Lloyd Doggett

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 15 seconds to the gentlewoman.

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Danny K. Davis), one of the members of our committee who has been a real advocate for children suffering from abuse.

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, 4 years ago I authored and passed into law the Protect our Kids Act. It became law with the help of former Ways and Means Republican Chair Dave Camp, and it established a commission to eliminate child abuse and neglect fatalities. It is a mark of the progress--or the lack of progress that this year, when that commission came forward with its report, Republicans on our committee would not permit a hearing to accept the modest findings of the commission. And so we have reached tonight. I was offered in the traditional Washington way an opportunity to put my name on this legislation. It has some meritorious provisions that eventually come into effect, but I could not do that and face my constituents in Texas saying that I had done something to address this crisis when I know, in fact, we are not doing what needs to be done to address this crisis. I advanced one of many alternatives to provide the dollars to deal with this crisis now. That was a proposal not for new taxes, but it was a proposal for tax compliance that would have fully funded the bipartisan agreement from the Senate. But for the ideological commitment to oppose any new resources going to address child abuse, we would have those dollars. We wouldn't be taking the money out of good adoption programs. We wouldn't be delaying a response for 3 years. We would be doing something now to address the challenges that are out there for the children who face abuse and neglect today. That is what should be happening. That is what today's bill fails to do, though it offers us the promise of eventual action to do what we should be doing right now. And why wait three years to respond to this crisis? Because the Republican-controlled Ways and Means Committee that vulnerable children can receive federal relief only from money taken from other children or other portions of initiatives within the jurisdiction of the Human Resources Subcommittee. Republicans rejected the use of any additional resources to prevent child abuse, including a simple tax compliance measure that would require the filing of a 1099 for alimony payments to ensure that those payments were being reported as income, which federal law has long required. That modest requirement would have provided more than $2 billion of resources, without raising a dime of taxes. Because taking money from adoption and congregate care fails to fully fund even today's delayed response, Republicans must also today waive a Budget point of order, since this bill does not comply with their own Budget rules. Finally, this bill makes wholly unjustified and discriminatory cuts to adoption assistance. The sole reason for these cuts is budgetary-- that was apparently the easiest way to find funds instead of adding the necessary revenue. This bill is paid for, in part, by delaying funding for children under the age of 4 to be adopted out of foster care, for those children with special needs, physical or mental, who are the hardest to adopt. According to a law Congress passed in 2008, those adopting 2- and 3-years-olds, who would otherwise have been entering foster care, would have been eligible in October for modest federal assistance; infants and 1-year-olds would have been eligible next year. Now, that funding will be delayed 2\1/2\ years, to pay for new services, none of which become available until 2020. The only excuse given for taking almost $700 million that otherwise would have supported adoptions is that some states are failing to reinvest in foster children the money that they save in foster care costs for each child who is adopted. There is no example of fraud or abuse, only the all too typical diversion by some states for other public services. Some states like Texas, which so regularly ignores the needs of its children, reinvested only a dime of every dollar of adoption savings in foster care. Others like Florida followed federal law and reinvested every dollar of their savings. This bill discriminates against Florida and similar states. And what does this bill propose to do to crack down on this state diversion of savings from adoption? It asks for a government report. In 2014, Congress enacted provisions of the Preventing Sex Trafficking and Strengthening Families Act to prevent diversion. The Administration should enforce that Act. Requesting that the Government Accountability Office provide information already available from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services adds nothing not already known. But if all we wanted was a report, we could get that report just by writing a letter to the GAO. Seeking another report represents cover for taking away resources that would otherwise have benefitted blameless infants and toddlers. We have a serious problem that deserves a serious state-federal, bipartisan solution. I am not opposing today's bill, but it does far less than it could and should have. It is a true missed opportunity to help some of our most vulnerable Americans. Today's bill does something, someday. We ought to be responding fully and effectively this day. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, how much time do I have remaining?

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 5 minutes. Each day in America, as many as eight children die at the hands of those who are supposed to be caring for them. Three out of four of these children are under the age of three. Half of them will never reach their first birthday, and countless others of all ages will forever be scarred by abuse and by neglect. The legislation that we consider tonight is all that remains of a comprehensive child safety bill offered by Senator Ron Wyden and offered by me here in the House last year. I salute his leadership then, and I accept his decision to settle for a small bit of what we sought to accomplish rather than no bit at all. This year, Senator Wyden put a fraction of our original bill into a proposal to which Senator Orrin Hatch agreed, a bipartisan Family First draft proposal. Today's bill is a fraction of a fraction of our original initiative. Despite the valiant efforts of many local groups and individuals across Texas, we have a child abuse crisis there. As The Dallas Morning News reported last month: ``Staggering number of Texas children in imminent danger neglected by CPS''--Child Protective Services-- ``investigation shows.'' And the same is true in one State after another. In short, the Republican answer in this bill is to do absolutely nothing with regard to child prevention services in additional resources now, to essentially do nothing about this crisis now, to continue neglecting the neglected this year, next year, and the year after that. Adoption has proven one way that we can keep children out of the foster care system and in a loving family. I know this is not Mr. Buchanan's personal view, but the only way that House Republicans would agree for us to fund additional preventive services for these children to avoid child abuse--even though that takes 3 long, painful years of delay--is by our cutting about $700 million from adoption. The other source of funding is congregate or group care. I believe we do need a change in group care, but while agreeing, I note that in Texas last month there were over 60 foster care youth. The only place they could find to sleep was in the State offices of Child Protective Services, and one has to ask about this bill the question of where these children will go if those group facilities are no longer available. This measure was approved on the same day that the Committee on Ways and Means approved barring over $50 billion for additional tax breaks, and yet not another dime of additional resources to prevent child abuse this year. They demanded that there could be no resources going into child abuse unless it was paid for from other human resources, essentially robbing Peter to pay Paul. One important aspect of the bill is the kinship provision, that assisting relatives who are willing to raise a child, keep them in a family home so they won't be bounced around from one place to another, that they get some support. I think it is a worthy approach, but it also shows how this House Republican proposal has slashed relief. This year's bipartisan recommendation by Senators Wyden and Hatch was estimated to cost $1.7 billion for kinship. Today we have a mere 8 percent--8 percent--of what they recommended, hardly worthy of a celebration. The major focus of this bill is to provide a Federal incentive for the States to invest in prevention and early intervention to ensure the safety of children. For too long we backloaded everything. We responded to abuse after it occurred instead of trying to prevent it at the beginning. We offer assistance now through this bill eventually, and we should be focused on it. I agree fully with that focus. That is why I plan to vote, reluctantly, for this proposal. But this bill would give the States an incentive through what is called Title IV-E, where the Federal Government would put up 50 percent, 50 cents on the dollar that is expended, and the States would put up 50 cents.

Mr. DOGGETT. I yield myself an additional 30 seconds. Unfortunately, this bill provides no immediate relief for children who are in danger right now. No additional funds for 3 years. In Texas, with the opioid crisis, and in other States, these children need help now. It has gotten so bad that Federal courts are beginning to declare these systems unconstitutional. We could have done better by these children. We have the capacity to do better. We have not had the will to do better in this Congress. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, I would say that what we have here is an attempt to also add by amendment the very reauthorization that I sought to offer in committee that was blocked then. I guess today will be the first time even our Republican colleagues learn what has been done with this authorization. Overall, what we have had is a Republican roadblock to real welfare reform and poverty reduction that this Congress should be focused on, and it obviously will take a new President and a new Congress to do it. Like the compassionate conservatism of George W. Bush, Republicans are offering us a slogan, not a solution. The same day that they rejected our efforts to deal with this issue, they were all about more tax breaks. Their poverty agenda is a collection of retreads that offer little hope for change. It only demonstrates that their approach to poverty is indeed impoverished. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Delaney), a leading advocate for social impact financing and, I know, a partner of Mr. Young.

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I salute and appreciate the commitment of Mr. Young and Mr. Delaney to seek new ways to try to combat some old problems. We need creativity to address these challenges. There is no one single approach that will solve all these problems. Where I disagree with them is over how they choose to fund this initiative--a choice that I think they probably personally did not make--and the lack of safeguards to assure their very laudable objectives. This bill takes money that has always been dedicated to benefit vulnerable children away from the Department of Health and Human Services and authorized its expenditure for other purposes that may be very well intentioned, but that have absolutely nothing to do with vulnerable children. Now is not the time to further reduce this funding for needy children just because it happens to be an easy place to take money from. It is only $100 million, only five-tenths of a percent of the total TANF budget, but I can tell you that it is hard to come by $100 million to do anything to try to help vulnerable children, and it is a loss to have that money taken away. It is true that President Obama finally, after almost 8 years of his administration, proposed that the contingency fund be repurposed and that money be added to family assistance grants and require the States to use more of the resources they get from TANF for the purposes of TANF to prevent two-generational poverty. The President's approach was to use the TANF contingency fund for a pathway to jobs initiative and a generational poverty initiative, not to take it out for other purposes. Today, this contingency fund is simply viewed as the easiest place to get money for what is not an evidence-based approach, but may still have merit. In committee, I sought to protect at least some of these moneys for children. I appreciate the fact that Mr. Young and Mr. Delaney have been receptive and have incorporated in the amended version today a measure that will assure that at least half of the money taken away from TANF is allocated for children, with the focus being on helping those poor children who would otherwise have benefited from the money had it stayed with TANF. Social impact financing offers the potential of greater private investment and resources to tackle some of the serious social ills that our country confronts. Without approving any new legislation, there is no restriction right now on any of our States from going out and using TANF money for social impact financing, so long as they focus on the statutory purposes of TANF. If these laboratories of democracy can do it already, then I think that is probably sufficient. I do know that there are a number of young entrepreneurs with a social conscience--a number of them I have talked with in Austin, Texas--who want to apply their talents to resolve ills that they see around them. There are a number of feasibility studies already underway in Austin concerning some of the problems that we have in Texas. But not everyone who applies for these funds will have the outlook of Mr. Young, Mr. Delaney, some of our colleagues who have come to the floor, and some of these young entrepreneurs because, unfortunately, with the starving of our social service and educational sector, one community after another is so desperate for funds to fight child abuse or neglect that they are willing to do almost anything that they might be sold upon. Therefore, Mr. Speaker, I will include in the Record a list of safeguards that I hope the gentlemen will consider as this bill proceeds to the Senate. In designing a new program with $100 million in taxpayer funds, which is designed to ultimately attract many additional taxpayer funds, to an initiative that is not evidence-based, we need to ensure that those dollars are not squandered. And after the Wall Street bailouts, many Americans question whether Wall Street is the place to turn to address social challenges. We have to consider the possibility of the unscrupulous offering false hope to a desperate local community. In Committee, I raised a list of questions about the lack of adequate safeguards. A state or locality may encounter substantial costs in administering the programs, between fees owed to intermediaries, service providers, evaluators and the like. This bill caps the amount that may be expended on feasibility studies to evaluate a social impact financing proposal, but it places no cap on underwriting costs, which Wall Street firms can charge. The bill puts no limit on the returns an investor can gain in one of these projects. It has no limit on who can determine what ``success'' is in one of these proposals. This bill fails to require a clear cost/benefit analysis that includes as a cost the cost of any related feasibility study. Even without proper safeguards, it is far from certain how many proposals will actually qualify for funding under this bill. Indeed, the Congressional Budget Office notes that ``because there is uncertainty as to the extent states conducting the projects will achieve the measurable outcomes required for federal reimbursement, CBO estimates that not all of the funds reserved for the program will be spent. House Republicans have been so eager to gain approval of any new idea they can claim responds to poverty and related social needs that this proposal has emerged without careful evaluation. Hopefully, the Senate in its legislative process can correct some of these shortcomings, and the Treasury and the Office of Management and Budget can include additional safeguards in implementing this measure. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, the indifference by some in this Congress to a looming public health crisis is truly stunning. This Republican bill cuts the emergency funding request for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by 80 percent. That is $4 out of every $5 it asks for that will be eliminated. The Zika virus is a terrible virus. It eats away at the brain of a fetus and results in a family tragedy of a child who is born with very severe birth defects. It will require costly lifetime care. Zika can be sexually transmitted, and it has spread to many parts of Texas. We have Texas-tough mosquitoes, and the season is just beginning there. We are on the cusp of an epidemic spreading across our region; meanwhile, the Republicans are refusing to provide the resources to prevent it. Now, I appreciate the very reassuring words that we have been hearing here, but just this morning I sat down and met with the Director of the Centers for Disease Control, Dr. Tom Frieden, and I asked him: What difference does it make that $4 out of every $5 you have asked for are being cut? He said in our discussion: If this Republican bill is approved to deny this vital CDC and NIH funding, we will not be able to develop the tools to diagnose the virus, combat the mosquitoes, and develop a safe and effective vaccine against it. He said: We cannot monitor all of those who are being infected, have already been infected, and the neighbors around them that another mosquito bite might transmit the virus to them. He said: We cannot get back to Texas and other States' general emergency preparedness funds that we have taken away in order to try to fight the Zika virus. To do the job effectively, this Administration needs more than four months of temporary funding. It needs long-term contracting authority to get at this crisis and to prevent it. I think that disease control and prevention represents some of our best and most effective investments in health. We can save a lifetime of suffering to so many families, and we can save millions of dollars of public and private monies that these children born with severe birth defects will have. The gentleman is correct that the Republican Senate is considering this matter. In fact, it not only considered it, but, finally, yesterday it approved legislation that offers almost twice as much in the way of resources to address this crisis as the bill the gentleman is promoting today includes. I say let's join together and reject this rule--reject it, and demand that the Republican leadership respond with the funding necessary to protect families across America from an emerging Zika tragedy.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. They show why the Stop Tax Haven Abuse legislation that I have introduced and the Corporate EXIT Fairness Act, to deal with those who renounce their citizenship, why they deserve a hearing and attention, the attention that they are not getting today or any day from this Republican Congress. If this Congress will do nothing to address this tax evasion and avoidance, the least we can do is to do no harm. But today's action does do harm. Rather than getting at the real problems, they seek to limit an already underfunded agency.

Mr. DOGGETT. They seek to limit, impair, and hinder an already underfunded agency in doing its job of tax avoidance so that everyone contributes to the costs of our national security and vital services. We need to be strengthening the law, ensuring fair enforcement, and ensuring that we have the resources necessary to keep America the strongest country in the world.

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. This bill is just the next segment of Republican Tax Distraction Day. Certainly, we should focus on misconduct, on delinquencies, from whatever the source. But here, on Republicans Tax Distraction Day, they are about distracting attention from their failure to address the real problem with reference to delinquencies and misconduct, and that is a problem that they have just shown total indifference about. For anyone who was listening even a little bit last week, world news around the globe focused on something called the Panama Papers, 11.5 million files explored over the course of an entire year by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists detailing how some people, especially the very wealthy, have used the secrecy of an offshore tax haven in Panama to avoid paying their taxes and, in some cases, illegal money laundering by organized crime and other forms of official corruption. This isn't just an American problem, but there is no American exceptionalism to it either. It is an international problem. Our European allies have responded to the Panama Papers by initiating new efforts to try to get at this problem of tax abuse. And the truth of the matter is, this is just the tip of the iceberg with this 11.5 million papers because it is only about abuse in one of a number of secret tax havens. But, of course, it did not attract universal attention. If you were in Beijing today and you were to search for the Panama Papers on the Web, what you would find is: Sorry, no relevant material. There is another place that you will find nothing about the Panama Papers, and that is in the House Ways and Means Committee and the Republican Caucus because they haven't been interested. They have shown constant indifference to problems that are generated from these tax havens, from the dodging, from the avoidance, from the evasion that has been going on, when that ought to be the focus of our attention. Instead of real abuse, they focus on imagined abuse. And keep in mind, by the way, this particular piece of legislation is designed to cover IRS employees for their delinquencies. They bother to exempt the Congress of the United States from that provision. But I think the focus ought to be on these abuses and delinquencies that are occurring in other places that are costing us real dollars. The Panama Papers show the importance of our working together with our allies to address lawlessness and money laundering and tax evasion. They show why we need to be participating in the Base Erosion and Profit Shifting initiative.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, Monday, as all Americans know, was, of course, Tax Day. Today should be officially designated as ``Republican Tax Distraction Day'' because that is exactly what is going on here. Rather than address the many inequities and complexities in our tax system, Republicans distract by attacking the tax collector, which is one of the oldest tactics around that goes back, I guess, many civilizations. I believe it was Mark Twain who suggested the difference between a taxidermist and a tax collector is that the taxidermist only takes your skin. The problem we have today is that there are many of our largest and most profitable corporations that don't have any skin in the game. For the patriotic taxpayers that were out there last weekend trying to figure out how they would complete their taxes and how they would make the payments or who were lined up on Monday night at the post office to make their payments--those taxpayers have a lot of boxes on their tax form, but they don't have one that they can check that shifts their income off to some offshore tax haven. They can't decide that they will just defer paying on some of their income until they feel like it. Yet, some of America's largest and most profitable companies use just these type of tax loopholes to dramatically lower their tax bill. These Republicans, especially on the House Ways and Means Committee, have shown no interest in addressing the problem whatsoever. Only last week a major development before this Republican tax development was a report that found that 20 percent of large, profitable corporations paid no Federal income tax in 2012, the last year of the survey. That is no. That is none. That is zero. That is zilch. It is not what those folks that were working last weekend trying to figure out their taxes were faced with, but it is what is occurring. If Republicans were serious about making the Internal Revenue Service work better, they would be addressing injustices like this instead of making it worse by slashing the IRS budget. Shorting that budget is short-circuiting the collection of taxes from all those people that are out there trying to dodge their taxes. Under these Republican budgets, almost one in four of the enforcement tax staff at the IRS have been eliminated over the last 7 years. Every additional dollar that we spend on tax enforcement yields an estimated $4 in increased revenue. Even a remarkable return on investment like that is modest compared to the return that America's largest corporations are getting by lobbying this Congress and participating in the political process. Oxfam America this month reported that tax dodging by multinationals is costing the United States perhaps as much as $111 billion each year.

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, recovering that revenue could pay for the entire budget of The National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control, and the Department of Education. Tax dodging is not a victimless crime. It is like those seaside resorts where you hear: Grandpa went to the Caymans and all I got was this lousy T-shirt. Well, you don't get a T-shirt out of this kind of tax dodging, but you do get a tax bill, because the hardworking American families and small businesses that are picking up the tab for all of those loopholes are having to pay more than their fair share. What we should be doing on this Republican Tax Distraction Day is getting about those loopholes and seeing that the IRS enforces our laws fairly and equitably. That is not being done today. This and the rest of this package should be rejected in favor of a system that is fair to all Americans.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, I have a motion at the desk.

Mr. DOGGETT. I am.

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, for many months now so many of us Democrats here in the House have been pleading with our Republican colleagues to recognize that there is a very serious cost to the American people of prescription price gouging; such a serious matter that, overwhelmingly, in the fall, when the Kaiser Family Foundation surveyed healthcare concerns of Americans, the number one issue was soaring, unaffordable prescription drugs. We have not been very successful in getting their attention on this just to recognize the severity of the problem--not even getting to the point of agreeing on what legislative action this Congress, this administration might take in order to address this problem. We got another indication of the severity of the problem and the way that people across America are being impacted by the Republican failure to address prescription price gouging in the latest survey done this year by AARP, their RxPrice Watch report, which found the average retail price among 622 prescription medicines that are widely used by seniors more than doubled from less than $6,000 in 2006 to over $11,000 in 2013. That is an incredible increase. It is not just seniors who are impacted, but working families, people all over the United States, by the fact that prescription drug prices are rising much faster than the cost of living and other health care. Now, we have been asking for months that Republicans recognize the severity of this problem. I have asked in the Committee on Ways and Means. We cannot even get a hearing on the subject. Our colleagues have asked, in the Commerce Committee, how about a hearing to look at what is happening to the American people on these outrageous prescription price increases that just keep increasing and increasing? The Commerce Committee has refused to hold a hearing on it. The Committee on Appropriations has been asked to review and consider this problem. They won't hold a hearing on it. The Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, under the leadership of Elijah Cummings as the ranking Democrat, asked for a subpoena. Finally--and it is appropriate for this bill, they call it the SMARTER Act, and Republicans are always so much better at naming their legislation than what is in it--we had a smart aleck who got subpoenaed, the guy who thought it was okay to raise the price of an over 60-year-old drug by over 5,000 percent in 1 day, having a big impact on people who needed it for reduced immunity from any number of kinds of treatments, a 5,000 percent increase, and they at least were willing to get him over video to make his various smart-aleck remarks about his ability to do that. Competition by itself is not solving the problem with the soaring cost of prescription drugs. But trying to maintain competition, if Republicans won't recognize how endangered so many Americans are by prescription price gouging, we ought not to go backwards, and that is what I fear this bill would do. Let me give you a precise example. On November 18, the Federal Trade Commission, which would be impacted by this bill, approved a final order that was concerned with the merger on generic drugs that treat certain types of ulcers and thyroid conditions. This is the merger, an $8 billion merger between Endo International and Par Pharmaceuticals. The FTC was concerned about the effect on competition and raising prices and gouging consumers even more than is occurring already. I do not want to impair in any way their ability to initiate litigation, to be involved, to see that competition remains--to the limited extent it is now--and not see seniors or working families with a sick child or anyone who gets a sad diagnosis of a life-threatening disease and then finds themselves facing financial ruin even if they have insurance, to see one of the few tools we have to deal with these anticompetitive provisions eliminated by this bill. This is the last amendment on the bill. It will not send the bill back to committee. It will at least preserve this one narrow area. If Republicans won't recognize the problem, at least don't go make it worse. They could be bringing up bills to this floor like the one that had bipartisan support about 8 or 9 years ago. Former Representative John Dingell had a bill so that we would begin to have Medicare negotiate prices with these pharmaceutical companies. Twenty-four Republicans even joined us. That is the kind of bipartisan action we need. At least approve this motion to recommit. Let the bill move forward, but without gouging consumers on prescription drug prices even more than they are today. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. I want to salute the gentleman and Mr. Young for their bipartisan initiative here that would eliminate some of the current paperwork barriers that are preventing abused and neglected children from being quickly placed in safe, loving homes, which happen to be on the other side of a State border. Their coming together in this bipartisan initiative is constructive in helping some of the most vulnerable children in America. It is unacceptable for children who already face so many challenges to have to deal with this additional hardship because the process, as it exists now, just is not working. Based on the experience we have had with those States that were involved in a pilot program, we know that waiting times there were reduced by almost one-third. I think, with that experience, we can move forward under this bill for an electronic information exchange that will work and will improve the times that these young people face. While this bipartisan step is a welcome one, it should also serve as a reminder to us of all the work that remains. Last week the National Commission to Eliminate Child Abuse and Neglect Fatalities, a commission that was created with legislation that I authored back in 2012, issued its final report entitled ``Within Our Reach: A National Strategy to Eliminate Child Abuse and Neglect Fatalities.'' However you count them and however you may focus on the data needed to adequately describe this problem, there are far too many children in America today who do suffer, including many who actually are killed, by abuse and neglect. Our committee, much in the tradition of this piece of bipartisan legislation, has addressed these issues on a bipartisan basis in the past. I hope that we can do the same with the report of the Commission, that we can move forward to consider some of its recommendations, like its unanimous recommendations. This was a bipartisan Commission appointed by President Obama and by House and Senate Democratic and Republican leaders. They came together with unanimous recommendations on a number of pieces of legislation, such as the importance of renewing the home visiting programs that go out and work with young parents that strengthen families and help them be the kind of parents they want to be. We need an ongoing conversation here about foster care financing. The reauthorization of programs like the Promoting Safe and Stable Families Program is coming up this year, and the Home Visiting Program, fully known as the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program, is up for renewal this next year.

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, I hope we can find ways to work together to advance what has been done here and to advance specific legislation that will help reduce the number of children that suffer from abuse and neglect. I must note, though, that at the same time this legislation was approved in our committee, under the Republican budget, the Social Services Block Grant was terminated. I hope that is not done by the Congress as a whole. The Social Services Block Grant is a major source of funding for prevention of child abuse and neglect today, used by State and local governments to focus on prevention with far too little focus on prevention overall. One of the major conclusions of this Commission on Child Fatalities is that we focus our attention so much on the end, after the abuse has occurred, and not on the beginning, to try to prevent abuse. We need to focus on prevention. So at the same time this bill was approved, that support was cut. Hopefully, Congress will reject the bill to eliminate the Social Services Block Grant and we can come together to find more resources to do what must be done to prevent us from just lurching from one tragedy to another and help stabilize and support families working to see that children are protected. I thank the gentlemen again for their effort.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. DOGGETT. I am.

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, to address a problem that has impacted our country for generations, some of our problem-solving colleagues have devised a surefire remedy. They are demanding another government report. Instead of actually voting to prevent more debt when they had the opportunity, they want a report. Approval of this motion will not kill the report, it will not kill the bill, nor will it send it back to committee. Rather, the bill will immediately proceed to final passage, as amended, but it will be a more complete report that more completely describes the problem with which we are dealing. Some of my Republican colleagues have a near insatiable desire for tax cuts that don't pay for themselves. They don't mind borrowing from foreign sources to provide more tax preferences to Wall Street or the privileged few. This motion would simply expose the cost of this false ideology. It would add a requirement that the public just find out how much these special-interest tax loopholes cost. Specifically, this report would be expanded to include inversions. These are schemes by which some multinational corporations are renouncing their American charter, their American citizenship, in order to dodge taxes, while continuing to remain in America and claim the benefits of being American, paid for by their business competitors and other taxpayers. We have had a recent string of these inversions, which are really perversions of our Tax Code by those who refuse to pay their fair share of the cost of national security and other vital services. American corporation Johnson Controls, for example, has announced its intent to merge with Tyco. Tyco was once an American citizen, before it became a citizen of Bermuda, before it switched to become a citizen of Ireland--all the while being managed in New Jersey. And Pfizer, the largest pharmaceutical company, is seeking the luck of the Irish--the Irish taxes, that is--but it certainly refuses to charge Americans lower, more reasonable Irish pharmaceutical costs. These are the same companies that are insulted by the notion that they ought to pay a higher rate on their earnings than the people who clean up the boardroom at night. The Republican chairman of a Houston oil services company wrote me a long time ago rejecting this notion as unfair and unpatriotic. He said: We are proud of our country, and we are willing to pay U.S. taxes to receive the wonderful benefits of U.S. citizenship. My strongly held view is that if companies want to be headquartered in some tax haven, then the management should give up their U.S. citizenship and move there. I agree. But that is not what happens. With our current tax loopholes, they don't have to move much more than a mailbox and few staff members. Since the U.S. Supreme Court thinks that corporations are people for many other purposes, I agree with former Secretary Hillary Clinton's proposal to treat these charter-changing corporations as individuals like the super rich individuals who turn in passports and leave America. Apply an exit tax to previous profits that these corporations want to take out of the country. There is much more that the Treasury Department can and should do now, since what it has done so far under existing legal authority has not accomplished very much. Today, let's just get a report about it, about a giant rip-off of America. Corporations which are shipping their jobs and profits overseas while paying their lobbyists and their chief executive officers more than they pay the United States Treasury in taxes in any given year have made a pretty good investment for themselves, but it is not too great for the rest of us. They could not do it without enablers in this Congress. American companies who stay in America and contribute to building American manufacturing in America deserve to have a level playing field. They help keep us secure at home and abroad, and they deserve to be treated fairly. In order to create more opportunity for all, we need more responsibility from all. Let's at least get a report about it. That is all that this motion to recommit does is to ask for a report to go along with the report that they are seeking from the Treasury Department to tell us what is happening, how our middle class--our working Americans--are having to pay more because some others won't pay their fair share. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, I have a motion to recommit at the desk.