The publication is reproduced in full below:
PROVIDING FOR CONSIDERATION OF H.R. 4502, LABOR, HEALTH AND HUMAN
SERVICES, EDUCATION, AGRICULTURE, RURAL DEVELOPMENT, ENERGY AND WATER
DEVELOPMENT, FINANCIAL SERVICES AND GENERAL GOVERNMENT, INTERIOR,
ENVIRONMENT, MILITARY CONSTRUCTION, VETERANS AFFAIRS, TRANSPORTATION,
AND HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2022; AND FOR
OTHER PURPOSES
Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, by the direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 555 and ask for its immediate consideration.
The Clerk read the resolution, as follows:
H. Res. 555
Resolved, That upon adoption of this resolution it shall be in order to consider in the House the bill (H.R. 4502) making appropriations for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and related agencies for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2022, and for other purposes. All points of order against consideration of the bill are waived. An amendment in the nature of a substitute consisting of the text of Rules Committee Print 117-12, modified by the amendment printed in part A of the report of the Committee on Rules accompanying this resolution, shall be considered as adopted. The bill, as amended, shall be considered as read. All points of order against provisions in the bill, as amended, are waived. The previous question shall be considered as ordered on the bill, as amended, and on any further amendment thereto, to final passage without intervening motion except: (1) one hour of debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on Appropriations or their respective designees; (2) the further amendments described in section 2 of this resolution; (3) the amendments en bloc described in section 3 of this resolution; and (4) one motion to recommit.
Sec. 2. After debate pursuant to the first section of this resolution, each further amendment printed in part B of the report of the Committee on Rules not earlier considered as part of amendments en bloc pursuant to section 3 of this resolution shall be considered only in the order printed in the report, may be offered only by a Member designated in the report, shall be considered as read, shall be debatable for the time specified in the report equally divided and controlled by the proponent and an opponent, may be withdrawn by the proponent at any time before the question is put thereon, shall not be subject to amendment, and shall not be subject to a demand for division of the question.
Sec. 3. It shall be in order at any time after debate pursuant to the first section of this resolution for the chair of the Committee on Appropriations or her designee to offer amendments en bloc consisting of further amendments printed in part B of the report of the Committee on Rules accompanying this resolution not earlier disposed of. Amendments en bloc offered pursuant to this section shall be considered as read, shall be debatable for 30 minutes equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on Appropriations or their respective designees, shall not be subject to amendment, and shall not be subject to a demand for division of the question.
Sec. 4. All points of order against the further amendments printed in part B of the report of the Committee on Rules or amendments en bloc described in section 3 of this resolution are waived.
Sec. 5. House Resolution 188, agreed to March 8, 2021 (as most recently amended by House Resolution 508, agreed to June 30, 2021), is amended by striking "July 30, 2021" each place it appears and inserting (in each instance) "September 22, 2021".
Sec. 6. (a) At any time through the legislative day of Friday, July 30, 2021, the Speaker may entertain motions offered by the Majority Leader or a designee that the House suspend the rules as though under clause 1 of rule XV with respect to multiple measures described in subsection (b), and the Chair shall put the question on any such motion without debate or intervening motion.
(b) A measure referred to in subsection (a) includes any measure that was the object of a motion to suspend the rules on the legislative day of July 26, 2021, or July 27, 2021, in the form as so offered, on which the yeas and nays were ordered and further proceedings postponed pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX.
(c) Upon the offering of a motion pursuant to subsection
(a) concerning multiple measures, the ordering of the yeas and nays on postponed motions to suspend the rules with respect to such measures is vacated to the end that all such motions are considered as withdrawn.
Sec. 7. Notwithstanding clause 8 of rule XX, further proceedings on a vote by the yeas and nays on the question of adoption of a motion that the House suspend the rules offered on the legislative day of July 26, 2021, or July 27, 2021, may continue to be postponed through the legislative day of September 22, 2021.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Massachusetts is recognized for 1 hour.
Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Cole), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only.
General Leave
Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members be given 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Massachusetts?
There was no objection.
Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, yesterday, the Rules Committee met and reported a rule, House Resolution 555. The rule provides for consideration of H.R. 4502, the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, Agriculture, Rural Development, Energy and Water Development, Financial Services and General Government, Interior, Environment, Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, Transportation, and Housing and Urban Development Appropriations Act, 2022, under a structured rule.
The rule provides 1 hour of debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on Appropriations or their designees. The rule self-executes a manager's amendment from Chairwoman DeLauro, makes in order 229 amendments, provides en bloc authority for the chairwoman or her designee, and provides one motion to recommit.
The rule provides the majority leader, or his designee, the ability through July 30 to en bloc requested roll call votes on suspension bills considered on July 26 or 27.
The rule also provides that requested roll call votes on suspension bills considered on July 26 or 27 may be postponed through September 22, 2021.
Finally, the rule amends H. Res. 188 to provide recess instructions, suspension authority, and same day authority through September 22, 2021.
Madam Speaker, if you care about protecting our seniors and taking care of our veterans and military families; if you care about fighting climate change and combating gun violence; if you care about closing health disparities and creating good paying jobs; and if you care about our economy not only rebounding from the COVID pandemic, but being strengthened for years to come, then the underlying measure is a lifeline. Because these seven appropriations measures provide landmark funding to deal with our Nation's most pressing issues.
It turns the page on an era where the prior administration demanded disinvestment in seemingly everything that helped all but the wealthiest of the wealthy. And now we are working with the Biden administration to stand up for our workers and to rebuild the middle class.
It is no secret that the appropriations process can seem a little arcane. But this measure is truly historic, Madam Speaker.
I want to make two points here in particular. First is what is not in here. Finally, after more than 40 years, the Hyde amendment is nowhere to be found. And let me say, it is about damn time. Because however we feel about abortion, we should not deny health coverage just because someone is working to make ends meet.
More than half of the women affected by the Hyde amendment are women of color. Nearly one-third are Black, 27 percent are Latina, and one-
fifth are Asian American and Pacific Islanders, as well as indigenous women also covered by Medicaid.
That is what inequality looks like, Madam Speaker, and I am proud that we are confronting it. The decision about whether to get an abortion is a deeply personal one. We don't know the circumstances. But I do know this: we should not defer to the politicians and special interest groups who want to impose their values on others. We should trust women and families to make their own decisions about what is best for them.
It is about justice. It is about freedom. And it is about respecting women's personal autonomy.
Madam Speaker, I want to thank Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Rosa DeLauro for leading the way on this, and I want to recognize the many Congresswomen, in particular, who have waged a sometimes lonely battle year after year after year to make this day a reality.
Second, Madam Speaker, I want to recognize language that is included here, which will help combat hunger across America. This measure expands access to healthy foods like fruits and vegetables to more than 6 million people through the WIC program. It ensures that more than 40 million people in SNAP-eligible families get benefits that they desperately need. And it also makes key investments in child nutrition programs, like school meals. This is incredibly important since we all saw the COVID crisis lay bare the truth about hunger in America.
The lines outside our food banks included some of the most affluent cars from the wealthiest neighborhoods, because no one is immune from food insecurity.
{time} 1230
It is an epidemic in every State and every congressional district in this country. Even before the COVID pandemic hit, there were more than 35 million people who were going hungry in this country, including 10 million children.
The United States is the richest country on the face of the Earth. That anybody--anybody--goes without food is unconscionable, Madam Speaker.
I have often said that we have everything we need to end hunger in America. We have the food, the know-how, and, yes, the money. The only thing we lack is the political will. Hunger is a political condition.
I think that is finally beginning to change, Madam Speaker.
For the last several months, the Rules Committee has acted as a kind of select committee on hunger, holding hearings, roundtables, and site visits, all to develop a road map to eradicate hunger in this country by 2030, as the United Nations has called for.
I am more convinced than ever that, with a holistic approach and the full weight of the Federal Government, a hunger-free America is within our grasp.
This rule makes in order my bipartisan amendment to provide $2.5 million for a White House conference on food, nutrition, hunger, and health. The conference will bring together the heads of food banks, hospitals, government agencies, educators, farmers, the faith-based community, people with lived experiences, our business community, anybody who has anything to do with finding a solution, not to hold an event that is essentially a press release, but to develop a real plan to tackle this, something with benchmarks that better connects the dots between all the different Federal programs and expands successful local and State initiatives.
The first and only time such a conference was held was the same year we put a man on the Moon, over 52 years ago. It developed and strengthened many programs we still rely on, like SNAP, WIC, and the National School Lunch Program.
A hunger conference for the 21st century can finish what was started so many decades ago by Senators George McGovern, Senator Bob Dole, and others.
Senator Dole wrote to Ranking Member Cole and me recently, saying:
``I remain proud of the work Senator McGovern and I did then, and I endorse your effort to secure a second White House conference to identify the next frontier of programs to finally end hunger in America.''
I believe we can do big things, and I hope that we can do them in a bipartisan way.
Madam Speaker, we can combat hunger; we can confront climate change; we can stand up for women's reproductive rights; and we can take care of the most vulnerable among us. This bill is proof of that.
I urge all of my colleagues to join with us in supporting this rule and the underlying measure so that we can build a more just and equitable future for every single American.
Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
I thank the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern), the distinguished chairman of the Rules Committee, and my good friend, for yielding me the customary 30 minutes.
Madam Speaker, today's rule covers H.R. 4502, a seven-bill appropriations package for fiscal year 2022, including the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Subcommittee, where I am the ranking member.
Though I have great affection for my good friend, Chairwoman Rosa DeLauro, and respect all of my colleagues across the aisle, I think this package is deeply misguided, and I will be opposing it today.
From the beginning, this package was structured on a flawed premise. The majority chose to use the 302(b) allocation numbers, the levels that tell each subcommittee how much money they can spend, that were totally off the mark.
The majority chose to mark their bills to spending levels that called for a 17 percent increase in nondefense spending, and an inadequate 1 percent increase in defense spending, less even than the amount the President requested in his own budget.
At a time when our national security is facing repeated threats, ranging from the Middle East to Afghanistan to the South China Sea, we can hardly afford to return to the continual underfunding of our military that was the hallmark of the Obama-Biden years.
What is worse, these seven bills account for a 21 percent increase over fiscal year 2021. Across the seven titles, the majority is asking to spend more than $100 billion more in fiscal year 2022 than we did just last year. This comes on top of massive spending earlier this year with the majority's $1.9 trillion COVID spending package, and at a time when Democrats in the House and the Senate are looking to spend another
$3.5 trillion as part of a new partisan reconciliation bill. This is truly tax-and-spend politics like we have never seen before.
But the problems with this bill aren't just with the amount of money that they spend. In drafting this package, the majority has also chosen to strip out longstanding bipartisan policy provisions and, instead, has filled this package with partisan, far-left policy that simply cannot pass both Chambers and become law.
There is no better illustration of this than the majority's shocking decision to remove the Hyde and Weldon amendments.
For 45 years, through both Democratic and Republican administrations and Democratic and Republican majorities in the House, the Hyde amendment has been the law. It is a commitment that no Federal tax dollars can be used to fund abortions, except in certain rare instances, and a commitment to protect the conscience rights of the great majority of American taxpayers who are opposed to publicly funding abortions.
Since 2006, the Weldon amendment has protected the conscience rights of healthcare providers to not participate in abortions if they have a moral objection to the procedure.
The very same Democratic majority that controls the House today had no apparent issue with the Hyde and Weldon amendments just 1 year ago since they were carried on their Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill without any issue. Yet, this year, the majority has inexplicably chosen not to include these bipartisan provisions, despite receiving support from every Democrat on the Appropriations Committee only last year.
Removing language that has been included in appropriations bills for decades is not only an overreach by the far left, but it also threatens to destabilize and upend the entire appropriations process. Appropriations bills simply cannot pass both Chambers and be signed into law without this language.
Eliminating the Hyde and Weldon amendments, given all of their importance to the American people, also eliminates the opportunity for bipartisanship. Without a bipartisan deal approved by both Chambers, we cannot reach a successful conclusion to the fiscal year 2022 appropriations process.
Removing this language sends us on a collision course for a yearlong continuing resolution or, worse, a government shutdown.
Madam Speaker, I filed an amendment to today's package to restore the Hyde and Weldon amendments. I did not do so alone. I was joined by every single Republican Member in this body--every single one. All 213 members of the Republican Conference signed on to this important amendment. Yet, when the Rules Committee met yesterday, I was shocked that my amendment was not made in order.
Madam Speaker, I find it stunning that the majority would not back provisions that are this important to the American people. But it serves to show how deeply partisan the package before us today actually is. The majority simply prefers to ram through their own partisan policy rather than provisions that have had bipartisan support for decades.
I find that deeply disappointing, Madam Speaker. But I know that today's bill will not be the last word. Whether the majority likes it or not, at the end of the day, we will have to reach a bipartisan and bicameral deal on spending for fiscal year 2022. The alternative is too bleak to contemplate.
But if the majority fails to compromise and fails to work with Republicans, both here and across the Capitol, then they will have only themselves to blame. They will bear the responsibility for the consequences, a continuing resolution or, even worse, a government shutdown.
Madam Speaker, I urge opposition to the rule and the underlying legislation, and I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, before I yield to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Morelle), I want to point out, for the record, the last time we had a government shutdown was when we had a Republican Congress and a Republican President, so I am not so much worried about that.
Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Morelle), a distinguished member of the Rules Committee.
Mr. MORELLE. Madam Speaker, I thank my dear friend, the chair of the Rules Committee, who not only leads us every day in the committee but, I think, deserves high praise for his inspired leadership on the question of hunger.
I have been privileged to be in a number of hearings that he has held, and I know we are making a difference in the appropriations bills before us, so I thank him for his continued leadership in that regard.
Madam Speaker, I rise today in support of the rule.
It is said that budgets are a statement of values. With this year's appropriations package, we are making our priorities crystal clear: uplifting working families and building a strong economic future for all Americans.
This is arguably one of the most important funding bills in many years as it comes in the midst of a historic global pandemic that has left families and businesses alike reeling from its impacts.
As we work to rebound from the devastation of the COVID-19 crisis, we must seize the opportunity before us and make transformational investments to support our Nation's recovery, both now and in the future. I am pleased to say that my colleagues and I have worked hard to craft an appropriations package that will do just that.
I am particularly proud to have helped deliver essential funding to uplift families in my community of Rochester, New York, by expanding community health services, workforce development initiatives, youth programs, and more.
We are investing in infrastructure, in better-paying jobs with benefits and apprenticeship training, and in affordable housing and daycare resources for working families.
Madam Speaker, COVID-19 has shined a stark light on the inequities that have existed within our communities for decades. We have a responsibility to take action and ensure that we don't just rebuild what was, that we truly embrace President Biden's creed and build back better.
That is why, with this appropriations package, we are also going to support equity for underserved communities with targeted economic investments, confront the climate crisis head-on, and invest in our Nation's greatest assets, its people, by empowering them with the tools they need to uplift their families and be successful.
Coming out of this pandemic has not been easy, but we have made tremendous strides. Let's keep our foot on the gas, pass this rule, and move forward with this historic investment.
I urge my colleagues to vote in support of the rule and in support of the underlying appropriations bill.
Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Madam Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to bring up H.R. 4698 for immediate consideration. This bill addresses the growing problem in American schools of educators pushing their own ideology onto students by forcing them to use the pedagogy of critical race theory.
Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of my amendment in the Record, along with extraneous material, immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Oklahoma?
There was no objection.
Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Utah
(Mr. Owens), the author of this amendment to further explain the amendment.
Mr. OWENS. Madam Speaker, I rise in opposition to moving the previous question so we can immediately consider my bill, H.R. 4698, the Say No to Indoctrination Act, which prohibits Federal funds from advancing the hateful critical race theory concepts.
I grew up in the Deep South during the days of KKK, Jim Crow, and segregation. I have felt the pain of racism and have seen and experienced firsthand when people act unjustly toward others due to the color of their skin. And, yes, it still happens today when individuals choose hate.
Once an unknown academic theory, the increasingly pervasive CRT says that racism permanently stains the fabric of American society. The critical race theorists believe that we are defined solely by our skin color. They believe that America's institutions preserve white supremacy. Some even believe that our Nation is hopelessly racist.
To try to make this divisive theory understandable, teachers often separate students into separate groups based on intrinsic characteristics like race, color, and national origin. In doing so, students are taught to judge others based on their appearance. In the 1960s, this was called pure racism.
In the span of a few weeks, Democrats have gone from claiming that CRT was only a myth to boldly embracing it. They have gone from dismissing parental objections to endorsing indoctrination in schools across the country. The American people are right in their distrust.
Make no mistake, I want our students to learn about the hundreds of moments that shaped us into the country we are today. Students should learn about slavery and its legacy. Students should learn about the Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution, the Emancipation Proclamation, Juneteenth, Jim Crow, the Tulsa race massacre, and the Civil Rights Acts.
They should also be taught and be proud of a Nation that, for over 200 years, has progressed, a country that has shown its commitment to its mission statement that all men and women are created equal.
We have not always lived up to our ideals but have come closer with each passing generation in doing so.
Racism exists. I grew up with it and have zero tolerance for bigotry and hate. More can be done to create a world that teaches greater tolerance and respects the dignity of every individual, regardless of race, color, or creed. CRT is not the solution.
{time} 1245
It is absolutely wrong and un-American to indoctrinate our children into believing that because of their skin color, they are forever part of the oppressed or oppressor class. Hate has no place in our schools, and CRT has no place in our classes.
We live in a world of imperfect people and in a country that from its inception understood this. It was, therefore, placed within our mission statement a goal to grow, to change, and to form a more perfect union.
I choose to believe in a country where we are judged not by the color of our skin but by the content of our character.
I choose to believe in a country that empowers all individuals to dream big and to live fulfilling lives.
Madam Speaker, if you share my belief in our great Nation, then you, too, will vote to defeat the previous question so we can take up and pass, on behalf of the American people, the Say No to Indoctrination Act. I urge my colleagues to do the same.
Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, it should be easy to agree that schools, especially primary schools, should focus solely on facts-based education, without political overtones.
Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from South Carolina (Ms. Mace), who will speak more about the importance of defeating the previous question because of the potential indoctrination of school children posed by schools teaching critical race theory.
Ms. MACE. Madam Speaker, I rise in opposition today to moving the previous question so that we can immediately consider H.R. 4698, a critical bill to ensure none of the funds made available in any legislation providing appropriations may be used to teach or advance concepts that separate individuals based on race, color, or national origin; that would assign characteristics or assumptions to individuals based on race, color, or national origin; or that would state or imply that the United States is an inherently racist country.
Critical race theory assumes that the tenets of freedom and equality, upon which our country was founded, are simply a mirage to mask systematic racism, and that our government should not provide any tax money to fund its teaching. Critical race theory is Marxist ideology that should not be taught anywhere or be used by anyone's tax dollars to be spent on our veterans or our children in public schools today.
Critical race theory assumes that to be born White is to be born guilty and to be born racist. And to be born Black is to be born oppressed or to be born a victim. These concepts have begun to trickle into our public schools, even though the vast majority of Americans disavow it and reject it.
Nothing could be more un-American than seeking to divide our young children based on factors outside of their control. You can watch many school board meetings across the Nation right now where parents, Black and White, are rejecting critical race theory.
The future leaders of our country must be encouraged to chart their own path without seeing everything through a lens of race. Rather than teaching our Black and Brown and African-American children that they are victims and they are oppressed, we can teach them that they are heroes.
We can teach them about heroes in our history like Harriet Tubman, who saved 750 slaves, rescued them in one night in Beaufort County, South Carolina; we can teach them about Robert Smalls, who commandeered a Civil War ship during the Civil War and freed himself and everyone on that ship and their families; and we can teach them about Joseph Rainey, who was the first Black American elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, who was elected from the State of South Carolina, as a Republican, in fact, from South Carolina's First Congressional District.
Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I include in the Record a July 14 Media Matters article entitled, ``FOX News' Obsession with Critical Race Theory, by the Numbers.'' Fox News' Obsession With Critical Race Theory, by the Numbers
(By Lis Power)
Update (7/14/21): Following the publication of this study, Media Matters continued to track mentions of ``critical race theory'' on Fox News. In June, there were 901 mentions on the network, the highest number of any month and an increase from 537 mentions in May. In the past 3\1/2\ months there have been over 1,900 mentions of critical race theory on the network.
Original Study
Critical race theory, to those who can actually define it, is an academic and legal framework that examines the impact of systemic racism on American society. For conservatives however, it's the latest boogeyman they can use to scare people into thinking America's children are being
``indoctrinated'' by ``woke'' leftist teachers. And while that is not even remotely the case, this idea is exploding on Fox News and in Republican-run state legislatures, leading to legislative bans in many states and skyrocketing mentions of critical race theory on the network.
As Media Matters has previously noted, Fox News' current obsession with ``critical race theory'' has been a year in making. What once was a slow trickle of monthly mentions has developed into a full blown assault. Since February, month over month mentions of the theory have more than doubled on Fox News as the network has begun to spin an illusion of what it is and where it's being taught (in reality, critical race theory is not generally taught in K-12). Coverage of the theory sharply increased in March, with 107 mentions on the network according to data from Kinetiq media monitoring service. The following month, network figures and guests mentioned it 226 times, and by May, the number had increased to 537 mentions. Not even halfway through June, there's already been 408 mentions on the network.
Just last week, Fox mentioned ``critical race theory'' a record 244 times--an increase from the previous record high of 170 mentions the week before.
Fox has admitted its reason for this souped-up coverage: the 2022 midterm elections. And in order to drum up outrage, the network has repeatedly amplified a lie that critical race theory teaches that one race is ``inherently superior to another.'' More recently, in its continued efforts to demonize it, Fox News has promoted a pamphlet that echoes the white nationalist ``Great Replacement'' conspiracy theory.
Fox's obsession with what it defines as ``critical race theory'' has frequently crossed the threshold into the absurd and overly dramatic. Fox host Tucker Carlson called it ``a cult,'' while host Will Cain said it is ``modern-day Jim Crow.'' Fox contributor Miranda Devine claimed that teaching the theory would ``warp the minds of American children'' and
``is a recipe for social upheaval and mental illness.'' Fox's Newt Gingrich said it was being driven by ``people who want to brainwash your child.''
By labeling everything that has to do with race ``critical race theory,'' Fox is attempting to shut down conversations about race and racism--which is ironic given the network's claims that it champions free speech. And even though many conservatives who lambast it don't have a clue what the theory actually is, their efforts are working as 21 states are either introducing bans or have banned what they call
``critical race theory.'' Many educators in those states have argued that the bills and laws would essentially ``whitewash history'' and have criticized legislators for making it difficult to have necessary conversations about race.
Methodology
Media Matters searched transcripts in the Kinetiq video database for all original programming on Fox News Channel for the key phrase ``critical race theory'' from June 2020 through June 13, 2021. We counted each instance of the phrase as a single mention.
Methodology update (7/14/21): Data now includes midnight episodes of Fox News @ Night (which recently shifted its time slot) and all new programming from June 14 through July 11, 2021.
Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, apparently my Republican friends and their allies in the media need a new scare tactic because they don't want to talk about things like the economy or how we put people back to work or how we crushed the virus. But we are not going to debate on whether racism exists in America because it does.
We are not going to debate whether we should teach our kids racism is wrong. We should.
We are not going to debate whether individual States and schools can decide what their kids learn. They can.
And we sure as hell are not going to be lectured about racism by the party that is trying to dismantle the Voting Rights Act that Martin Luther King and John Lewis paid for with their blood.
Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California
(Ms. Roybal-Allard), the distinguished chairwoman of the Committee on Appropriations' Subcommittee on Homeland Security.
Ms. ROYBAL-ALLARD. Madam Speaker, I support this rule and commend the chairs who worked diligently to produce funding bills that reflect our goal to ``Build Back Better'' for the American people.
As vice chair of the Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies, I am delighted that this bill lives up to its reputation as the ``People's Bill,'' thanks to the work and commitment of its chair, Rosa DeLauro.
The bill has strong outlays in job training and apprenticeship programs, increased funding for childcare and worker protections, transformative investments to help adults in all communities access post-secondary educational opportunities, and critical investments to ensure our children can return to school safely and receive high-
quality education to overcome the pandemic setbacks.
The Labor, HHS, and Education bill has historic investments to strengthen our public health system and ensure the infrastructure and resources needed to address future public health challenges.
This includes increased investments in REACH, the Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program, the Climate and Health Program, and the Chronic Disease Education and Awareness Program.
As co-chair of the Maternity Care Caucus, I am grateful for the strong investments in mothers and babies, like the large increases in the MCH block grant, the Healthy Start Program, and Safe Motherhood programs. I am also pleased the bill expands the capacity of the Maternal Mental Health Hotline, the SAMHSA Pregnant and Postpartum Women Program and midwifery education funding within the Scholarships for Disadvantaged Students.
Madam Speaker, President Biden said: ``Don't tell me what you value. Show me your budget, and I will tell you what you value.''
I thank all the subcommittee chairs for outlining our values so distinctly in their appropriation bills, and I urge passage of the rule and this minibus.
Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Bishop), a passionate advocate on this issue, who will speak more about the previous question.
Mr. BISHOP of North Carolina. Madam Speaker, we should defeat the previous question in order to immediately consider H.R. 4698, Representative Burgess Owens' bill, called the Say No to Indoctrination Act.
The Nation has awakened to the insidious ideology, or better said, theology of critical race theory and its allied neo-Marxian concepts, all spawned in the fringes of academia.
After a few hardy individuals began focusing on this phenomenon, Americans have discovered with growing alarm that it seems to be everywhere: in the media, in the workplace, in our armed services, in healthcare, in churches, and, yes, in the classrooms where our school children are taught.
With this daunting realization, employees, soldiers, and moms and dads from all walks of life have been speaking out.
Now, the proponents of CRT are scrambling. Their first answer has been to play word games, to ridicule the notion that the ideology is present. But whether couched as CRT, critical social justice, conflict theory, race essentialism, intersectionality, White fragility, or many other names, Americans have seen it and they have caught on.
So the second line of defense--we just heard it--by the activists is to erect a straw man to falsely ascribe to those who confront CRT a motive to deny or conceal racial and group injustice in our history.
But Americans are on to that as well. They know that at the core of critical race theory is the mission to indoctrinate people, especially young people, into the idea that our country is forever locked into group conflict, especially racial conflict, so that the country, and certainly all White people, are irredeemably racists. It casts the American principles of individual liberty, meritocracy, and free enterprise as systems of oppression.
This condemns the progress our Nation has made since first stating its founding principles.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has expired.
Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentleman from North Carolina.
Mr. BISHOP of North Carolina. Madam Speaker, CRT has nothing to do with teaching accurate history.
It is impossible to overstate the danger of indoctrinating Americans with the belief that their race, or other group membership, is the primary determinant of their path in life.
My friends, Mr. Owens' bill ensures that this poison is not funded with taxpayer dollars. The U.S. Congress should catch up with the moms and dads confronting school boards across the country.
I encourage my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the previous question and to support Representative Owens' bill.
Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Madam Speaker, think about what we are dealing with as we gather here on the House floor. We have a pandemic that we are trying to crush, we have a crumbling infrastructure, and what do my friends want to talk about? A FOX News talking point.
Madam Speaker, I include in the Record a July 23 ABC News article entitled: ``Martin Luther King, Jr., the KKK, and More May Soon Be Cut from Texas Education Requirements.''
Martin Luther King, Jr., the KKK, and More May Soon Be Cut From Texas
Education Requirement
(By Kiara Alfonseca)
Some lessons on the civil rights movement, white supremacy, the women's suffrage movement and Martin Luther King Jr. may soon be cut from Texas' public education requirements, according to legislation being considered in the state--one of several bills targeting critical race theory around the country.
The Texas Senate has passed Senate Bill 3 in a continued effort to proscribe education on racial inequality in K-12 education. It removes several Texas Education Code lesson requirements that were proposed by Democrats in prior education legislation to be implemented in the upcoming school year. It also stipulates that lessons cannot teach that ``one race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex'' or make students ``feel discomfort, guilt, [or] anguish'' about privilege or systemic racism.
The concept critical race theory, an academic discipline that analyzes how racism is perpetuated in U.S. laws and policies, has become a lightning rod for conservatives around the country amid the racial reckoning spurred by George Floyd's death.
At least 26 other states have introduced or implemented similar legislation on race education by Republican lawmakers, echoing concerns about racial division.
Opponents say that children should not be made to feel responsible for past injustices based solely on the color of their skin or be forced to accept the idea that the United States and its institutions are not only structured racially but perpetuate that racism.
Some teachers interviewed by ABC News have said critical race theory isn't being taught in grades K-12 and instead is reserved for academic institutions. Some Texas educators told ABC they believe the fight against ``critical race theory'' is a veiled attempt to turn back the clock on racial equality.
The new legislation, SB3, would remove several staples of U.S. history education from state requirements, according to Ovidia Molina, the president of the Texas State Teachers Association.
The state currently requires teaching ``the history of white supremacy,'' ``the institution of slavery, the eugenics movement, and the Ku Klux Klan, and the ways in which it is morally wrong; the Chicano movement; women's suffrage and equal rights; the civil rights movement'' and more.
However, SB3 would cut those requirements--a move that some teachers say signals a growing effort to remove specific lessons from classrooms.
``Specifically editing out that you can't teach that white supremacy is morally wrong--that is deeply concerning,'' said Jennifer Lee, a teacher in Killeen, Texas. ``I think the angle here is just . . . preserving the ideals behind white supremacy.''
Though the new legislation doesn't necessarily ban these lessons from being taught, removing them from the list of requirements means they may come under scrutiny due to the vague, anticritical race theory language of this bill.
Gov. Greg Abbott already signed anti-critical race theory into law in June with HB3979--stating that teachers are banned from linking systemic racism to the ``authentic founding principles of the United States.'' But teachers and advocates say it is so vague that it could infringe on their ability to have truthful dialogue about history and racism with their students.
SB3 was added to the state legislature's special session after Abbott signed HB3979 into law, saying said ``more must be done'' on critical race theory in schools.
And SB3 has been called troubling by education groups including the National Education Association for its potential to censor teachers and students in the classroom.
`Provide guardrails' against `animosity'
Defenders of the bill, including Republican state Sen. Bryan Hughes who sponsored the bill, say that some lessons on racial inequality blame white students for systemic racism and creates tension between students of different backgrounds.
``This bill is meant only to provide guardrails against imposing division and animosity on our students,'' Hughes said before the July 16 Senate vote. ``Since [critical race theory] is so prevalent in higher education and since we see it popping up in public schools, that's why it needs to be addressed.''
Other proponents of anti-critical race theory bills, such as Florida Gov. Ron Desantis, have said that some lessons on race could lead to the ``indoctrination'' of public school students toward progressive political leanings.
Ovidia Molina, the president of the Texas State Teachers Association, said that students have so much to gain from education about America's racial history, including those that would be erased by this new legislation.
``We want to keep honesty in education,'' Molina said. ``We want to make sure that we teach our students the truth, the whole truth, the good, the bad, the failures, the successes.''
Molina said teachers have spoken up at hearings and called their local legislators to denounce the new legislation--but said lawmakers are not listening.
``They don't know what's happening in our public schools,'' Molina said. ``We still want to celebrate women's suffrage, we still want to celebrate the Chicano movement, we still want to celebrate people of color, so that our students see themselves in the history and so they see themselves in the future.''
The Texas Education Agency did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Molina said that Texas districts have yet to announce what punishment for teaching these subjects might look like for teachers.
Concerning shift toward `patriotic' education
Some teachers told ABC they are worried about retaliation, termination, or other forms of punishment. But others are more concerned about what this shift toward more
``patriotic'' education means for their students.
``One of the first things Hitler did was start to reform education and impact the way that history is taught. One of the first things Mussolini did was go through and incorporate patriotic education,'' Lee said. ``Education has always been that first line of defense in preserving a certain way of thinking.''
Former President Donald Trump, among several other conservatives, have become proponents of ``patriotic'' education in response to critical race theory and The New York Times' 1619 project--which dissects the founding of the United States of America and its legacy of slavery. Trump's proposed ``1776 commission'' aims to envision U.S. history in a positive light, instead of through a condemnatory, racial lens.
A school bus is seen outside Condit Elementary School in Bellaire, Texas, on Dec. 16, 2020. San Antonio teacher Christopher Green said he believes that lessons on race, inequality and oppression are vital to helping children navigate the world and understand our society.
``Rather than adding a more diverse perspective to the teaching of history, it's eliminating things that really need to be in there to understand the full picture of the American story,'' Green said.
The bill will now be headed to the state House, but it will likely be stalled due to protests from Texas Democratic representatives. They have fled the state in protest of new voting restrictions, meaning there won't be enough members to conduct business according to House rules.
Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, many of my Republican colleagues think they can interfere with everything from what our teachers teach in school to what happens between women and their doctors.
This is from the party who pretends to be the party of local government. One of my colleagues on the Republican side in an interview yesterday said that we should have cameras in the classroom to monitor what teachers do every single minute. So the party that claims to be the party of liberty and the party of local government wants to be the party of super-big government and control everybody's life.
Give me a break. Let me close with that.
Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from North Carolina (Ms. Ross), a distinguished member of the Rules Committee.
Ms. ROSS. Madam Speaker, I rise in favor of the rule and to highlight two amendments that I am offering to the minibus.
In my home State of North Carolina, we lead the East Coast in offshore wind energy generation potential, and our manufacturing workforce stands ready to support offshore wind projects up and down the Atlantic coastline.
Unfortunately, former President Trump issued a 10-year moratorium on offshore wind leasing off our coast that is set to take effect in 2022. This ill-conceived moratorium puts our State's ability to develop this resource and capture its economic and environmental benefits at risk.
I am proud to offer an amendment to this bill, which would prohibit the use of funds to implement the offshore wind component of this moratorium while leaving the moratorium on offshore oil and gas leasing in place.
This amendment, and a similar bill I introduced with Congressman Tonko, are essential in order to meet our State and national climate goals.
My second amendment highlights the obstacles faced by pregnant and parenting students. Today, nearly 22 percent of undergraduate students are parents. Pregnant and parenting students face significant barriers in education, from difficulty accessing college, to insufficient childcare, to lack of holistic supports.
As a result, pregnant and parenting students experience disproportionately low graduation rates as well as a median debt that is nearly 2\1/2\ times higher than that of students without children. Pregnant and parenting high school students too frequently find themselves pushed out of school entirely.
My amendment instructs the Institute of Education Sciences to conduct a study on the obstacles pregnant and parenting students face in the pursuit of education and provides recommendations for improving educational outcomes, including graduation rates for these students.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentlewoman has expired.
Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentlewoman from North Carolina.
Ms. ROSS. Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support the rule, my amendments, and the underlying bill.
Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Burgess), my very good friend, a distinguished member of both the Rules Committee and the Energy and Commerce Committee.
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Mr. BURGESS. Madam Speaker, I rise today to demand of the majority that they restore the use of the resolution of inquiry. Resolutions of inquiry are used by the House to obtain information from the executive branch. If a resolution of inquiry is not marked up in committee within 14 days, it becomes a privileged resolution on the House floor.
Now, for a year the majority has turned off the tolling days for resolutions of inquiry. They said this was because of the pandemic. But there is no need for this. Committees are open, committees are operating. The House floor votes have returned to near normal operations.
This is a request for information. It is not an opinion. It is a request for information that we, as Members of the House, should have available from the administration.
But if you want an opinion, yesterday I introduced a resolution of inquiry directing the Departments of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services to turn over information on the care of unaccompanied alien children in the custody of Customs and Border Protection and the Office of Refugee Resettlement. This used to be something in which the majority was interested.
There is a crisis along our southern border, and the Biden administration and the majority should see the importance of having transparency for the protection of these children that are, by law, under our care.
I urge the majority to restore minority rights, and turn back on the tolling days for resolutions of inquiry.
Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Let me just say that I think that it will be a lot easier for us to be able to accommodate the gentleman if he could control members of his own party from trying to disrupt and derail everything that we try to do here.
Suspension votes, which are really pretty noncontroversial, that usually pass overwhelmingly, we have had to impose a new rule to be able to consider them in order to be able to overcome their objection to every single one of them. And now they are even objecting to that; bipartisan bills, Republican bills.
Unfortunately, there is a concerted effort on behalf of some in the minority to try to stop all of the people's business, and we are going to move forward and get the people's business done. That is what we are doing here today, and we will continue to do that.
I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Trone).
Mr. TRONE. Madam Speaker, I want to thank Chairman McGovern for yielding, and also for his leadership on the Rules Committee and, equally important, his relentless leadership in the House to help those that are unacceptably hungry in America.
I rise today as a member of the House Appropriations Committee to urge support for the rule and the bill, which includes important investments to fight our Nation's substance use and mental health crisis, and significant funding for the National Institutes of Health.
The COVID pandemic has only worsened our Nation's addiction and mental health epidemics. The data is alarming. Last year over 93,000 people died in America from an overdose. That is a 30 percent increase in our country. This year more people are reporting frequent thoughts of suicide and self-harm than ever before.
Unlike COVID, there will be no vaccine for addiction, no vaccine for mental health.
It is going to take consistent, increased funding to meet the needs of our most vulnerable Americans. I am happy to say this bill does that. I am also happy to have secured over $6 million in this bill for critical projects in Maryland's Sixth District that invest in important social services for the most vulnerable and job training in our community for those that need it the most.
I want to thank Chair Rosa DeLauro for her work to lead this committee and invest long term in this important funding for our country. I urge a ``yes'' vote.
Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith), my very good friend and the most distinguished defender of life in the Congress.
Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Madam Speaker, sadly the rule under consideration precludes a vote on the Cole amendment to preserve the Hyde amendment and Weldon conscience protection law as well as other pro-life amendments, including one that I first successfully offered back in 1983 prohibiting abortion funding in the Federal Employees Health Benefits program. All of our amendments were ruled out of order. That is tragic; we are not even going to get to vote on these lifesaving measures.
Madam Speaker, the Hyde amendment has saved more than 2.4 million lives, about 60,000 per year since first enacted. If retained in law, more innocent lives will be protected.
It is time, I believe, for more of us to face the harsh reality of what abortion actually does to children. No one in the media ever bothers to expose the violent methods of abortion that include dismemberment of a child's fragile body, including decapitation; that drugs like RU-486 starve the baby to death; or that unborn babies killed by abortion at 20 weeks or later experience excruciating physical pain, and until rendered unconscious or dead by these hideous procedures, the baby feels the pain of every single cut.
Madam Speaker, abortion is not healthcare unless one construes the precious life of an unborn child to be analogous to a tumor to be excised or a disease to be vanquished.
Mr. Biden once wrote to constituents explaining his support for laws against funding for abortion by saying, ``It would protect both the woman and her unborn child.'' He went on to say that ``those of us who are opposed to abortion should not be compelled to pay for them.''
Over the years, the polls have consistently shown that Americans do not support taxpayer funding of abortion. The January 2021 Marist poll found that 58 percent of Americans oppose taxpayer funding of abortion as opposed to 38 percent who support it. The Marist poll also found a supermajority of 65 percent Independents oppose taxpayer funding of abortion.
Madam Speaker, unborn babies need the President of the United States of America and Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle to be their friends and advocates, not powerful adversaries.
Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Madam Speaker, we can talk about polls. I have a poll here that just recently came out that shows the exact opposite of that.
But rather than talk about polls, we should be talking about values, and a majority of Americans believe that women should not be denied reproductive healthcare because they can't afford it. They believe that people should not be denied healthcare because, you know, they are working hard to try to make ends meet.
So, I mean, here's a poll that just came out that shows the exact opposite of that, an overwhelming majority of Americans believe that Medicaid should, in fact, cover women's reproductive healthcare.
Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Wisconsin
(Ms. Moore).
Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. Madam Speaker, I rise in strong support of this rule and the underlying legislation, which funds key health, education, and other priorities that our Nation has simply underinvested in for much too long.
I am particularly appreciative for the increased investments in TRIO--and I would mention that is a bipartisan initiative--and WIC--
Women, Infant, and Children--among other things.
I want to talk now about two amendments that I have offered to this bill, which were made in order under this rule. The first is a bipartisan amendment to increase the Low Income Heating Energy Assistance Program funding by $10 million. In the United States, 40 million households every year are unable to afford their basic household energy needs.
I know in my State the temperature ranges between 55 degrees below zero to over 100 degrees. So it is not optional to have heating or cooling.
In many cases this means choosing between food, medicine, and electricity needs to make ends meet, or leaving a home that is unsafe and unhealthy because of the upper or lower temperatures.
In Wisconsin, only 31 percent of eligible households received LIHEAP assistance in 2020. Increasing the funding available for this program will help ensure that more of our most vulnerable citizens have adequate resources to prevent their energy needs from further straining their budgets.
The second amendment, Madam Speaker, would provide an additional $2 million for school breakfast expansion grants included in the 2010 child nutrition reauthorization. I am so proud that the committee included $10 million for this program in the underlying bill. Every child deserves a morning free of hunger and to have the opportunity to learn, grow, and focus in school without worrying where their next meal will come from.
Currently, out of the 97,000 schools that participate in the school meals program, over 7,000 of them do not provide breakfast. With these additional funds, we can close the school breakfast gap.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentlewoman has expired.
Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentlewoman.
Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. Madam Speaker, with these funds we can close the school breakfast gap and ensure that all students receive breakfast who want it.
Madam Speaker, I urge a ``yes'' vote on the rule and the underlying bill.
Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Van Drew), my good friend.
Mr. VAN DREW. Madam Speaker, I rise in opposition to this shameful legislation.
This single vote encompasses seven unrelated spending bills. This is a broken legislative process.
The bill includes poison pills that make it impossible for me and for my colleagues to support this in good conscience. This is exactly as the majority intended. Today's vote is simply an attempt to strategically inflict political pain.
Our country is tired, tired of political gamesmanship, tired of partisan maneuvering, tired of this selfish dysfunction.
On behalf of the American people, I ask the majority to stop. I must ask the majority to stop. There is an ability to work together. This is not it.
If this were an earnest attempt at legislating, I could lend my support where appropriate. Unfortunately, I must oppose this rule and this legislation.
Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Madam Speaker, I am very proud of this process. The shameful process was when my friend's party was in control of the House and the White House, and they shut the government down. That is what people don't want to see happen ever again.
By the way, I mean, these bills do things like tackle hunger, they lift up our rural communities, they rebuild health and safety infrastructure, they invest incredibly important dollars in the National Institutes of Health and medical research to try to find cures for everything from Alzheimer's to Parkinson's disease, to get a better handle on how we can deal with future pandemics. It creates and sustains good-paying jobs, it grows opportunities through education. It advances equal treatment for women.
There are so many important, good things in here that, by the way, I think are bipartisan everywhere in the country but in this Chamber, and so this is what the American people want. This is what they voted for. I am proud of the Appropriations Committee, Chairwoman DeLauro, and all of those who put the American people front and center on our agenda.
Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Lois Frankel).
Ms. LOIS FRANKEL of Florida. Madam Speaker, I rise in support of this bill that invests in the love and commitment we have for our families, from the very young to the very old.
It gets our children off to a good start with historic funding for pre-K and child care, and makes sure all children have access to high-
quality public education regardless of their ZIP Code.
We want our children to have a chance to live out their dreams, so we make unprecedented investments in Pell grants for college students, including DACA recipients.
And our grandparents have given us so much. To help them age with dignity and comfort, the bill increases funding for home and community-
based services and research on Alzheimer's and other conditions that impact older Americans.
And, of course, we want our families to be safe and healthy, so this bill doubles funding for research on gun violence, pluses-up mental health treatment, and makes historic investments in combatting climate change and protecting Florida's Everglades, drinking water for millions.
And this is a country that honors our veterans. I am proud to champion Centers of Excellence for Student Veteran Success programs that help veterans transition from Active Duty to civilian student life.
And today we celebrate reproductive freedom with historic investments in Title X Family Planning program, which provides health service to millions of low-income patients in our most underserved communities, and we eliminate provisions blocking the use of Medicaid funding for abortion.
No matter how we feel about abortion, politicians should not deny someone's health coverage just because they are struggling financially. Women must have the freedom to decide when and if to become a parent. This is monumental.
This is a bill filled with love and hope and justice that lifts up our families. I am proud to support it.
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Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Van Duyne).
Ms. VAN DUYNE. Madam Speaker, I wish I could say I was rising in support of this legislation but, again, we are being asked to vote on a bill that represents a missed opportunity on the backs of our constituents.
I am pleased I was able to secure needed improvement for DFW Airport in the appropriations legislation. These projects would not only improve my district but the whole region.
I have held roundtables and formed a working group with local leaders and stakeholders who know what is best for my community and what I heard from them and fought to include in legislation funding our government is, sadly, not what we are debating today.
Instead of working to craft bipartisan legislation which Members on both sides of the aisle can support, the Senate can pass, and the President can sign into law, we are, instead, debating monstrous appropriations bills that are based on unrealistic, irresponsible funding levels and include partisan policy provisions that will only delay funding and passage.
These political games only serve to impede badly needed infrastructure projects. No, the Democrats didn't shut down the government, they just tried to shut down the rest of the country. I would love to be able to work on legislation that we can work on together that will actually advance what we are trying to do in this country. I urge opposition to this rule.
Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentlewoman from Indiana (Mrs. Walorski).
Mrs. WALORSKI. Madam Speaker, I rise to defend the dignity of life and the rights of pro-life Americans. We must protect taxpayers from being forced to fund abortion against their own conscience.
The Hyde amendment which prohibits taxpayer dollars for paying for abortion has had bipartisan consensus since 1976 and the majority of Americans still support it today. This pro-life protection has saved nearly 2.5 million lives.
Driven by a radical agenda, Democrats and the Biden administration have stripped this vital amendment from these appropriation packages. It is incredibly disappointing that Democrats want to force American taxpayers to bankroll the destruction of life.
I am proud to cosponsor H.R. 18, the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act, which would make this prohibition the law of the land. Pro-life Americans must stand together to protect the most vulnerable among us. Lives are depending on us.
I urge my colleagues to oppose this rule and the underlying bill to prevent taxpayer funding from paying for abortions.
Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Smith), my very good friend and the ranking member of the Budget Committee.
Mr. SMITH of Missouri. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Oklahoma for yielding.
Madam Speaker, we are debating a spending bill under a budget that doesn't exist. Six months into Joe Biden's Presidency and a Democrat-
controlled Congress, we have still not passed a budget for fiscal year 2022. In fact, Democrats have been in the majority for over 1,000 days and they have yet to put a real budget on the floor of the House of Representatives.
In this bill before us today, the Democrats want to give Washington bureaucrats an average increase of 21 percent. Their plan will fuel a massive growth in red tape that will harm small businesses. It will hurt working Americans and families, and it gives Washington more control over their lives and livelihoods.
But notice what they have left out.
What they have left out is, where is the money to protect our homeland?
Where is the money for our men and women in uniform?
Perhaps our colleagues have not brought these bills to the floor because they are ashamed to face the American people and explain why they want to flatline spending for our men and women in uniform.
Or how, during the largest and worst immigration crisis of the southern border in years, they refuse to put in one additional dollar to secure our border.
I suppose this shouldn't surprise us. Democrats have been very, very clear about their objectives. While we are debating a raise for bureaucrats, the Senate is figuring out how to abuse the budget process to spend at least $3.5 trillion more on their socialist agenda: amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants; subsidies for wealthy environmentalists; forcing States to expand Medicaid; and tax increases for working Americans while giving tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans.
This is the first year in the last decade without a spending cap agreement and look what is happening. Without missing a beat, the Democrats are opening the floodgates to reckless spending. While they argue over how many trillions to spend, we are just days away from reaching our debt limit. Democrats have ignored runaway government spending this year and look what is happening: Americans are paying more at the pump and in the checkout lines than they have in years.
The debate around our Nation's debt limit provides Congress with the opportunity to seriously address runaway government spending and rising inflation.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has expired.
Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield the gentleman an additional 15 seconds.
Mr. SMITH of Missouri. But as we are here today, Democrats would rather bypass their budget process and talk about their liberal wish list.
Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
People always ask: Why don't you work together? How do you work with that? To come down here and to lecture us about deficits or about budgets, give me a break.
When the gentleman's party was in power, when they controlled the House, the Senate, and the White House, they gave us a $2 trillion debt because of a tax cut that went to wealthy people, to big corporations.
When they controlled the House, the Senate, and the White House, they shut the government down. They couldn't even agree amongst themselves. It was the first time in history that we ended a Congress with a government shutdown.
When they lost power, they gave Democrats a government that was shut down. We had to clean up the mess, and we continue to do that.
In all of the years of disinvestment when they were in charge with Donald Trump, we are now trying to put the people first. That is what this is about.
I am proud of this bill. I am proud of the investments in medical research, in our families, in our children, in our senior citizens, and in our veterans. That is what this is all about. These bills are being brought to the floor.
I hate to tell the gentleman that is what we are doing; they are coming to the floor. He can vote ``no'' on them and go home and explain to his constituents why he voted against their interests, but that is what we are doing. And I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I would advise the gentleman that I am prepared to close whenever he is. Madam Speaker, can I inquire how much time remains?
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Oklahoma has 5\1/4\ minutes remaining. The gentleman from Massachusetts has 4 minutes remaining.
Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.
I want to begin by thanking my good friend, Mr. McGovern, the chairman of the Rules Committee, as we always have a spirited debate and lively exchange and we don't always agree on things, but I always appreciate his faith in the institution, his willingness to engage in debate, and his friendship and decency as we work through our differences.
Madam Speaker, the bill before us today is a deeply misguided bill. I say that as someone who serves on the Appropriations Committee. The spending package covering seven different appropriations bills is marked to numbers that simply don't make sense.
Contrary to what my friend claimed, we haven't had a massive disinvestment in domestic spending over the last 4 years. Quite the opposite. There have been steady and, I think, genuinely merited increases. This is an explosion of spending tied to additional spending that is promised down the road in the form of a $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill.
Now, everything is funded except, as my good friend from Missouri said, the things that keep us safe and free. The defense budget is laughable. We have had a succession of Secretaries--on both sides of the aisle, by the way--who have told us we need a 3 to 5 percent increase beyond inflation in defense over the next several years.
We don't have a defense bill on the floor. We are not likely to see one any time soon, but the reality is, the defense bill my friends propose actually is an inflation-adjusted cut in the defense of the United States, a cut at a time that we are dealing with Russian and Chinese aggression and dangerous adventurism in other parts of the world by regional adversaries like North Korea and Iran. That is irresponsible.
We all know we have a crisis on the southern border. We won't see the Homeland Security bill either because that is flat funded and not meeting the obvious needs that we have there. But we do have an extraordinary explosion in domestic spending, one that is simply not justified and can't be sustained.
If those were my only objections, I would think at some point we could probably find some sort of reasonable compromise, because my friends know at the end of the day they have to get to 60 votes in the United States Senate. However, in addition to that, they have ripped out things like the Hyde and Weldon amendments that have been in these bills for 45 years, in the case of the Hyde amendment, 15 or 16 years in the case of the Weldon amendment. Those are deal-breaking bills to us.
Now, my friends have routinely voted for those things for decades; not for years but for decades, and Presidents of both parties have signed them. As I have mentioned to my friends yesterday in the Rules Committee, it was a Democratic Congress that passed the Hyde amendment, overwhelmingly Democrat in both Chambers.
My friends have changed their view about the life issue. That is their right. I respect it. We have not. We have not changed our views on conscience issues. My friends know that if that language in the Hyde amendment and the Weldon amendment are not restored to the appropriations bills, they are not going to have any of these grand bills or even compromise bills. They are going to end up with a continuing resolution, at best.
For those people who are watching that don't know what a continuing resolution is, it is simply last year's spending with the Weldon and Hyde amendments. In effect, a Democratic President, a Democratic House, and a Democratic Senate will have produced Donald Trump's last-
negotiated budget. That is where we are headed unless my friends decide to restore that language. That is an absolute deal-breaker for us if it is not.
The other thing that I would mention to my good friends on the other side is that there is still some time to do some things. This is a long process, and I understand setting out your negotiating position. But let's not be under any illusion that what we are talking about today will ever become law. It will never be passed by the Senate. It will never reach the desk of the President of the United States.
Madam Speaker, I urge my friends to reject the rule, reject the bill, and sit down and bargain in good faith. We can get there.
As I have said on many occasions, I have had the great privilege of having been chairman and ranking member of the largest component bill in this group. On six different occasions, both as chairman and ranking member, working with my good friend, the chairwoman of the full committee, Representative DeLauro, we came to a deal. All six times, the bill was out of committee, across the floor, signed by the President. It didn't matter who was chairman or ranking member. It didn't matter which party controlled. It didn't matter who the President was.
That is six times in a row. We can do that again a seventh time in this bill. There are some good things in this bill, as my friend says, some things I certainly support. But there can be such a thing as too much of a good thing, and there is way too much of a good thing in this bill in terms of the amount of money it spends.
At the end of the day, if we are going to have an appropriations process that works, if we are going to have a deal--and we both should want a deal--then the defense number is going to have to come up. The discretionary spending number, which is embodied in this bill, is going to have to come down, and the Hyde and Weldon amendments are going to have to be restored.
Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, earlier I referred to when one of my Republican colleagues came to the floor and had a meltdown. I commented: How do you work with that? Coming to the floor and yelling and screaming and scolding and distorting and trying to find the worst possible version of everything, that never accomplishes anything. It never does.
Madam Speaker, I would never characterize my colleague from Oklahoma that way. When we get to a final product, he will be part of the solution because he respects this institution, and he understands the importance of give and take. We have some very strong disagreements in the Rules Committee but I never question his integrity, and he never questions my integrity or anybody else's on the committee. I wish there were more people like him, quite frankly, in this Chamber.
{time} 1330
Madam Speaker, to hear some of my friends on the other side today, you would think that the sky is falling.
What is so controversial about trusting women to make their own healthcare decisions, free from politicians and special interest groups trying to control them?
What is so controversial about confronting climate change, or making America the world's clean energy superpower?
Or helping our farmers in our rural communities?
Or making sure our veterans have the support and the care that they have earned when they return home?
Apparently, since Democrats proposed it, this minibus is a bridge too far for some. But I have to tell you, to most Americans, what is included here is just common sense.
I am proud that we are doing our work and keeping our government funded, and doing so in a way that respects women's autonomy and builds a more just and equitable future.
Madam Speaker, too many of these issues can't wait another day, another year, another decade for us to act, so I urge all of my colleagues to support this rule and this minibus so that we can meet the scale of the challenges that we face today and put the building blocks in place to grow our economy for years to come. That is what these bills are all about.
Someone earlier described them as bills filled with hope and love. They are. This is about putting our families first. This is about respecting our kids, understanding that our children are 100 percent of our future. This is about understanding that we have a climate crisis, and we have to do something about it. This is about respecting equity and justice and things that, quite frankly, should be shared values.
Madam Speaker, I know that there are some disagreements here. We will all get through this, work it out, and get to a conclusion, but the final product will be much, much better because of what we are doing on this House floor today.
Madam Speaker, I urge all of my colleagues to support the rule and the underlying bill.
The material previously referred to by Mr. Cole is as follows:
Amendment to House Resolution 555
At the end of the resolution, add the following:
Sec. 8. Immediately upon adoption of this resolution, the House shall proceed to the consideration in the House of the bill (H.R. 4698) to prevent the use of Federal funds to advance discriminatory concepts, and for other purposes. All points of order against consideration of the bill are waived. The bill shall be considered as read. All points of order against provisions in the bill are waived. The previous question shall be considered as ordered on the bill and on any amendment thereto to final passage without intervening motion except: (1) one hour of debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on Education and Labor; and (2) one motion to recommit.
Sec. 9. Clause 1(c) of rule XIX shall not apply to the consideration of H.R. 4698.
Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on ordering the previous question.
The question was taken; and the Speaker pro tempore announced that the ayes appeared to have it.
Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to section 3(s) of House Resolution 8, the yeas and nays are ordered.
The vote was taken by electronic device, and there were--yeas 217, nays 201, not voting 12, as follows:
YEAS--217
Adams Aguilar Allred Auchincloss Axne Barragan Bass Beatty Bera Beyer Bishop (GA) Blumenauer Bonamici Bourdeaux Bowman Boyle, Brendan F. Brown Brownley Bush Bustos Butterfield Carbajal Cardenas Carson Carter (LA) Cartwright Case Casten Castor (FL) Castro (TX) Chu Cicilline Clark (MA) Clarke (NY) Cleaver Clyburn Cohen Connolly Cooper Correa Costa Courtney Craig Crist Crow Cuellar Davids (KS) Davis, Danny K. Dean DeFazio DeGette DeLauro DelBene Delgado Demings DeSaulnier Deutch Dingell Doggett Doyle, Michael F. Escobar Eshoo Espaillat Evans Fletcher Foster Frankel, Lois Gallego Garamendi Garcia (IL) Garcia (TX) Golden Gomez Gonzalez, Vicente Gottheimer Green, Al (TX) Grijalva Harder (CA) Hayes Higgins (NY) Himes Horsford Houlahan Hoyer Huffman Jackson Lee Jacobs (CA) Jayapal Jeffries Johnson (GA) Johnson (TX) Jones Kahele Kaptur Keating Kelly (IL) Khanna Kildee Kilmer Kim (NJ) Kind Kirkpatrick Krishnamoorthi Kuster Lamb Langevin Larsen (WA) Larson (CT) Lawrence Lawson (FL) Lee (CA) Lee (NV) Leger Fernandez Levin (CA) Levin (MI) Lieu Lofgren Lowenthal Luria Lynch Malinowski Maloney, Carolyn B. Maloney, Sean Manning Matsui McBath McCollum McEachin McGovern McNerney Meeks Meng Mfume Moore (WI) Morelle Moulton Mrvan Nadler Napolitano Neal Neguse Newman Norcross O'Halleran Ocasio-Cortez Omar Pallone Panetta Pappas Pascrell Payne Perlmutter Peters Phillips Pingree Pocan Porter Pressley Price (NC) Quigley Raskin Rice (NY) Ross Roybal-Allard Ruiz Ruppersberger Rush Ryan Sanchez Sarbanes Scanlon Schakowsky Schiff Schneider Schrader Schrier Scott (VA) Scott, David Sewell Sherman Sherrill Sires Slotkin Smith (WA) Soto Spanberger Speier Stansbury Stanton Stevens Strickland Suozzi Swalwell Takano Thompson (CA) Thompson (MS) Titus Tlaib Tonko Torres (CA) Torres (NY) Trahan Trone Underwood Vargas Veasey Vela Velazquez Wasserman Schultz Waters Watson Coleman Welch Wexton Wild Williams (GA) Wilson (FL) Yarmuth
NAYS--201
Aderholt Allen Amodei Armstrong Arrington Babin Bacon Baird Balderson Banks Barr Bentz Bergman Bice (OK) Biggs Bilirakis Bishop (NC) Boebert Bost Brady Brooks Buchanan Bucshon Budd Burchett Burgess Calvert Cammack Carl Cawthorn Chabot Cheney Cline Cloud Clyde Cole Comer Crenshaw Curtis Davidson Davis, Rodney DesJarlais Diaz-Balart Donalds Duncan Dunn Emmer Estes Fallon Feenstra Ferguson Fischbach Fitzgerald Fitzpatrick Fleischmann Fortenberry Foxx Franklin, C. Scott Fulcher Gaetz Gallagher Garbarino Garcia (CA) Gibbs Gimenez Gohmert Gonzales, Tony Gonzalez (OH) Good (VA) Gooden (TX) Gosar Granger Graves (LA) Graves (MO) Green (TN) Greene (GA) Griffith Grothman Guest Guthrie Hagedorn Harris Harshbarger Hartzler Hern Herrell Herrera Beutler Hice (GA) Hill Hinson Hollingsworth Hudson Huizenga Issa Jackson Jacobs (NY) Johnson (LA) Johnson (OH) Johnson (SD) Jordan Joyce (OH) Joyce (PA) Katko Keller Kelly (MS) Kelly (PA) Kim (CA) Kustoff LaHood LaMalfa Lamborn Latta LaTurner Lesko Letlow Long Lucas Luetkemeyer Mace Malliotakis Mann Massie McCarthy McCaul McClain McClintock McKinley Meijer Meuser Miller (IL) Miller (WV) Miller-Meeks Moolenaar Mooney Moore (AL) Moore (UT) Mullin Murphy (NC) Nehls Newhouse Norman Nunes Obernolte Owens Palazzo Palmer Pence Perry Pfluger Posey Reed Reschenthaler Rice (SC) Rodgers (WA) Rogers (AL) Rogers (KY) Rose Rosendale Rouzer Roy Rutherford Salazar Scalise Schweikert Sessions Simpson Smith (MO) Smith (NE) Smith (NJ) Smucker Spartz Stauber Steel Stefanik Steil Steube Stewart Taylor Tenney Thompson (PA) Tiffany Timmons Turner Upton Valadao Van Drew Van Duyne Wagner Walberg Walorski Waltz Weber (TX) Webster (FL) Wenstrup Westerman Williams (TX) Wilson (SC) Wittman Womack Young Zeldin
NOT VOTING--12
Blunt Rochester Buck Carter (GA) Carter (TX) Crawford Higgins (LA) Kinzinger Loudermilk Mast McHenry Murphy (FL) Scott, Austin
{time} 1403
Mr. LONG changed his vote from ``yea'' to ``nay''.
So the previous question was ordered.
The result of the vote was announced as above recorded.
Stated for:
Ms. BLUNT ROCHESTER. Madam Speaker, had I been present, I would have voted ``yea'' on rollcall No. 222.
Members Recorded Pursuant to House Resolution 8, 117th Congress
Aderholt (Moolenaar) Amodei (Balderson) DeSaulnier (Thompson (CA)) Fulcher (Meuser) Garcia (IL) (Garcia (TX)) Gonzalez (OH) (Timmons) Graves (MO) (Wagner) Green (TX) (Perlmutter) Grijalva (Stanton) Horsford (Jeffries) Jones (Williams (GA)) Kelly (PA) (Keller) Kirkpatrick (Stanton) Lawrence (Beatty) Lawson (FL) (Evans) Lowenthal (Beyer) Maloney, Carolyn (Velazquez) McEachin (Wexton) Meng (Jeffries) Napolitano (Correa) Payne (Pallone) Porter (Wexton) Ruppersberger (Brown) Rush (Underwood) Sires (Pallone) Watson Coleman (Pallone) Wild (Axne) Wilson (FL) (Hayes)
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the resolution.
The question was taken; and the Speaker pro tempore announced that the ayes appeared to have it.
Mr. RESCHENTHALER. Madam Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to section 3(s) of House Resolution 8, the yeas and nays are ordered.
The vote was taken by electronic device, and there were--yeas 218, nays 207, not voting 5, as follows:
YEAS--218
Adams Aguilar Allred Auchincloss Axne Barragan Bass Beatty Bera Beyer Bishop (GA) Blumenauer Blunt Rochester Bonamici Bowman Boyle, Brendan F. Brown Brownley Bush Bustos Butterfield Carbajal Cardenas Carson Carter (LA) Cartwright Case Casten Castor (FL) Castro (TX) Chu Cicilline Clark (MA) Clarke (NY) Cleaver Clyburn Cohen Connolly Cooper Correa Costa Courtney Craig Crist Crow Cuellar Davids (KS) Davis, Danny K. Dean DeFazio DeGette DeLauro DelBene Delgado Demings DeSaulnier Deutch Dingell Doggett Doyle, Michael F. Escobar Eshoo Espaillat Evans Fletcher Foster Frankel, Lois Gallego Garamendi Garcia (IL) Garcia (TX) Golden Gomez Gonzalez, Vicente Gottheimer Green, Al (TX) Grijalva Harder (CA) Hayes Higgins (NY) Himes Horsford Houlahan Hoyer Huffman Jackson Lee Jacobs (CA) Jayapal Jeffries Johnson (GA) Johnson (TX) Jones Kahele Kaptur Keating Kelly (IL) Khanna Kildee Kilmer Kim (NJ) Kind Kirkpatrick Krishnamoorthi Kuster Lamb Langevin Larsen (WA) Larson (CT)
Lawrence Lawson (FL) Lee (CA) Lee (NV) Leger Fernandez Levin (CA) Levin (MI) Lieu Lofgren Lowenthal Luria Lynch Malinowski Maloney, Carolyn B. Maloney, Sean Manning Matsui McBath McCollum McEachin McGovern McNerney Meeks Meng Mfume Moore (WI) Morelle Moulton Mrvan Murphy (FL) Nadler Napolitano Neal Neguse Newman Norcross O'Halleran Ocasio-Cortez Omar Pallone Panetta Pappas Pascrell Payne Perlmutter Peters Phillips Pingree Pocan Porter Pressley Price (NC) Quigley Raskin Rice (NY) Ross Roybal-Allard Ruiz Ruppersberger Rush Ryan Sanchez Sarbanes Scanlon Schakowsky Schiff Schneider Schrader Schrier Scott (VA) Scott, David Sewell Sherman Sherrill Sires Slotkin Smith (WA) Soto Spanberger Speier Stansbury Stanton Stevens Strickland Suozzi Swalwell Takano Thompson (CA) Thompson (MS) Titus Tlaib Tonko Torres (CA) Torres (NY) Trahan Trone Underwood Vargas Veasey Vela Velazquez Wasserman Schultz Waters Watson Coleman Welch Wexton Wild Williams (GA) Wilson (FL) Yarmuth
NAYS--207
Aderholt Allen Amodei Armstrong Arrington Babin Bacon Baird Balderson Banks Barr Bentz Bergman Bice (OK) Biggs Bilirakis Bishop (NC) Boebert Bost Bourdeaux Brady Brooks Buchanan Bucshon Budd Burchett Burgess Calvert Cammack Carl Carter (TX) Cawthorn Chabot Cheney Cline Cloud Clyde Cole Comer Crawford Crenshaw Curtis Davidson Davis, Rodney DesJarlais Diaz-Balart Donalds Duncan Dunn Emmer Estes Fallon Feenstra Ferguson Fischbach Fitzgerald Fitzpatrick Fleischmann Fortenberry Foxx Franklin, C. Scott Fulcher Gaetz Gallagher Garbarino Garcia (CA) Gibbs Gimenez Gohmert Gonzales, Tony Gonzalez (OH) Good (VA) Gooden (TX) Gosar Granger Graves (LA) Graves (MO) Green (TN) Greene (GA) Griffith Grothman Guest Guthrie Hagedorn Harris Harshbarger Hartzler Hern Herrell Herrera Beutler Hice (GA) Hill Hinson Hollingsworth Hudson Huizenga Issa Jackson Jacobs (NY) Johnson (LA) Johnson (OH) Johnson (SD) Jordan Joyce (OH) Joyce (PA) Katko Keller Kelly (MS) Kelly (PA) Kim (CA) Kinzinger Kustoff LaHood LaMalfa Lamborn Latta LaTurner Lesko Letlow Long Loudermilk Lucas Luetkemeyer Mace Malliotakis Mann Massie McCarthy McCaul McClain McClintock McHenry McKinley Meijer Meuser Miller (IL) Miller (WV) Miller-Meeks Moolenaar Mooney Moore (AL) Moore (UT) Mullin Murphy (NC) Nehls Newhouse Norman Nunes Obernolte Owens Palazzo Palmer Pence Perry Pfluger Posey Reed Reschenthaler Rice (SC) Rodgers (WA) Rogers (AL) Rogers (KY) Rose Rosendale Rouzer Roy Rutherford Salazar Scalise Schweikert Sessions Simpson Smith (MO) Smith (NE) Smith (NJ) Smucker Spartz Stauber Steel Stefanik Steil Steube Stewart Taylor Tenney Thompson (PA) Tiffany Timmons Turner Upton Valadao Van Drew Van Duyne Wagner Walberg Walorski Waltz Weber (TX) Webster (FL) Wenstrup Westerman Williams (TX) Wilson (SC) Wittman Womack Young Zeldin
NOT VOTING--5
Buck Carter (GA) Higgins (LA) Mast Scott, Austin
{time} 1430
So the resolution was agreed to.
The result of the vote was announced as above recorded.
A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.
Members Recorded Pursuant to House Resolution 8, 117th Congress
Aderholt (Moolenaar) Amodei (Balderson) DeSaulnier (Thompson (CA)) Fulcher (Meuser) Garcia (IL) (Garcia (TX)) Gonzalez (OH) (Timmons) Graves (MO) (Wagner) Green (TX) (Perlmutter) Grijalva (Stanton) Horsford (Jeffries) Jones (Williams (GA)) Kelly (PA) (Keller) Kirkpatrick (Stanton) Lawrence (Beatty) Lawson (FL) (Evans) Lowenthal (Beyer) Maloney, Carolyn (Velazquez) McEachin (Wexton) McHenry (Budd) Meng (Jeffries) Napolitano (Correa) Payne (Pallone) Porter (Wexton) Ruppersberger (Brown) Rush (Underwood) Sires (Pallone) Watson Coleman (Pallone) Wild (Axne) Wilson (FL) (Hayes)
____________________
SOURCE: Congressional Record Vol. 167, No. 131
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