Tom Cole

Mr. COLE

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I will not yield, and I do want to reiterate my previous announcement that all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only. I am not yielding for other purposes.

Mr. COLE. I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, again, I just want to make the point to my friend. Nobody is trying to strip away the rights from anyone. The 2008 law has been abused. Those people have found a loophole in it, and they have clogged the legal system. We have offered not a repeal, but a relatively minor fix. The President of the United States and his administration have also said this law is at fault. As a matter of fact, they are actually the ones who put that suggestion out there. The President of the United States is the person who said the vast majority of these people need to go home and will eventually go home. So if he has a better way to do this, we would love to see the proposal. What he sent us was a funding proposal with no fix at all. It is a proposal aimed at better managing the flow of people, but not reversing that. It is a proposal, frankly, that goes well beyond this fiscal year, well beyond this calendar year, and allows him basically to operate outside the budget agreement limits--the caps--that we have all agreed to. We don't think that is appropriate. We think you reprioritize money toward the more urgent issue. We agree with the President. This is an urgent issue. We are willing to find the savings in other parts of the budget. We are not willing to break the budget, and we are not willing to break the budget caps that both sides agreed to. That is really, I think, the essence of the difference. We are trying to offer a solution. It may not be the final solution. I hope the Senate will offer their solution. We can go to conference, and we can work with the President, but so far, the only ideas that have been put forward to actually fix the problem, I think, have largely come from our side of the aisle. I am sure that won't last indefinitely. I think my friends will do the same thing, but certainly, they dominate the Senate. The Senate can do the same thing. Sooner or later, they will get it done. We will continue to work on this, but for right now, again, nobody's aim is to strip anybody's rights away, but we are going to try to confront an urgent crisis, and we are going to try and do it in an expeditious way, in a responsible way, and in a limited way. We can come back here and look at the larger issues in September and after the election. With that, Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time. Parliamentary Inquiries

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 object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

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

Mr. COLE. I do not, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to close whenever my friend is.

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

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Woodall), my good friend, my colleague on the Rules Committee.

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

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

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time. Parliamentary Inquiry

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

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

Mr. COLE. I am prepared to close whenever my friend is prepared to close.

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. We have had a very passionate and--in many cases, compassionate-- debate. I want to recognize that quality in many of the speakers, my friends on the other side. I have no doubt about their passion. Frankly, I have no doubt about their compassion. I know they want to do the right thing. I also want to point out, Mr. Speaker, that this bill actually is, as my friend from Massachusetts suggested, a mechanism to keep us in session and working on the problem, so that we have the ability between now and September 5 to actually act and act quickly. I think that is a very important thing. It is important, too, to think back about the nature of the problem that we are dealing with. In the last 3 years, the number of unaccompanied juveniles arriving at our borders has gone from about 6,000 to--the estimates I hear this year will be somewhere like 90,000 and may well reach 150,000 within the next year or two. The administration, according to news reports and testimony, was actually warned about this in 2012 and 2013. Frankly, they didn't prepare for it. I am quite certain they didn't anticipate it. They actually submitted a budget this year that called for cuts in many of the areas that we are clearly going to need to deal with this huge--and unanticipated, I guess, on their part--influx of unaccompanied juveniles. Worth noting for the record, we actually restored a lot of those cuts in the foreign operations bill that has now cleared the full Appropriations Committee. I am glad we did. The administration then, when confronted with this crisis which it did not anticipate, told us this was due to the 2008 sex trafficking law. Frankly, I am somewhat skeptical about that because this influx didn't happen in 2009, 2010, or 2011. It only begun to be remotely visible in 2012. That coincides, by the way, with some of the President's unilateral abrogation of immigration law. I think that is probably more likely to be the cause, but regardless, the administration has pointed to the 2008 law. The President has done that. The Secretary of Homeland Security has done that. So far, they have offered no formal solution, although in testimony before the Senate, the Secretary of Homeland Security said he would like the law changed, so that people arriving at our borders are treated the same way as Canadian and Mexican juveniles. That was his request, not a repeal of the law, but that was--at least in testimony-- his suggestion. The President has said that, regardless, the great majority of these children will eventually be returned home. He sent us a request recently to deal with the crisis in terms of the financial resources that he needs. He did not send us a fix, he did not send us a proffered legislative solution, just simply a mechanism for money that would go around or go outside of the Ryan-Murray budget agreement that we had agreed upon. What has been our response? I would be the first to acknowledge this is a difficult problem to deal with. That is why the administration, I presume, has not offered us a solution. That is why the Senate, which tried to pass one yesterday, gave up and went home. It is not an easy problem. Indeed, yesterday, we weren't able to bring legislation to the floor that would actually address the problem. The difference between this body and the other body is this body decided to stay here and continue to work on it and try to come up with a legislative response. That response, undoubtedly, will include a fix, a tweak, an amendment to the 2008 law. If my friends have a better solution, then I would hope the administration or the Senate or somebody offers that. So far, it has been as if we blame the problem on the 2008 law, but we are told you can't change the 2008 law. That position is both intellectually and politically, I think, indefensible. If this is the problem, tell us how to fix the problem. If you won't tell us, we will suggest one, and that is exactly what we are going to do. We have also decided to look at the financial issue, and there is no question additional resources are needed to handle this influx, secure the border, add additional judges, and add additional courtroom facilities to handle an enormous backlog. So we say, well, we are not going to give you a 13-month blank check, but we will redirect resources from within the existing budget toward what we agree is a more urgent problem, and we will help you get through this fiscal year and this calendar year, and then let's sit down and talk about what is necessary for fiscal year 2015 and try to do that within the Ryan-Murray budget agreement. I think that is what we are going to do. So we are willing to work with the administration in these areas. I would also suggest, at the end of the day, the worst thing we could do would be to go home and not do anything. My friends have suggested-- and I think appropriately so--that you can't tell the President he is overreaching in one area and then is pulling back in another without providing legislative authority and legislative guidance. I think they are absolutely correct in that position. I have made that point myself both privately and publicly, but that is what we are going to try and accomplish. Hopefully, we can accomplish it today. If we do that today or this weekend, we will have done our part of the job. The Senate then, by the way, could reconvene and do its part of the job. Then we could go to conference, in working with the administration, and come up with something, but it does begin with somebody at least doing his job. That is what this House and that is what this majority is absolutely determined to do. Mr. Speaker, there is not much more that can be said on a resolution that is only 10 lines long. This resolution is important so that we can consider possible legislation in a timely fashion related to the border crisis. I would urge my colleagues to support the rule.

Mr. COLE

Mr. COLE. I will not yield until I finish my point. You have got plenty of time. I think you can make your points on your own.

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, on Wednesday, the Rules Committee met and reported a rule for consideration of three measures: H.R. 5230, the supplemental appropriations bill to deal with the influx of unaccompanied minors across the southern border; H.R. 5272, a bill that would prevent the administration from expanding the use of deferred action for individuals who are not legally present in the United States; and the Senate amendment to H.R. 5021, the Highway and Transportation Funding Act of 2014. The resolution provides a closed rule for consideration of H.R. 5230, the supplemental appropriations bill. This is consistent with the way all seven supplemental appropriations acts considered in the 110th and 111th Congresses were treated when my colleagues on the other side of the aisle were in the majority. The rule provides for 1 hour of debate, equally divided and controlled by the chairman and ranking member of the Committee on Appropriations, and provides for one motion to recommit. In addition, the resolution also provides that after the passage of H.R. 5230, that it be in order to consider H.R. 5272, a bill that would prevent the administration from expanding the use of deferred action for individuals who are not legally present in the United States. The resolution provides a closed rule for consideration of H.R. 5272, provides for 60 minutes of debate, equally divided by the chairman and ranking member of the Committee on the Judiciary, and provides for a motion to recommit. In addition, the rule also provides for consideration of a motion to disagree to the Senate's amendment to H.R. 5021, so we can send the bill that easily passed the House on an overwhelming bipartisan vote back to the Senate. Finally, the rule provides for same-day and suspension authority today to resolve any outstanding issues before the August recess. Mr. Speaker, this rule demonstrates this House's careful consideration of the President's supplemental request. Earlier this month, the President submitted to Congress a $3.7 billion request to deal with both the urgent crisis of unaccompanied juveniles crossing the border and with wildfires. Since then, Chairman Rogers, Chairman Granger, Speaker Boehner, and the Republican Conference have thoughtfully considered what resources the President needs to address this crisis through the end of the fiscal year. The result, Mr. Speaker, is a significantly pared-down piece of legislation. It provides $659 million to meet the immediate border security and humanitarian needs. This supplemental sends the message that this administration has been unwilling to send, that if you come here illegally, you will be deported. And it provides the resources to effect just that. It provides $334 million for Immigration and Customs Enforcement for boosted enforcement efforts, accelerates judicial proceedings by providing $22 million to hire temporary immigration judges and provide courts with video teleconferencing equipment, and makes smart policy reforms, like changing the 2008 sex trafficking law to require that all unaccompanied minors are treated the same, among others. These important policy reforms, which the President initially asked for, are a reasonable, thoughtful response to the tenfold increase of unaccompanied alien children since 2011. Mr. Speaker, the President's advisers warned him this crisis was coming back in 2012 and 2013, but he ignored that advice. In fact, Mr. Speaker, the administration has mismanaged this entire issue from the beginning. If the President's FY 2015 budget had become law, we would have seen a reduction of nearly 3,500 detention beds, a 2 percent reduction in ICE's investigative capacity, and a 12 percent reduction to CBP air and marine operations, all vital tools to deal with this problem. In addition, the President's budget request for the Central American Regional Security Initiative, which confronts narcotics and arms trafficking, gangs, and organized crime in that region and addresses border security deficiencies and disrupts criminal infrastructure, was actually proposed to be cut in the President's FY 2015 budget. The House FY15 foreign operations bill reverses those cuts and actually increases the resources to deal with these related problems. Mr. Speaker, at every turn, the administration has failed to address the border crisis adequately, and now the President wants a blank check to proceed. His aim is not to stop and reverse the flow of unaccompanied minors into this country. He merely aims to manage that influx more efficiently. The House cannot accept that. This legislation, H.R. 5230, adequately funds the shortfalls caused by this administration's policy by using existing resources. And Republicans are willing to provide additional resources should they be needed in FY 2015 appropriations, within the bipartisan budget cap set by the Ryan-Murray budget agreement. But we believe that this bill provides the appropriate resources at this time. In addition, Mr. Speaker, the bill provides for consideration of H.R. 5272, which would prevent the administration from expanding the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the so-called DACA program. I, like many of my colleagues, believe that DACA has incentivized juveniles to attempt the long and dangerous journey from Central America, with the hope of staying in this country permanently. Executive orders, like DACA, only serve to keep that hope alive. I believe it is important to send a strong signal that this program should not be expanded. H.R. 5272 does just that. Finally, Mr. Speaker, the rule would send back the original House- passed highway bill to the Senate. While I appreciate what my friends in the other body have been able to do, I believe it is important to provide Members the maximum amount of flexibility to craft a long-term highway bill. By accepting the Senate amendment, which would only provide adequate funding of the highway trust fund through mid- December, we would be effectively creating a new crisis in the middle of a lame duck session of Congress. Given the limited number of session days before the election, this does not seem like a prudent course to take. Instead, the House should return to the Senate its bipartisan legislation, which passed this Chamber by a vote of 367-55. In closing, Mr. Speaker, I believe it is important to move forward on these three important pieces of legislation before the August district work period. I urge support for the rule and the underlying legislation. I reserve the balance of my time. Parliamentary Inquiries

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, my friend is always a terrific and impassioned speaker, and I love to hear him. I genuinely do, but what he is saying is, frankly, at odds with the facts. Look at the record. It was the President in his budget who wanted to cut border security, cut detention beds, reduce aid to Central America, and reduce law enforcement. That was the President's proposal. Before this crisis, we had already corrected some of those mistakes in the FY15 Foreign Operations budget. So in terms of who has been willing to put resources not only in a law enforcement sense but in a humanitarian sense, it has been the majority side of the aisle, not the minority. Frankly, our plan will not increase suffering; it will decrease it. What will increase suffering is continuing to send the signal that coming here illegally will be rewarded. The challenge of that is, number one, when you encourage that behavior, we are destroying the societies from which those young people are coming. The officials of those governments have met with ours, and they say that we would like our children back. That is a terrible thing that we are doing to those countries. Number two, the people who are financing it, well-meaning people in most cases, trying to bring children into the United States, are turning their money over to criminal enterprises and cartels. They are strengthening the very people who are destroying their society and committing crimes across the entire region, not just our country. And finally, the children that are encouraged to come are young people, mostly juveniles from three countries and, frankly, are subject to a horrific and dangerous journey. Along the way, they can be pressed into sex trafficking. They can be turned into drug smugglers. They can be physically abused. We don't know how many of them never make it here at all. Any policy left in place that encourages that, wittingly or unwittingly, ought to be changed. Until the signal is sent unmistakably to these societies, don't spend your money, don't put your kids at risk, the flow will continue. Now the President of the United States, at least 2 weeks ago, said: The majority of these children are going to be returned. That is his statement, not ours, not us doing something that he said isn't going to happen. He said the overwhelming majority of these children will be returned. Doing this quickly and humanely might keep other children from following the same route. This is a tough, tough situation. It is a situation, quite frankly, that the President was warned would happen in 2012, was warned in 2013 by officials in his own administration, and ignored. You can see he ignored it in terms of the budget he actually proposed to present to Congress this year. Thank goodness we didn't actually do what he asked us to do. I think if you look at this objectively, you can see the President was overtaken by a crisis. He fumbled it and mismanaged that crisis, in my opinion, and now my friends on the other side of the aisle are trying to turn this into something that it is not. It is a border crisis debate and discussion. It is not an overall immigration debate. It is not a political stunt. We certainly didn't plan for this to happen. My friends clearly did not plan for it to happen. The President didn't plan for it to happen or he would never have submitted the budget that he did. So we are trying to respond quickly and expeditiously to a crisis. This is not, by the way, a once-and-for-all response. We are here in August. We will be back here in September. We will be back here after the election. We have an appropriations process, probably an omnibus bill waiting in the lame duck that will continue to address this, but something has to be done now. What the President requests, again, doesn't address the problem. It is an open-ended check and, frankly, sort of gets him off the hook until September 30, 2015, when we would have to come back here again. The bill in front of us is a much more prudent, much more targeted, much more thoughtful, and much, frankly, more efficient use of resources in the interim while we continue to work to get a handle on the situation. With that, Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks.

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I have a great deal of respect for my friend from the Appropriations Committee. He is an excellent legislator and tremendous Member. I am, though, going to point out the record of the Democratic majority the last time they were here and in control of what happened on the floor. In the 111th Congress, the final 2 years of Representative Pelosi's time as Speaker, the House never considered a single bill under an open rule--not one bill. That is the definition of a closed process. Under Republican control, the House has returned to consideration of appropriations bills under an open process, with 22 open rules. We had no open rules on appropriations when my friends were in the majority. This year alone, the House has considered 404 amendments during the appropriations process, and 189 of them offered were by our friends on the other side. When you actually compare the record overall, frankly, I think the comparison is much to the advantage of Republicans. So we are trying to deal with complex issues in a relatively short period of time. I know the Congress will be back in session in September. We will be working on the appropriations process in the lameduck again, so there are going to be ample legislative opportunities, but we are in a crisis situation, which we are in this case. We are trying to respond thoughtfully and expeditiously. We are trying to put resources toward the problem. We are trying to get at the core of the problem, which the administration itself a month ago identified as a 2008 law, but has now offered absolutely no suggestions how to fix. So we have not tried to repeal it. We have tried to tweak it and address the problem. If my friends have a better solution, we would love to hear it, but we haven't heard it. Instead, we have been told the 2008 law caused the problem, but you can't change the law. That seems to me both politically and intellectually indefensible. We are going to continue to try to solve the problem that has been identified by the administration. At some point, we hope they will join us in trying to actually correct the problem that they say exists. With that, Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. COLE

Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that when the House adjourns today, it adjourn to meet at 10 a.m. tomorrow.

Mr. COLE

Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.