you all bringing Articles of 
Impeachment to the floor? Is the chairman rightly going down an 
impeachment road? And what exactly are those articles?
  What are the Articles of Impeachment, if the committee today--your 
chairman of your committee--said: This is formal impeachment 
proceedings? What exactly is the gentleman planning on impeaching the 
President of the United States on? And are you, if he brings those 
Articles of Impeachment out of committee--blanks that haven't even been 
filled in--if they bring them to the floor, or if they move them out of 
committee by the end of the year, as the chairman hopes, is the 
gentleman prepared to bring that to the floor of the United States 
House of Representatives?

  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer).
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, the chairman of the committee spoke about 
their process. Their process has been a fact-finding process. That is 
our responsibility as a Congress. That is his responsibility and the 
committee's responsibility as a committee.
  The majority party claims that they have an agenda for the people, 
and the people believe we ought to exercise our responsibility. That is 
what the committee is doing. I do not want to anticipate what the 
committee's findings will ultimately be nor what the committee's 
actions will finally be. We will wait to see. But it is exercising its 
responsibility as a coequal branch of government as provided in the 
Constitution.
  I am not going to get into an argument, Mr. Speaker, about the 
premises in the Mueller report, other than to say I disagree with the 
characterization made by the Republican whip. That will be for another 
day to argue that.
  The committee is doing its duty and it will continue to do so. And if 
it decides that that requires further action, my presumption is it will 
pursue that as well.
  Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman, but I don't think 
the question has been answered. Because the gentleman says the 
committee has a responsibility, and I agree. But the committee has a 
responsibility to be responsible, and it is highly irresponsible. It is 
reckless and dangerous for the committee to start impeachment 
proceedings when there is nothing to impeach the President on.
  We were in the majority when the President of the United States was 
somebody we had a lot of disagreements with. We never filed Articles of 
Impeachment or talked about impeaching the President because there was 
nothing to impeach the President on. We never did that.
  We might have disagreed with them on a lot of things, but there were 
no committee hearings where the chairman said: This is formal 
impeachment proceedings, with nothing to impeach the President on.
  If he does something years down the road when he gets reelected, you 
know, this is not the time to go and try to harass the President when 
there is nothing that you have found--and you have looked. There has 
been this witch hunt going on for years.
  It didn't yield what you were hoping for it to yield. We all should 
have applauded when the Mueller report said that there was no 
collusion. But instead of closing it out, there is still--I guess he 
says, by the end of the year he wants to move Articles of Impeachment. 
So I guess that means they have drafted it up and are hoping to find 
something to fill in the blanks.
  But that is irresponsible of that committee to be moving down a 
course of impeachment when there is nothing to impeach the President 
on, and especially, when there is so much other work that needs to be 
done by that committee.
  We have a border that is out of control right now; thousands of 
people coming across every day. Good thing the President of the United 
States has actually worked in agreement with Mexico. The President was 
able to achieve that recently, where the Mexican President said that he 
is going to start putting thousands of troops at the Mexican southern 
border.
  And you know what? It is starting to yield results. But we still have 
human trafficking coming across our border. We still have drugs coming 
across our border. And there has been requests made to get more funding 
to secure that border, to put technology in place, to put other tools 
in place so that our border patrol agents can do their job securing 
America's border. And that is the committee of jurisdiction, and they 
are not bringing bills out of committee to solve that.
  They are filing Articles of Impeachment or hoping to move Articles of 
Impeachment in the next 3 months. And there is not even anything filled 
in, because there is nothing the President has done to be impeached 
upon.
  This is a serious responsibility the committee has, and, yet, they 
are acting in such a reckless fashion such to appease the radical left 
base, who wants to impeach the President, even though there is nothing 
to impeach him on.
  But everybody else in America says, Do your job and focus on the 
things that are in front of you and drop this daily harassment and 
drumbeat of impeachment and witch hunts.

                              {time}  1245

  It is time to move on and do the work of the committee instead of 
focusing on impeaching a President, even though there is nothing to 
impeach him on.
  If there is something, show us what it is. But to recklessly say in 
an open hearing that they are going to impeach the President and move 
Articles of Impeachment to this House floor by the end of this year, on 
what?
  This has to end. We have to focus on the things that need to be fixed 
by that committee and this Congress and drop this witch hunt.
  Look, at some point, the other side is going to have to figure out 
which way they want to go because some people in the gentleman's 
radical base might want to impeach no matter what, but everybody else 
knows it is the wrong thing to do. Everybody else knows it is 
irresponsible for that committee to act that way.
  I would hope that y'all would make the right decision and say that 
you are

[[Page H7695]]

going to move forward on the things that need to be addressed by the 
committee. If there is something that comes up, sure, they go look at 
it, but there is not anything. If there was, they would have filed it 
already. But to say they are going to file it even if there is nothing, 
that is dangerous, reckless, and irresponsible.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Maryland.
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  I didn't want to get into this debate, and I don't want to prolong 
it, but I do not want the premises articulated by the whip, Mr. 
Speaker, to stand unobjected to.
  In my view, Mr. Speaker, the Mueller report is replete with instances 
of cooperation by members of the Trump team with the Russians, page 
after page after page. As a matter of fact, one of them was Page, of 
collusion.
  Now, ``collusion'' is not a legal term. ``Conspiracy'' is the legal 
term. Mr. Mueller said we didn't look at collusion because it was not a 
legal premise.
  In fact, Mr. Mueller made it very clear that the reason they didn't 
find criminal wrongdoing was because they believed, under Justice 
Department rules, a President cannot be indicted during the course of 
his term. They did not absolve him.
  Whether it was obstruction of justice, using a foreign government 
that is, essentially, not our ally, not our friend, or meeting with 
Putin secretly and not allowing the American people or the Congress to 
know what was said, my friend's premise that there is no smoke, no 
fire, is wrong.
  Very frankly, as someone who has served here a long time and who has 
seen some of the most irresponsible attacks on the President during the 
Obama administration--hearings, over and over and over again. A tragedy 
in Benghazi--seven hearings, seven hearings, all concluded nothing 
there, so they had an eighth hearing.
  The gentleman talks about Judiciary. Eight hearings on Benghazi, four 
lives lost tragically, with an attempt over and over and over again to 
be made a political issue. The eighth found nothing there either.
  When I see this wringing of hands, Mr. Speaker, I am not impressed. I 
have been here for a long time. I have seen irresponsible action, and 
the American people have seen it.
  The Judiciary Committee is doing what it pledged to do when they all 
raised their hands to defend and support the Constitution of the United 
States of America.
  The President would like us to think everything is fake news. The 
gentleman hasn't used ``fake news'' but ``the witch hunt.''
  ``Poor me. I am the victim of all these people,'' when, daily, the 
President says things that are demonstrably not true.
  Mr. Speaker, the Judiciary Committee will continue to pursue its 
duties, as it needs to do.
  Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, if you talk about Benghazi, there are a lot 
of serious questions that have not been answered yet.
  Mr. HOYER. Eight hearings, all Republican-led.
  Mr. SCALISE. Eight hearings, and maybe more should have been had, to 
investigate why those deaths happened that should not have happened.
  Mr. HOYER. And all found nothing there.
  Mr. SCALISE. It shouldn't have happened. It should have been stopped.
  Mr. HOYER. All found nothing there, Mr. Speaker.
  Mr. SCALISE. It was unwarranted, what happened there. Fast and 
Furious, a lot of questions raised.
  There were multiple times when the President took action where, 
ultimately, he was found to be out of compliance with the law, where 
courts reversed what the President did. We never moved Articles of 
Impeachment for that. That doesn't warrant high crimes and 
misdemeanors.
  Surely, we investigated those things, and in most cases, it turned 
out we were right.
  With Benghazi, those questions still haven't been answered, about why 
they died and shouldn't have, because everybody knew the dangers.
  Mr. HOYER. Eight hearings found nothing there.
  Mr. SCALISE. Found nothing there?
  Mr. HOYER. All led by Republicans.
  Mr. SCALISE. Found out that Americans died when it was known that it 
was dangerous where they were. Why weren't planes circled? You could 
have flown jets over there in 15 minutes to scare away the people who 
were attacking that Embassy and killing Americans.
  We looked into it, and it raised a lot of questions.
  Mr. HOYER. Eight times you looked into it.
  Mr. SCALISE. Maybe it should have been more to look into why those 
Americans died so that it doesn't happen again. Things like that, which 
shouldn't have happened, we should find out what went wrong. Why did 
people miss telltale signs and let those people die who shouldn't have 
died?
  Yes, those hearings were warranted, but we never filed Articles of 
Impeachment. We never said we were going to move to impeach so now 
let's go figure something out, see if we can find something, and even 
if we don't find something, we are still going to do it.

  That is reckless. They took an oath, absolutely, like all of us, to 
uphold this Constitution and protect this country.
  We have a border that is not secure. We have thousands of people 
coming over every single day, including people who are bringing drugs, 
trafficking humans, young kids who are being abused. We all know what 
is happening.
  That is the committee of jurisdiction, and they are ignoring it. They 
haven't produced a single bill to go and solve that problem.
  Are they okay with what is going on at the border? They don't think 
that legislation is warranted to address it, to close the asylum 
loopholes that everybody knows are a magnet that is bringing people 
over here illegally, coming through other countries that are offering 
them asylum to come here illegally? But we don't want to fix that 
problem because the committee is focused on impeachment.
  We will see what they do. But the American people are watching, too, 
and the American people are tired of those kinds of games--every single 
day, focusing their energies and taxpayer dollars on attacking the 
President, on attacking his family, on attacking his Cabinet members 
and people who did business deals with him 20 years ago who are getting 
subpoenaed and who have nothing to do with his Presidency just because 
they want to harass the President because they don't like the fact that 
he was duly elected in 2016.
  The American people did duly elect him President, and he is doing his 
job. He is carrying out his mission despite all that.
  Shame on that committee for continuing to abuse their power by going 
after something whether it is there or not. Every prosecutor knows you 
don't try to go find something on somebody. You should follow the 
facts. If the facts lead you to a dead end, then you end. You don't 
keep looking. It is not there.
  They want to keep doing it and abusing their power. But there is 
accountability that happens, too. That is why we have elections.
  If that is what the committee wants to do, and if that is what the 
leadership of this House Democratic Caucus wants to do, people are 
watching.
  I want to talk about one final thing, and that is USMCA, an 
opportunity for us to get something big done for this country.
  I had a meeting yesterday with Ambassador Lighthizer, the U.S. Trade 
Representative, who I know has been meeting with Speaker Pelosi and her 
team. In fact, a few weeks ago, the Speaker, through her trade working 
group on USMCA, sent a letter to Ambassador Lighthizer, identifying 
some areas that they would like addressed in the USMCA trade agreement.
  I understand that, last night, Ambassador Lighthizer sent a reply, 
including things that he has worked with the Democratic majority on, to 
try to address some of those issues and ultimately get this done.
  I say this in the most sincere way: I really do think USMCA is 
something that we can do together, that we can get an agreement with 
our friends from the north and south. Canada and Mexico have both come 
to the table and agreed to make NAFTA work better for American workers, 
for American industries, for our dairy farmers that can't sell their 
products into Canada right now that will be able to have better open 
markets, better working conditions.

[[Page H7696]]

  Clearly, we want to make sure there is enforcement, and I know that 
is being worked through, to put belt and suspenders.
  At the end of the day, every day we wait means more jobs we are 
missing out on creating for our economy. I know that there is still the 
opportunity to get this done, maybe in the next few weeks.
  We have a whip team that has been put in place specifically for 
USMCA. I know there are a lot of Democrats that have been working with 
Ambassador Lighthizer as well, to try to get this done.
  I would ask the gentleman if he has any idea of where that process is 
on his side, if there is any idea of a timeline to finally bring this 
to the floor, pass this important agreement that would send a message 
not only to our friends from the north and south, Canada and Mexico, 
but to our friends all around the world, to Japan and other countries 
that want to get trade agreements with America but this is holding back 
because they want to see if this can get done.
  Then, ultimately, let's shift our focus to China and all the 
countries around the world that want China to have to comply with the 
rules that everybody else has to comply with, to finally get these 
tariff fights over so we can have an even stronger economy.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Maryland.
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, we have said all along that we want to get to 
yes on the USMCA. Frankly, we think it is an improvement over NAFTA, 
which needs improving.
  As the gentleman may know, the Speaker and I were here when we voted 
on NAFTA. We both voted for it.
  There were some promises made and side agreements that the rights of 
workers and the environment would be protected. Unfortunately, that did 
not turn out to be true, so that, in adopting a change to NAFTA, we 
want to make sure that the promises made in the agreement are promises 
that can be enforced.
  As the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has often said, the commitments in a 
trade pact aren't worth the paper they are written on if they can't be 
enforced.
  Mr. Speaker, that has been the posture of the Speaker, myself, and of 
so many others, that enforcement is critical. Unfortunately, the NAFTA 
enforcement mechanisms have been a failure.
  In 25 years, as I am sure the whip knows, the U.S. has taken only one 
successful enforcement action under the NAFTA dispute resolution 
procedure, and none in the past 20 years. Not a single enforcement has 
prevailed. We have been completely unable to enforce its labor 
provisions, not one successful enforcement action.
  We want to get to yes. And, yes, I want to say that Ambassador 
Lighthizer is somebody who we respect and think is operating in good 
faith. We think he is a positive interlocutor. He is somebody who we 
can work with and have been working with.

  On the other hand, we sent a letter 6 weeks ago, and as the gentleman 
pointed out, we got an answer yesterday. So, it is taking some time for 
our task force to get answers to questions and to determine how we can 
move forward to ensure that the matters included in the agreement 
become reality, not simply words on paper.
  That is important for workers. It is important for our environment. 
Very frankly, it is also important in terms of trying to contain drug 
prices, here and around the world.
  The gentleman talked about prescription drugs. That is one of the 
items that is still in dispute. We want to get to yes. We think this is 
an improvement on what exists.
  Therefore, I am hopeful that we will be able to get to an agreement. 
We believe it will require that the agreement be opened and that 
enforcement be included so that, as the chamber said, it can really be 
enforced.
  If that happens, I am hopeful that we can pass that agreement, with 
the agreement of our friends in labor, with our friends at the Chamber 
of Commerce, and in a bipartisan way on this floor. Let's hope that 
happens.
  But we have made it very, very clear that, if it is just words on 
paper and not enforceable, it is not a good agreement for America or 
America's workers.
  But I hope that we can move forward and achieve an agreement on this 
issue so that we can pass it.

                              {time}  1300

  Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, I share the gentleman from Maryland's 
optimism about the ability to get there, to get this done, to get to 
``yes.'' And with the provisions that are already in place on 
enforcement, if there is a way to make them stronger, I know that that 
is something that Ambassador Lighthizer has been working with the 
gentleman's team on.
  That is why, while the letter was sent 6 weeks ago, Ambassador 
Lighthizer started going to work right away, sitting down with folks on 
both sides, including Democratic leadership in the House, to address 
those as best as both sides could get agreement; and that is where the 
letter, I think, finally lays out the remedies to those issues that 
were brought up.
  It is my hope that, as that is reviewed, we get to a place where we 
can find agreement and then get it passed. Mexico has already passed 
it. Canada is waiting on us. And I think we would send a strong signal 
to the world that, not only is America the best place to do business, 
with the strongest economy in the world, but we are also able to reach 
better trade deals, both for Americans and for our friends. Then there 
are a lot more folks in line waiting for us to be a part of those kind 
of deals, too.
  So I look forward to the ability to keep working on that. I would 
love the ability to work with the gentleman as the Republican whip, the 
leader, laying out a floor schedule for when that comes, and we can 
celebrate something big for this country and the workers of America.
  I thank the gentleman for his work and for this discourse, and I 
yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________