Tom Cole

Mr. COLE

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 164, (H.R. 1412--Improving Job Opportunities for Veterans) had I been present, I would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. COLE

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 165, (H.R. 324--To grant the Congressional Gold Medal, collectively, to the First Special Service Force, in recognition of its superior service during World War II, as amended) had I been present, I would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. COLE

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I was unavoidably detained and missed rollcall No. 152 and No. 153. Had I been present, I would have voted ``aye'' on rollcall No. 152 and ``nay'' on rollcall No. 153.

Mr. COLE

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, the sad tale of Benghazi is a story of complacency, incompetence, and coverup: complacency in the face of repeated warnings by the CIA and diplomats on the ground that the post was in danger; incompetence in preparing for a potential attack in a region in turmoil in a place where we had multiple military assets and on a day where we had every reason to believe trouble would occur; and an attempted coverup of a successful terrorist attack with talk about videos and spontaneous riots when the State Department, the CIA, and top officials in the administration knew the truth. Mr. Speaker, it's time for the administration to take responsibility, come clean, and dismiss those associated with this debacle that cost the lives of four brave Americans.

Mr. COLE

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend for yielding. I have the privilege, as Mr. Woodall mentioned, of serving with him on the Budget Committee and serving with him on the Rules Committee, and being a fellow member of the Republican Study Committee with him. And I want to thank him for all he's done, quite frankly, to fashion both the Ryan budget and the RSC budget, and to bring us such an excellent rule today. Writing a budget in the end is always about making choices. And, fortunately, this rule provides this House with multiple choices, a variety of options, and a great deal of time for debate. We'll have an opportunity to debate the budget offered by our friends in the Congressional Black Caucus. We're going to have an opportunity to debate the Progressive Caucus's budget, the Republican Study Committee's budget, and what we think will be the Senate budget--or at least as close to it as we can determine at this time. Obviously our friends on the other side of the aisle will present their substitute budget, and we'll have the underlying budget, the so-called Ryan budget, the Republican budget. So I think those are a lot of choices that this body will have to work through in the next couple of days. I'm proud that this rule allows that degree of choice and facilitates debate. Personally, I support both the Republican Study Committee budget, and should it fail to achieve majority, the underlying Ryan budget. Both of them make tough choices. First and foremost to me, they both come into balance. Now our Republican Study Committee budget, which my friend Mr. Woodall had more to do with than any other Member in crafting, comes in a little faster. I actually think that's a good thing. But the Ryan budget also comes into balance within 10 years. That's important not just for the sake of bookkeeping; it's important because we all know that private sector growth depends on the confidence that taxes aren't going to continually go up, and that the public sector will remain in check. I think by giving that kind of assurance, both of those budgets facilitate what I know all of us want, and that's the creation of more and better jobs for the American people. After all, if budgets that never balanced and record deficits got job creation, we would be coming off the four best years in modern American history because we've had four $1 trillion deficits in a row, another that will ``only be'' $850 billion this year. That has yielded us less than 2 percent growth a year. We all know if we took the number of Americans that have left the workforce and recalculated our unemployment rate, it wouldn't be 7.8 percent; it would be about 10.5 percent. So the path that my friends on the other side recommend doesn't work, and the balance in both the RSC budget and the Ryan budget are a much more promising course. And they achieve that balance while not raising taxes. I think that's very important, too. We certainly aren't undertaxed in this country. Now my friends on the other side clearly believe that we are. They are going to offer multiple tax increases in all their budgets. I like a budget that does not require tax increases. Finally, both these budgets, the Republican Study Committee budget and the Republican budget, come to grips with the reality that we have to reform entitlements. Now we have our preferred way of doing that, but there could be others. Unfortunately, our friends on the other side are largely silent about that important choice. As my friend, Mr. Woodall, mentioned in his remarks, the Ryan budget in particular is hardly a radical budget. It's going to increase spending every single year over a 10-year window by about 3.5 percent. The main Democratic alternative is at about 5 percent. Can't we live at 3.5 percent and have a balanced budget in 10 years as opposed to going to 5 with higher taxes and not balance the budget within that 10-year window? Again, I'm proud of my Democratic colleagues for joining in the debate. I appreciate the fact that they're going to put multiple budgets on the floor. I wish the President's budget was available. I'm going to assume some day it will be. It should've been here months ago, quite frankly. But sooner or later he will get it into debate. In my view, all of the Democratic budgets are unacceptable for three very simple reasons: each and every one of them calls for much bigger government, much bigger than we've had historically, and all of them call for higher taxes. And frankly, most of them never, ever, ever balance at all--not in 10 years, not in 20, not in 30. So effectively, our friends are offering more expensive government, bigger government, and an eternal and ever-expanding debt. I don't think that's a choice that the American people want to make. I want to urge support of this generally excellent rule. It provides every Member of this House an opportunity to participate in this important debate. I want to urge passage of the Republican Study Committee budget, and failing that, the underlying Ryan or Republican budget.

Mr. COLE

Mr. COLE. I thank the gentleman. Madam Chair, I want to thank my good friend, Mr. Young, for bringing this amendment. Nobody has worked harder or worked longer for Native peoples in this Chamber than my good friend from Alaska. And the fact that we would guarantee this, I think, is an important recognition of how difficult the circumstances are for much of the Native population in the country. The Bureau of Labor Statistics does not actually keep statistics on Native American unemployment, but anybody that has ever been to a reservation knows that we have plenty of them in the middle of States with very low unemployment rates where the unemployment rate on a reservation will be 75 percent or more. So, again, I want to thank my friend for making sure that important resources are directed toward an often neglected population. I want to thank him for his many years of work in this area and look forward to working with him as we move forward.

Mr. COLE

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. It was once famously observed that the inhabitants of the United Kingdom and the United States were two people divided by the same language. Evidently, that applies to the people of Massachusetts and the people of Oklahoma. I want to thank my good friend, who kindly sent me a note. I had mentioned if you're from Oklahoma, we would say he's from Worcester, but he said it's ``Worcest-ah.'' So I want to get that right, and I want to thank my friend for correcting me. That's probably the only place my friend and I will agree, and I'll agree that it was appropriate to correct me. Let me just make a couple of simple responses to what my friend had to say. I don't want to re-debate sequester. He and I had an opportunity to do that in the context of the continuing resolution last week. But the idea that that was somehow partisan, when over 50 of my friends' colleagues voted for it on final passage, strikes me as odd. It was, actually, quite bipartisan, and we began a process in that that is going to result in saving the American people $1.2 trillion. We think we made initial steps in improving the bill. It appears to us as if that same process is working now on the other side of the rotunda amongst our friends in the Senate, and so we're working our way towards a responsible piece of legislation, operating through regular order and trying to find common ground. We're not happy with the sequester. We tried to fix it a couple of times, as my friend recalls. Neither the Senate nor the President ever took us up on that offer, so we worked hard. Now we found another route. Perhaps we can keep working and find some common ground in some other areas. As to this bill itself, let's just go back to the specifics. All we're doing is making sure that the work requirement stays in place. I'll make a rather bold prediction and say after the rule vote is over, probably a lot of Democrats will vote for that legislation. They'll vote for it for two reasons: First, it reauthorizes TANF, which is a good thing. We agree on that. It's a good piece of legislation. And certainly we should provide the neediest of our people certainty through the end of the fiscal year, as opposed to the end of March. So I think that's an effort by both sides to do the right thing. But second, if there's a misunderstanding here and we misinterpreted the administration, fair enough. I don't think we did, but regardless, let's just make absolutely sure and pass this legislation. If we both agree on it, it shouldn't be a point of a great deal of contention. And with that, Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I want to take a moment and respond to some of my friend's concerns and points. First, simply on sequester, with all due respect, I'm glad there's an interest now. There wasn't an interest last May when this House passed legislation. The Senate never picked it up; the President never offered a counter. There wasn't an interest last December. There seems to only be an interest here in the final, waning days. Now, we actually think we're proceeding in the continuing resolution, perhaps in the upcoming budget debates, and perhaps later on in ways where we can come back and work in a bipartisan fashion. But our efforts to do that were twice rebuffed, and now we're beaten up for not doing it a third time. I think two chances is about as many as you get. And, again, we'll try to find another way to work with our friends on this thing. As for the job loss, I couldn't agree more with my friend. This is a tremendously bad thing for the economy. This is not the right way to do things. We would have preferred to have done it differently. Now, you can always arrive at some interesting figures on job loss. According to the CBO, the Affordable Care Act will cost 800,000 jobs. I doubt my friends would work with us to repeal that and save those 800,000 jobs. They've got other objectives there. Our objective in the entire sequester effort is simply to begin to lower the long-term debt for this country, a debt that is going to undermine the economy and destroy many, many, many tens of thousands of jobs in the coming years unless we deal with it. We're making that effort today in the Ryan budget, in the Budget Committee. That will be on the floor next week. I know my friends will have an alternative for that. I welcome that. I'm glad they're doing that. They did not do that when they were in the majority. The Senate finally, for the first time in 4 years, looks like it's going to put out a budget. It's not a budget that I would like, but they're going to put one out; and I think that's a very good thing. So, again, I see some little gleams and glistenings of progress around here. And I do want to thank my friend because we have worked together in the last 70 or 80 days on some significant things. I worked with my friend on the fiscal cliff. I worked with my friend on Hurricane Sandy relief, worked with my friend on violence against women; and I very much appreciate his kind words about that. So I actually see opportunities in front of us, as well as obvious differences and debates that we're surely going to have. Mr. Speaker, in closing, I believe that the underlying bill provides additional certainty for those currently on the TANF program and ensures that their benefits will not lapse at the end of the month, something I know that my friends are concerned about, just as we are, and want to ensure that that doesn't happen. In addition, it maintains the bipartisan work requirements that this administration professes to support, but has clearly created some doubt about. So let's give them the opportunity, through this legislation, just to make sure that there's no misunderstanding, that both parties and the administration want to maintain the work requirements. In closing, I would urge my colleagues to support the rule and the underlying legislation. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution.

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, on Tuesday, the Rules Committee met and reported a closed rule for consideration of H.R. 890, the Preserving Work Requirements for Welfare Programs Act of 2013. The rule provides for 1 hour of debate equally divided between the chairman and the ranking member of the Committee on Ways and Means. In addition, Mr. Speaker, the rule provides one motion to recommit with or without instructions. It was not the intention of the Rules Committee, Mr. Speaker, to have a closed rule. However, the committee received only four amendments, one of which was withdrawn. The remaining three amendments were all subject to points of order for germaneness and other violations of the rules of the House. Unfortunately, we are left with little choice but to propose a closed rule. Mr. Speaker, H.R. 890 would prohibit the Secretary of Health and Human Services from issuing waivers relating to compliance with the work requirements for welfare recipients, which were created under the historic 1996 welfare reform law. These work requirements have led to more work, more earning, less welfare dependence, and less poverty among low-income Americans. Additionally, H.R. 890 incorporates the text of H.R. 987. H.R. 987 extends the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families programs, also known as TANF, which is due to expire on March 27, through the end of 2013. Mr. Speaker, the Welfare and Medicaid Reform Act of 1996 made historic changes in the way our country treats its most impoverished citizens. Generally, the reforms offered States new flexibility in designing welfare programs. However, in exchange for that flexibility, strong new Federal work requirements were put in place. These requirements specified the minimum number of hours per week an individual must engage in either work or work-related activities and penalties for failure to comply. What were the results of the 1996 reforms? Well, let me just go over a few. America saw the greatest reduction in poverty among children since the 1960s. The employment rate for single mothers in 2010 is higher than it was in 1996, even though the unemployment rate itself has almost doubled during that period of time. Poverty among single mothers has fallen by 30 percent. The list of successes associated with the law, which I must stress was bipartisan and worked upon by both parties both in this Chamber and obviously by President Clinton, goes on and on. In addition, Mr. Speaker, the Welfare Reform Act specifically prohibited waivers of the new TANF work requirements. Under both Republican and Democratic administrations, it's been assumed that these requirements could not be waived. However, the current administration, through a so-called ``informational memorandum''--I'm frankly not quite sure what that is--has decided it does have the authority to waive these work requirements. Mr. Speaker, the bipartisan compromise that was drafted in 1996 has done a good job in reducing poverty in this country and improving the lives and the prospects of those mired in very difficult circumstances. We should not allow the administration to undo, by an informational memorandum, what the Congress and Presidents in the past have been able to accomplish by statute. Mr. Speaker, this is a good bill and a good rule. I urge the support of the rule and the underlying legislation, and 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, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 107 and ask for its immediate consideration.

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

Mr. COLE. I'm prepared to close whenever my friend is.

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I just want to quickly respond to my friend's point on sequester again. A little bit like Lucy and the football, we've tried this twice, and the idea that we should now have to tee it up a third time before the President rouses himself--or the Senate--to action, strikes me as a little bit extreme. Again, we've tried to do it. We're now moving through another process. It seems to be working. Regular order seems to actually be working around here, and I'm hopeful we'll get to, before the end of the month, a resolution that will be considerably better than the CR, that will frankly have folded a lot of the work of the Appropriations Committee into what is effectively the fiscal year 2013 budget. To my friend from Puerto Rico, it is my understanding--and I'm not a parliamentarian--that the amendment was not germane or was ruled out of order to the bill. Again, I'm not and don't pretend to be an expert on that, but I think he makes an excellent point, and it is certainly a matter worthy of consideration at some appropriate time. Finally, Mr. Speaker, we don't have a great deal of disagreement here. Let's just make sure that the work requirement is there. There is considerable debate as to who asked for waivers, whether they were asked for, and whether it was reform. I've seen a lot of back-and-forth on this, and I don't pretend to know; but I think it's the clear intent of this Chamber, and always has been since the legislation was passed, that the work requirements remain intact. So just reiterating that point I think makes it crystal clear to everyone and perhaps eliminates the confusion. Again, I think the reauthorization of the underlying legislation is something that both parties want to accomplish and want to provide certainty for people that are in very difficult circumstances that they're not going to be at risk financially if for some reason, which I don't anticipate, we actually don't get our work done by March 27 and avoid some sort of catastrophic government shutdown. Again, something that I know the President wants to do and something that my friends on the other side of the aisle want to do and something I think our colleagues in the United States Senate want to do. With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Worcester (Mr. McGovern), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, Mr. Speaker, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only. General Leave

Mr. COLE

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 99 and ask for its immediate consideration.

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

Mr. COLE. I yield myself the balance of my time. I want to begin by, frankly, agreeing with my friend. The time to act has long since passed. We tried to act a long time ago. We tried to act in May, but nobody in the Senate chose to pick up our bill. They sent us back something different, which was their right, but it didn't do anything at all. We tried to act in December, but nobody did anything in the Senate then. We offered to negotiate with the President for weeks. Instead, we saw a 6-week, an 8-week campaign all over the country. There was no time, evidently, in the President's busy schedule in city after city, at photo op after photo op to simply get on the phone, call the Speaker and say--How would you like to come down and talk?--until the very last day before the sequester, when it had become evident that this type of political bullying wouldn't work. So we believe the time has passed to act. That's why we're acting today. We are actually going to secure the cuts that are in the legislation that the President advocated for. He originated the idea--I accept the Woodward version of that, I suppose--and he signed it into law. He had 18 months to do something about it. We offered two opportunities in that timeframe to do something, and the Speaker has always been available to sit down with the President and do something. We are going to take a small step in the right direction. Now, let's not overestimate what we're doing. We could probably take more pride in this than is warranted. Our friends, I think, are shouting more alarm than is necessary. This is $85 billion in a $3.5 trillion deficit--2.4 percent. We ought to be able to do that in our sleep. Quite frankly, we are willing to sit down and renegotiate with our friends from where they come. We are not willing to renegotiate the total amount of the money involved. Over time, it does add up to $1.2 trillion. That's a lot of money, but it's not anywhere near what it's going to take to get our budget in balance. I look forward to the debates we're going to have on that in the budget discussions ahead; but let's right now, while we have that debate and while we go through that process, take the responsible step that the President urges us to take and that we all agree on, which is simply to make sure that the government doesn't shut down while we have our discussion and sort out our differences. I applaud Chairman Rogers and Chairman Sessions for making that possible, particularly for bringing this bill in a timely fashion, giving us enough time when we're not going to be jammed. I know our friends in the Senate are going to try and do the same thing. They're going to produce, I have no doubt, a different product than we have. That's fine. We'll negotiate it out, and we'll avoid a government shutdown, but we will secure these savings for the taxpayers of the United States, and we will then take the next step in a longer discussion. I believe we've had a good debate on the rule. I believe the underlying bill provides the American people with the hope that we can do the basic functions that we were sent here to accomplish--funding the government. I would urge my colleagues to support this rule and the underlying legislation.

Mr. COLE. I will in a moment. Let me just finish my point. But we will move in the right direction. We will actually move to avoid a government shutdown. We'll leave open an avenue of negotiation with our friends in the Senate. I'm sure the President will be involved in discussion at some point too. So I take some heart from that. With that, I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey.

Mr. COLE. Reclaiming my time, I'd be happy if the United States Senate decided to operate collectively instead of individually, but I didn't write their rules and neither did my friends. I'm sure if we got to write them--although we've both sent a lot of our friends over there, neither of them seem to be willing to sit down and change the rules to make them a more functional body. But I'm glad you've moved the discussion to where we both agree away from our adversarial discussion toward the real enemy, the United States Senate, which has a hard time acting. In this case, honestly I think they are going to act, and I say that with a great deal of respect to Senator Reid and to Senator McConnell. I think that they will produce a product to make sure that something doesn't happen that we all agree shouldn't happen. The President doesn't think the government should shut down. We don't think the government should shut down. I don't believe our friends in the Senate think it should shut down. This is actually a pretty good day. It may not be the perfect bill from my friends's standpoint. I certainly respect that. It's probably not the perfect bill from all of our Members' standpoint.

Mr. COLE. I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey.

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, just very quickly I yield myself such time as I may consume. I want to thank my friend. I can assure you that we take this very serious, as well. I have lots of Federal employees, and the real job loss won't be theirs. They will certainly be hard-hit, they'll be furloughed, but the real job loss, as my friend suggests, really is in the private sector, and that's why we should sit down and have a serious discussion about entitlement costs. With all due respect to my friend, Mr. Van Hollen, my friends on the other side of the aisle, I don't think that proposal would pass. I certainly wouldn't vote for it. I want that very much in the Record. If our friends want to do something, they do have control of the United States Senate. That's a body that can do whatever it wants to do, and we'll see what happens going forward. Again, what I'm pleased with is, I think this is the beginning of a real discussion and the beginning of a real dialogue. We're going to do some good things in terms of giving flexibility to the Defense Department and our friends that deal with military construction and the VA. We're anxious to hear ideas on the other side. But we are going to reduce spending, and we're going to reduce it not by an extraordinary amount, but by 2.4 percent of the entire $3.5 trillion Federal budget, and we're willing to renegotiate where those cuts come from. I think that's a pretty reasonable position to have.

Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I want to agree with my good friend from Virginia on his point about discretionary spending. It's probably an area that he and I would find a considerable amount of common ground on. I certainly do think that far too much of this is coming out of the discretionary side of the budget, particularly in defense, but I would say across the board. I have Indian health facilities in my district that will be hit, and I have the National Severe Storms Laboratory in my district that will be hit. I understand my friend makes those points. He's making a very important point. Now, we've been willing to go where no man has gone before, the nondiscretionary side of the budget. The Ryan budget, which you may like or not like, or the Ryan plan on Medicare is a real attempt to deal with where we all in the room know the real problem is, and that's on the nondiscretionary side of the budget. I hope that our friends put their ideas out there. The President has put, and sometimes withdrawn, but has put a number of interesting ideas on the table at various points. We never seem to quite get there, whether it's change CPI or raising age over time gradually on some of our programs. Now, my friends on the other side, at least our distinguished minority leader, has refused to ever do that. Whether it's Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid, it's been: We're going to defend this ground; we're not going to make any changes. At the end of the day, that's the kind of thing that we're going to have to deal with. As an appropriator, as somebody who, like my friend from Virginia, sees the impacts of these discretionary reductions and this squeezing down, I think that is the solution. I think that's at least a big part of the solution. I have no illusions we're going to settle all our deficit problems with this bill, but we are taking a step in the right direction. Hopefully our friends, and our side as well, will expand the dialogue to include the nondiscretionary side of the budget in the weeks and months ahead, and we can begin to arrive at common ground. But we can't simply allow Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, and farm programs--I'll put some of our sacred cows on the table as well--to expand by a matter of law without any effort to look at them. We've offered to do that. We've actually written a budget that has done that. We've gone through the political fires. I can assure my friends you can do that and still survive as a majority. And we're anxious to do that going forward. If we can find willing partners in that, both on the other side of the aisle, the other side of the rotunda, and the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, I think we'll actually be on the road to doing something. So, with that, I reserve the balance of my time, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. COLE. Reclaiming my time, if I may, I think the gentlelady asked a good question, and I look forward to working with my friends on the other side of the aisle. I actually think today is the beginning of a process where that will happen. It's one of the reasons I really commend Chairman Rogers for moving early. We're not in a last-minute crisis atmosphere here, and we're not trying to jam our friends in the Senate. We want them to move as quickly and expeditiously as they can. We would like to move toward the discussion and talks with them, and I'm sure the administration will be involved in that. To me, that's a step back toward what I would like and what we all talk about around here, which is regular order. While that's going on, we can engage in the normal appropriations process for fiscal year 2014. So, as difficult as this is--and we've been through a difficult time, I think, in recent months and over the last year plus, honestly--this may be the first step back in the right direction. Again, I respect that my friends have a different point of view on this, but I'm talking what I would view as political reality to them, just as I did to my friends on my own side of the aisle a few weeks ago. This is going to occur, so let's just be reasonable and rational about how it is. We're going to have a lower deficit because of that. I think that's one of the reasons that Wall Street is doing well. But who knows? It's always hard to predict what's going on there. I reserve the balance of my time.