Rob Andrews

Mr. ANDREWS

Mr. ANDREWS. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. ANDREWS. I move to strike the last word.

Mr. ANDREWS

Mr. ANDREWS. Mr. Chairman, for the last 5 weeks or so since the new majority has taken over the House, as 15 million people are unemployed in this country, as people are losing their homes, losing their businesses, the majority has focused like a laser beam on everything except job creation for the American people. They have found time to dabble in a variety of political issues while ignoring the essential purpose for which I believe we were all sent here, which is to foster an environment where businesses and entrepreneurs can create jobs for this country. This week they have changed. They have gone from ignoring the jobs problem to making it worse. The legislation that's on the floor tonight does reflect a good faith and necessary goal of reducing spending in our country. I don't think there is anyone here who would disagree with the proposition that continuing to spend more than we take in eventually will cause even greater pain and harm to the U.S. economy than it has already caused, which is considerable, indeed. But all spending cuts are not created equally, and all spending decisions don't have the same consequences. The prism through which we have to look at spending cuts is whether they are sensible or reckless, whether they help to create jobs or destroy jobs. And I would submit, ladies and gentlemen of the House, that the legislation before us is worsening the very deep economic crisis in our country in three ways. First of all, you can't have economic growth if you don't have safe streets and a safe country. But the provisions of this bill will lead to the layoff of more than 10,000 police officers in cities and towns across our country. The provisions of this bill will lead to the dismissal or furlough of over 1,000 people whose job it is to check containers coming into this country to see if they have dirty bombs or chemical weapons in them. A country that isn't safe won't grow. Ladies and gentlemen, the other cuts in this bill, let's talk about education. A country that can't learn won't grow. But this legislation will result in the elimination of 10,000 reading tutors and math coaches for the neediest students in this country. It will remove 7,000 teachers who teach autistic kids, children with a learning disability, from classrooms. For the single mom who is struggling to pay her bills, raise her children, and go to school, it will raise her tuition by up to $825 this year by eliminating the college scholarship on which she relies to go to school. A country that doesn't learn doesn't grow, and these cuts will lead us into a country that makes it very difficult in which to learn. And finally, this country is fueled by research and development, inventing and creating new products, new cures, new solutions to the world's problems. Yet in this bill, in one of the most important areas, medical research, the majority has given us an unwelcomed surprise. There is a spending cut in excess of $600 million from the National Institutes of Health that is described, ladies and gentlemen, as further cuts to get to the 2008 levels. I don't know what that means. I don't think anyone on the majority side will tell us what that means. But I do know this: Thousands of Americans work doing medical research through the National Institutes of Health. Millions of Americans depend upon the miracles which grow out of that research, and this country's economy is stronger when that research continues. That research will be cut. The average cancer research grant in this country is about $500,000. Looking at the cut that's in here, it appears that over 500 cancer research grants will go by the wayside. A country that isn't safe, a country that isn't learning and investing won't grow. This bill means America won't grow. This bill should be defeated.

Mr. ANDREWS. Madam Chair, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. ANDREWS. I move to strike the last word.

Mr. ANDREWS. This amendment sets a new standard of irresponsibility that I hope the House never again emulates. Let's assume that a worker who is trying to organize a union is fired because of his or her union organizing activity, files a complaint against the employer for an unfair labor practice, and the National Labor Relations Board is in the process of determining whether that claim is right or wrong and what should happen as a result. Or, let's imagine that a worker believes that he or she has not been properly represented by the union they are in, and they file a claim against their union claiming that the union has failed in its duty to represent that worker. This amendment says that both of those claims and others will just stop in the middle. We will pull the plug from the adjudication of the rights of these Americans. I frankly think that it's ironic that a majority which chooses to define itself in terms of its great devotion to the Constitution may be proposing an amendment that violates the due process rights of American citizens kind of on its face. If you file a claim and a duly constituted adjudicatory body starts to hear that claim, my sense is the Congress cannot step in and interrupt that claim in the middle of its adjudication and take your rights away. But that appears to be what is happening here. This is a precedent that would be inappropriate and even dangerous to the extreme in this regard: The principle that apparently informs this amendment is if Congress doesn't like something that an agency is doing substantively, we can pull the plug on the agency and not give it any more money in the middle of its deliberations. Imagine for a moment if during the runup to the Wall Street meltdown in 2008 that those of us who were unhappy with decisions of the Securities and Exchange Commission, which we were unhappy with, said we're so unhappy with what the SEC is doing, we're going to defund that organization and stop the process of any investigations they are doing, stop the process of any decisions they are making. Just pull the plug in the middle of their deliberations. I think that the majority would have correctly criticized us for an act of irresponsibility. We didn't do that. When we disliked the actions of the SEC, we came together and passed a law, the Dodd-Frank law last year, that tried to improve its operations. That is the way a responsible legislative body acts. So forget for a moment about the consequences of this amendment for those who work for the NLRB or for those somehow engaged in it. Let's talk about the litigants, the workers, the employers, the unions, all of those involved here. The agency just disappears the day that this law is signed. Yes, Congress has the power of the purse, but with power comes responsibility. This is an amendment which sets a new low standard of irresponsibility in this House. If we don't like the substantive decisions of an agency, then amend the statute they are operating under or litigate those decisions. But to pull the plug in the middle of decisionmaking that affects thousands of Americans is, frankly, an abuse of the power of the purse. I think it is unconstitutional or a violation of the due process rights of those litigants, and I would urge a ``no'' vote. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. ANDREWS

Mr. ANDREWS. Reclaiming my time, I would then respectfully ask the gentleman if the majority would then not lodge a point of order when my amendment comes to the floor.

Mr. ANDREWS. I yield to the gentleman from Georgia.

Mr. ANDREWS. Mr. Speaker, we do believe that reducing our deficit is one of the ways to instill confidence and create jobs. So, Mr. Speaker, I have a proposal for consideration. We give away $4 billion a year in tax breaks to oil companies. Last week, the former CEO of Shell Oil Company said they don't need these tax breaks any more because they would search for the oil anyway; and, by the way, these companies made about a 53 percent profit last year. So here's the proposal I would like to make: Let's do away with the $4 billion in oil company tax breaks. Let's take 80 percent of that money and use it to reduce the deficit, and then let's take the remaining 20 percent of the money and spend it on programs for homeless veterans. There was a report last week that 16 percent of the homeless in our country are veterans of the military service. This is obviously a condition that's a disgrace to our country and should be stopped. So my proposal under this open rule is that I be permitted to offer an amendment that says let's get rid of the tax breaks for the oil companies, put 80 percent of the money to reducing the deficit, and spend the other 20 percent to help the homeless veterans living on the streets of our country. Now, it's my understanding, reading this rule, that I will not be permitted to offer that amendment. I would yield to anyone on the majority side if they could tell me whether they agree with my interpretation of the rule. Would I be permitted to offer the amendment that I am proposing on the floor?

Mr. ANDREWS. Reclaiming my time, I would just read the words of our Speaker on opening day when he said to us, You will always have the right to a robust debate in an open process that allows you to make your case and offer alternatives. Always. I'm not sure if ``always'' applies to this rule.

Mr. ANDREWS. I yield to my friend, the gentleman from Georgia, to respond.

Mr. ANDREWS

Mr. ANDREWS. I move to strike the last word.

Mr. ANDREWS. Mr. Chairman, I thank you for the opportunity to participate in this debate. Mr. Chairman, I don't have a dog in this fight. Neither of the two fine companies that are arguing over this has jobs in my district that I'm aware of. I'm involved in this argument because I have thousands of service personnel who serve our country, and I have hundreds of thousands of taxpayers who pay for the government of our country, and I am convinced that the right answer for our service personnel and for our taxpayers is to oppose this amendment. We have heard many good reasons. I think the ones that stand out the most are these. As the Chair well knows, he and I were given the privilege and responsibility of looking at defense procurement across the board over the course of the last 3 or 4 years. Something very rare happened when the gentleman in the chair and I worked on this. We produced two pieces of legislation that passed the House, essentially unanimously. And in that process of Democrat and Republican working together, we learned something very disturbing, and that was that, in major weapons systems, costs had skyrocketed by $296 billion over what they were supposed to cost, and the delay in fielding these systems had gone from an average of 16 months behind to 22 months behind. That was very unwelcome news. In the course of conducting that analysis, we also learned something that I think most Americans know intuitively. When you have more choice and you have more competition, you get a better result. I think most of us, when we've had to buy a household appliance or a car, go out and get a couple of quotes. We have people compete against each other so we get the best deal. That very commonsense concept is the core argument in front of us this evening. And I think the burden would be on those who say we shouldn't have competition and those who say that the status quo would be okay if we had only one contractor. Now, the other point I want to make beyond money is about the operational capacity of our Armed Forces. The United States enjoys the blessing of military superiority this evening I think for two essential reasons. The first and most important one is the quality of the young men and women who volunteer to serve us. Without question, that's the most important reason. But the second, I believe, is our superiority in the air, our ability in any corner of the globe to establish dominance over the battle space by virtue of the quality of our air assets. The operability of those air assets, as Mr. Hunter just mentioned a few minutes ago, is at risk if we are dependent upon one supply chain, one manufacturing process, one set of parts, and one set of solutions to a problem. You always want to have a plan B. This would be a difficult call if having that plan B operationally cost us more money, but it isn't a difficult call because the opposite is true. Having the plan B, having the option, saves money for the American taxpayer. The GAO has estimated about $21 billion over time because of the merits and benefits of choice and competition. We have two fine enterprises involved with these engines, and I think what we ought to do is create a system where each flourishes, not because of the benefits of the job creation that will occur--although that's certainly a welcome benefit--but because operationally, this is the best way to support those who serve us. This is the best way to avoid putting them at risk because of operational defects and because the benefits and merits of competition over time will reduce pressure on our taxpayers to the tune of $21 billion. I thank the Chair for his collegial work on this subject, and I would urge Members to defeat this amendment.

Mr. ANDREWS

Mr. ANDREWS. I come from a State, New Jersey, which prides on being the medicine chest of the world, in our pharmaceutical industry. How can you have a cutting edge in pharmaceutical products if you lay off people from the FDA, the Food and Drug Administration, that review the applications for new drugs? How can you have a supermarket industry that's thriving and employs millions of people in the agriculture and food industries if the people who inspect our meat and our milk and our food are not there? Now these are questions that are going to be debated and answered next week here. They do have an effect on jobs--a profoundly negative effect on jobs. We understand that there is a common responsibility to enact sensible restraint on what our government spends. That's why Democrats balanced the budget when President Clinton was in office. That's why Democrats passed a pay-as-you-go statute. I would urge that we return to the business of the House.

Mr. ANDREWS. I thank my leader from South Carolina. Madam Speaker, the prior gentleman who spoke is right. Americans are asking, ``Where are the jobs?'' And the majority is saying, ``We'll get to that later.'' This week, the first thing that they did was to try to rush to the floor, without hearings or consideration, an extension of the Patriot Act, which is a very serious and profound issue for the country. And it didn't work. Then they brought to the floor a bill that was supposed to recover money from the United Nations, which we're all for, but the Congressional Budget Office says it wouldn't actually save any money. The New York City police commissioner said it would be harmful to his efforts to protect the people of New York against terrorism that might come up around the United Nations. And I think the rest of the world said, Why is the United States rocking the boat at a time when there is profound global crisis going on in the most dangerous area of the world? So that didn't work. They then brought to the floor this bill, which commendably says that committees should look at whether there are regulations that don't make any sense, that are harmful to jobs and businesses in our country. They're right. We should do that. We're already doing it. In other words, each committee adopts what's called an oversight plan when it meets. It talks about all the different things it wants to do. In Education and the Workforce, we did that. In Armed Services, we did that. So we've now spent 9\1/2\ hours debating whether we should keep doing something we're already doing and bring to the floor someday, in the distant ozone future, actual bills that might actually reduce such regulations. Now if that really weren't bad enough, the majority really switched this week, from ignoring the jobs problem to worsening the jobs problem. Because out of the view of the public on this floor, in their private meetings, they're planning to bring to the floor next week a bill that will dramatically reduce investments, and let me give you an example. We only know what we read in the newspaper because my understanding is that they have yet to post their spending bill online, which they've promised to do 72 hours before it comes up, but you can project this out that they're probably calling for a 30 percent cut in things like air traffic controllers. I want you to think about this, Madam Speaker, for a moment. Putting aside the obvious safety consideration, I don't think any of us would put anyone we love or care about on a plane we didn't think was safe. That's obviously true on both sides of the aisle, and I'm not suggesting the other side wants to do that. But there are consequences to not having a full complement of air traffic controllers. And beyond the safety consideration is an economic consideration: How can you have a thriving economy if people feel like they can't fly safely?

Mr. ANDREWS. Madam Speaker, as we meet this morning, there are 15 million unemployed people in our country. And what I'm hearing from our constituents is they want us to work together to find ways to help the job generators of this country, small businesses and entrepreneurs, to put Americans back to work. Here we are again, really, just having a political discussion that doesn't hire a person, help a company, or really go anywhere. Frankly, the majority has gone from ignoring the unemployment problem to worsening it in the last couple of days. In the 5 weeks that they've been in the majority, there has not been one bill, not one word, not 1 hour of debate on a bill that would create jobs in the American economy. Instead, what we've had is a series of political exercises that have ignored their promise to ``focus like a laser beam on job creation.'' Now, the problem has gotten worse this week, and it will get worse as the day goes on with the announcement of the majority's plan to finish out the budget year with massive cuts in the budget. Now, let me say from the outset, we agree completely that sensible spending restraint is necessary to reverse our trend of deficit and debt and help the American people and the American economy, and we look forward to working with our friends in the Republican Party to make this a reality. But one of the areas that is being considered for up to a 30 percent cut is education. Now, the Federal Government spends education money on essentially five things: We help the most disadvantaged children in the country learn how to read and do mathematics through Title I; we help children confronted with a learning disability, with Downs Syndrome or autism, get special education services through the IDEA; there are scholarships and student loans for people of all descriptions to get a higher education at a college or a tech school; there are programs for someone who's lost his job at an oil refinery or her job at a bank to be retrained for their next job; and there's a small but crucial amount of money that helps our teachers become better instigators of science education or math education and instill in the next generations the hunger to learn and the power to achieve. You need not listen to Members of Congress about the consequences of these kinds of cuts. Listen to the job generators of our country. Listen to Andrew Liveris, the leader of the Dow Chemical Company, who, as part of the business roundtable report in December, said the following, and I quote. ``I think if you had to go to the easy ones, education is a sweet spot for the government, for Congress and for all of us. If we don't get a well-educated workforce back in this country, if we don't invest in science, technology, engineering and math, if we don't pull it all together,'' he goes on to say, ``there will be trouble.'' And he further says, so what we've got to do is ``have a sustained investment, government and public companies together, private partnerships in education.'' This is not the Democratic leader of the House. This is not President Obama's administration. This is the leader of Dow Chemical Company saying that to grow jobs in America and win global economic competition, we need to invest in education. The majority's taking us in exactly the wrong direction. Proposing cuts of up to 30 percent in education programs will be on the floor next week. So, sadly, they've moved from ignoring the jobs problem to worsening it. We want to work together with the Republican Party and with Independents to find ways to empower small businesses and entrepreneurs to put our country back to work. We've spent 9\1/2\ hours in this debate talking about something else. Let's get on with this debate, get on to business, put the American people back to work.

Mr. ANDREWS

Mr. ANDREWS. I appreciate his courtesy. The gentleman just makes a very good point about the importance of hearings before legislation takes place. How many hearings have there been on the renewal of the Patriot Act?

Mr. ANDREWS. The American people are placing a 911 call to Washington that says this country needs help. It needs a real plan to produce real jobs for the American people. What they are getting from the majority once again is wasted words, wasted time, wasted opportunities. Yes, looking at regulations is a good thing to do. We support that. But, Mr. Speaker, there is a difference between analysis and paralysis. The majority is giving us paralysis. All talk, no jobs. The right vote on this resolution is ``no.''

Mr. ANDREWS. I thank my friend. I think we can have a very worthy debate about whether that rule is a good one or a bad one. Why aren't we having that debate? Why don't you just put on the floor a bill that says let's repeal that rule and have a debate? Why aren't we doing that?

Mr. ANDREWS. I thank my friend from Florida for yielding. Mr. Speaker, as we meet this afternoon, there are 15 million Americans who are unemployed, and for them, this is another day of searching the Web or the want ads to try to find a job they've been unable to find after months of diligent searching. So what is the Congress of the United States doing about this? We are wasting yet another opportunity to work together, Republicans and Democrats, to create an environment in which small business people and entrepreneurs can create jobs for our country, the way we did work together at the end of last year and passed legislation that 80 Senators voted for, 270-some House Members voted for across party lines. The majority says that this process will somehow help to create jobs. It is important to understand what this resolution really says. It says, in response to the 15 million unemployed people we have in this country, let's have a bunch of politicians have a bunch of meetings they were already scheduled to have; right? So their response, Mr. Speaker, is let's spend 9\1/2\ hours debating a bill that says a bunch of politicians should have a bunch of meetings they would have had anyway to talk about the problem. You know, if we called 911 to report a fire in our home, we wouldn't be very happy if the fire department said, ``We are going to immediately have a meeting to decide whether to put the fire out at your house.'' We would expect the fire company to come put the fire out at your house. The majority is not putting on the floor regulations they want to repeal. That would be a worthy debate. We should have that. What they are doing is saying let's, for 9\1/2\ hours, talk about whether to have a bunch of meetings to talk about the problem. In the last 5 weeks, there has not been one word in one bill or 1 hour of debate about a plan to create jobs for the American people. So now we are going to spend 9\1/2\ hours talking about whether to have a series of political meetings. Why don't we put on the floor and argue the pros and cons of a plan to put our people back to work building schools and bridges and highways? You can be for or against that, but it's a real plan that would actually put people back to work. Now, the majority says that they do want to create jobs by cutting spending and reducing the deficit. But of course the very first bill they passed increased the deficit by more than $1 trillion over the next 20 years. Then they ran on a promise--a promise--to reduce the current year's budget by $100 billion, but 2 days ago, the Appropriations Committee reported out a bill that reduces it by $32 billion.

Mr. ANDREWS. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. ANDREWS. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. ANDREWS. It still seems to me to be all windup and no pitch, that if you really believe that that regulation should be repealed, why don't you put a bill on the floor that repeals it and let's do something rather than just talk about it.

Mr. ANDREWS. Will the gentleman further yield?

Mr. ANDREWS

Mr. ANDREWS. Madam Speaker, as we meet here this afternoon, there are 15 million Americans unemployed, and yet we are passing up yet another opportunity to work together to try to create jobs in our country. And what are we doing? We are passing a spending reduction bill that the Congressional Budget Office says doesn't have any impact on the budget at all, so we are not saving any money. We are passing a bill, or some of us are going to pass a bill, that the New York City Police Commissioner, who is entrusted with defending people around the U.N., says is dangerous because it impairs his ability to do that. And at a time when the most dangerous area of the world is literally in flames and calling out for cooperation between our country and other countries around the world to try to calm things down, we are sending a signal to the most important international institution that our participation is somehow contingent upon domestic politics. We should be doing a jobs bill, not putting our imprimatur today on a bill that is yet another exercise in politics. The right vote for the country is ``no.'' General Leave