Michael Burgess

Mr. BURGESS

Mr. BURGESS. I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. BURGESS

Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, this past weekend, I traveled to McAllen, Texas, down to our border, to once again tour the intake facilities that are being used to process the tens of thousands of individuals who are crossing into the United States each year. This problem has not gone away. Last summer, I spent time at home listening to my constituents at town hall meetings. The number one concern for Texans was the influx of illegal immigrants into our State. For Texans, this has meant a strain on our classrooms, a strain on our hospitals, a major strain on local law enforcement and our economy in general. Last year, the President refused to come to the Texas border. The President so far has refused to govern. The President has refused to follow the rule of law and continues to turn our once-porous border into a wide-open space. As such, we must do all we can to secure the southern border and send a loud and clear message to the child traffickers and to the drug smugglers who are taking children on a treacherous journey from Central America to the United States and setting them up for failure once they are here. We must end this human rights crisis. The correct way is to secure our southern border.

Mr. BURGESS

Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize John Pitstick who is retiring as the Director of Planning and Development from the City of North Richland Hills. As Director, Mr. Pitstick was responsible for all of the city's development activities, including planning and zoning as well as direction of building inspections. These responsibilities for comprehensive planning, strategic development and redevelopment included revitalization of Boulevard 26, expansion of Loop 820, future commuter rail station planning and gas well regulations. Under his leadership, the City of North Richland Hills was presented with the ``Certificate of Achievement for Planning Excellence'' by the Texas Chapter of the American Planning Association. The annual award recognizes ``a commitment to professional planning by City Administration, Elected and Appointed Officials and exemplary professional standards demonstrated by the Planning Staff.'' Mr. Pitstick is a graduate of the University of Texas at Arlington with a Bachelor's Degree in Communications and a Master's in Urban Affairs. With a career spanning over 30 years of service, his retirement from North Richland Hills was preceded by his service in key positions with the cities of Hurst, Wylie, Arlington, Lancaster and Irving. I am honored to represent Mr. Pitstick and the City of North Richland Hills in the U.S. House of Representatives, and I gladly join the City and the appreciative citizens of the 26th Congressional District and across North Texas whom he has dutifully served throughout his career.

Mr. BURGESS

Mr. BURGESS. I thank the chairman for yielding. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to encourage people on both sides of the dais, both sides of the aisle, to support the rule and the underlying appropriations bill with its attached amendments. I do tire of hearing people talk about our broken immigration system. Mr. Speaker, last year, in the United States of America, 1.1 million people came into this country, raised their right hand, took the oath of citizenship, and came in legally. And it has been that way every year that I have been in Congress since 2003. So, by my arithmetic, that is well over 12 million people that have become naturalized United States citizens in the last 10 or 12 years. Does that sound like a system that is broken? For comparison, let's look at other countries. The fact of the matter is, when you combine every other country on the face of the Earth, they don't match half of the number of people that are allowed to come into the United States and take the oath of citizenship. But I will tell you what is broken. What is broken is the enforcement of our immigration laws, and we have seen that demonstrated time and again. The President made some unilateral decisions in June of 2012, and we in Texas, particularly in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, understand very much what happens when someone makes adjustments without going through the rule of law. As a consequence, in late 2013, and then throughout the spring and summer of last year, we saw unprecedented amounts of unaccompanied minors simply coming across the border and turning themselves in to Customs and Border Patrol. Now, why did they do that? Did someone just suddenly wake up one day in Honduras or Guatemala and say: I'm going to make that dangerous trek across the Mexican desert? No, it is because child traffickers, coyotes, saw what the President did, and said: Here's a business plan. Let's go to these families, charge them thousands of dollars, with the admonition that if you don't do it now, this door is going to close. But right now the President has got the door open for you to come up and get your amnesty. Step up and get it while you can. So what did the President do in November? He doubled down on that. The message to the child traffickers around the world is: Y'all come. Y'all come and it will be all right. But the fact of the matter is it is not all right. In fact, our homeland security is threatened. This is an important bill. Judge Carter has done enormous work to bring this bill to the floor. For that, I thank him. The bill is important, along with the amendments. I urge adoption of the rule, and I urge adoption of the underlying bill with its accompanying amendments.

Mr. BURGESS

Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize Jimmy Cates who is retiring as Public Works Manager of the City of North Richland Hills after a 30 year career with the City's Public Works Department. As Manager of Public Works, Mr. Cates was responsible for the operations of the city's streets, transportation, water distribution, and wastewater systems. These responsibilities include the duties assigned to the Divisions of Streets and Drainage, Transportation and Water/ Sewer Maintenance and Repair. Ultimately, Mr. Cates ensured that the citizens of North Richland Hills had an efficient, effective and safe transportation system, water supply, sewer and stormwater system which would meet the needs of current and future residents. A graduate of Indiana University, he is a member of the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE), American Public Works Association (APWA), International Municipal Signal Association (IMSA), Texas Water Utilities Association, and the American Water Works Association (AWWA). I am honored to represent Mr. Cates and the City of North Richland Hills in the U.S. House of Representatives, and I gladly join the City and the appreciative citizens of the 26th Congressional District, whom he has dutifully served throughout his career.

Mr. BURGESS

Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to posthumously honor Mr. Lee Roy ``Tex'' Keith, who passed away December 23, 2014 at the age of 96, leaving behind a proud legacy. In 2010, it was my privilege to present the 26th District of Texas Congressional Veteran Commendation to Lee Roy Keith. He honorably served our nation as a Marine aviator in World War II and the Korean War. Keith began pilot training in January 1943 and was commissioned as a captain serving at El Toro, CA where he flew military combat supplies to the Pacific. His Okinawan deployment involved evacuation of casualties from Japanese beaches and reconnaissance missions following the two atomic bombings. After assignment in Hawaii, he returned stateside and was released from active duty on October 30, 1946. Keith earned a Bachelor of Science degree, established a ranching business and joined the USMC Reserves, achieving the rank of Major. On October 22, 1951, Keith was summoned again to active duty service to our nation in the Korean conflict. Following his distinguished military career, Major Keith served as an FAA Flight Inspector from 1960 to 1975. As a token of the esteem with which he was held by his peers, he was given the distinct honor of piloting the first official commercial aircraft landing at the new Dallas-Fort Worth Airport. Upon retiring from a post-military career with the FAA, Mr. Keith served as the Veterans Service Officer for Denton County and was elected to successive terms as President of the State VSO Association. He continued to support his fellow veterans by serving in multiple American Legion Commander positions, and as the Post 71 Boys State Chairman for 35 years. With his impressive service record and unquestionable dedication to our country, it was an honor to represent Major Lee Roy ``Tex'' Keith in the U.S. House of Representatives and I extend my condolences to his family and friends.

Mr. BURGESS

Mr. BURGESS. The pipeline, in fact, exists between Cushing, Oklahoma, and Houston, Texas, this very day.

Mr. BURGESS. Madam Speaker, House Resolution 19 provides for the consideration of two important pieces of legislation to help the American economy, both of which passed in the 113th Congress with bipartisan support. H.R. 30, the Save American Workers Act, is designed to address a critical flaw in the Affordable Care Act which is causing workers to lose hours at their jobs and, thus, lose wages--those wages that help put food on their tables, those wages that help feed their families, pay their utility bills, heat their homes during the winter, and cool their homes during the summer. H.R. 30 fixes this flaw by changing the newly created labor rule in the Affordable Care Act which defines full-time work at 30 hours a week and places that definition back where the American public has believed it to be for the last 100 years, that is, at 40 hours. The second bill contained in today's rule is H.R. 3, the Keystone XL Pipeline Act, and that would put an end to what has been a 6-year process for approving a pipeline that should have simply been common sense for America's economy a long time ago. The rule before us today provides for 1 hour of debate for each of the bills. This allows the House to fully debate these crucial issues. These bills are targeted pieces of legislation dealing with one single provision in the Affordable Care Act and one single pipeline, respectively. No one is trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act today. For that, stay tuned. But I have no doubt that Members of the minority will claim that this bill is an attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act. But, in fact, it simply makes changes to a definition and interpretation by the Department of Labor in the bill. As always, the minority is also afforded the customary motion to recommit on each of the bills. Madam Speaker, as a result of the Affordable Care Act's requirement that businesses with 50 or more employees provide health insurance coverage to those employees working 30 hours per week, employers across the Nation--from schools to universities to municipalities to restaurants--are being forced to cut workers' hours or face unsustainable employment costs to their businesses and to their organizations. As a result, we are seeing--and this is what Republicans predicted prior to the controversial and contentious passage of the Affordable Care Act--but what we are seeing is the bill has fundamentally changed labor law in this country, creating a new, standard 30-hour workweek. As a result, workers' hours are being cut, and productivity in this country--a country that has always prided itself on the work ethic of its citizens--will decrease over time. This is what onerous government regulations do--suppress innovation and hamper businesses. Many Members of the Democratic Party have been outspoken in clamoring for an extension to long-term unemployment benefits, which would extend government assistance to all unemployed Americans well beyond a year's worth of benefits. Yet there is something that can be done now, there is something that can be done today, which will have an actual, practical effect of putting more money in more people's pockets. We have heard story after story from every State in the Union that employers are dropping workers' hours from less than 39 hours a week to perhaps less than 29 hours or fewer--potentially 10 work hours a week that workers won't see in their paychecks, which could mean hundreds of dollars that men and women won't have to feed their families and pay their bills. Increasing workers' hours increases money that people have to spend. The Affordable Care Act fundamentally changed labor law in this country, and the repercussions of this may not be felt for years to come. This is a dangerous, slippery slope. What other labor laws will be reinterpreted now to define ``full-time employment'' as 30 hours per week? Do people intend to impose overtime rules on employers who employ people for over 30 hours per week? This is yet another regulation which would only result in businesses cutting more hours. What will the National Labor Relations Board reinterpret, knowing that the very fabric of labor law is now based on a 30-hour workweek instead of the 100-year standard of the 40-hour workweek? Prior to the Affordable Care Act, employers were already overwhelmingly providing health insurance to their employees working 40 hours per week. Making the change contained in Mr. Young's legislation will cause the least amount of disruption to the labor market, and that is an important thing. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the Affordable Care Act will reduce the total number of hours worked, on net, by about 1.5 percent during the period from 2017 to 2024, almost entirely because workers will choose to supply less labor. Because of this, the Congressional Budget Office projects a decline in the number of workers of about 2 million in 2017, rising to 2.5 million in 2024, as a result of the Affordable Care Act. The latest Congressional Budget Office figures show that the Affordable Care Act will increase spending by almost $2 trillion, double the estimate from 5 years ago. And the Joint Committee on Taxation says that taxpayers will be on the hook for over another $1 trillion over the next decade. Americans earning as little as $25,000 annually will pay more because of the law, even after accounting for the $1 trillion in premium cost-sharing subsidies. H.R. 3, the Keystone XL Pipeline Act, is an issue that Congress and the American people have been supportive of for the past several years. It has now been over 6 years since TransCanada first submitted its application for a Presidential permit to cross the United States- Canadian border with a pipeline bringing oil to refineries in Houston, Texas. The President's own State Department, in a several thousand-page document, stated that the pipeline would be cleaner and more environmentally friendly. It is a way to transport oil than other means, namely, with trucks, trains, and ships. This is common sense. The issue has been debated here in the House I don't know how many times over the past several years. Enough is enough. It is time to approve this application and put men and women to work who will be building this pipeline. Madam Speaker, let us be clear about what is happening today. We are not repealing the Affordable Care Act. We are not undermining the Affordable Care Act. The bill does not take health insurance from a single person in this country. It is a fix to a fatal flaw in the legislation, a fix similar to the seven other fixes that have passed both Houses of Congress and, in fact, been signed by the President. It is similar to the 37 unilateral fixes that the President and his Secretary of Health and Human Services have made on their own. This is a fix to stop this legislation from resulting in people losing work. If Democrats can't agree to fix a provision in the Affordable Care Act that is preventing people from working, then it is simply empty rhetoric to claim that they are interested in any fixes at all. I will encourage my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on the rule and ``yes'' on the underlying legislation, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BURGESS. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks.

Mr. BURGESS. Madam Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Polis), 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. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. It has been an interesting afternoon, and we have heard a lot of discussion. The first week of a new Congress is a little bit different from other times. None of our committees have been constituted. Yet, in this Congress--in this historic Congress--we have been left an enormous amount of work by the previous Congress, not because the House wouldn't do its work. Republicans and Democrats showed up and passed bills and sent them over to the Senate, and there they languished. Well over 300 bills are stacked up on the former majority leader's desk. I stress the word ``former'' in that statement, and I believe that is why he is the former majority leader. Now it is a new day and a new Congress. No, the committees have not yet been constituted, but there is an enormous amount of work--there is an enormous body of work--that has already been accomplished by the House of Representatives that now needs to move forward on behalf of the American people, on behalf of our economy, on behalf of our jobs, on behalf of heating our homes. Look, I am old enough to remember when the Democrats assumed power in 2007, in the 110th Congress. It was kind of an unusual time for me because I had been in the majority previously, and I didn't know what it was like to be in the minority, but let me just take everyone back for a moment. The rules package that the Democrats passed in the 110th Congress-- their first year of the majority--provided for the consideration of five measures. I never quite understood that because the Democrats ran on ``six for '06.'' Nevertheless, five measures were included in their rules package. They went directly to the floor with these bills, with no committee consideration, not even the consideration of a hearing in the House Rules Committee, which they controlled at the time. So it is a little disingenuous to say, ``Oh, we are rushing things. Oh, we have not had adequate consideration.'' You heard the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Shimkus) describe the number of hearings and markups that have been done on just the Keystone pipeline. In the time I have been sitting here I have heard discussions that there is nothing in the Affordable Care Act that actually cuts a worker's hours, but a plain reading of the legislation--of section 1513, page 158, paragraph four, for those who are keeping score at home--reads: A full-time employee, section A, in general: The term ``full-time employee'' means, with respect to any month, an employee who is employed at least 30 hours of service per week. That seems pretty straightforward. What has happened as a result of that very plain language even before the Department of Labor issued its rules, which were even more restrictive, is employers made the decision of: Do you know what? We are not going to employ anyone over 29 hours because we don't want to run the risk of invoking this employer mandate. Now, it is true enough that the administration did delay the mandate. Yes, we are criticized for passing things that are restrictive on the Affordable Care Act. The administration has done so so many times--30, 35--I don't even remember how many. One of the things they delayed was the employer mandate. In fact, later on, in this very section, section 1513, it states: On the effective date of the employer mandate, the amendments made by this section shall apply to months beginning after December 31, 2013. That is in the past. It is important to bring this up. It is not part of our discussion today on the rules, but it is for employers--for small businesses--in this country to recognize, with the delay of the employer mandate-- actually, it started last week, January 1 of 2015--no taxes for calendar year 2015 will be paid until next year. So the fines under the Affordable Care Act will, in fact, not start until next year, but the reporting requirements started 7 days ago. Big companies understand this. Big companies get this. Big companies have got lots of lawyers on retainer who are working on this every day. It is the small employers with 50 employees back home in our districts who need to understand that they have to be keeping these records today so that they will be able to go back and verify the statements on their tax bills next year. Mr. Shimkus said it very well. On the Keystone pipeline, there have been 15 hearings in the House and Senate, four markups, 10 votes--10 votes on the Keystone pipeline. Tell me we haven't studied this situation. We heard discussion from the other side that this was a phantom pipeline, that no one is even interested in building it anymore, and that the price of gas is so low that no one would be interested in building the Keystone pipeline. In fact, the president and CEO of TransCanada, in a statement yesterday, said that Keystone XL is a project that was needed when oil prices were less than $40 a barrel. That was in 2008 that it was less than $40 a barrel. It is a project that was needed when oil prices were less than $40 a barrel. It was needed when prices were over $100 a barrel, and it is certainly needed when prices are $50 a barrel, as they are today. He went on to say that the review process for the Keystone XL has been anything but a well-established process. For decades, the normal process to review and make a decision on an infrastructure project like Keystone would take 2 years. He went on to say that we are well over the 6-year mark in reviewing the final phase of Keystone with, seemingly, no end in sight. The bar continues to move again and again. What business can function like that, Mr. Speaker? TransCanada has patiently and diligently worked since 2008 to comply with every twist and turn in this unparalleled process. We have done this to ensure that the Keystone XL is built and operated safely. The State Department has concluded this to be the case time and time again, and it can be done. Mr. Speaker, I would just submit that that does not sound like a CEO who is not willing to invest his money. We are not even talking about government money here. We are talking about private money. This private investment, indeed, is going forward. I would just submit again, from Cushing, Oklahoma, to Port Arthur, Texas, the pipeline is actually in the ground and exists today--far from a phantom pipeline. Mr. Speaker, today's rule provides for the consideration of important bills pertaining to health care and energy--the two very centers of excellence within the Energy and Commerce Committee. I applaud Mr. Young and Mr. Cramer for their thoughtful pieces of legislation. I applaud them for working across the aisle to offer bills that both Republicans and Democrats have publicly supported. Over two- dozen Democrats voted for the 40-hour workweek the last time it came to the floor. I urge my colleagues to support both the rule and the underlying bills. For that reason, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution.

Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Weber).

Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Shimkus), a fellow member of the Energy and Commerce Committee.

Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BURGESS. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Michigan (Mrs. Miller), the chairwoman of the House Administration Committee.

Mr. BURGESS. Madam Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BURGESS. Madam Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BURGESS. Madam Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 19 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time I have remaining.

Mr. BURGESS. I have no additional speakers.

Mr. BURGESS. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BURGESS. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BURGESS. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Sensenbrenner).