Tom Cole

Mr. COLE

Mr. COLE. Mr. Chairman, I just want to quickly respond to my friend. I share many of his sentiments. I certainly don't like to see anybody furloughed. I was not in favor of previous government shutdowns. I thought they were quite counterproductive. This is, however, a unique case. The funds are already in existence. There is no savings. We are literally taking people out of work when we have funds set aside outside the appropriations process for them to continue their work. So in this case they really deserve to be excepted if we happen to make a mistake and stumble into a process like this again. Again, I don't disagree with my friend's sentiments about the larger workforce. I have never found these things to be particularly productive. Indeed, as I recall, in every case we have always gone back and made everybody whole, so really the ultimate loser has usually been the taxpayer because we paid for work, created uncertainty that our Federal employees didn't deserve, but ultimately compensated them. In this case, the funds are available. We should just keep people at work. They are doing an important job for the national security. So again, I would urge the passage of the amendment. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. COLE. Mr. Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I am offering a bipartisan amendment which prohibits the furlough of civilian employees while funds remain in the defense working capital fund. The services provided by working capital fund employees are already fully funded apart from the appropriations process. In fact, imposing furloughs actually costs the taxpayers more through delayed production, overhead increases, and the need for overtime or the transfer of workload to more expensive sources of work. The amendment will prevent that from happening again as it did in 2013. If working capital fund employees are furloughed, as they were in the last government shutdown, there will be no direct savings. Indeed, it will actually cost the taxpayers more money. The furloughs delay production, increase the overhead, and in some cases transfer workload to more expensive sources of work. Indeed, senior military officials have expressed publicly that working capital fund employees, such as depot and shipyard workers, should be considered for exemption from furloughs because the furloughs actually hurt readiness and increase costs associated with production delays. It is important to note that under this provision, DOD still has the authority to furlough working capital fund employees for disciplinary purposes. Further, working capital fund employees could be furloughed if funded workload dried up due to budget cuts or downsizing. Therefore, ending the threat of furloughs for these employees will save money, improve military readiness, and prevent needless delays and cost overruns from work that has already been funded. I urge the support of the amendment. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. COLE

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, today I rise to introduce legislation, the FDA Deeming Authority Clarification Act of 2015, to make a technical change to the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act (FSPTCA). The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act provides the framework for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to regulate tobacco products and products with nicotine derived from tobacco. Under the FSPTCA, the FDA was provided immediate regulatory authority over cigarettes, smokeless tobacco, and roll-your-own tobacco. Further, the FSPTCA allows FDA to regulate other tobacco products through a regulatory process. The issue that my legislation seeks to remedy relates to a specific date--the predicate/grandfather date of February 15, 2007. The FSPTCA specifies that any cigarette, smokeless tobacco or roll-your-own tobacco product that was in the market before February 15, 2007 is grandfathered and can stay on the market without manufacturers submitting applications to FDA approval, but FDA is still able to regulate these products. Manufacturers making changes to grandfathered tobacco products or introducing new tobacco products after this date are required to file an application with the FDA. Further, a manufacturer is able to file a more abbreviated substantial equivalence application if the manufacturer can demonstrate that the modified or new tobacco product is substantially equivalent to a tobacco product that was on the market before this grandfather date. For this reason, this date is doubly important because it serves as both the grandfather date and the predicate date. The FSPTCA further lays out that any products that came to market between February 15, 2007 and the date of enactment (June 22, 2009), or during the following 21 months (before March 22, 2011) were permitted to stay on the market, but the manufacturer was required to file a substantial equivalence (SE) for those products before the end of this transition period. Finally, no product may be brought to market after this transition period without authorization from FDA. Questions may be raised as to why the so-called predicate/grandfather date of February 15, 2007 was picked in the Act. If you look at the legislative history, February 15, 2007 was the date the Act was introduced in the 110th Congress. There was no other specific reason for the date chosen in the Act. Moreover, the 2007 date reflects the predicate/grandfather date for those immediately regulated products-- not for products that FDA could choose to regulate at a later time. On April 25, 2014, FDA released its proposed deeming regulation, which would grant authority for the agency to regulate cigars, vapor products and other products with nicotine derived from tobacco. However, in the proposed rule, the agency stated it would maintain the February 15, 2007 as the predicate/grandfather date for newly deemed products even though the FDA has the regulatory discretion to choose a different date. Notably, the FDA provided for a two-year transition period, similar to the 21-month transition period contained in the Act. The FDA claims that it lacks the legal authority to change the February 15, 2007 date even though it has used regulatory authority to make a number of decisions that were not spelled out in the initial Act. The agency should apply that same authority to altering the predicate/grandfather date for newly deemed tobacco products, while maintaining this important transition period. Should the agency choose not to alter the date, the February 15, 2007 predicate/grandfather date will make it costly and create significant barriers for the industry and the FDA to bring innovative new products that may significantly reduce the harms associated with tobacco to market, and could force the withdrawal of many products that have come to market since February 2007. The end result will be that newly deemed tobacco products would be treated much more harshly than immediately regulated products. Specifically, the ``look back'' period for cigarettes, smokeless tobacco and roll-your-own tobacco products was two years (June 2009 to February 2007) while the period for newly deemed products would be eight years (June 2015 to February 2007) if FDA meets its June 2015 target to publish a final deeming rule, and perhaps longer if FDA does not publish its final rule in time. It makes no sense that immediately regulated products--which Congress decided were most in need of FDA regulation--get such an advantage over later regulated products. In addition, applying the February 2007 predicate/grandfather date to newly deemed products or failure to provide for a transition period will immediately and dramatically add to FDA's enormous backlog of SE applications, which stands at thousands to date. Even though the FDA already has this authority, the legislation I introduce today will underscore that FDA should choose a new grandfather/predicate date each time the agency deems new tobacco products. Specifically, the bill would make the grandfather/predicate date for newly deemed tobacco products the effective date of the final rule and mimic the 21-month transition period provided for cigarettes, smokeless tobacco and roll-your-own tobacco. Accordingly, on the crucial issue of path to market, later regulated products would be treated no better and no worse than immediately regulated products.

Mr. COLE

Mr. COLE. I thank my friend for yielding, and I thank my friend for leading us in this genuinely somber and extraordinarily important moment not only for our State and, certainly, for what was then his district but, I think, for Americans everywhere. Twenty years ago on April 19 of 1995, we saw a domestic tragedy of historic proportions. It is still the largest single act of domestic terrorism in American history. It was totally unexpected, totally unanticipated, and extraordinarily devastating to the people involved and, I think, to the country as a whole. But sometimes out of a tragedy of that proportion a triumph emerges, and that is certainly what occurred in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995, and on the days that followed. Our first thoughts on the 20th anniversary is always of the victims-- of the 168 lives who were lost, 19 of them children, unknowing that disaster was about to overtake them--and of the many dozens who were wounded severely and who still, to this day, carry those injuries with them. Next, we think always of the first responders, particularly of the Oklahoma City fire and police officers who immediately rushed to the scene; of the surrounding fire and police departments that were rapidly mobilized to assist them; of the Oklahoma National Guard, which was there within a matter of hours; and, frankly, of the rescue teams from all across the United States of America that immediately moved in our direction to help our people. I think of the people of Oklahoma next, who, stunned, rallied with enormous speed and with great courage to try and support, in each and every way that they could, the folks whose lives had been lost and the people who were still in danger. I still remember that day at the Governor's office--at the end of the day, at 2 o'clock in the morning--and driving from the capitol toward my home in Moore, Oklahoma, and seeing a line of people outside the blood center. At 2 in the morning, they were still there, wanting to help and be supportive in whatever way that they could. We were really blessed at that particular moment in the history of our State and in the history of our country with extraordinary leadership. I think, first, always--because I worked for Governor Keating as his secretary of state--of the manner in which he responded. Like my friend Mr. Lucas, I heard about this totally unexpectedly. I was, literally, walking into the capitol at 9:02, in the tunnel, and I felt a little shudder. When I walked into my office, my secretary immediately walked in and said, ``Your wife is on the phone.'' She was working two blocks away from the site of the bombing, and she was on the 18th floor of a building. She said, ``I don't know what has happened, but I am looking down, and I can see enormous smoke--an explosion occurred--rolling out, and there are hundreds of people on the street, fleeing from this disaster.'' My office was below the Governor's office on the first floor of the capitol, and I went up. This was maybe 8 minutes into the event. I walked in because I knew the Governor would be focused on this, obviously. He was standing in the press room immediately to the right as you walked in, and at that time, there were already helicopters in the air, and, on the scene, we were seeing the horrific sights. The speculation immediately was that it was some sort of natural gas explosion. Well, Frank Keating, who was our Governor, was also a former FBI agent who had been trained in investigating terrorism in the 1960s. He was a former Tulsa prosecutor, a former U.S. attorney, a former Associate Attorney General of the United States, and he knew what he was looking at. He immediately looked at that television set, and I will never forget what he said. He said: ``That is not a natural gas explosion. That is a car bomb of some sort.'' He knew instantly what he was dealing with. On that day and on the subsequent days, he led with extraordinary distinction in mobilizing resources, leading from the front, being on the front line. It was an exceptional act of public leadership from an official who was less than 100 days into his first term as Governor of the State. Equally impressive was the leadership of his wife, our first lady, Cathy Keating. Most of America knows of the memorial service that took place on the Sunday after the disaster. I remember the night after the disaster my being at the Governor's Mansion. We still didn't know how many people had been lost, and we didn't know if there were survivors still in the building. There were search teams. We were dealing with a disaster of national and of, really, international proportions. Cathy Keating came to the meeting and said: ``We need to have some sort of service to memorialize the people who have been lost. People are grieving, and they want to participate.'' I remember thinking at the time, my goodness, how in the world can we ever pull this off? We are dealing with more than we can deal with, let alone organizing something like that, and I made that point. She said, ``Don't worry. I will take over,'' and she did. America, not just Oklahoma City and Oklahoma, was given a moment to mourn, a moment that attracted the President of the United States, Billy Graham, a national audience, and thousands of Oklahomans who simply wanted to get together and pay tribute to those who had lost their lives. It was an exceptional act of public leadership on her part. The two of them set up a foundation to take care of the educational needs of anyone who had lost a parent, let alone two parents, in the course of that, and that institution still functions to this day. Again, exceptional leadership. We have had other moments of tragedy in our country, like 9/11, and just as Rudy Giuliani was quoted as being ``America's mayor'' on that day, Ron Norick in Oklahoma City was ``America's mayor'' that day. It was an amazing performance as he got together his police and his fire firefighters and was immediately on the scene. He is one of the greatest public servants who I have ever seen. I would be remiss not to mention my friend behind me, Mr. Lucas. As he alluded to in his remarks, that was his district office one building over. That was a place where he was in and out of a lot in the Federal building. My task as secretary of state, assigned by the Governor, was to work in Washington to try and coordinate with the Federal Government long-term rebuilding efforts. Nobody did more to rebuild Oklahoma City than Frank Lucas. Nobody did more to help secure the funds, get the national support, work with us to get out of the requirements. We had to match this with 25 percent because this was not a natural disaster. This was literally an attack on a Federal facility in Oklahoma City with a unique Federal responsibility. Those were all things that Frank Lucas got done for not just the people of his district, but the people of our State; and, frankly, in that, he set some precedents that served the people of New York on 9/11 awfully well in addition. The last person I want to mention is the President of the United States at the time. I am a pretty good Republican, and I can't say I ever voted for Bill Clinton, but I was very glad he was President of the United States at that moment. Nobody helped us more. I will never forget 1 p.m. the day of the disaster. We had moved the Governor to a civil defense facility below ground at the Capitol--he was directing affairs there--and we got a call from the President of the United States. I did not know it at the time, but they--Frank Keating and Bill Clinton--had actually gone to school together. They were both at Georgetown together. Frank Keating was president of the student body when Bill Clinton was president of the sophomore class, so they knew one another. The first thing that the President asked was: Governor, do you have any idea who is responsible for this? There were, of course, all sorts of wild reports on television, wild speculation. The Governor, being a law enforcement professional, immediately responded: Mr. President, we have no idea. We do not know who would do this. I know you are hearing foreign terrorists or all sorts of things. We just don't know yet. It is too chaotic for us to know. President Clinton at that point said something that really struck me, and struck me more later. He said: Well, I hope it wasn't a foreign national. And I remember being almost shocked that you would hope that, you know, an American had done something this awful, but then he added, prophetically, as it turned out several years later: Because if it was, we will be at war someplace in the world within 6 months. He was absolutely right. He, too, understood the dimensions of the tragedy. And in the days ahead, everything we asked for and all the resources and compassion that a great people like the United States of America and its citizens can muster was immediately at our disposal. I remember President Clinton, when we announced we were doing the ceremony, we were discreetly approached by a member in his administration, who said: You know, the President would like to be here, but we certainly don't want to be here if it is inappropriate. I said: Look, I have to go clear that with the Governor, but I can tell you, I know what Frank Keating's response is going to be. Of course, we would welcome the President of the United States. He did, indeed, come. He not only helped us through it, he helped us emotionally through it, as did the First Lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton, at the time also made that journey and was there to help and comfort people. So we may have our political differences from time to time as Americans, but in times of tragedy, we stick together. We come together; we pull together; and we work to help one another, and certainly President Clinton did that. Finally, let me just make this observation and this expression of gratitude. I want to use this occasion to thank the millions and millions of Americans who responded with their prayers, with their help, the rescue workers that came, the donations that flowed in from all across the country to help the victims and the families of the victims, that came, frankly, from around the world, because we had international help as well. I want to remind people that whenever they lose faith in the United States of America or just the sheer decency of people, think of the Oklahoma City bombing; think of the magnificent performance of this country, not just of the people on the scene, but of the support this country directed toward its fellow citizens in a time of difficulty, and of the many prayers and expressions of goodwill and condolence from around the world as people rallied in the face of what was an unspeakable act of terror. So we had our moment of tragedy, but we have had 20 years of triumph since then; and that triumph is not just the triumph of the people of Oklahoma City or the people of Oklahoma, it is an American triumph, and it is a human triumph of enormous dimensions and of great consequence.

Mr. COLE

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend for yielding. I want to pick up and thank my friend and thank our chairman of the Rules Committee for doing exactly what he just suggested, bringing us a rule that lets everybody bring their choices to the floor. That is what we all like to do around here. Interestingly enough, we essentially have three Democratic choices and three Republican choices, and we are going to have an opportunity for people to express a variety of opinions and arrive at a consensus in this body. Now, obviously, as a Republican, I like all three Republican alternatives pretty well. I think my friend Mr. Woodall has always worked on the Republican Study Committee budget; it gets us to balance faster than anything else on this floor. The reality is, if you look at the three Republican budgets, they have several things in common. The first is they make tough choices because we have got an $18 trillion debt; and, just left on autopilot, that will increase by another $7.2 trillion. It aims to bring these things into balance, and each one of those Republican budgets does that--the Republican Study Committee budget a little bit faster--but all within the 10-year budget window. Second, they all repeal ObamaCare--not a big surprise. No Republican voted for it. We have never liked it, and it would be remiss of us not to continue to argue our position. Third, they all call for major tax reforms. We all know that lowering rates, eliminating exemptions, and rationalizing the Tax Code contributes to economic growth. They all, frankly, defend the country pretty well. We do it in different ways, and we have debates, but they all manage to do that, and none of them raise taxes in the process of achieving those objectives. I am pretty content with the Republican choices in front of us and look forward to that. I think it behooves us all to remember--and it gets lost in this debate--a budget is not the law of the land. The budget is, essentially, a negotiating position. The President submitted a budget earlier. That is his initial negotiating position. Whatever emerges from this debate today is likely to be the Republican initial negotiating position. My friends on their side will present a budget today which I presume represents their initial negotiating position. They have also got other budgets within the context of that--perfectly appropriate. We do, too, but they will have a general position. Our friends in the Senate, on both sides of the aisle, are wrestling with this very issue as we talk. Now, we seem to forget, as we draw our differences and distinctions here, we do live in an era of divided government; and despite what many people think, we do occasionally come to compromises around here. Now, I am pretty pleased we have lowered the budget deficit every year that we have been in the majority, but that has entailed some compromises. We compromised in the Ryan-Murray agreement. That was actually a pretty good agreement that both sides were happy with. Frankly, this week, we will probably compromise on the so-called doc fix, the SGR. We compromised last December on the CR/Omnibus bill which, again, gave us some fiscal stability. I suspect, as we all define our initial negotiating positions, at some point down the road, we will indeed compromise. The President of the United States has got a signature that is going to have to happen to any appropriations bill. Our friends have a filibuster control in the upper House. My hope is we state our positions. I am very content with where we are opening this debate; and then, frankly, over the course of the months ahead, we work together and see if we can find that common ground. That common ground ought to do what the Republicans are trying to do in terms of lowering the deficit, reforming entitlements, not raising taxes, and moving us in a fiscally responsible direction while we modernize our Tax Code. That is our opening position. I look forward to defending it. I thank my friend Mr. Woodall for bringing this excellent rule to the floor, which allows everybody to put forward their position. Mr. Speaker, I urge support of the rule.

Mr. COLE

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. It is very important when we look at this extremely significant piece of legislation to recognize, as my good friend from Wisconsin said, this is a trust obligation of the United States Government. This isn't a housing handout. This isn't some special deal. This is something, an obligation that we assumed in negotiation with tribes over many decades, many different situations. If people are living in Indian Country, particularly on reservations, and don't have adequate housing, the Federal Government has a responsibility to do something about it, something we have recognized since the 1960s, something, as my friend Mr. Pearce said, we institutionalized in 1996. This has been a good program for a long time. It has been a block grant program, which has empowered tribes. One of the things I love about this legislation is, in a bipartisan sense, we continue to do that. We provide a lot more flexibility for tribes to actually control their own affairs, meet their own needs. As Ms. Moore suggests, we all wish the sum could be more. $650 million is a lot of money, but spread across a population of almost three million individuals and over 57 million acres, an area of land about the size of Wyoming, it is maybe not as much as we would like, particularly given the severe needs, but it is a good faith effort, and it is appropriate given the difficult financial times we are in. Again, we have had tremendous support across Indian Country. As both speakers previously mentioned, National Congress of American Indians, particularly the National American Indian Housing Council, has worked hand-in-glove with Members on both sides of the aisle to build this program. My friends were very fulsome in their praise for various Members, and I wouldn't disagree with anybody they mentioned, but I have got to hold, particularly, Mr. Pearce up not only for his tremendous work on this, Ms. Moore as well, but for their persistence in this. They brought this legislation to the floor in the last Congress, having worked out the difficulties, formed a bipartisan compromise and coalition and, frankly, brought their leaders along with them, I think, educating their respective leaders in the process. We got that through the House last time on a bipartisan basis. The Senate wasn't able to act, and I am very pleased to see that they have come back again this quickly in the session. Hopefully we will have a little bit better response on the other side. I don't think there was any opposition; they just didn't get it done in the press of business toward the end of the year. They are going to have plenty of time to do that. This is an excellent piece of legislation. As my friends have both suggested, it is an example of how well we can work together when we focus on the problems instead of sometimes the partisan and philosophical divisions that separate us. I reflect, as I am looking here on the floor, that I usually like to think of myself as a rightwing conservative Republican, but I can't get to the right of my friend Mr. Pearce, as hard as I try; and my friend Ms. Moore--we have worked together on TRIO programs, on violence against women, now on this--is certainly well to the left of me on a lot of issues. So anything that can bring the three of us together is pretty inclusive in this body, and you won't have much excuse. I am particularly pleased to see my friend Mr. Kildee on the floor, who continues a family tradition of working in the forefront of Native American issues. It is a good piece of legislation. It has been worked on hard by people that really know what they are doing. They brought the body along. So I certainly urge its passage and again want to congratulate, particularly, Mr. Pearce and Ms. Moore for their absolutely stellar work in this case. It would not have happened without their efforts.

Mr. COLE

Mr. COLE. I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Speaker, I share the outrage of my friends over the President's actions because I don't think there is any question that is why we are here. The President did something that most of us, I think, on our side of the aisle believe was unconstitutional, illegal, and ill-advised. Secondly, I share my friend's anger at the United States Senate. I think it is reprehensible not to pick up a bill and act on it, not to go to conference. That is exactly the way we are designed to work. We know that, frankly, the Democratic now minority, thankfully, in the Senate has operated that way for 4 years. I am not surprised, having operated that way in the majority, that they continue to operate that way in the minority. But every now and then, you need to take a step back and recognize we are not the only place where these issues get thrashed out, and we are not the only players in this drama. Indeed, we have been very fortunate on our side of this debate. We have been joined by 26 State attorneys general who hold exactly the same view that we do and have taken the President of the United States and the administration to court and have prevailed in the first court case, as my friends have pointed out. In addition, they have won an injunction so that the President cannot do the very things my friends are concerned about that he wants to do. So we not only have the court, at least to this point, on our side, but we have it in a venue where you actually can win in the end. We are not likely to be able to do that in the Congress, given the Democratic control of the filibuster in the other body and the Presidential veto at the end of the process. In the courts, you can actually win. It is a constitutional issue. It ought to be settled constitutionally through a judicial process. Since we have stopped the President, since we are prevailing in court, it seems to me the logical thing to do is what the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Dent) suggested and look at a bipartisan compromise bill that protects the American people from real and physical harm and danger at the moment that we are sorting out our constitutional political differences in the appropriate format. That is all this bill is about. It was agreed to in a bipartisan fashion. It was agreed to in a bicameral fashion. The reasons why we were concerned about it or used it have now been addressed by the courts. So I would urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, let's set aside our differences. They are going to be resolved in the appropriate way, in the appropriate fashion, and in the right forum. And let's do the right thing for the American people, pass this legislation, and make sure that our fellow citizens stay secure.

Mr. COLE

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Let me return the focus for a moment at least to the matter at hand, the legislation in front of us. In response to my good friend from Massachusetts' concerns, remember, the provisions in the tax legislation that we are considering have been routinely enacted for years under both Democratic and Republican Congresses and Democratic and Republican administrations. They are so automatic that they are essentially part of the existing Tax Code. Frankly, I predict once we get to the legislation, probably we will have dozens of my friend's colleagues vote in favor of these. That certainly was the case last year when similar provisions were brought to the floor. There will be a lot of Democratic votes for the very bills that are under consideration. Mr. Speaker, I agree with my friend. We do need a larger overhaul of the entire tax system. He is totally correct at that. We made some progress in that regard last year. I have no doubt that is exactly Mr. Ryan's intent. The reason to act on these measures and others like them now that will be part of any final package is to simply give our fellow Americans--businesses, workers, and people that want to make charitable contributions--tax certainty early in the year, so they can go ahead and make their actions knowing that this legislation is in place. I am not convinced that none of these will be taken up by the other side in the other Chamber. We will see. It is an unpredictable body, but we will see. Mr. Speaker, I want to compliment my friend from New York, the gentlewoman who is the ranking member on Appropriations. We have gotten 95 percent or so of government funded in large part due to her efforts in conjunction with our colleague, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, and she was a big reason that that got done and got done in a bipartisan manner. We passed legislation across this floor with the gentlelady's help, quite frankly. So all of us, myself included, owe you a debt in that regard. I do point out that the legislation on homeland--we have acted on that. Now, my friends have said, Well, perhaps you should sue the President. That is a good suggestion. About 30-odd States are doing that right now. He is in court because the action he took, in their view, is going to cost them millions and millions of dollars. My personal view is perhaps the House should somehow associate itself with that lawsuit. That is not my decision to make, but I think that is an appropriate thing to do. Mr. Speaker, this was an action that was extraordinarily provocative by the President. The President has a long history of using immigration as a political issue rather than viewing it as a problem to be solved. When he ran for office in 2008, he said he would have an immigration bill on the floor within 100 days. We had a Democratic Senate and a Democratic House, and we never saw the bill. Then we didn't hear much about it for 2 years because he was busy running for his own reelection. Then later, we heard a lot about it. The President said he was going to act before the election. Then he pulled back from doing that because he thought, Well, electorally, this may not be advantageous. But the minute afterwards when he thought it was to his political advantage, he rolled it out again. So let's be real here about how serious this effort is, but it will be challenged in court. In terms of this body, again, it has passed appropriate legislation on funding. It has done exactly as my friend from New York suggests, use some of the tools that are legitimately at its disposal. That bill now rests in the Senate. If the Democratic minority in the Senate will allow it to be brought up, I would not expect it would come back exactly as this House fashioned it. They simply just need to do their job, send something back, go to conference, and we can act on it. They have had lots of time to do this. This was moved over there weeks ago--or a couple of weeks ago. The real problem here, Mr. Speaker, is the United States Senate, because of the obstruction of the minority, is simply choosing not to act. As soon as they act, I think we will probably move pretty expeditiously, find some common ground, and address my friend's concerns because I think they are very legitimate concerns and very appropriate in terms of getting the Homeland Security bill done. It is a good bill. The underlying bill that my friend was part of negotiating was an excellent piece of bipartisan, bicameral compromise. If the Senate would simply take up the bill in front of them, I think we could get to the point we could have an agreement in rather short order. Mr. Speaker, I will continue to hope that the Senate actually does its job. In the meantime, 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 such time as I may consume. Again, let's go back over a couple of points in the process where my friends and I disagree. Again, tax legislation normally comes here under a closed rule-- almost always. Democrats do it; Republicans do it. The second point: I bet you that these provisions that we are discussing here today will at some point this year, if not in this legislation, almost certainly--as a matter of fact, certainly--be extended and placed. All we are trying to do is move them early so people know for sure it is going to happen and can plan and act accordingly--and, frankly, dozens of my friends who will vote for this, almost certainly, when it is actually considered on the floor. Nothing unusual or extreme here. It is just simply a way to try to give a break and a little advance notice to hardworking men and women that run small businesses all over America. On the Homeland Security issue, again, this is now in the Senate. This body has acted. The Senate can literally do whatever it chooses to do. We have had several suggestions of what Republican leaders can do or what Democratic leaders can do. Right now, the Democratic minority has chosen not to allow debate to occur, not to act on the bill. If they simply act on the bill, I suspect it will change. It will not look exactly like what we sent over. All they need to do is actually legislate. Now, this is the oldest book, evidently, in the minority party on the other body's playbook, because, again, they did it when they were in the majority. They just simply refuse to vote on things. We don't have a broken House. We certainly have differences of opinion in the House, but at least we act and actually move legislation across the floor and put it in the other Chamber. All we are asking of Democrats and Republicans alike in the other Chamber is just do your job. Just send us something. We will go to conference with you. We will hammer out a compromise, and we will go on from there. So this sort of deja vu all over again, I agree with that. We saw a Democratic majority in the Senate blocking action on almost any legislation, didn't pass a single appropriations bill last year. We now see a Democratic minority trying to do, in the same body, essentially the same thing. So, hopefully, that lesson will be learned at some point over there and they will just simply pick up legislation and begin to move it. If they do, I think we can find a lot of common ground on a lot of important issues. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Speaker, let's go back to the beginning of this debate and make sure that folks are very clear about what we are talking about. We are talking about extending tax breaks that have routinely been extended for years--that Democrats have extended, that Republicans have extended--that, frankly, have not been paid for in the past, and that will most certainly be part of any overall package that is enacted. We are simply saying let's make sure people that have a benefit bestowed in these areas know and can calculate and make business decisions accordingly early in the year instead of scramble at the very end. It simply makes sense, and it is simply fair to the American taxpayer. That is important to remember. Also, it is important to remember that the underlying legislation is extremely bipartisan. The only part of this process that will be partisan is the normal procedural part, where it is almost a sort of shirts and skins game where Democrats all vote against a Republican rule--we do exactly the same thing when we are in the minority--and our people mostly vote for that rule, and I think probably certainly will today; and then we will actually have a vote on the underlying legislation, and many, many, many Democrats will join almost all Republicans and vote for it. So we think it is a good piece of legislation, and we also think it is part of an incremental effort. We think Mr. Ryan will bring other bills like this to the floor but also will, in time, make an overall proposal on tax reform. Then we will see if our friends are really serious about engaging in that debate. I am not questioning my friends on this side of the aisle, but I do have some serious questions about how serious the President is about tax reform. But, again, we will see. Finally, we have had a great deal of discussion about Homeland Security. And, again, just to be clear, this House has acted and fully funded Homeland Security. The Homeland is done. It is funded through the end of this month. We have got legislation that we have agreed on. The President, in my view, provoked a crisis by acting unilaterally. That view, by the way, is not just a narrow view by a few people. He is in court defending his actions. Over 30 States are involved in a lawsuit against him because of what he did. He knew it was going to be controversial. He waited until after the elections to try and pick a fight and I think probably try to cover up a little bit for how poorly his side did in that particular election, anything to change the topic. So now we are here. The House has reacted to that, I think, in an appropriate form and has sent it to the Senate. In the Senate, the Democratic minority has simply refused to allow any debate. They can do that under the Senate rules--and I respect that process--but let's be clear about who is stopping the funding of Homeland Security. It is actually Democratic Senators, who won't allow a measure to even come up for debate. Now, if that measure came up for debate, what this House passed, I would suspect that it would be changed in some ways. I do not expect the Senate will do exactly what we suggest and think they should do. They very seldom do that. If they will just do that, we will arrive at, I think, a common agreement; we will go to conference; there will be the normal give-and-take in politics; and we will reach an agreement. My friend is concerned about the openness of the process. Again, I point out that, when we deal with this kind of legislation, it is normally a closed rule, and this has been pretty routine stuff. I commit to my friend on this point: we will actually be much more open in the appropriations process than my friends were when they were in the majority. They almost never brought bills to the floor, and when they did, they actually, for the first time, brought them under closed rules. We will bring our bills to the floor under open rules, and that is normal in the appropriations process. I think, if you actually look at the record of the two majorities side by side, you will find that there were a lot more amendments made available to Members of both sides under a Republican majority than has been the case when my friends were most recently in power. Mr. Speaker, in closing, again, I want to point out that the legislation in question is routine, and it should be enacted on a bipartisan basis. We have the potential, if the Senate will act, to actually put it on the President's desk. I don't think he would actually veto it if we did, but, again, that would be his call. I urge my colleagues to support this rule and the underlying legislation.

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 101 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern), 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 ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks.

Mr. COLE. On Tuesday, the Committee on Rules met and reported a rule for consideration of two important pieces of tax legislation, H.R. 644 and H.R. 636. The resolution provides a closed rule for consideration of each bill and provides for 90 minutes of debate equally divided between the chairman and ranking member of the Committee on Ways and Means on each bill. In addition, the rule provides for a motion to recommit on each bill. Mr. Speaker, most of my colleagues will remember the House's consideration of H.R. 5771, the Tax Increase Prevention Act of 2014, in December of last year. At that time, more than 50 individual tax extenders were retroactively extended for the 2014 tax year, giving businesses just 12 days to make complicated investment decisions. That is no way to run a business. Every time I am at home I hear from Oklahomans who either work for or own small businesses. Without fail, they tell me that certainty is what they need most from Washington. But too often Washington tells Americans who operate and work in small businesses to ``trust us.'' We promise to extend X or Y or Z tax provision indefinitely. Unfortunately, those Americans can't take that to the bank. They can't take our word that we will actually be able to deliver on the promises made by Congress. The only thing they can rely on is the law. If our tax laws expire every year, it injects an uncertainty into the business environment that inhibits economic growth. Even though we were able to retroactively extend those tax provisions at the end of last year, they are already expired again. Instead of continuing this cycle of uncertainty, it is important to put these tax cuts in place early so that we don't end up in a situation like we did last year. I applaud Chairman Ryan for beginning early with provisions we all agree on. This rule will provide for consideration of permanent extension of seven different tax provisions, provisions like section 179 expensing and provisions like extending the deduction of IRA distributions to charities. All of us, Republicans and Democrats, have supported these measures in the past, at least on a temporary basis. These are tax provisions that we retroactively extended less than 2 months ago. Why shouldn't we make these popular tax provisions permanent and do it now, not retroactively late in the year? Mr. Speaker, some have criticized this legislation because it ``isn't paid for.'' I think Chairman Ryan said it best in the Rules Committee on Tuesday. These are provisions of the Tax Code which we routinely extend, year after year. They are effectively part of the existing Tax Code. Permanently reauthorizing them reflects the policy this country has maintained for years, under both Republican and Democratic administrations and Congress. And doing so provides business with the certainty that they desperately seek. Finally, Mr. Speaker, I want to take a few moments to note that just as we have had to examine and pare back the discretionary side of the budget, we need to examine and pare back the tax side of the budget. There are over 200 tax expenditures--or spending on the ``tax side'' of the ledger--that, if all are extended, will cost the Federal Government more than $12 trillion over the next 10 years. Many of these provisions are worthy, but many others should clearly be eliminated. The sheer complexity of the Tax Code and associated regulations should push us towards reforms so that our Tax Code works for us all in the 21st century. Mr. Speaker, I want to commend Chairman Ryan for beginning this process in earnest and look forward to the consideration of additional measures at the appropriate time. I urge support for the rule and the underlying legislation. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. My good friend from Massachusetts covered a lot of ground. I am not going to try to deal with every single issue that he raised in my response. But let me point out a couple of facts. First, my friend is concerned about the deficit, and I appreciate that. But this is a rather new, novel idea for Democrats. When the Republican majority actually took power, the deficit was $1.4 trillion a year. It is under $500 billion, which is still way too high. But this majority has taken deficits extremely seriously and has lowered them every year. Second, my friend is worried about the cost of these tax cuts. That is amazing to me because when they were in the majority, they routinely extended these same tax credits without paying for them year after year after year. So the sudden conversion to paying for tax cuts is new and remarkable and probably worth some consideration. Third, my friend is worried about this coming to the floor under a closed rule. Frankly, tax legislation always comes to the floor under a closed rule. It is pretty hard to make calculations otherwise. And that was true with Democrats. It is true with Republicans. In this particular case, I am informed that the minority was offered a chance to submit an alternative proposal in the form of an amendment and chose not to exercise that right. That is certainly their right. But if they wanted an alternative, it could have been made in order. They chose not to do that. My friend raised the issue of Homeland Security. And on this, frankly, we all are concerned. I think all Americans are worried. I think where we disagree is, this House has acted. It has fully funded and passed, and we are waiting on the Senate to do something. Now, what is happening in the Senate? My friend alluded to the fact that the Republicans were somehow responsible for this in the Senate. As he well knows, the Republicans on three occasions have tried to bring the bill that we passed in this Chamber to the floor for consideration. The Democratic majority on all three occasions have kept them from reaching the 60 votes that Senate rules require. Why? Because they simply don't want to vote on anything. We lived through 4 years of a Democratic majority that never brought appropriations bills to the floor. They have already had more votes under the Republican leadership in the other body in a matter of weeks than they had all of last year. The Democratic majority in the Senate didn't want a vote. The Democratic minority in the Senate evidently does not want a vote either. And that has frustrated, frankly, both sides and has kept legislation from coming to be. That is just simply the reality of it. We will wait to see what the Senate does. I would not expect them to pass exactly what we pass over here. If they would simply allow consideration for a bill, something would emerge. We would go to conference. We would hammer out our differences, and we could move on and fund the Department of Homeland Security. But right now, this is a Senate issue. This is not a House issue. And this is a question as to whether or not Democratic Senators will allow their own body to function. That is in their hands, not in ours. Frankly, I think that we will, unfortunately, see a lot of this in the course of this session. We will send legislation over. Democrats will try to keep it from being considered. I think they will be offered the opportunity to consider that legislation over and over again. I hope we don't see this pattern repeated time after time after time. With that, Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. COLE

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I was unavoidably detained and not present for roll call vote number 32, Salmon of Arizona Part B Amendment No. 4 to H.R. 240. Had I been present, I would have voted ``YEA'' on the amendment.

Mr. COLE

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, during rollcall vote No. 24, on agreeing to amendment number two to H.R. 185 by Mr. Johnson of Georgia, I was unavoidably detained and unable to cast my votes. Had I been present, I would have voted ``no''.

Mr. COLE

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

Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Kingston), my good friend, our distinguished parting Member and the chairman of the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Subcommittee of our Appropriations Committee.

Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Madam Speaker, I want to thank my friend for his very generous and kind words and remarks. There is nobody seriously I enjoy listening to more on this floor. I very much appreciate his generous offer which I know he has made to people far above my pay grade on my side of the aisle to work together and find common ground not only here in the closing days of the session, but next year as well. I appreciate the fact that he is willing to accept over 99 percent of this bill, and I agree with his political assessment. I think we could muster strong bipartisan majorities to pass that. The issues he raised I suspect are being considered and are a little above my pay grade to comment on, so I am not going to do that, but I do want to tell my friend how much I respect him and how much I appreciate his contribution each and every day to how this House operates. I think we would have been in a much better place here as Democrats and Republicans had the Senate done a better job of doing its job. Madam Speaker, I will disagree with my friend a little bit or maybe express a different opinion on saying we did seven-twelfths of our job. My friend has been a distinguished majority leader in this institution, and I think he is a master at the legislative process and knows probably better than most how difficult it is to function on one side of the rotunda of this Capitol Building when they are not functioning on the other. You do reach a point after you have put seven bills on the floor and the other body has made it obvious that they are not going to put a single appropriations measure on the floor, your own side begins to wonder: Why are we doing this? Why are we going through this process? Now, we did go ahead and move through full committee 11 of the 12 bills which were again done in a bipartisan fashion with consultation with our friends on the Democratic side. You do reach a point where you say: Why are we wasting the floor time? Why are we exposing our Members? I am hopeful when our friend in the chair arrives at the other side that we are going to have partners that work with us on both sides of the aisle and engage in that normal process that I know my friend is not only a master at, but a defender and advocate for.

Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Two quick points. As I think I pointed out earlier in the course of this debate, the language dealing with swaps was actually considered by this House in two separate pieces of language. One of those bills passed this House with a bipartisan majority. The other was the Financial Services bill, where there was no objection, no amendment, and no complaint. Now we find at the very last minute concern and objections that were never raised earlier in the process when there were multiple opportunities to do that. With respect to my friend's point about the political contribution issue, that is something I know a little bit about. I used to be chief of staff of the Republican National Committee. I was the executive director of the NRCC, our campaign committee, earlier in my life. I have watched McCain-Feingold over the years, and I have seen that, frankly, it has been a failed piece of legislation. I agree with my friend's point this is not the way to do it. I would have much preferred to debate in an open process, but the idea there is not big money in politics I think is an idea that is very much out of date. There is lots of big money in politics. We have diminished the importance of individual candidate campaigns and the party organizations, while we have enhanced them partly through a Supreme Court ruling. So there is plenty of extra money out there, and it pours into races. To marginalize the political parties, which are actually the most accountable, most transparent, and most responsible participants in the process, is something that we ought to rethink. Frankly, to put candidates individually at the mercy of megadonors on each side--by the way, my friends are as much at risk of this as my colleagues on this side of the aisle--is something we need to think about. Again, I suspect that is what happened here. I wouldn't suggest this was a Republican idea. I don't know, frankly, if it was a Republican or Democratic idea. I know Democrats in the Senate consented to it and I suspect participated in it. So let's not have a lot of show that we don't like this or that and somehow this was a Republican measure. In many cases it wasn't, or it was a negotiated compromise. In this case, again, there will be ample opportunity to deal with this both later when we vote on the final product and eventually when the Senate takes it up. But, again, if the Senate would just do its job, we wouldn't be here in this process. We wouldn't have these opportunities for people to short-circuit the normal legislative procedures that I know my friends agree with, and I certainly agree with. With that, Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I just want to make this point again. I agree with some of the points my good friend from Mississippi makes, but this could be avoided if the United States Senate had simply picked up appropriations bills and passed them. This could have been long done. We could have come to an agreement many months ago. We tried on seven different occasions and did bring bills across this floor. They were under open amendment, something my friends did not do their last year in the majority, and we had multiple opportunities. But at some point when the other body isn't moving and tells you it is not going to take up an appropriations bill, you just quit hitting your head against the wall and say, ``Well, I guess we are going to have to deal with this with a big omnibus at the end of the year.'' If my friends wanted a different process--and I am sure they did-- they should have been talking to their colleagues in the United States Senate. That is why we are here, not because we wouldn't bring bills across but because the Senate wouldn't. At some point, if one-half of the Congress won't work, the other half can't get its work done. That is just the process and the way it works. We are hoping the new Senate under new management will do something. We all know in this Chamber the only reason why they did that was because they wanted to avoid tough votes. Quite frankly, that is the reason why my friends wouldn't allow an open amendment process the last time they were in the majority. It didn't work well for them in 2010; it didn't work well for their Democratic colleagues this time around in 2014. I think the lesson both of us ought to draw from this is, let's do regular order. It actually is in the best interests of the country, the best interests of the institution. It is even in the best political interests of the two parties. Just let us go do our work. But we can't now shut down the government because the Senate refused to do the process any other way but do it here. And, again, with all due respect to my friend's concerns on a variety of issues, some of which I share, quite frankly, there are even some parts of this bill that I like that I don't like to see passed this way. I don't think it is appropriate to be passed this way. At the end of the day you have got to keep the government functioning. This is the last vehicle to do that. To suggest, again, it wasn't bicameral or bipartisan--it has been. As my friends know, this has been negotiated at the top levels of leadership and on the Appropriations Committee between Democrats and Republicans in the House and the Senate. There are some flaws in this process. There are certainly some things I don't like in this bill, but I recognize it is a gigantic compromise and one designed to allow government to continue to function, and it hasn't been the House of Representatives, either Democrat or Republican, that has gotten us to this point. This is the Democratic leadership in the Senate that has gotten us to this point. But at the end of the day, everybody here will have a vote, both on the rule and on the bill, and the same thing will be true in the United States Senate. The President has a signature at his end of Pennsylvania Avenue, and if this process doesn't work or my friends want to bring it down, that is up to them. We would prefer not to close the government, to continue to function. With that, Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I am going to disagree with my friend from California. This bill is bipartisan and bicameral. It was negotiated with the Democratic Senate, and both sides approved it before it was ever submitted to the Rules Committee for consideration. It has been alleged that the swaps push-out language contained in the omni was snuck into the bill, that it allows for risky trading and puts taxpayer funds at risk. None of this, in my view, is true. The language included in this omnibus is identical to H.R. 992, which passed the House with broad bipartisan support by a vote of 292-122. The language was added to the Financial Services appropriations bill as a full committee amendment. After a public debate on the language, it was adopted by voice vote. When the Financial Services appropriations bill was considered by the full House for 3 days under an open rule, where 51 amendments were considered, there were no amendments offered on the swaps push-out language. The omni provides a commonsense fix for section 716 of the Dodd- Frank. Risky swaps like those that brought down AIG are still required to be pushed out. The omni allows low-risk trades to continue to be conducted by depository institutions, which are regulated by banking supervisors. Without this fix, farmers and manufacturers will experience increased costs and regulatory burdens without making our financial system any more stable. Former Fed Chairmen Ben Bernanke and Paul Volcker and former FDIC Chair Sheila Bair have all expressed a need to fix section 716 of Dodd- Frank. CBO has scored this language as having no impact on the taxpayers. So we obviously see this differently than our friends on the other side. With that, Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. COLE. Well, I have very little time and actually less time than my friend has, so I would prefer you to use your own time. If they are not willing to give you any time, then perhaps I will reconsider that. With that, Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.