Tom Cole

Mr. COLE

Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I am prepared to close, and I yield myself the balance of my time. Madam Speaker, in closing, I urge opposition to the rule. Today's bill is nothing more than a Democratic wish list masquerading as a coronavirus relief bill, roughly the same as the partisan bill the majority passed back in May and it was never taken up by the Senate, would never be signed by the President. As in May, today's bill is ultimately doomed. It will not pass the Senate. The President has made it clear he will not sign it. Madam Speaker, the majority is missing a real chance here. The American people are suffering as a result of the coronavirus. It is past time for the two parties to do what we did very successfully four times in a row in a 10-week period and work together and actually provide a package that provides real relief for the American people. There are plenty of things we agree on, such as the extension of the Paycheck Protection Program, such as ensuring that more funds are provided for testing and tracing, such as one-time payments of $1,200 per individual and $500 per child to every household making less than $75,000 a year. We disagree about the exact amount, but we agree every American who is unemployed, through no fault of their own, should get at least $400 more a week. Frankly, because the Democrats did not take up that offer, those people have gotten zero since the end of July. We absolutely agree that we need additional money for the opening of schools. Madam Speaker, so why don't we put on the floor--it is a novel suggestion--the things we agree on, the things we know the Senate will pass and we know the President would sign. The only reason we have failed to do that is because the Democratic leadership has made the decision that we have to agree on everything before we do anything. That is no way to legislate in a body that has a Democratic majority in the House, a Republican majority in the Senate, and a Republican President. The majority is not in the position to dictate to either the Senate or the President what is going to happen, but they are in a powerful position to negotiate, and negotiate in good faith, and focus on the areas where we agree. Madam Speaker, I think that would move us forward productively. I think that would be in the best interests of the American people. So I call on the majority to end this charade and engage with Republicans in the House, the Senate, and the administration and come to an agreement on a real bipartisan relief package. I know my friends can do it because we did it together four times in a row. Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the previous question, ``no'' on the rule, and ``no'' on the underlying bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, let me yield myself such time as I may consume just to quickly make a couple of points and then move to my friend from Arizona. Far be it for me, Mr. Speaker, to defend the upper body. I am a very proud Member of this House, as I know all of us here are. But it is worth noting for the Record the Senate actually had 52 votes to pass a bill. It was my friend's party that kept them from considering it. As to the Supreme Court, thank goodness they don't have to deal with the House of Representatives. That is why they are able to move quickly. They could move pretty quickly if they had somebody they could deal with here as well. It is my friends who have chosen to craft legislation that they know will be unacceptable, that they know the President will not sign, and then rail at them for not passing it and the President for not signing it. That is the height of chutzpah, if you will. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Arizona (Mrs. Lesko), my distinguished friend and fellow member of the Rules Committee.

Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Madam Speaker, I just want to respond quickly to my friends and point out something that is striking to me in listening to the debate. There is almost nothing that any of my friends have mentioned that we don't support--almost nothing. All these worthy programs for restaurants, all this relief for individuals, and all this help, we all agree with that. It is the things my friends don't mention that they have in their bill that we don't agree with. We don't agree with more money for Planned Parenthood. That has no place in this bill. We obviously have very serious objections to federalizing the election system of this country, which is State based. That has no place in this bill. We obviously don't want to give a tax break to millionaires and billionaires in blue States by getting rid of the State and local tax limitations that were placed in. Those are the things, none of which have anything to do with coronavirus, that we object to. Those are the things that my friends are insisting on that they cannot pass in the United States Senate and that the President will not sign. If they want to actually pass all these other wonderful things, we agree with them, and we have been very generous in terms of the amount of money. The President has moved up on that. Money is a negotiable item here. Policy positions--poison pills, as my good friend from Arizona said--are not, and that is what is keeping us from acting. Frankly, that is a tragedy and a travesty, in my view, Madam Speaker. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume, and I thank my good friend, the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern), the distinguished chairman of the Rules Committee, for yielding me the customary 30 minutes. Mr. Speaker, we are here today to consider a rule that provides for consideration of a single item, the Senate amendment to H.R. 925, the majority's second attempt to pass a partisan wish list under the guise of a coronavirus relief bill. There are two quotes that sum up how I feel about today's rule, Mr. Speaker. The first, widely misattributed to Albert Einstein, is that: ``The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results''; the second, accurately attributed to Yogi Berra, is that today's action feels like: ``It's deja vu all over again.'' Today, the House majority is bringing up again a partisan coronavirus relief package, just as they did in May. As in May, today's bill was written with only Democratic input. Like in May, today's bill has a massive price tag. This sits at $2.4 trillion. As in May, today's bill contains a plethora of provisions that are completely unrelated to coronavirus relief. Indeed, just like in May, today's bill is more akin to a Democratic policy wish list than to an actual relief bill. And just as in May, we all know what the end result will be: the Senate will not pass this bill and the President will not sign it into law. But it doesn't have to be this way, Mr. Speaker. For whatever reason, the majority is refusing to truly negotiate on a bipartisan coronavirus relief bill that would provide real relief for millions of Americans. I grant them, discussions have taken place. But when the majority continues to insist that it is their way or no way and refuses to meet Republicans halfway, one begins to understand how we got to this point. Mr. Speaker, I would remind both this Chamber and the American people that it has been the Democrats who have blocked a second coronavirus relief bill. Just last week, House Democrats blocked Republicans from bringing up a simple bill to extend the Paycheck Protection Program. In the Senate, Democrats blocked the majority from bringing up a clean extension of PPP, and later, Democrats blocked a Republican-led coronavirus relief bill from being considered, not because they disagreed with anything in the bill, but because they just thought other things should be in the bill. All of these bills are bills that the President would have signed into law. At a time when so many Americans are truly suffering, why the House majority insists on blocking these measures and bringing up their own partisan wish list instead does not make sense to me. But what makes even less sense is the egregious process they followed in considering this bill. The process, if you can even call it that, violated House rules and any notion of fairness. The bill was introduced on Monday night after being drafted in secret in Speaker Pelosi's office without any Republican input whatsoever. No committee held a hearing on it and no committee marked it up. That is violating the McGovern rule, which requires any bill coming before the Rules Committee to have a hearing and a markup in the committee of jurisdiction. The bill is 2,152 pages long, and I highly doubt that most Members have had time to read, review, and digest it in that short amount of time. I will say this, though: it does set a record. It spends $1 billion a page. That is pretty remarkable spending. When your process is that bad, no wonder the output is as bad as the bill we are considering today. The majority claims that today's bill is a scaled-down version of the Heroes Act, a bill we considered back in May. If the majority's funding calculations on the amount of money we are spending in this bill are accurate, that may be technically correct, but it still has the exact same policies and problems as the Heroes Act. This bill includes massive spending even in areas where we appropriated funds as part of the CARES Act in March and haven't fully spent them yet: funding for Democratic policy priorities at the expense of bipartisan ones; inclusion of provisions that are completely unrelated to coronavirus relief, like a complicated and controversial multiemployer pension bill, a provision revealing an existing provision of law requiring the auction of T-Band spectrum, massive student loan forgiveness, and the mandating of a national vote by mail. Some of these may deserve consideration, but what they are doing in a bill that is supposed to be about providing relief to Americans affected by the coronavirus pandemic is beyond me. Mr. Speaker, in any bill this size, it is inevitable that all Members will find at least one provision that they like, but it is the package as a whole that is offensive and objectionable. Drafted without Republican input and with nothing but Democratic ideas and extraneous policy priorities, it is doomed to the same result as happened the last time the majority tried this approach. With their actions today, we will not move the ball forward, we will not draw closer to a final deal that actually helps Americans. And what they will do is to continue to pass on the chance to actually work together as a bipartisan institution and to provide real help to the American people. Just as in May, the majority is putting up a partisan bill, when what we need is a bipartisan deal. We did that four times before, Mr. Speaker. If we chose to, we could do so again. They are doing the same thing again and expecting a different result. Mr. Speaker, it didn't have to be this way. There are many areas where we agree: Paycheck Protection Program; additional money for schools to reopen; a one-time payment of $1,200 per individual, $500 per child in households making less than $75,000 a year; additional money to speed the distribution of vaccines. Those are areas we could bring out one at a time or bundled together and pass. Instead, my friends have chosen to use a formula they know is doomed to failure. As to the amount, the President has actually been flexible. The original Senate proposal was $1 trillion, no inconsiderable sum of money, I might add. The President moved that up to $1.5 trillion. That wasn't good enough, even though many members of my friend's party actually supported that, the so-called Problem Solvers Caucus. So I don't want to belabor the point, but I know the difference between a serious effort to pass legislation that has a chance of passing in the Senate and being signed by the President and a messaging exercise, and that is all we are engaged in today. So it is indeed, Mr. Speaker, deja vu all over again. Mr. Speaker, I urge opposition to the rule, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. COLE

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman, my good friend, for yielding. I want to begin by responding to some of my friend's kind remarks, the chairman. We belong to different parties. We sometimes have our different points of view in the committee itself, which means on occasion we are going to be taking contrasting positions with one another, but I think one of the common traits that we have is that we both revere the institution of the House of Representatives and all of its procedures. I think we also really respect the staff, the personal staff, the committee staff, and, most especially, the professional staff of the House itself. What an extraordinary role they play in allowing us to do our job. Mr. Speaker, I rise to join Chairman McGovern in paying tribute to a dedicated public servant. Tom Wickham, the House Parliamentarian, has served this House with honor and distinction for the past 25 years and will be taking a well- deserved retirement at the end of this month. Tom has expertly advised five Speakers and countless Members and staff throughout his distinguished tenure. His exceptional knowledge and understanding of the rules, procedures, and parliamentary precedent has been invaluable to this institution, and he will be sorely missed. Mr. Speaker, I am also proud to congratulate Jason Smith, the current Deputy Parliamentarian, on his appointment as the sixth Parliamentarian of the House. The Rules Committee has the benefit of working with the Parliamentarian's Office, frankly, more than any other committee, and I have every confidence that Jason will lead the office with the same standard of excellence his predecessors, particularly Mr. Wickham, have set. Finally, Mr. Speaker, I just want to take a moment to thank Chairman McGovern for seeking my opinion during the process to select our next Parliamentarian. That is not something he was required to do, but it speaks volumes about his respect for this institution and the role that the Parliamentarian plays for the minority, particularly on the Rules Committee, that he was interested in our perspective on this important decision. Let me close with this. My friend, the chairman, said that Mr. Wickham had seen everything. Well, we are hopeful that you don't write about everything that you have seen, and that you remember us as fondly as we remember you. But the sad thing is not very many people get to see your work and what you and your colleagues in the Parliamentarian's Office have done for each and every Member of this institution. Even our own Members quite often don't understand how indispensable your decisions and recommendations are to each side, to facilitate a full and open debate, to make sure that every person has an opportunity to express their opinion in the appropriate way under the procedures and rules of the House. So I just want to personally thank you for the extraordinary job you have done for all of those who have the privilege of being Members and, frankly, for our staffs as well, who work so closely with you and whom you advise so frequently and so professionally. We will really, really, really miss you, but we thank you for making sure that we had an adequate successor in place in Mr. Smith and a superb supporting staff that reflects your leadership. So we thank you for your hard work in a very bipartisan way, your professionalism, your decency, and, frankly, the honorable way in which you have discharged your duties for 25 years.

Mr. COLE

Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I rise to oppose the rule for a very simple reason. It is a silly rule. It actually violates the rules that my friends passed at the beginning of this Congress. The legislation before us has not gone through any committee, has not been marked up, has not been debated, has not been amended. My friend said at the beginning of the Congress they wouldn't bring legislation like that to the floor, they conveniently waived that rule yesterday. So here it comes with no committee procedure or markup. We had a number of amendments, Madam Speaker, that were presented to the committee, none of them were made in order. I offered an amendment for what is called an open rule, where any Member could come down here and put forward what they thought would be a better idea since we had no opportunity to do that in committee. That too was rejected. So this rule is a take-it-or-leave-it ultimatum from the majority, and it means you can pass it in the House, but it is not going anywhere else. Now, let's turn to the bill itself. My friends say that--we are going to hear a lot of bad things about the Postmaster General in the course of the morning. I have never met him. I don't know him. The people that do know him say that he is a really good guy, but I don't know. We are going to hear a lot of terrible things about him. But at the end of the day my friends are going to vote to give him $25 billion, and they are going to do it in a bill that has no reforms in it, just says you can't change anything. Now, how smart is that? You can't change anything in an institution that is losing $8 to $9 billion every single year. We don't trust the person who heads this, but we are going to give him $25 billion. Do we need that money? Absolutely not. The post office tells us they have $15 billion on hand, they have access to a $10 billion line of credit that will more than take them for a year from now. So we don't need to be spending this money right now. It is a silly, silly bill. But I want to give my friends some free political advice. They want to pass this bill. They want to get it through the Senate. They want to get it to the President's desk. They want to get it signed. I believe that. If that is true, make it bigger. Do exactly what my friend, the distinguished chairman of the committee said, let's put some stuff in it that we agree on. The President of the United States says, I think every family in America that makes less than $75,000 a year needs help right now, they need $1,200 per adult, $500 per kid, that would be $3,400, a one-time payment for a family of four. Attach that to this, it would pass the floor unanimously in a bipartisan fashion and be picked up by the Senate. And the President said, through his chief of staff, I will sign something like that. You could do something a little bit different. We are all having our schools open right now all across the country. My friends passed $100 billion in the HEROES Act for it. The President said, actually, we think it would take about $105 billion. Put that on this and help every school district in America. But my friends chose not to do that, but if you do, it will pass here, it will pass the Senate, and the President would sign it. Let's talk about unemployment. The President said, hey, we think the $600 extra is a little high, but while we are negotiating, by the way, we will keep paying it. My friends on the other side said, no, they can do without the $600. And then the President said, well, we think $200 is the right number, but we can go to $400. Put that on here. Every unemployed person in America would get $400 a week. Right now, thanks to the Speaker and the minority leader in the United States Senate, they are getting zero. The only help they are getting is from the President who is using Herculean executive orders to try and get them some additional relief. So this is a joke. This is, as my friend the distinguished Member from Georgia said, a theatrical moment punctuating the two conventions, the Democratic Convention and leading into ours. No legislation is going to happen because my friends aren't serious about legislation. No money is going to get to the post office because it can't pass the Senate, and the post office doesn't need it anyway. So we are going to have an entertaining couple of hours. Fortunately, it is on a Saturday morning, so I don't think very many Americans are going to waste their time listening to this. When my friends want to get serious, when they want to negotiate, when they want to move something to the floor, we will be ready. With that, Madam Speaker, I urge rejection to the rule and rejection of the bill.

Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I want to thank my good friend for yielding and very much appreciate his leadership on our committee. Madam Speaker, I want to rise to oppose both the rule and the underlying legislation. Before I do, though, I include in the Record four newspaper articles discussing the majority's concern about the Postal Service. The first is a Wall Street Journal editorial; a column by Rich Lowry appearing in the New York Post; a column by Byron York, appearing in the Washington Examiner; and a column by Ruth Goldway, a former commissioner of the Postal Service, appearing in the New York Times. All four articles make it clear that the majority's reasons for bringing this legislation, frankly, are ludicrous, and that what they are proposing actually will make it more difficult to reform. [From the Wall Street Journal, Aug. 17, 2020] Nancy Pelosi Goes Politically Postal (By the Editorial Board) Speaker Nancy Pelosi is calling the House back into session this week to address fears that the U.S. Postal Service is being infiltrated by alien lizard people posing as letter carriers. OK, it isn't quite that bad. The actual conspiracy theory holds that President Trump is strangling the USPS to hack the November election. But talk about ``unsubstantiated,'' as the press likes to call Donald Trump's Twitter emissions. Democrats should be deeply embarrassed that their leadership has embraced such claims. Two Congressmen, including Democratic Caucus Chairman Hakeem Jeffries, wrote to the FBI on Monday to urge, if you can believe it, a criminal investigation of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy. ``This conspiracy theory is the most far-flung thing I think I've ever heard,'' says Stephen Kearney, who worked at the USPS for 33 years, including as treasurer and a senior vice president. ``DeJoy was not appointed by President Trump,'' but by the USPS's bipartisan governors. (Who, as it happens, selected him unanimously.) ``You can find valid operational reasons for the actions taken by the Postal Service so far,'' says Mike Plunkett, another longtime USPS executive who now leads the Association for Postal Commerce. ``In no way do I detect any criminality behind them, and I'm at a loss as to how one would reach that conclusion.'' The Democratic letter to the FBI cites news reports that the USPS is decommissioning hundreds of mail-sorting machines. But the context is that overall mail volume has fallen 33% since 2006. ``They've been taking machines out of service for years now, and I've been encouraging them to do it more aggressively,'' says Hamilton Davison, the president of the American Catalog Mailers Association. ``I think that's a good thing for America, because we don't want to pay for stuff that we don't need.'' Mr. Kearney, who now runs the Alliance of Nonprofit Mailers, concurs. ``It's obvious, to be efficient and not waste money, you need to take out some of that capacity,'' he says. His group has similarly been urging productivity improvements, ``because if they don't do that, our postage rates are going to go way up.'' A leaked USPS document floating in the online ether is titled ``Equipment Reduction.'' But it's dated May 15, and Mr. DeJoy took over June 15. Another claim is that the USPS is pulling blue collection bins off the street en masse. ``They're going around literally with tractor trailers picking up mailboxes,'' Joe Biden said last week. ``I mean, it's bizarre!'' The USPS says it has nearly 142,000 boxes across the country, which are adjusted as volume and costs dictate. In August 2016, the USPS's Inspector General said that ``the number of collection boxes declined by more than 12,000 in the past 5 years.'' Voter suppression by the Obama Administration? Alarmed Twitter users last week posted a photo of mailboxes on a flatbed truck in New Jersey. Oops: ``Morristown Mayor Tim Dougherty said the mailboxes were being replaced with new anti-fishing boxes,'' the local newspaper explained. On Monday the USPS said it would postpone this security upgrade for 90 days ``while we evaluate our customers' concerns''--in other words, to keep jittery partisans on the internet from losing their minds before Nov. 3. Mr. DeJoy is being knocked for trying to cut overtime costs. But is it any wonder? The day he was sworn in, the Inspector General reported that in 2019 the post office ``spent $1.1 billion in mail processing overtime and penalty overtime, $280 million in late and extra transportation, and $2.9 billion in delivery overtime and penalty overtime costs.'' For context, the USPS's overall loss that year was $8.8 billion. Mrs. Pelosi is trying to put on a political show, starring Democrats as the saviors of the post office. She says she wants to pass a bill that ``prohibits the Postal Service from implementing any changes to operations or level of service it had in place on January 1.'' Also in the mix may be a $25 billion cash infusion. Then Chuck Schumer will demand that the Senate come back to town for the same vote. By the way the letter-carriers union endorsed Joe Biden on the weekend. This is a made-for-TV phony political crisis. The USPS has long-term challenges, but enough money to last into 2021. Mr. DeJoy says there's ``ample capacity to deliver all election mail.'' Some states have startlingly lax ballot deadlines, but nobody can pretend with a straight face that it's the post office's fault. Democrats have also scheduled a hearing for next Monday so they can yell at Mr. DeJoy in person. How long before Rep. Adam Schiff says it's another Russia-Donald Trump conspiracy to steal the election?

Mr. COLE

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Duncan), my very good friend and distinguished member and leader on the Energy and Commerce Committee.

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I would inquire from my friend, is she prepared to close?

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Speaker, I want to begin where every other speaker has started, and that is to thank our distinguished chairman for her 30 years of unparalleled service to the Congress and to the country and, of course, her many years on Appropriations. I have had the good fortune since I arrived on that committee to serve with my friend and watch her steady rise to the chairmanship. And I think my friend, Mr. Diaz-Balart, summed it up, if you want to be short: What a class act. What an extraordinary appropriator. We all, on both sides of the aisle, respect her professionalism and her deep knowledge of the appropriations process. But I think even more than that, we just appreciate her personal qualities as a friend, as a mentor, as a colleague, and as someone who is an outstanding credit to her district, to her State, and to the Congress of the United States. Mr. Speaker, we will all miss her on both sides of the aisle. Having said that, I am going to be less charitable toward the bill itself. As I mentioned several times, I love the Appropriations Committee because I think it is a naturally collaborative committee, and when it is left to do its work, it does a really good job. Last year, we had a negotiated settlement between the President and the congressional leadership on both sides of the aisle in both Chambers in the 2019 Budget Act, and that led to a very orderly appropriations process under the leadership of my friend, the chairman. We got all those bills done. We didn't have a long-term CR, and we have not been at risk, in this fiscal year, of a government shutdown. And that is something you can't always say around here. My friend had a great deal to do with that, along with our ranking member, Ms. Granger, that legendary partnership between the two. If you let them do their work, they will get the job done. What is in front of us now, though, is not what we saw last year. My friends, for whatever reason, decided they would ignore the 2019 Budget Act, which has the force of law, and embark on an unprecedented amount of emergency spending, almost a quarter of a trillion dollars. And, again, none of that was agreed to last year. In addition, last year, the agreement was we would not put extraneous matters in the bill. We would not put legislative riders, as they are known. We didn't do it last year, and we moved through. This year, these bills are absolutely full of them. And the consequence, while these bills may pass this floor, they are certainly not going to be taken up as is by the United States Senate, nor would they ever be signed by the President. I think we have another model. We have the model of last year. We also have the model of the first four supplementals this year, Mr. Speaker. The four supplementals dealing with coronavirus were brought to the floor after collaborative discussion and negotiation and passed here with almost universal bipartisan support on each occasion. For whatever reason, rather than continuing that productive dialogue, our friend decided they would bring the HEROES Act. That is certainly their right to do that. But, again, if you are not involving Republicans in this Chamber in that discussion, then I can assure you you are not going to be in very good shape when you go to a Chamber where Republicans are actually the majority. Nor will you get the support of the President. And we are seeing how that is working out right now with respect to the next supplemental. The same thing could happen here. Mr. Speaker, I don't worry about that in the short term because, again, there are times in this process where it is partisan, and when we get to conference, quite often, it becomes bipartisan. But I do worry these departures are so large that we could find ourselves in September kicking into a CR and then, frankly, then we could do another one well into next year. That would be a mistake. That would be a mistake, in my opinion. The day-to-day funding of government ought to go on regardless of the politics of the moment. The emergencies need to be dealt with. And I think we have shown we can work together on emergency supplementals. We did them so quickly and so easily in an unprecedented way just in the spring of this year. So I would think we could return to that. And if we do return to that, I suspect our friends and I on our side can come to common ground and we can bring bills to the floor that command substantial bipartisan majorities, just as my friend, the chairwoman, did last year when she brought appropriations bill after bill after bill to the floor, and they were passed with substantial bipartisan majorities because she engaged, as is always her habit, in collaborative negotiation with friends on all sides of the Chamber. So with that, Mr. Speaker, I reluctantly urge the rejection of this particular minibus of six appropriations bills. I hope that my friends, as we go forward, will return to their habits in terms of the appropriations of last year and return to the style of negotiation that they exhibited all through the spring in dealing with this awful coronavirus crisis that has caused such turmoil and damage in our country. In closing, the last thing I would say is, again, it is a privilege for me to share the floor with my friend, the chairman. Normally, my ranking member would be here, but Ms. Granger, of course, is in self-quarantine because of coronavirus; otherwise, I know she would prefer to be here. But her misfortune at least gave me the opportunity to share the floor with my very good friend, our distinguished chairman. Mr. Speaker, I urge the rejection of the legislation, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 6 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Aderholt), my good friend, the ranking member of the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee.

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield the gentleman from Alabama an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. As the vice ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee, Mr. Speaker, I stand today in opposition to H.R. 7617, the second set of fiscal year 2021 appropriations bills to be considered by the House. This minibus of six bills includes the two largest, Defense and Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, as well as the titles covering Commerce-Justice-Science, Energy and Water Development, Financial Services and General Government, and, finally, Transportation-Housing and Urban Development. While I am always encouraged to see the process of funding government underway in Congress, Democrats, unfortunately, chose a deeply flawed approach in exercising this function for fiscal year 2021. Remember, nearly a year ago, Mr. Speaker, Congress passed and President Trump signed into law the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2019, which set budgetary levels for fiscal years 2020 and 2021. This bipartisan and bicameral compromise was the result of a good faith negotiation between the President and congressional leadership. Last year, my friends on their side of the aisle actually kept that agreement, and we had an orderly appropriations process, a successful outcome, and we have had no government shutdowns, no long-term continuing resolutions. This year, however, despite this existing agreement, Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee chose to write bills that greatly exceed the spending limits allowed for fiscal year 2021. In fact, they did so through extensive use of a budget gimmick that designates certain funds as emergency. Without question, there are many worthwhile items and priorities in these six bills before us, Mr. Speaker, but I remain concerned about the use of emergency designated funds as a workaround and scheme to break the budget agreement between the two parties and the President. In fact, in this bill alone, there is well over $200 billion of this so-called emergency spending, clearly in violation of the budget agreement. $186 billion is included in the infrastructure title without any bipartisan discussion or agreement. Another $24 billion is included to address the coronavirus, even though discussions and negotiations are underway on another supplemental specifically for that purpose. These funds were added without any consultation with House Republicans, with the Senate, or with the President, and without that consultation, they have no chance of becoming law. Now, let's remember, Mr. Speaker, some of the critical things these six appropriations titles are supposed to support each year: our dedicated servicemembers who put their lives on the line every day to defend and preserve our precious freedom; our courageous law enforcement officers who keep our communities safe; our hardworking small business owners and their workers who are seeking to achieve the American Dream; our vital researchers who are looking for lifesaving treatments and cures; our ports and waterways that are so critical to commerce; and, finally, they support our transit system upon which many Americans depend daily. All these things are put at risk, Mr. Speaker, unless Democrats and Republicans work together. Unfortunately, along with the unworkable approach taken in writing this package of bills, there are many partisan policy positions that must come out before it can become law. Many of these partisan provisions are similar to policies pushed through the House in recent months. Considering that the committee has had more than 100 hearings and briefings to make important funding decisions, it is disappointing that many of these provisions seem to have been dictated from the top. A few examples: The bill jeopardizes our safety and security by allowing terrorists detained at Guantanamo Bay to be brought to U.S. soil. It also includes language that would prevent the United States from exercising the right to defend ourselves and our allies, such as Israel. In a time when China is seeking to dominate the world order, this bill would undermine America's preeminence in space exploration and cede the opportunity to China to dominate the next frontier. Also concerning, this minibus plays into the dangerous narrative of defunding the police through its failure to provide adequate funding for our Federal law enforcement agencies. Moreover, State and local law enforcement agencies are barred from receiving excess equipment from the Department of Defense. As the ranking member of the Labor-HHS-Education Subcommittee, I am, of course, most familiar with the partisan provisions contained there. Indeed, the text of that bill includes a wide variety of harmful riders. First, it includes a partisan policy prescription that will tie the hands of the administration with respect to the Title X family planning program. Most notably, the riders would force the administration to resume grants awarded to controversial groups that provide abortions, such as Planned Parenthood, and it would prevent the administration from granting waivers that protect deeply held religious beliefs of institutions, organizations, and individuals that provide vital services funded in the bill. The Labor-HHS title also includes riders that would undo the Department of Labor's rule clarifying the joint employer standard. If this policy rider were enacted, it would cause chaos for thousands of businesses and millions of employees, leaving them uncertain about the nature of the employment relationship. Not to be outdone, this bill also includes riders micromanaging and second-guessing how HHS administers the Unaccompanied Alien Children Program, which will ensure that the individuals devoting their energies to assisting such unaccompanied minors will find themselves devoting their energy to becoming wrapped up evermore deeply in congressionally mandated red tape. Again, the same can be said for the other five divisions of this package. Throughout this minibus, the Democratic majority has inserted policy riders that tie the hands of the administration. They have limited the ability of the administration to reprogram funds, even when necessary. They have inserted rider after rider aimed at preventing the President from spending money on barriers and security measures at the southern border. And they have removed countless bipartisan policy provisions that have been carried in previous year's bills. When it comes to Congress' fundamental function of keeping the government open and operating, good faith negotiation must be present at every stage. In this era of divided government, that might be challenging, but we have proven time and time again that it is certainly not impossible. We did it when we negotiated the 2019 budget agreement. We did it again when we moved through an orderly process for the 2020 fiscal year appropriations bills. And, finally, we did it most recently on four separate occasions in dealing with the coronavirus. All of these successes were the product of bipartisan negotiation in divided government. In those negotiations, neither side can dictate to the other or jam the other, or failure will result. In the days ahead, Mr. Speaker, we must work together on appropriations bills that reflect the bipartisan budget agreement and leave out controversial policy language. Until we do that, no appropriations bill will make it to the President's desk, and we will run the risk later this year of either a long-term continuing resolution or even a government shutdown. For those reasons, Mr. Speaker, I stand in opposition to the second minibus package, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 7 minutes to the gentleman from Idaho (Mr. Simpson). My very good friend is the ranking member on the Energy and Water Development, and Related Agencies Subcommittee on Appropriations.

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from California, (Mr. Calvert), my very good friend, the ranking Republican on the Subcommittee on Defense Appropriations.

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Florida (Mr. Diaz-Balart), my very good friend and classmate.

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. To respond to my friend, I have no problems whatsoever with emergency spending. That is why we passed four bills. We work with our friends on the other side of the aisle to do that. I think where the mistake was made was the HEROES Act, where you decided you weren't going to work with anybody on this side of the aisle. You just jammed it through, and it has gotten nowhere in the United States Senate. The same thing is happening here. This emergency spending of enormous proportion that has been placed in this bill was done without any consultation with Republicans in the House, let alone with agreements with the Senate and the President, who would have to sign off on it. I don't think that is a productive way to proceed. I think negotiating together with one another, we show we can work together. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Washington (Mrs. Rodgers), a distinguished lady from Spokane, Washington, my good friend, and a distinguished member of the Energy and Commerce Committee.

Mr. COLE

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to immediately bring up S. 939, the CONFUCIUS Act, which passed the Senate by unanimous consent a month and a half ago. If enacted into law, S. 939 will address China's influence on American colleges and universities through Confucius Institutes, which are cultural institutes directly or indirectly funded by the Chinese Government. Specifically, colleges and universities receiving Federal funds will be required to certify that the institution ensures that any contract or agreement between the institution and a Confucius Institute includes clear provisions that protect academic freedom at the institution, prohibits the application of any foreign law, and ensures the institution retains full managerial authority over the Confucius Institute. Mr. Speaker, in recent years, Confucius Institutes have become commonplace among higher-education campuses. While ostensibly high- minded, these organizations are funded by the Government of the People's Republic of China and focus on a Beijing-approved view of Chinese history. They are noted for presenting Chinese Communist Party propaganda, ignoring human rights abuses in Tibet and among the Uighurs, and insisting that Taiwan belongs to mainland China. What is worse, Chinese influence on American campuses comes at a time in which China is engaged in ongoing efforts to steal American intellectual property and research, particularly in research institutions like those located on our higher education campuses. It is inarguable that Chinese espionage efforts like these pose a clear threat to national security. Passage of the CONFUCIUS Act would help close an open loophole on our college campuses currently being exploited by the People's Republic of China. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of my amendment in the Record, along with extraneous material, immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume to respond quickly to my friend. While we appreciate the number of amendments made in order, let's just look at the statistics. Twenty percent of all the amendments in this bill are Republican, 60 percent are Democrat, 20 percent are bipartisan. Frankly, I am pleased to have hit 20 percent, because for the year, we are down at about 17 percent of the amendments. So while we appreciate the difficult conditions, I also remind my friend that in the last Congress, when we held the majority, they actually always had more amendments than the Republicans did. So let's not get carried away with the difficulties of the situation or the fairness of the process. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Shimkus), my good friend, a distinguished Member, and an outstanding member of the Energy and Commerce Committee.

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I thank my good friend, the gentleman from Massachusetts, the distinguished chairman of the Rules Committee, for yielding me the customary 30 minutes, and, Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, today's debate is on a rule providing for consideration of H.R. 7617, which contains 6 of the 12 annual appropriations bills recently reported by the House Appropriations Committee. These six bills include the two largest, Defense, and Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, as well as the titles covering Commerce, Justice, Science, Energy and Water Development, Financial Services and General Government, and finally, Transportation, Housing, and Urban Development. Mr. Speaker, as a member of the Appropriations Committee, it is always encouraging to see the appropriations process moving forward. Passing these 12 bills is one of the biggest responsibilities we have as Members of Congress; to fund the government and keep it open and operating for our constituents. Despite that great responsibility, I am disappointed by the partisan approach taken by the majority in crafting the bills in this package, and I cannot support them at this time. I single out the majority in my comments because the 12 bills that were reported out of committee this year were all written to satisfy the concerns and wishes of one party, the Democratic party. While that is often how the appropriations process begins, it is ultimately never where it ends. At the end of the day, for us to pass 12 full-year fiscal year 2021 appropriations bills, in an era of divided government, it will require Members on both sides of the aisle and in both Chambers of Congress to reach consensus. That ultimately means that the partisan bills like those we are considering today are nonstarters and cannot become law. During markup on these measures in the Appropriations Committee and again yesterday in the Rules Committee, Republicans rightfully raised several reasons why these bills cannot become law and should not pass the House. Those objections were ignored. Consequently, today's bill will have very little, if any, Republican support. That means these bills are effectively dead on arrival in the United States Senate and would never be signed by a Republican President, and there are a lot of reasons for that. First, all 12 appropriations bills are marked at 302(b) allocation numbers that violate the fiscal year 2021 total spending limit negotiated in the current budget agreement just last year. Indeed, I remind my friends, Congress is lawfully bound to uphold that agreement. Instead of abiding by the negotiated numbers that were agreed to in both Houses of Congress by both parties and by the President, the majority has used a huge amount of emergency-designated funds as a workaround scheme to break that good faith budget agreement. In this bill alone, there is well over $200 billion in so-called emergency spending. That violates the budget agreement. This will make it much more difficult to negotiate final bills with the Senate that can actually become law. But what is more disappointing than the widespread use of budget gimmicks is the prolific use of partisan policy riders throughout the appropriations bills, including these six. These riders are simply unacceptable, and they must come out before bipartisan agreement can be reached. Consider the bill that I am most familiar with, which came out of the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Subcommittee, where I am the ranking member. The text of that bill includes a wide variety of harmful riders. In the first instance, the bill includes partisan policy prescriptions that will tie the hands of the administration with respect to Title X family planning. Most notably, the riders would force the administration to resume grants awarded to controversial groups that provide abortions, such as Planned Parenthood, and it would prevent the administration from granting waivers that protect deeply held religious beliefs of institutions, organizations, and individuals that provide vital services funded in the bill. The Labor, Health and Human Services title includes riders that would undo the Department of Labor's rule clarifying the so-called joint employer standard. If this policy rider were enacted, it would cause chaos for thousands of businesses and millions of employees, leaving them uncertain about the nature of their employment relationship. Not to be outdone, the bill also includes riders micromanaging and second-guessing how Health and Human Services administers the Unaccompanied Alien Children Program, which will ensure that the individuals devoting their energies to assisting such unaccompanied minors will find themselves devoting their energy, becoming wrapped up in evermore deeply and congressionally mandated red tape. The same can be said for the other divisions in this package. Throughout this minibus, the majority has inserted policy riders that tie the hands of the administration. They have limited the ability of the administration to reprogram funds even when necessary. They have inserted rider after rider aimed at preventing the President from spending money on barriers and security measures at the southern border. And they have removed countless bipartisan policy revisions that have been routinely carried in previous years' bills. Let me say it again: Partisan riders like these must come out before a bipartisan agreement can be reached. On top of this, while I understand we are living through unprecedented times and have had to rightly limit our physical interactions, I have serious concerns about considering these bills in a six-division, trillion-dollar spending bill. Debating these measures together as one shuts out the ability of most rank-and-file Members to have their ideas heard on the floor, or limits them to having their amendments included in massive all-or-nothing en bloc packages, and places many Members in an untenable all-or-nothing vote on both the en bloc packages and ultimately final passage of the bill. We can do better than that, Mr. Speaker, and we must do better than that. Mr. Speaker, I am still hopeful that we can reach a bipartisan appropriations deal for the full year. If we can get the prolific emergency spending and budget gimmicks out of these bills, and if we can eliminate all partisan policy riders, then I think the majority in the House will have a workable starting point to begin negotiations with the Senate toward a bipartisan deal. Under such circumstances, they would still not be the bills I would have written, but they would be a reasonable basis on which to begin negotiations. But until then, these bills are going absolutely nowhere. They will not pass the Senate, and they will not be signed by the President into law. Frankly, I do not believe they should be passed by this House, either. Mr. Speaker, I urge opposition to the rule and the underlying legislation, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I urge a ``no'' vote on the previous question, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time to close. Mr. Speaker, I want to begin by telling my good friend that I have many of the same concerns he does about the coronavirus crisis and the need to act on another bill. That is not what is before us today, but I look forward to when that time comes and we have a negotiated product to working with my friend and seeing if we can find the necessary support to make sure that is enacted into law. Indeed, the Senate is involved in doing that right now. What is before us today is the work of the Appropriations Committee of the House of Representatives, not coronavirus legislation per se, although there are certainly elements in this bill that deal with that. Let me again reiterate what I said just a few minutes ago: There are a lot of good things in these appropriations bills. Appropriators work hard and quite a few often work together. We have an excellent chairman and an excellent ranking member, and so we cooperate. So there are many good things in these bills. But what makes them fundamentally unacceptable is, first, a decision to insert almost a quarter of a trillion dollars of emergency spending that violates the budget agreement that my friends signed only last year. Mr. Speaker, if you need an emergency measure--that happens--then you sit down and negotiate with the other side about what the amount is and what the nature of the response is. There was no effort to negotiate with Republicans on this emergency spending--not in the House, not with the Republican-dominated United States Senate, and not with the Republican President. So these are just numbers willy-nilly sort of thrown in there, and they are not going anywhere. In that sense, we have wasted a lot of time. Second, my friends agreed, also, last year to no riders, no policy provisions in the bills. We will just have straight government funding bills. Last year, they did that. They kept that agreement last year. They kept to the top line numbers, and they kept to their agreements in terms of policy. We passed all 12 bills in a bipartisan manner. The President signed them, and we have enjoyed the benefit of that this year. We have had no government shutdown and we have had no crises. The work was done in a timely fashion. Why my friends abandoned a formula and an agreement that worked last year to do this is beyond me. Frankly, it smacks a little bit of election-year politics; but, regardless, the purpose is to fund the government and to keep the government working for all of our citizens, providing basic services. These bills won't do that because they violated an agreement last year and they contain things that my friends recognized a year ago that, if we do that, then we are not going to get to any agreement on spending. The same thing is true today. The political constellation hasn't changed. It won't change for the balance of this fiscal year, and it won't change for the balance of the calendar year. If we were serious about legislating, we would write real bills that adhere to the agreements that both sides make, not add additional hundreds of billions of dollars of spending and add additional policy provisions that we know the other side will not accept. Unfortunately, that is what is being done here. So I regret that. I hope my friends at some point will decide to come back and bargain. I suspect they will. They usually do. But we are wasting precious time now. We could have completed all these bills. Frankly, I will chastise the Senate here, too, because they are not moving very fast on the basic necessity of these bills. They have a tougher process. They can't just get a majority and ram things through the way my friends have the ability to do when they are in the majority and we have the ability to do when we are in the majority. It is a little bit different in the Senate of the United States. I recognize that. But we should make a contribution. We should have stuck to our agreement. We need emergency spending, which I think we do. That should come outside the confines of this legislation in standalone, emergency legislation agreed to by both sides negotiating in good faith. We have done that four times this year already. We are pretty good at it. If we would do it again for a fifth--and they are trying to do it now in the Senate--then I think we could deal with those other items that are in these bills that, quite frankly, belong in a standalone supplemental dealing with coronavirus. So, with that, I want to thank my friend for the time, and I want to thank him for the debate. As always, I look forward to working with him; but, for the moment, I urge the rejection of the rule and urge the rejection of the underlying legislation. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I just want to respond quickly to the overall thrust of what is in these bills. There is no question, as my friend from Florida said, there are a lot of good things in these bills. My friend from Florida is actually a distinguished member of the Appropriations Committee, one whom I have had the opportunity to work with on many occasions. We don't object to those. But what is undeniable is there is roughly $40 billion more in spending than my friends agreed to only last year. Now, that is a budget cap imposed by law. Occasionally, Mr. Speaker, you have reason to do emergencies. We are living through an emergency right now. But if you need emergency spending, you negotiate that with the other side. There was no negotiation here with Republicans in the House. You certainly negotiate with the other Chamber, Mr. Speaker, particularly when it is controlled by the other party. There was no negotiation with the other Chamber. And you certainly negotiate with the President of the United States--no negotiation with him either. It is just a number made up out of whole cloth to keep my friends from having to make some tough budgetary decisions that they agreed to make and passed into law only last year. The second thing, as I mentioned, is these bills are chock-full of partisan riders. That is just the reality. Now my friends know none of these riders are going to remain in these bills or the bills will never pass the United States Senate and never be signed by a Republican President, so I suppose they were put in there for some internal reason. I hope they are not put in there to keep us from going past the September 30 deadline, which all these bills should be finished by, into later this year or, goodness knows, next year, when my friends might think they might have a more politically favorable environment. That is a disservice. This Congress ought to get its job done. It can't get its job done when one side decides to break its agreement, add almost a quarter of a trillion dollars in new spending, and add dozens of new policy provisions that they know are unacceptable. We can have those debates. They are good debates to have, but they don't belong in the middle of appropriations bills. I am not naive enough to say that both sides don't do this. We certainly did it when we were in the majority on some occasions. But when we did do it, it always slowed down the process and made agreement more difficult. Last year, 2019, the President, the Speaker, the minority leader, the Senate majority leader, and the Senate minority leader sat down and negotiated a deal. They said that these are going to be the spending limits, and we are not going to put any extraneous things in these bills. To my friends' credit, last year they actually did that. They stayed within the limit that we had set, and they did not put extraneous things in the bill. Consequently, all those bills passed; they all got enacted into law; we have had no government shutdowns; and we have had regular order. Why they decided this year to abandon the agreement that they actually committed to last year and launch spending initiatives and policy initiatives that they said they would not do is beyond me, but I do remind them it will make it much more difficult to come to agreement. So, given that, and given the fact that my friends have not kept the agreement that they agreed to last year, assented to last year, I am going to oppose the rule and urge rejection of the underlying legislation. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.