Legislative Program

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCALISE. Madam Speaker, as we start the appropriations process to, ultimately, get to the point where we are able to pass our appropriations bills prior to September 30, I think the gentleman recognizes that the only way we will have an opportunity to get to a point where we don't have a shutdown is if we are in agreement, both between the House and Senate as well as with the White House, on the actual number, the amount of money that the Federal Government would be able to spend in that year.

We have had agreements in prior years, budget agreements, on how we are going to do that. I think the gentleman understands that even within the Democratic-controlled House, there is not an agreement. The Budget Committee, the majority's Budget Committee, was not able to pass a budget. It was not even able to pass out of committee an amount of money to determine what we could spend in the House or the Senate. There is not an agreement at all.

In fact, if you look, it is the first time in 9 years that the House Budget Committee did not produce a budget. That budget, that is usually the document that says this is the amount of money that the appropriations bills can ultimately equal up to, whether it is defense or all the other bills.

Next week, more than half of the discretionary spending of the country is going to be on the House floor. The Department of Defense bill alone represents more than half of the discretionary spending, and there is not an agreement between the House and Senate or with the White House on how much we are going to fund defense.

I would like to see us get that agreement, but, clearly, the gentleman knows we don't have one. Unfortunately, those bills are typically bipartisan, and the Appropriations Committee has produced a very partisan defense bill. That doesn't happen often.

I wish the Democrats on the committee would have worked with the Republicans on the Appropriations Committee to produce a bipartisan bill so that we would have a better chance of getting something that can get signed into law.

If we want to avoid a shutdown, the best way to do it is to work with both parties, not just produce a Democrat-only bill. That doesn't happen too often. Unfortunately, I think that is the direction we are headed.

I would like to ask the gentleman, number one, if he has any kind of idea on how we are going to get to a budget agreement, an agreement on some kind of spending forecast, so that we can have a picture of how we can get bills that can get signed into law and an amendment process that would be fair to both sides.

I think we have talked about this before, how so far this Congress, it has been very tilted, where the lion's share of amendments that are coming out of the Rules Committee are only Democratic amendments. There has been a history this Congress of shutting out Republican amendments on the floor, and I would hope there would be a more fair process as these important bills--DOD, Labor-H, and some of the other bills--are going to be coming to the floor, where the Rules Committee would at least allow both sides to speak as we try to produce a bill that could be bipartisan but, so far, has not been.

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Mr. SCALISE. I yield to the gentleman from Maryland.

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Mr. SCALISE. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his comments.

I share the majority leader's understanding that there is a negotiation going on to see if we can get an agreement on the budget numbers. We are not there yet.

I understand the gentleman that the majority has to move, at some point, on those appropriations bills next week. We all know that the bills that are being moved are not bills that we have an agreement on and, unfortunately, started off on a very partisan nature. Hopefully, we can get to a more bipartisan nature in the bills, bills like defense, that are coming up.

We want our military to be properly funded, and we want our military to have the certainty that they don't have to operate under a CR, they don't have to operate under a cloud of potential shutdown.

Our men and women in uniform, as we get ready to honor the brave sacrifices that were made on D-Day--tomorrow, of course, marks the 75th anniversary of D-Day and the heroic efforts that so many made, sacrificing their lives. Over 10,000 American soldiers died, and, of course, we reflect and pause to thank them for their sacrifice, to recognize that sacrifice that they made.

And just as they did, today we have men and women in uniform risking their lives for our country. And we don't want to have this potential that, if we get to September 30 and can't get an agreement on what that proper level should be, that they should worry whether or not they are going to get paid.

So, hopefully, we can keep that work going, those conversations and negotiations going to finalize an agreement that we can get. We are not there yet. We will see where it goes next week.

We then want to shift over now and talk about what else is going to be on the floor next week, and that is going to be this contempt resolution. I haven't seen the language. I don't know when the gentleman's side plans to file.

I would ask the majority leader, it is clear that there is a march to impeachment, that this starts, maybe, the formal march to impeachment on the House floor. But just this Sunday, the majority whip was asked on a TV show if he felt the House was going to impeach the President of the United States, and he said yes.

There has been no evidence that would necessitate an impeachment. We had this nearly 2-year investigation by Mr. Mueller, and it was all about whether or not there was collusion between the President and Russia. They looked into whether or not there was any kind of interference by Russia in our elections.

Of course, he did find that there was interference by Russia. Russia tried to interfere with our elections while Barack Obama was President of the United States.

Now, what did Barack Obama do to stop that? I don't know. I don't know if that is going to be investigated--it should be--whether or not the President did everything in his powers at the time to stop Russia from interfering with our elections.

We need to work together to make sure it doesn't happen again. That should be our focus.

There was no collusion, by the way, and he found that. There was no obstruction of justice.

I know the committee wants to keep focusing and looking into everything that they can to try to find more evidence that wasn't there, but if they start bringing and you start bringing resolutions to hold, for example, the Attorney General in contempt--we haven't seen what the charges are, but some of the things that the Judiciary Committee has asked the Attorney General to produce, if the Attorney General produced that information, he would be violating law.

Why would you hold the Attorney General of the United States in contempt of Congress for not breaking the law?

Those are some of the things we have seen. Again, we haven't seen the final language. We have heard some conjecture by the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, by others who want to start this impeachment drumbeat.

Madam Speaker, I would just urge caution to the gentleman as the House floor becomes politicized to just try to impeach the President because some people just don't like the fact that he was elected in 2016.

There will be an election next year. There are a whole lot of people on the Democratic side who are already trying to get the nomination to unseat the President, and that debate is already going on in the country, and it will happen in full next year.

Let's let the people of this country decide who the President of the United States is. Let's respect the fact that the people of this country, in 2016, said they wanted Donald Trump to be the President of the United States, and he is the President of the United States, and he is carrying out his duties, and he is carrying out the agenda that he campaigned on, as it should be.

If somebody wants to carry out a different agenda, next year they are going to have that opportunity to present it to the people of this country.

But even though there was no collusion identified by the special counsel, this idea that we are still going to just start bringing legislative instruments to the floor like contempt and then, ultimately, as the majority whip said Sunday that he felt that there would be impeachment on the House floor, I would just urge caution to the gentleman. This next week, this legislation that is going to be brought forward is all a part of that.

We should respect this process more. We should respect the fact that the Attorney General of the United States has an obligation to enforce the laws of this country. And when he is asked by Congress to do something that would actually violate laws, we ought to respect the fact that he said he would come and testify to the Judiciary Committee, to the members of the Judiciary Committee.

Then the Judiciary Committee changed the rules of the game and said they didn't want Members of Congress to question him; they wanted staff to question, which would be unprecedented, so he didn't come. But he did say he would come and testify to the committee under the normal processes that have always been in place.

So with that, again, we haven't seen the legislation yet. Once we do, we will review it, but I would just urge caution.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.

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Mr. SCALISE. Well, the gentleman mentioned a lot of things that I think need to be addressed.

First, the idea that there is some coverup. Let's recognize and remember that for nearly 2 years of the Mueller investigation, President Trump fully complied with all of the requests that were made, and when the Mueller investigation was completed, first of all, Mr. Barr, the Attorney General, had an opportunity to review that report and give a summary to Congress.

During that period, Mr. Barr invited Mr. Mueller to review the report, to review his summary. Mr. Mueller chose not to participate in that. And so ultimately the Attorney General then gave Congress a summary, which made it crystal clear there was no collusion after almost 2 years and over $30 million of taxpayer money looking into this where the President fully complied, his administration fully complied, and they were probing everything.

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Mr. SCALISE. The gentleman will yield, but after I first go through this because these are important points to make because anybody that wants to use the term ``coverup'' ought to be very cognizant of what they are talking about when we talk about that investigation. Because that investigation was as thorough as any that we have seen, and the Attorney General and the special counsel were both involved in reviewing it, but the special counsel had an opportunity if he found wrongdoing to file charges. And the gentleman from Maryland knows that.

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Mr. SCALISE. He could have filed charges, and he filed absolutely no charges. There were no charges filed, because there was nothing wrong that was found.

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Mr. SCALISE. The task was to see if there was any collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign while Russia was interfering with the elections. We know Russia interfered with the elections.

Why did the Obama administration allow Russia to interfere with the elections? That is a question we should be probing. Why? Not just to go back in time, but to make sure it doesn't happen again. And how much time is being spent going and looking and seeing just exactly what Russia did to interfere with our election while Barack Obama was President? They are not doing that. They want to go after all these witch hunts, and was there more collusion. There was no collusion.

And so instead of saying, okay, they tried for 2 years. You had members of your own leadership team saying they had evidence of collusion, and yet, there was no evidence of collusion and they have never come forth and said they were wrong. They have never brought forward what their mysterious evidence was, because there was no evidence, because there was no collusion. And so instead of that, they are continuing to say, let's just hold contempt hearings for the Attorney General here on the House floor.

The majority whip says the House will impeach the President. The gentleman hasn't answered that. Well, where is that going to happen? When is that going to happen? Why don't we actually focus on the problems of this country? Because the same committee that continues down these rabbit holes and on these witch hunts, that same committee that has jurisdiction over this whole Mueller investigation that found no collusion, no charges filed by the special counsel, that is the same committee that has jurisdiction over the border crisis.

And the gentleman knows we have a crisis at our border. It is a serious crisis because we don't have control over our border yet. We need to get control over our border, but in the next 2 weeks-- literally, in the next 2 weeks the department of DHS is about to run out of money to deal with this crisis.

And the President of the United States submitted a supplemental request to this majority asking to give additional funding so that we can take care of those kids that are coming over every day in the thousands, the unaccompanied children where the Department of Health and Human Services is about to run out of money to take care of those kids.

And so what happens to those kids? If they come over illegally, the law says what Homeland Security has to do. And if they come over and they are sick, which some of them are coming over very sick, they are turned over to DHS where DHS takes care of them, and DHS has told you they are about to run out of money and not a thing has been done.

In fact, when the Labor-HHS bill was in subcommittee, one of our Members actually filed an amendment to try to include the money, so that we can keep taking care of the health needs of those kids that are coming over illegally, and that was rejected on a party line vote. Your party voted against that. And the committee of jurisdiction, instead of focusing on how to solve this problem, how we can help resolve this problem in a bipartisan way, which it should be bipartisan, we all ought to care about these kids that are coming over that have a lot of health issues that we are trying address, but they are about to run out of money. And what are we going to do about it? We have asked that this majority do something to address that request that was sent down from the President weeks ago.

But we are literally facing a crisis in a matter of days where they will run out of money. When is that going to be addressed by this majority? We have asked for it to be addressed, and it hasn't. So when is the Speaker going to bring legislation? Would the majority leader be willing to bring legislation? For weeks we have talked about it right here in this colloquy, and it hasn't been addressed. And so before it becomes a crisis where literally DHS cannot take and care for the health needs of these kids that are coming over, why don't we address it now, instead of waiting until they truly run out of money, can no longer take care of those kids and bad things would happen. I don't want those bad things to happen. I know you don't want those bad things to happen. And the President doesn't want those bad things to happen. That is why he sent that supplemental request weeks ago, and it hasn't been dealt with.

I yield to the gentleman.

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Mr. SCALISE. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his comments, and I would share a lot of the disagreements we have with how the Senate does business, whether it is a Republican or Democratic Senate.

Their rules, in many ways, work to undermine much of the good work that we do here in the House, whether it is a Republican or Democratic majority. We can find a lot of common ground on that disagreement.

As it relates to immigration, I, too, believe America has this unique place in the world as that shining beacon for anybody who seeks freedom, anybody who seeks the liberty that has been fought for with blood and treasure by so many heroes throughout generations to make America the place that people look to when they think about freedom.

We are also the most generous nation in the world when it comes to immigration, and we are proud of that. That is something we celebrate. We let over a million people a year into America to be a part of the American Dream, to come to seek the American Dream, and that is what it should be about.

It should be about seeking those things that make America great so that more people can come to add to the richness of this country. We do that, but we also are a nation of laws, and we can't lose sight of that at the same time that we want to maintain that beacon.

We only maintain it if we also maintain those great laws that we take an oath to uphold. All of us take that oath. That oath is critically important, because as people want to come here, they want to come here because of what America is. It is our job to preserve the greatness of what America is.

If we start to lose that, if we start to look the other way and ignore this law and try to undermine that law, it really weakens the greatness of our democracy.

When you look at the differences we had on the House floor, so many of us wanted to address the problems that are created by not having a secure border. But when you say, for example, that if somebody comes here when they are actually in a gang database, and by law, we can't even look at that database to see if that person coming into our country is a member of a gang or committed violent crimes, that is not what is the richness of America. We want to maintain the dream that people come here to seek.

We may disagree on the methods of getting there, but let's keep working to try to get to a better place, something signed into law to fix the problems with our immigration system, to get back to a functioning, legal immigration system, instead of having thousands of people, whether they are part of that culture that wants to seek the American Dream or whether they are coming here to undermine what is great about America, think they can just traipse through, thousands a day at a time, because we have not secured our border.

In our homes, we have windows, doors, a yard. We might have a fence. But if we lock our door, we are locking it for a reason. It is not because we don't want anyone inside. It is because we only want to let in the people who are coming to be a part of what is great about our family and about our home. If somebody wants to come to do us harm, that is why we have the lock on the door.

We let over a million people a year into our country, and that is part of what is great about our Nation. No other country in the world, by the way, is close to the generosity in letting people into their country every year. No country is letting in over a million people a year.

We need to get back to a system where our immigration system works.

We passed a bipartisan bill last week to take care of the disaster needs of so many people around the country, and it was bipartisan. It was an example of what works.

There were some Members who objected. Some of them objected because the humanitarian money that is needed to address this crisis at the border wasn't in the bill.

I am glad the gentleman acknowledged that we need to work to resolve it. Hopefully, we can do that next week before the crisis hits, before DHS actually runs out of money so that we have a severe crisis.

Let's work together to stop it. I know the gentleman has acknowledged he wants to do that. While there are some other things that are going to be on the floor next week that, unfortunately, will be very partisan in nature that we will disagree on, let's also try to work to address that crisis so that, again, we get back to the richness of what's great about this Nation.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman and look forward to working together next week on the things that we can accomplish for this country.

Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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