Tom Cole

Mr. COLE

Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Madam Speaker, I would again return my friend's compliments. I enjoy working with him on the Rules Committee. We have been there together a long time. There is nobody I have a higher professional and personal regard for than my good friend. Now honestly, Madam Speaker, I wish I had his talent for colorful rhetoric. I particularly like the ``Groundhog Day'' reference. I remind my friend, while there are some similarities, the movie had a happy ending. Everybody learned some lessons and they got to where they needed to be. I think we may be involved in a process something like that. I disagree with my friend that the issues being brought up in this bill are trivial. Defending the United States of America is not a trivial thing. You can agree or disagree with the bill, and I will talk about that in a minute. That is fair enough. I don't consider that trivial. Providing natural gas in abundance and at modest prices to Americans and having that resource to deal with our adversaries overseas, who often use energy as a weapon, and to be able to provide for our friends and allies reliable energy is not a trivial matter. It is an extraordinarily important matter. The 10 million Americans that work in the domestic energy industry think what we are doing here is the right thing to do. I don't consider their interests and their views trivial. I am just very privileged to represent many people that have that point of view and are involved in that particular profession. Finally, I don't consider standing up for the Second Amendment a trivial thing. We have a Governor that issued an order that a Federal judge immediately overturned and Democrats in New Mexico condemned-- elected Democrats, law enforcement officials. It is actually one of the areas that is usually a contentious issue that we had really strong bipartisan agreement. We think it is important to make my point. My friends have a different point of view. That is fair enough. Just express it, and we will move on. Again, we don't consider defense of the Constitution to be trivial. I agree with my friend about a number of things, and we have had this discussion, frankly, as friends in the Rules Committee. I agree with him about shutdowns. I do not think it is an appropriate tactic, and I hope that we are able to avoid one. There will be an appropriate time, I am sure, when we discuss with our friends how to do that, but we need a negotiating position. We are working toward that, and we hope we will get there. Believe me, I am well aware that we have a Democratic Senate. This House has done wonderful work on things like H.R. 1 to deal with energy, H.R. 2 to deal with our border. We send them over there and they are never picked up, never heard of again unless we can snatch pieces out of them here or there and attach them to one of these broader agreements, as we were able to do on the debt ceiling crisis over permitting of facilities, both for renewable and nonrenewable energy. Again, it is a difficult legislative process, and I agree it is going to be complicated, but our goal is to get to the same place; that is, to make sure that the government is funded, and also, that we advance shared values that we have and have an open and honest discussion with the United States Senate. When we do that, we have been able to find some agreement. My friend likes to point out--all my Democratic friends like to point out regularly--well, gosh, why are you passing appropriations bills that are less than to the letter agreed on? Well, gee whiz, where I come from, if you can do something for less money, that is usually a good thing to do. I am never going to apologize. If we see a different way to get to a policy objective that costs less money, that is a good thing to do. Now, I know when we discussed this last night, the Senate is consistently appropriating above the agreed-upon number. All the appropriations bills, or pretty much all of them that they have dealt with so far, are at higher levels. So guess what? We will get into negotiation. My guess is they will come down some. We will come up some, and we will find some sort of common deal. That is just the way politics work. I am never going to be critical of my colleagues for trying to do something cheaper and save money. I remind my friend of the condition in which the Democratic majority left our fiscal finances. We are running a $1.7 trillion deficit this year. That is bigger than all the discretionary budget of the United States of America. We have not had a Democratic President submit a budget that comes into balance--not in a decade, but ever, since Bill Clinton. President Obama never did. President Biden never has. I don't think any future Democrat will. We used to have Democrats in the 1990s that we disagreed with, that we fought, but they said, well, let's try to get to a balanced budget within 10 years, and they managed to do that. My friends have basically abdicated that debate. They just let it go on and on out to infinity. Even President Trump submitted budgets that within a decade came into balance. I didn't always agree with some of the decisions. I don't think either party has done a very good job. My friend and I have had this discussion in dealing with the real drivers of debt: that is mandatory spending; that is Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare. We need to have that debate. I hope the Presidential contest has it. I note at least some of the discussions we have been having in our caucus talk about having a debt commission attached to some of this, so perhaps we can make some modest steps. My friends heard me talk about my Social Security bill, which is really modeled after what was done in 1983 by Ronald Reagan, Tip O'Neill, and Howard Baker working together, a commission, then Congress voting--including, by the way, the President of the United States at that time who liked commissions, voting for the commission, for the deal, and it worked. It improved the fiscal solvency of the country. It extended the life of Social Security, a program I know that we both support. Again, you may think these are trivial issues. We don't. We think we have a long process in front of us. These are steps in the right direction on the appropriate end that won't be enough. Madam Speaker, the last point I will make--and my friend and I just disagree here--look, defense is a very different thing than any other part of the appropriations process. Most appropriations process is about things that are desirable and good. I have worked pretty hard on cancer research, so my friend's points are well made there. I think those are valuable investments. Defense is about threats. We had a peace dividend in the 1990s. You know why we had it? Because the Soviet Union had collapsed, and we could prudently save money in defense. I will tell you right now, I would go higher than the number here; but if the number we have on defense is outrageous, your first call ought to be to the White House because it is basically the President's number. We actually pulled back from where our defense appropriators wanted to go and a lot of our defense hawks wanted to go because we did think addressing the horrific deficits that were inherited from the last Democratic era meant we even had to make sacrifices here. I am not really comfortable with it, but it is a step in the right direction. We might not even had to have that if you hadn't, through reckless spending, unleashed the worst inflation in 40 years. I actually have a 40-year-old son. He had never seen anything like what happened in the Biden administration because of irresponsibly passing the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan and another $700 billion much- misnamed Inflation Reduction Act. We inherited a mess. We inherited inflation. We inherited record deficits. It is a pretty tough deal. My friends don't want to address it. Well, this majority is going to do its best to address those issues. We do struggle and disagree, and sometimes I get frustrated with some of my friends on my side of the aisle about tactics. My colleague is right about one thing, and I will agree 100 percent. There is no objection to this rule on the basis of the rule. There is nothing wrong with it. It has 184 amendments. You can agree or disagree with the bill, but it is a good rule. In my view, there is nothing wrong with the bill, other than I would like to have spent a little bit more money. Like any bill that spends this amount of money, everybody could do it a little bit differently. People are trying to make other points unrelated to the bill, and I will agree with my friend that that is unfortunate. I don't think that is a good way to legislate. I think my colleagues should look at the legislation in front of them. If they agree with the rule, they ought to vote for it. If they disagree, it is fair enough to vote against it. However, if they agree with the basic bill, don't relate it to something else and try to use it as a weapon. We don't have many Members who do that, but we have a few. As my friend knows, we have a very narrow majority. He has been here once or twice himself when they had narrow majorities. It is part of the legislative process. We will continue to work it. My hope today is we will advance this rule. It will open the way to advance what I think is a good Defense appropriations bill, and we will continue to move legislatively as rapidly as we can. We will work and, at the appropriate time, I am sure, work across the rotunda with Democrats in the Senate and probably in this Chamber with some of my Democratic friends. Hopefully, we will avoid a government shutdown. The most important thing today: Move the rule. Move the bill. That is what we are going to try to do. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 712 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, last night the Rules Committee met and reported out a rule, House Resolution 712, providing for consideration of H.R. 4365, the Department of Defense Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2024, under a structured rule. It provides 1 hour of general debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking member of the Committee on Appropriations or their respective designees. It also makes in order 184 amendments, more than 75 percent of those eligible for consideration. Finally, it provides for one motion to recommit. The rule also makes in order H.R. 1130, the Unlocking our Domestic LNG Potential Act of 2023 under a structured rule. It provides for 1 hour of general debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking member of the Committee on Energy and Commerce or their respective designees. It provides for one motion to recommit. Finally, the rule makes in order H. Res. 684 under a closed rule. It provides 1 hour of general debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking member of the Committee on the Judiciary or their respective designees. I rise today, Madam Speaker, in support of the rule and the underlying legislation. Madam Speaker, as Members are aware, the House has previously debated an identical rule covering H.R. 4365. This was a fulsome and passionate debate, and I said most of what was needed to be said from my point of view during that debate, but I will make a few key points about this bill again now. The bill before us provides full funding for our national defense. It appropriates $826 billion in new discretionary spending, which is a modest increase of $300 million over the President's budget request of nearly $29 billion or 3.6 percent over the FY 2023 enacted level. Madam Speaker, this truly is a good bill, one that I think the House can and should be proud of. It makes appropriate investments in the military and ensures that dollars are being directed where they are needed the most. It invests heavily in our servicemembers, providing them with a 5.2 percent pay raise. It provides continued funding for new advanced weapons systems, ensuring that the military has the force it needs to confront any foe anywhere in the world at any time, and it continues to expand the Navy to protect the freedom of the seas and invests heavily in Asia and the Pacific theater where China continues to expand its own military might in anticipation of a confrontation with the United States and our allies. Madam Speaker, providing funding for our national defense is both Congress' privilege and its responsibility. In order for our brave men and women in uniform to do their jobs, Congress must do its job. Today, we can take that first step toward doing so. The rule also provides for consideration of H.R. 1130, the Unlocking our Domestic LNG Potential Act of 2023. This bill removes regulatory barriers for the construction and licensing of new liquid natural gas or LNG import and export terminals. Madam Speaker, when the Republican majority took over in January, we committed to unleashing America's energy potential. For too long, regulatory roadblocks and active hostility of the Biden administration have made it difficult to expand production of America's abundant energy resources, but despite the Biden administration's hostility, America is today the top producer of natural gas in the world. From my home State of Oklahoma, this is not an academic point. Oklahoma is the fifth largest natural gas producing State in the country, with nearly 350,000 jobs in the State tied directly to natural gas production. It is a critical part of my home State's economy. In recent years, innovation and new technology have revolutionized and expanded the production of natural gas, both in Oklahoma and in the United States as a whole. The people of my district are very proud to be part of that revolution. There is still more to be done, and the passage of H.R. 1130 will help make it easier, cheaper, and quicker to bring new LNG export terminals online. It is no exaggeration to say that American natural gas is a critical part of the world's energy mix, particularly in Europe, which previously sourced much of its natural gas from Russia, and we are capable of achieving more. The end result will be a strong future for us as we create more high-paying jobs and maintain America's energy independence and a strong future for our friends and allies around the world who can source their energy needs from us rather than from vicious dictators like Vladimir Putin. Madam Speaker, all in all, this is a strong bill, one that I am certainly proud to support. Finally, the rule makes in order H. Res. 684, which condemns New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham for her executive order attempting to subvert the Second Amendment rights of New Mexico's citizens. As Members are aware, earlier this month, Governor Grisham issued an executive order purporting to suspend the right of New Mexicans to open and concealed carry of firearms. Governor Grisham claimed that this was necessary in order to deal with a public health emergency. Of course, this claim is patently absurd, and there is not now, nor has there ever been, a public health emergency and exception for constitutional rights. The right of Americans to bear arms is protected by the Second Amendment to the Constitution, and a constitutional right cannot be subverted at the whim of an elected official. Last week, a Federal judge in New Mexico agreed and issued a restraining order blocking implementation of this patently unconstitutional order. Governor Grisham has rightly received condemnation on a bipartisan basis for her actions. H. Res. 684 will give all Members of Congress an opportunity to do so officially and on the record. It is always appropriate for the House to take time to reaffirm our values as a country and to protect the constitutional rights that form the foundation of our Republic. Indeed, I urge all Members to do so and speak with one voice, reminding all Americans that when it comes to their constitutional rights, the House of Representatives has their back. Madam Speaker, I urge Members to support both the rule and the underlying bills, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I want to respond to some of my good friend from Pennsylvania's points, and some of them I agree with. I do think shutting down the government is not an appropriate tactic. We agree on that. You know, linking them to election results is really an interesting exercise. The government shutdown that I think my friend thought was in 2011, if I am correct, and I may be wrong, was really the one in 2013. We actually picked up seats in 2014. I don't think that is why we picked up seats. My friends always forget that they shut down the government in 2017, and they won seats in 2018. So you can pretty much play these numbers however you want. The important point, which my friend makes and I agree with, is that shutting down the government is bad for the American people. It is an abdication of our responsibility. It is something we should not do. I have never supported it in the past. I hope we manage to avoid one now. I think that is exactly what the Speaker is engaged in trying to accomplish, whether my friends agree with his methods or not. I will tell you, I am mystified by this concern about the agreement. Again, we agreed on top-line numbers. We didn't say we are going to the top-line numbers. This is the top-line number, and if we can do it for less and persuade the Senate that that is a good idea, then I don't see that as a bad thing. If my friends are concerned about keeping agreements, maybe they ought to call over to their friends in the United States Senate who are producing bill after bill that are above these numbers. Guess what? I suspect each side is positioning for a negotiation, and magically, we probably won't be too far off, if we come to an agreement, of the numbers that are laid out in the debt ceiling deal. I am not telling you this is the most efficient way to legislate, but I have seen it before, and we are seeing it from both sides right now. In terms of the budget, I tell you what, I am interested in the opinions my friends have on the budget because they didn't bother to do one for the 4 years they were in the majority. I am thrilled they are actually marking up a budget in the Budget Committee. I give Chairman Arrington a lot of credit for doing it. It is hard to do. My friends didn't do it for 4 years because they couldn't do it because they couldn't come to an agreement. As a matter of fact, I remember those 4 years I used to serve on the Budget Committee. You couldn't get a budget out of the Budget Committee that you controlled. Do you want to talk about dysfunction? The Budget Committee sets the top-line number for all spending. Maybe that is why we overspent so much. As a matter of fact, you deemed budgets in the rule. So I would agree with you. We should probably be sitting down and figuring out ways to run our fiscal affairs better and particularly do it in a more cooperative way because, as my friends point out, they do control the United States Senate and the United States Presidency. However, please don't lecture me on how you do budgets when you had the House, the Senate, and the Presidency and could not write a budget in 4 years and get it out of your own committee, let alone bring it to this floor. Some of those years you weren't operating with a five-seat majority. You just couldn't get the job done. We are trying. I commend the Budget Committee. I hope they bring one out here. I will be disappointed if they don't, but at least they are making the effort. Finally, again, to my friends, I can't figure out whether you want the Speaker to succeed or not because there are lots of expressions that you feel sorry for him in the job he has. Don't worry, he likes the job he has. He works hard at it every day. I think he is a good Speaker. He delivered on a debt ceiling deal that my friends even in the end came around and voted for. He delivered one that was a heck of a lot better because it had some genuine concessions in it, in terms of energy production and in terms of setting top lines. We are on the eve of another kind of negotiation, and maybe we can find common ground again. I genuinely, quite frankly, hope that we do. In that process, there will be plenty of people on both sides of the aisle who don't like what the end product is, and they will vote accordingly. That is fair enough. This is just kind of the way it works around here right now, and I think the Speaker is doing a terrific job of trying to work the process, trying to make sure legislation moves across the floor in regular order, and trying to get to numbers that begin to bring down this horrific deficit that my friends left the country with, with no plan to deal with it. Nobody in the White House has a plan. The President has never submitted a budget that comes into balance. He won't talk about entitlement reform. He rules it out. Sorry, if you are serious about the budget deficit, you do control two-thirds of this process. I know it is inconvenient when we bring up the fact that we are spending a lot more money and you have no plan to deal with it, but that is what we are going to do. We will see. The American people can make a choice in the next election about that, but I am not going to be critical of my friends. Even when I am critical of their tactics, and I am sometimes, I am not critical of people who are trying to lower the budget deficit and trying to restore a measure of fiscal sanity to this country. That is something the Democrats used to care about, did care about when I first got here. They totally abandoned it during the Obama Presidency. When my friends want to get serious, they will have a willing negotiating partner on the budget. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. COLE

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, had I been present, I would have voted ``yea'' on rollcall No. 401.

Mr. COLE

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution.

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Nobody is arguing against diversity in the military. The American military has actually usually been the leader in this area, whether it was desegregation or certainly addressing the inequities between men and women, and we haven't gotten it right, but I think broadly it has worked in the right direction and quite often ahead of the rest of society. The real problem here is we want to focus on training and weapons, not on culture wars. We think the administration has gone around Congress in some cases--the Hyde amendment being one of them. My friends have their lawyers, we have our lawyers. I guess they will go to court and sort that out. There wasn't any consultation with the Congress, any discussion on this. That was a decision made unilaterally by the administration. I think Congress has every right to be consulted. They don't have money by their own right in the executive branch. They have what we give them for the purposes that are specified by the Congress of the United States. They don't get to just make it up on their own. I know there was at least some discussion back and forth where people warned: Don't open this door without a discussion and without a green light from Congress. That didn't occur, and so we are in this discussion. Now, over the course of reaching a bill, I suspect we will find some sort of solution or work it through one way or the other. I hope we do, because I don't think anything is more important, in what I think is a very dangerous world, than equipping, training, and preparing the men and women who protect us all. On that, we have a lot more common ground than division. Again, I think this was a choice by the administration. It provoked a response by Congress. We will try to work it through by normal legislative means and see where we end up. Mr. Speaker, I will reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks on House Resolution 680.

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, last week the Rules Committee met and reported out a rule, House Resolution 680, consideration of H.R. 4365, the Department of Defense Appropriations Act for fiscal year 2024, under a structured rule. It provides 1 hour of general debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking member of the Committee on Appropriations or their designees. It also makes in order 184 amendments; more than 75 percent of those eligible for consideration. Finally, it provides for a motion to recommit. I rise today in support of the rule and the underlying legislation. Mr. Speaker, our democracy remains a beacon of hope to the entire world. Billions of people across the globe look to the United States as a leader in freedom and liberty and as a protector of peace. From the very moment our Nation was conceived, a strong national defense has been a differentiator of democracy. Essential to protecting the homeland, international order, and the American people from those who would seek to do us harm, we must never lose sight of the need to maintain a strong defense. Although our men and women in uniform give of themselves every day, they cannot do their jobs unless Congress does its job. Only Congress can provide the funding our military needs to fulfill its duties. That is our responsibility. Today we move forward with that commitment as we take up H.R. 4365, the Department of Defense Appropriations Act for fiscal year 2024. We must do our duty and make sure that our brave military members can move forward with theirs. With evolving threats, we continue to face a struggle seen throughout time. The contest between freedom and tyranny is not far from us. From Vladimir Putin's unjust and illegal invasion of Ukraine, to China's posturing in the South China Sea, to continued threats posed by extremists and terrorists, hostile actors are looking for weakness. Yet, America's Armed Forces remain ready to meet any challenge wherever it may arise. Continuing to meet those threats requires an appropriate investment of national resources. With today's measure, we fulfill that commitment and ensure that our Armed Forces will have the resources they need to meet any foe anywhere in the world at any time. The bill before us provides full funding for the national defense. It appropriates $826 billion in new discretionary spending, which is a modest increase of $300 million over the President's budget request and nearly $29 billion, or 3.6 percent, over the fiscal year 2023 enacted level. H.R. 4365 makes targeted investments that support critical priorities. Perhaps the most important of these priorities is to reinvest in our servicemen and -women. The bill provides a 5.2 percent pay raise for our servicemembers. For junior enlisted servicemembers, we provide an historic pay increase of an average of 30 percent, ensuring that we not only offset the effects of President Biden's inflationary crisis for these younger and most junior servicemembers, but also ensuring that we can retain servicemembers who are at the beginning of their military careers. I would be remiss, Mr. Speaker, not to give credit to the gentleman from California (Mr. Mike Garcia), my good friend and fellow defense appropriator, for this particular measure, both in the appropriations bill and, frankly, in the NDAA, as well. His work on behalf of younger servicepeople has been exemplary, relentless, and effective. The bill also makes continued and necessary investments to ensure that we will continue to have the best equipped and best-trained fighting force now and into the future. We fund continued expansion of the Navy, making sure that we will be able to continue to protect freedom of the seas around the globe and fund development and acquisition of next-generation weapons systems. However, it doesn't stop there, Mr. Speaker. H.R. 4365 also ensures that the Biden administration cannot continue to put politics ahead of national security. It preserves existing and longstanding bipartisan bans on taxpayer funding for abortions. It also ensures that Federal dollars cannot be used to indoctrinate our troops with progressive ideology like critical race theory training, and instead ensures that the Pentagon's focus is where it should be: on military readiness and preparedness so that our warfighters can defeat aggression and defend freedom anywhere in the world. All in all, there is much to like in today's bill, Mr. Speaker. I look forward to advancing this measure through a robust amendment process on the floor and onward to final passage. I urge Members to support both the rule and the underlying legislation, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I begin by returning my deep respect, my deep regards, to my good friend from New Mexico. It has been a delight to have her on the Rules Committee, and we have found a lot of common ground working on Native American issues, where, frankly, she is an acknowledged national expert. I look forward to a long and good relationship with my friend. When it comes to this rule and bill, obviously, we have disagreements. Let me talk first about the point my friend makes about timing and how many bills have gotten done and where we are in the process. There is actually a great deal that I agree with her on. Sadly, we ought to also remember the Democratic Congress of last year didn't finish the appropriations process until December. If you looked at it the year before, it didn't finish until March the next year, after the end of the fiscal year. Being late around here is not new for either party, but our friends set the standard last time, I think. We will see how we end up. My friend made a comment that we had only done one bill. I will say that is one more than the Democratic United States Senators managed to do. The reality is the Senate didn't produce, under Democratic control, any bills for the last 2 years--none out of subcommittee, none out of full committee, none across the floor. We are dealing with a very difficult body on the other side of the rotunda. These timing issues, hopefully, we can all get better at this and work together. I actually think we have something this year in the debt ceiling agreement that will be helpful in that regard. The reality is if we don't get our work done by January 1, which is about the time Democrats got their work done last year, we will have a yearlong CR with a 1 percent across-the-board cut. I don't know any appropriator on either side of the aisle who wants to see that happen. I don't think most people who care deeply about the defense of the United States do. We have some forcing mechanisms in place. Hopefully, we will continue to make some better progress there. In terms of my friend's point about divisive social policy, I will point out where this started. It is the executive branch that made decisions to do things much differently than we have done before, and usually with no consultation with the Congress of the United States. Most of the things my friend disagrees with we consider corrective of executive overreach, including violation of the Hyde amendment, which is essentially, in my view, what the Department of Defense has decided on its own to do without discussion or consultation with the Congress of the United States. That is unfortunate. That is something, hopefully, we can work through and resolve in the months ahead. I will also say that we are just very different in terms of where we think the focus ought to be. This bill focuses on weapons acquisition, training, and readiness. We live in a very dangerous world. We think there is a big difference, for instance, between climate resilience and actively pushing climate change legislation, which we believe the original administration budget does. We want to refocus on the things that we think matter. We are not going to beat our adversaries if, God forbid, we find ourselves in a contest with any of them and our forces aren't well trained, aren't well armed, and aren't well prepared for the challenges they are going to face. That should be the main focus of the Department of Defense. We think the administration has lost its focus. We see this bill as a useful corrective. Finally, I point out to my friends on both sides of the aisle that, quite frankly, whatever we pass, we are going to sit down and negotiate with the United States Senate and with the President of the United States. As my friends know, the Democrats control the United States Senate, and we have a Democrat as the President of the United States. Wherever we end up, it is going to be a process of give-and-take and discussion, but it is important that the House have an opening position. The last point to make on this is if we get this bill across the floor--and I do say ``if'' because there is some controversy about whether or not we will make it, even on our own side. Even though nobody disagrees with the rule or disagrees with the bill, they have other points sometimes they want to make. Sadly, it shouldn't be with this bill. However, my friends never got the Defense bill across the floor by themselves when they were in the majority. There were too many divisions and splits within their Caucus to even bring it to the floor. If we manage to get this bill across the floor, we will actually, in that single action, have moved across the floor a larger percentage of the discretionary budget of the United States than my friends were ever able to do when they were in the majority. It is a complex bill, over half of the discretionary spending of the United States. There are lots of barriers and flash points where we disagree, but it is important that we continue the dialogue and the motion forward. I think we have the opportunity, in passing the rule and the underlying legislation, to do that today, and I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to vote accordingly. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 680 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I both agree and disagree with my friend from New Mexico about shutting down the government. I personally could not agree more with her. I think it is a dumb thing to do. I think it is a dangerous thing to do. I have never favored shutting down the government, and I have argued against it. The tactic doesn't work. I think it won't work this time. The American people expect us to keep the essential services of government going while we negotiate and get to a final solution. I will correct my friend on one thing. The Democrats have shut down the government. Frankly, they shut it down over DACA in 2017. Now, I always hand the Democrats this: When they shut it down or do something stupid, they are pretty quick to realize it, and they back off. I think they shut it down on a Friday and reopened it on a Monday, but they did indeed shut it down. It is simply an inappropriate tool in the toolbox, in my opinion. I have seen both sides use it. My side, sadly, has used it more. I hope we don't do it this time. Certainly, the great majority of our Members and the Speaker do not want to see a shutdown, and I think they have made that apparent over and over again. I hadn't particularly intended to comment on the ranking member's amendment because I know how passionately my good friend feels about this. I respect those feelings. Honestly, I respect the feelings of all those who hold that view. I find myself in the unusual position of agreeing with President Biden when my good friend, the ranking member, is disagreeing with him. It shows it is not really a partisan issue. I think it is an issue of judgment. I have no doubt the President of the United States agonized before making this decision. It was clearly a decision he did not want to make, but I think he was compelled by two factors that probably decided the case for him, although I don't presume to speak for the President. Number one, we ought to always remember the enemies of Ukraine, Russia, introduced these weapons on the other side first and was using those weapons indiscriminately. Second, Ukraine is using these weapons in defense of its own territory and its own people in its own territory. That is not what the Russians are doing. They are aggressively, on the other side, using these in another country. Finally, again, just to be fair about the President's dilemma, we have used an extraordinary amount of ammunition trying to support Ukraine. I think we have some strains on our own stockpiles, and I suspect that was part of the decisionmaking. When you are in a war, you are in it to win it. Frankly, it was not the Ukrainians or the Americans that introduced this first. It was not the Ukrainians or the Americans or the European allies, who were there in vast numbers, that started this conflict. It is to the advantage of all that it ends as quickly as it can. The level of casualties on both sides is horrific, but the person who bears responsibility is Vladimir Putin. Frankly, the country that is the aggressor is Russia, and I am not going to begrudge the Ukrainians for getting what they need. As critical as I can sometimes be of President Biden, I will certainly not criticize him in this case because I think, in this case, he reluctantly made a tough decision, a decision he probably didn't want to make, but I think he made it for the right reasons. Therefore, I won't be supporting my friend's amendment later on today. Although, again, I am glad we were able to make it in order. I think it is an important issue for us to discuss, and I look forward to a very vigorous debate on that later this afternoon. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I have great affection and respect for my friend, the ranking member and formerly the chairman of the full Rules Committee. I will start where I began this debate. Remember, my friends, Democrats didn't finish the appropriations process on their side until December of last year, and Democrats controlled all three parts of government. They had the Senate, the House, and the Presidency, and they didn't get done until December. The year before that, they didn't get done until March of the year after. I wish the process went easier and smoother as well, but I don't think it goes much differently, regardless of who happens to be in control. I do think that we are trying to make some progress here. Now, my friends are worried about what is cut. They ought to be worried about what was spent. We are running a $1.7 trillion deficit. That deficit is bigger than the entire discretionary budget of the United States of America. It is not just bigger than the defense budget; it is bigger than everything. It got a lot worse when my friends controlled the executive branch and both houses of Congress. You did over $3 trillion worth of spending outside the normal appropriations process; $1.9 trillion for an unneeded American Rescue Plan when we were coming out of COVID, roughly $700 billion from the much-misnamed Inflation Reduction Act, which even the President now says was misnamed because it really had to do more with climate change. That was money we didn't have, money that fueled inflation that made life worse for every single American. I don't even get to the knockoffs, like transportation bills that don't pay for themselves. I had voted for every other major transportation agreement in my time here, two of them under President Obama, but they paid for themselves either through gasoline taxes or ticket fees, what have you. Now, we have got a trillion dollars here, but it is not enough. We will just throw another several hundred billion dollars on in debt. We are paying for that now. I am not going to be critical of my party for trying to push down some of the spending; $1.7 trillion this year. You guys can't find anywhere to cut. Now you want to talk about defense? I am happy to talk about defense. My dad was a career noncommissioned officer at the height of the Cold War. You know what we spent on defense then? Fifty percent of the Federal budget, 9 percent of the GDP. You know what we spent during the great Reagan buildup? Six percent of the GDP, about a third of the Federal budget. You know what we spend today? About 3 percent of the GDP and about 15 percent of the budget. Believe me, there has been an explosion of domestic spending over the decades, largely driven by my friends, and it is unsustainable. We cannot stay on the path we are on. We can argue about this or that. I have a bill I would invite my friend to look at, try and go back and do with Social Security what we did in 1983 on a bipartisan basis. We need to start getting the spending under control. The spending that is driving us out of balance is largely not in the Pentagon. It is largely in entitlement spending, which I would be the first to say that both sides have been reluctant to deal with. Neither of the last two Presidents have been willing. This President actually voted for a Social Security commission that reformed and stabilized it when he was a Senator. Now, the White House rules these things out. No, we can't talk about it, can't do it. By the way, his predecessor was exactly the same, so Republican and Democrat alike. I would love to be more restrained in the spending, and I think that is what my colleagues are trying to do, even when I don't always agree with the tactics they use. They are motivated in the right direction, which is to deal with a $1.7 trillion deficit. We are trying to make some appropriate decisions. Again, we work in the legislative process. I remind my friends, they control two-thirds of it. By the way, the Defense bill last year, which was passed almost exclusively with Democratic votes, the omni, to be fair, actually had a larger increase in the defense budget than my friends pushed, $45 billion--I actually agree with that, by the way--than this year, where we are basically at the President's number. We can all play this game with numbers and what have you. Let's try to work toward a deal. I think we can get there, but I don't have any illusions it will be easy along the way. I certainly have seen both sides make missteps, in my view, in handling these situations over the years. I hope we don't do that again. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Again, there are some areas where I agree with my good friends and some areas where I disagree. Nobody disagrees on the importance of the fentanyl crisis and the importance of dealing in any way we can through whatever means we have with those who engage in trafficking that illegal drug that has killed tens of thousands of Americans. Quite frankly, I suspect later this week or next week we will give our friends the opportunity to work with us on homeland security measures that will deal with just that. I would point to, frankly, the abject failure of the Biden administration to defend the southern border. The green light that has been put out there is a huge cost for this massive influx of drugs into our own country. We passed H.R. 2 on this floor, Mr. Speaker, to try and deal with that, and we are going to provide our friends with some opportunities where maybe we can find some common ground. You can be pro-immigration and pro-border security at the same time. I think this administration has had a hard time doing that, and quite frankly, most of the policies that it reversed--whether it was building the wall or remain in Mexico--from the last administration were effective. You can tell by the record numbers of illegal entries we have, the record amount of trafficking we have in drugs, and sadly, in human beings across the border to know that the Biden border policy, which my friends have supported, has been a disaster. It is one that, again, we hope they not only recognize that disaster, but will work with us to correct some of those measures. Again, I am going to agree with my friend from New Mexico. I don't believe in shutting down the government. I know we occasionally have some people who believe that, although it is a very small number, it can be a very influential number in a House that is very narrowly divided. We are going to provide some opportunities both to our own Members and to our colleagues on the other side to avoid that and to negotiate in good faith, but again, I just reiterate a point where I know my friend and I agree: It is not an appropriate tool. It does not work. I would hope that we can avoid that. We also need to sit down and work together where we can, and there are a lot of areas in this bill that we can work on. The last point I will make--my friends talk about the conflicts that we have in the Defense bill--remember, we had a conflict in the last Congress when my friends in the House tried to unilaterally overturn the Hyde language, a bipartisan agreement that goes all the way back to 1975 or 1976, as I recall, Mr. Speaker, and when that was struck, there were less than 150 Republicans in the House, so it was genuinely bipartisan. It wasn't just something we crammed down. My friends have changed their mind over the issue of using Federal dollars for abortion over the years. We have not changed our position, and we were able to beat that back even when we were in the minority because, at the end of the day, they couldn't pass the bills without Republican support. I think the administration has tried to go around Congress in this case and use Federal dollars without congressional consent to facilitate abortion, other than in cases where we are talking about rape, incest, or the life of the mother. We have no debate over the appropriate use of Federal dollars in those cases. We do in others. It doesn't mean people can't travel; we just shouldn't be using Federal dollars in this area. That is a longstanding principle that I would argue the Biden administration is trying to subvert. By the way, it is a principle that President Biden, until 2019 when he was running for President, accepted throughout his entire career. He was a champion of that until 2019 when his own party moved so far left he had to change his longstanding position in pursuit of the nomination. Again, this is politics, people are allowed to do what they want, but please don't chastise us for being consistent with a position we assumed in 1975 and have not changed. It is our friends who have changed their mind on this issue, and frankly, it is the administration that tried to subvert the will and the authority of Congress by moving around it. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentlewoman from New Mexico (Ms. Leger Fernandez), my very good friend, 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. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time to close. I urge all my colleagues to support the resolution. Today's rule will make in order the Department of Defense Appropriations Act for fiscal year 2024. It will provide full and complete funding for our national defense needs, ensuring that our servicemembers are fairly paid, and supporting the well-being of military families. It also makes certain that our troops will never face a fair fight by giving them every advantage possible. We make appropriate investments in the development and acquisition of weapons systems needed to preserve and defend freedom around the globe and restrict the Biden administration from forcing progressive ideology on the Armed Forces and circumventing the authority of Congress when it does so. Bottom line, the bill targets resources to its new core mission, protecting our homeland and security interests and making sure that our forces are the best trained, the best equipped, and the best prepared in the world. To my friends, it has been an interesting debate, as always. I enjoy exchanging observations with my good friend from New Mexico, and we strayed sometimes off this bill and off this rule. I do want to mention a couple of things. The rule, I think even my friends would agree, is a pretty robust rule. We are going to have 184 amendments, a very thorough debate, so I look forward to that. Second, it is lost sometimes, but we actually basically fund the military at the level that the President requested, so those people who think it is over the top probably should have their argument with the White House as opposed to us. Personally, I would have liked to have done more, but we are going to go with the President's number, essentially. Finally, we do disagree about the manner in which the administration is using the military. We think they are advancing progressive ideology when they ought to be focused on weapons acquisition, training, and warfighting, and we think that ultimately weakens the country. We live in a very dangerous world right now. I would actually argue we are not spending enough on defense when we look at what is happening in the Western Pacific with China; when we look at what the Russians are doing, the acts they are engaged in, in Ukraine. I want a robust budget, and I want one that we come together on. In the end, I think we will be able to achieve that, and I look forward to working with my friends to accomplish that objective. The material previously referred to by Ms. Leger Fernandez is as follows: An Amendment to H. Res. 680 Offered by Ms. Leger Fernandez of New Mexico At the end of the resolution, add the following: Sec. 7. Immediately upon adoption of this resolution, the House shall proceed to the consideration in the House of the resolution (H. Res. 178) affirming the House of Representatives' commitment to protect and strengthen Social Security and Medicare. The resolution shall be considered as read. The previous question shall be considered as ordered on the resolution and preamble to adoption without intervening motion or demand for division of the question except one hour of debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on Ways and Means or their respective designees. Sec. 8. Clause 1 (c) of rule XIX sha11 not apply to the consideration of H. Res. 178.

Mr. COLE

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Langworthy), my very good friend who was there for every minute of the Rules Committee hearings last night and the night before, and a distinguished member of the Rules Committee.

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I want to go back to a point on this issue of abortion. Quite frankly, we look at this issue very differently. As my friend, Mr. Roy from Texas, said, we see the administration as having directly intervened and changed existing policy. We have something called the Hyde amendment, which has been passed for years, decades, over and over again, and it prohibits using Federal tax dollars for abortion. Facilitating abortion is exactly what we are talking about here. Now, was there any consultation with us when the executive branch decided to do that? No, there wasn't. As my friend from Texas pointed out, there is a pretty big pushback on our side. We have worked in a bipartisan fashion. That is why that bill came out of committee 58-1. Most of the amendments on this floor in the last couple days have been bipartisan, and we have worked together. There are issues where we simply don't agree, and this is, at the end of the day, a majoritarian institution. While my friend talks about the extremist this or the extremist that, if it is an extremist amendment, it won't win the majority. These amendments that are going to come up here are either going to win or lose. Some of them are going to lose. Some of the time, my friend and I are actually going to be voting the same way on those amendments. Other times, we will vote differently. We will certainly vote differently at the end of the day when it comes time to vote on the bill. That is the way the game is played here. To say that some majority is being run by extremists, by definition, that is almost impossible because you can't be the majority on the House floor if it is true. Again, you can disagree, and I respect the disagreement, but the initiator, particularly in the case of abortion and I would say some of the other culture clashes that we are having on this bill, has been the administration, has been policies that were decided in this administration and sometimes pushed on the military against their own wishes. Again, it is the executive branch. They get to run the military. They get to do what they want to do. But please, when you get a response from people that genuinely disagree, to say they started it by responding is simply not the case. Again, I look forward to this debate. I understand that people will have very different opinions. I do remind everybody that 95 percent of this bill is this bill, you know. It was bipartisan. It does deal with the military. Very little of much of the debate has dealt with the military. I actually sit on the Defense Appropriations Committee. We spend a lot of time talking about what is the right mix of arms? What is going to happen in terms of artillery? What are we doing to update AWACS? I can go on and on. Most of the discussions in the House Armed Services Committee were similar. Again, we are going to have these differences and let the chips fall where they may. I would suspect whatever product comes off this floor will be the product that the majority of this body chose. Then we will go, as my friends well know, to sit down with the United States Senate, and they will have a different product, and the President will be part of that discussion because he has to sign the bill. We are going to have a pretty good tussle here. To think this is the be-all and end-all today I think is a disservice to the process and how it unfolds and how it actually works. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Roy), who is another member of the Rules Committee who has been fighting the good fight for the last two nights well past midnight.

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

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution.

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. In closing, I urge all my colleagues to support this resolution. Today's rule makes in order 80 amendments reflecting Member priorities on both sides of the aisle. Although I would have liked to have worked more quickly, on a matter that is so critical as the annual NDAA we owe the American people no less than whatever time is necessary to complete this important task. I remind the House that the NDAA has been passed into law every year for 62 consecutive years. I am confident that with today's rule, we are well on the way to making it 63. Mr. Speaker, again, I want to point out and emphasize several important facts that sometimes get lost in the spirited debate. The first one is that about 95 percent of this bill is exactly what passed out of the House Armed Services Committee 58-1, as my friends have pointed out, and I agree. Most of this bill is extraordinarily bipartisan. Most of the amendments that have come to this floor, 300 yesterday, or 290, roughly, were bipartisan and were accepted no matter who authored them, Democrat or Republican, by either side. As I said yesterday, this was going to be more contentious today, and that is fine. But to suggest that anything you disagree with that passes is extreme, I think, frankly, you are leaping to a conclusion. Some of these amendments that my friend points to the most probably won't pass, probably won't make it. Again, there is nothing inappropriate about that. I mean, I have come down here--and I know my friend has--plenty of times and fought for things that we believed in that may have been right or wrong, but we lost or won. What comes out of here will be what a majority of the House decides is appropriate. Now, as I have said multiple times in the course of the debate, this is a process, not an event. The reality is, we are going to sit down at some point, almost certainly, with the Senate and the President. The Senate is Democratic, and the President is a Democrat. We are going to have a discussion and a debate, and I suspect the product that comes out of that will be different than the one that emerges here. That is okay. It will be different than what the Senate writes, and it will be different than what the President's budget was and what he proposed. Nobody is going to get everything they want. At the end of the day, everybody is going to have to give and take, and the reality is if we get to a bill, which I think we will because we have for 62 consecutive years, it is going to be a bipartisan compromise. We can have all the theatrics and all the flailing of arms. That is part of the process, too. At the end of the day, almost all of this bill is bipartisan, and almost all of this bill is supported by the majority of both sides of the aisle. There are individual flash points where we disagree. I know about getting rolled in debates. I remember my Democratic friends spending $1.9 trillion without a single Republican vote and unleashing the worst inflation we have seen in 40 years. I remember them bringing a bill to this floor called the Inflation Reduction Act that had zero to do with inflation and was everything about green climate. Fair enough. If you want to do that, that is okay. You didn't get a single Republican vote, but you won, and you got it through the Senate and got the President of the United States to sign it. There are plenty of times that one side has steamrolled the other. There are other times when we negotiate together. Welcome to the House of Representatives and to American politics. What we are going to deal with today, there will be a lot of sound. There will be a lot of noise. Most of the bill is bipartisan. It is an extraordinarily good bill. As a matter of fact, lost in the course of this debate is one of the areas where my friends and I do disagree, and I disagree with the bill, and that is that we are coming in at the President's number. This outrageous, terrible bill is going to be at the number the President proposed. I think that number is too low--I really do--but I am going to vote for it because it is still better than last year and better than a CR, and it moves the country in the right direction. Mr. Speaker, again, I have enjoyed the debate. I always do. I will close by thanking my friend. I mean this with all sincerity. I will end where I began. We have been through a couple of challenging days in the Rules Committee, very long nights. I very much appreciate the professionalism of my friend and his colleagues and my colleagues on my side of the aisle. I very much appreciate the staff that worked very hard on both sides of the aisle and also the wonderful House support staff that we had facilitating our meetings. I thank them all, and I particularly thank my friend.

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 583 and ask for its immediate consideration.