Keith Ellison

Mr. ELLISON

Mr. ELLISON. I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. ELLISON. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Washington State (Mr. McDermott). (Mr. McDERMOTT asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. ELLISON. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee).

Mr. ELLISON. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I want to thank the chairman and ranking member for the time. Also, I just want to acknowledge to my colleagues that we are here to talk about the best way to make sure that Iran does not acquire a nuclear weapon. I am convinced that what we do here today is not the best way to do that. I am convinced that the best way to make sure that Iran does not have a nuclear weapon is to allow the Commander in Chief, Chief Executive of this country, to negotiate a deal, and then Congress will be asked to relieve any sanctions, if that is warranted, and we will be able to weigh in at that time, which is the proper time. We will be able to have oversight hearings without regard to this legislation or any other, at any time we choose. This piece of legislation, I believe, improperly, in an unhelpful manner, restrains the President by tying his hands, significantly delaying the implementation of a peace agreement, weakens our negotiating position by strengthening Iranian hard-liners--who will argue that the U.S. will not repeal sanctions even if Iran complies with the final deal--and sends a signal to the international community that the U.S. Congress is setting the stage to vote down a final agreement, compromising our relationships with NATO allies and international partners that have implemented the sanctions regime and that brought about Iran to the negotiating table. It is very important that we acknowledge it was not the U.S. sanctions alone that has brought Iran to the negotiating table. It has been the international community and the cooperation we have enjoyed with the international community that has brought them to the negotiating table. If we start operating as if we are going to change the deal, we signal to our partners that we are operating in less than good faith, which could collapse the whole sanctions regime internationally. This is not U.S.-Iran negotiating; this is the P5+1, and we must keep that in due regard. Congress has an important role to play in this agreement with Iran repealing statutory sanctions. The deal cannot be implemented without congressional action. There is no reason for us to act right now. The only thing that acting now will achieve is to undermine the chance of an agreement. Now, I believe Congress must have oversight, but I don't believe we should make this deal stillborn in the crib before it is even allowed to emerge. We don't want to abort the deal before it is born. The deal should be allowed to come forward and the President should be allowed to make peace with a hostile nation before we start talking about what is wrong with it. We are anticipating what is wrong with it, and I don't think that is a helpful thing. We are certainly not under any illusions about human rights, about exporting conflict from Iran. We know these things are the case. What do you do when you want to deescalate the prospect of war? You negotiate. That is what the President is doing. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. ELLISON

Mr. ELLISON. Madam Chair, surely my friend and I can join together on the spending reduction account on this particular measure. It is not that much money in the scope of this big event. The fact is, we should all be trying to reduce the deficit where we can, particularly when we are talking about industries that have combined profits of a trillion dollars. A trillion. I do not think my constituents in the Fifth Congressional District of Minnesota need to foot the bill for R&D for Exxon Mobil, Shell, Chevron, BP, and ConocoPhillips. I think they should pay their own R&D if they are banking money like that. I think they are doing just fine, and they don't need more of the average taxpayer's dough. Let me also say that we are already giving the fossil fuel industry $550 billion a year in subsidies. Isn't that enough? Can't they live with a little less, given that they are making a trillion dollars in combined profits? We are giving them $550 billion in subsidies, and they want more, and they just cannot possibly do with $45 million less than we are giving them already? I have got to tell you, I have just got a feeling that if they don't get this extra money, they will be fine. I feel ConocoPhillips and Chevron will somehow make it if they don't get our American taxpayers' $45 million. I urge a very strong ``yes'' in favor of this amendment for deficit reduction and to end a little bit of corporate welfare. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. ELLISON. Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. ELLISON. Madam Chair, do I have time remaining?

Mr. ELLISON. Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. ELLISON. Madam Chair, my amendment is simple and straightforward. It is designed to reduce wasteful spending, which I think we all would like to do around here. This year Republican appropriators increased taxpayer-funded fossil fuel research and development by $45 million above the President's request. My amendment would simply reduce the funding for the Office of Fossil Energy by $45 million, down to the President's requested level, and then dedicate these funds to the spending reduction account, which is something that I think all of us want to do, given how much we talk about wasteful spending and deficit reduction around here. The five most profitable oil companies--Exxon Mobil, Shell, Chevron, BP, ConocoPhillips--together made more than a trillion in profits last decade. A trillion dollars of profit; I think that is pretty good. Fossil fuels are reaping $550 billion a year in subsidies, four times the amount of $120 billion paid out in incentives for renewable energy. So fossil fuels are not getting the short shrift. Air pollution from fossil fuels costs money. Nationwide the hidden health costs of electricity generated by fossil fuels adds up to as much as $886 billion annually, or about 6 percent of gross domestic product. I am from Minnesota, and I live in north Minneapolis, and I can tell you, Madam Chair, that children there suffer greater rates of asthma than the rest of the State, partially as a result of emissions from vehicles that run on fossil fuels. Climate change costs money, too. Climate change will make our electricity costs go up. Greenhouse-gas-driven changes in temperature will likely increase demand for electricity. This will make it necessary for construction of up to 95 gigawatts of new power generation over the next 5 to 25 years. Residential and commercial ratepayers will pay up to $12 billion more per year, and people living in coastal communities could pay as much as $35 billion a year within the next 15 years because of sea level rise and hurricane activity. Conclusion: let's lower the deficit; let's cut wasteful spending; let's stop wasting taxpayer money on dirty fossil fuel resources that cost all of us a lot more in the long term. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. ELLISON

Mr. ELLISON. Mr. Speaker, on April 13, 2015, I missed Roll Call Votes No. 145-147. Had I been present I would have voted ``nay'' on Roll Call Votes No. 145 and 146. I would have voted ``yea'' on 147. Mr. Speaker, on April 14, 2015, I missed Roll Call Votes No. 148-153. Had I been present I would have voted ``yea'' on Roll Call Votes No. 150 and 153. I would have voted ``nay'' on Roll Call Votes No. 148, 149, 151 and 152.

Mr. ELLISON

Mr. ELLISON. I would like to thank the gentlewoman for the time. Mr. Chairman, I will just remind my colleagues that, yes, the bill was bipartisan, but the amendment was not. The amendment, which was rigidly partisan, is what has put this good idea in a space of being very partisan on this House floor. You would have thought that after the hard work that Mr. Heck had put into this bill that maybe somebody would have listened to him and would have said, ``Mr. Heck, you have put your time in on this bill. We are not going to do this to your bill. We are going to stick with that bipartisanship that we had all along,'' but that kind of consideration has gone missing in this place. The truth is, Mr. Chairman, that the Republican leadership has brought us another bill in a long series of bills to weaken the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and no small-business person who is listening to this debate should be bamboozled, tricked, or led astray in believing that the rhetoric on this floor is about helping them. The fact is that a lot of small-business people are protected by predatory lenders that the CFPB stops. A lot of small-business people open their businesses with a credit card. They rely on the CFPB to keep the predation away from them. They, in fact, are the beneficiaries of the work of the CFPB's. All of these bills to attack the CFPB harm the American people. These bills make it easier to steer customers into costly loans that strip their wealth and limit their economic mobility. These bills divert CFPB resources from protecting consumers to costly, unnecessary, bureaucratic activities. Last week, we had a bill to repeal the CFPB rules that protect buyers of manufactured homes from what had been before Dodd-Frank a predatory market. Enough Democrats voted ``no'' on H.R. 650 to sustain the President's veto. That is a good thing. We should not remove consumer protections for high-cost loans that are targeted at buyers of manufactured homes. Also last week, the GOP brought another bill which would weaken the CFPB protections against controlled business arrangements in real estate transactions. Today, the Republican majority considers what is a good idea. H.R. 1195 would require the CFPB to establish a small business advisory council. It is a pretty fair idea. You could argue that it is already there, but if you don't believe it is, it is not at all a highly objectionable bill. In fact, it has merit. What is wrong with a little bit more input from small business? That is a good thing. The fact of the matter is that it is a Trojan horse that is being used to attack the CFPB all over again. My question is this: Why would you want to destroy an organization that has identified $5.3 billion, which is the approximate amount of relief to consumers ordered by the CFPB enforcement actions? It is $5.3 billion that hard-working Americans have saved from predatory lenders. Why in the world, unless you favor predation in financial markets, would you be against the CFPB? There are 15 million consumers who receive relief because of the CFPB, and I hope they let their voices be heard all across the United States against these people who relentlessly try to rip down the CFPB. $208 million is the amount of money that has been ordered to be paid in civil penalties as a result of CFPB's enforcement actions against people who do not help the market but who distort the market. The CFPB helps business because good, honest, decent businesses--and America is full of them, the ones that play by the rules--get harmed when a cheater goes without being punished. When a business that cuts corners and abuses consumers does not get eliminated from the market or punished because of its bad behavior, it means that playing by the rules is no longer profitable or the thing to do. The CFPB makes the market work as it should. There were 145 banks and credit unions under the CFPB's supervisory authority as of June 2014. That is a good thing. There are 30 million consumers with debts in collection, and larger debt collection companies are now under Federal supervision for the first time because of the CFPB. The CFPB is a good institution. Vote ``no'' on this Trojan horse bill.

Mr. ELLISON

Mr. ELLISON. I thank the gentlewoman for yielding. Madam Speaker, I had an interesting story today. I was talking with a young lady named Stacy Mitchell, who is a researcher. She does a lot of research on this issue of what is the economic effect of raising the minimum wage because what you hear so many conservatives say is, if we raise the minimum wage, maybe there will be a lot of workers who simply will not be employable because they don't have the skill level to be employed, they don't bring enough value to the business to pay them $15 an hour. What she showed--and this is through research--is that low wages lead to workers who have a lot of high turnover. High turnover leads to mistakes, leads to errors, leads to training errors, leads to bad customer service when the workers don't have a firm grip on what they have been doing. High turnover and the need to retrain then leads to a loss of money, and they have calculated that to about $12,000 a year for the average small business. Now, folks who are interested in learning more about this can contact the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. This is a small-business organization that says that we can have more economic viability if we focus on small business and not just the big-box retailer. Of course, it is interesting because, whenever you talk to the big- box retailer about raising the minimum wage or whether you talk to McDonald's or Walmart, they always say: yeah, we are making record profits; but what about the small business? It was pretty surprising to hear that there are a lot of small businesses that have decided to pay people a better wage, keep them on the job, and as they stay on the job, they learn the job better, serve the customer better, and end up making the business more profitable overall. A lot of businesspeople, whether it is Costco or Ben & Jerry's, are challenging this idea by the rightwing conservative business types that squeezing the most out of the worker, hurting the worker, taking the most out of the worker, paying the worker the least you can possibly afford--not any health care, not any sick days--just squeezing the life out of that worker is not a good business model. There are other ways to do it. There are ways for everyone to succeed. Now, sometimes, my friends on the other side of the aisle like to say: Have you ever run a business? In fact, I have. I am a businessowner. I ran my own law firm for years. I employed investigators. I employed legal assistants. I even hired some lawyers. When people arrogantly talk about, Oh, I know business, and you don't, it always makes me chuckle a little bit because I actually have run a business--owned a business--and actually have run fairly large nonprofits, which are also businesses. It is clear to me that the real thing that I cared about as a businessperson is customers coming through the door. I needed people with money who could pay me. That is what I needed. If nobody was making any money, they couldn't pay me. What was always better for me is being in a vibrant, strong community with an economy where prosperity was shared so that people had some business for me. It is funny; I never worried about taxes too much. I can't imagine too many small-businesspeople staying up all night worrying about taxes. You know what they are worried about? Customers coming through the door, clients coming through the door, people who need haircuts, people who need meals, people who need a lawyer to do their will--that is what you have got to have. But if the average working class person is broke because they have been getting paid $7 an hour or whatever, they can't spend money with you. It was interesting to me, when I first got to Congress, this was right before the real hit in the financial system in 2008. I was at a committee hearing, I will let the gentlewoman know, and I asked one of the witnesses at the committee hearing what their opinion was about Americans having negative savings because I found a statistic that Americans had a negative 2 percent savings rate. That meant that you were borrowing to consume. That meant that you didn't have money, and you had to go to the credit card, the payday loan, title loan, something like that, to make it through the week. This person looked at me and said: Well, there is so much equity people have in their homes; that is not a problem. This is an economist I will never listen to again. The bottom line is, when you pay people more, they can save. They can save for retirement. When you pay people more, that makes them more loyal to you. I actually paid people as much as I could--way over minimum wage-- and the reason why is I needed my legal secretary to know how to prepare documents the way I needed them. I needed her to know how to prepare the document so that I could read it over, make sure that this divorce or this will or whatever it was that I was doing for them was right; and the better she got at what she was doing, the faster I could work. I was happy to pay her because the customer was happy to pay. The real job was getting customers in the door, and paying workers better was smarter and more profitable for me. I absolutely reject this model that you squeeze the life out of the worker and try to make sure that they don't have anything except for the bus fare to get back to work the next day. This is absolutely wrong. Yes, you can run a business like that; you can make a lot of money like that, but you will ruin society doing things like that. I actually liked paying taxes so we could have the Metro rail to get people to work, so the bus would come. I didn't mind being able to turn on the spigot and have clean water come out of the faucet in Minnesota. I don't understand these people who claim to be for business, don't want to pay any taxes, don't want to train anybody, don't want to pay any decent wages, and hate health care. It is the craziest thing in the world. It is actually bad for business and leads to very extremes in society, the extremely rich and the vast ocean of the poor. How many people have you talked to who sit back and say, You know what, you used to be able to get into the middle class by becoming a small-businessperson or getting a good union job? The conservative rightwing attacks both. The conservative rightwing attacks unions. The conservative rightwing doesn't like unions, and they are union busters, so union membership has declined. As they have pushed this right-to-work garbage, what we have seen is wages go down at the very same time. It is a funny thing about these big, big, big business types. Whenever they come to my office asking for whatever, they always talk in terms of the small business. I always find it somewhat amusing when the big businesses that pay poverty wages say: well, if we raise the minimum wage, it is going to hurt small business. I think to myself: Man, when was the last time you were ever running a small business? You don't pay any taxes because you have got lawyers trying to figure out how to get around them. You don't deal with what the small-businessperson has to deal with. They actually have to earn a living and come up with a product or service that people really want, and they don't get tax breaks the way you do. They don't have an army of lawyers to help them escape their responsibility to help fund the U.S. Government. What does all that have to do with today? Well, low-wage workers have finally gotten sick of it. Today, over 200 cities are standing together to call for $15 an hour. Thirty different countries are standing in solidarity with low-wage workers, calling for $15 an hour. I am proud that, in my own city of Minneapolis, low-wage workers have gone out and are on strike to demand $15 an hour. These are the people who make the hamburgers, they fry the chicken, they sweep the floors. They do the stuff that, if it doesn't get done, the business crashes. I am going to tell you honestly, in the business I ran, if I wanted to go on vacation for a day or two, I probably could; but, if my legal secretary and my investigator and the lawyer that I hired didn't show up, I would be in trouble. I couldn't go anywhere. I guarantee you that you can't show me a CEO of a business that is a big business who can't show up or go on a long golfing trip, whatever; but, if you let the people who actually fry the chicken not show up, this place will grind to a halt. So I was very glad to see tens of thousands of low-wage workers in more than 200 cities standing together to call for $15 an hour. These workers are White, they are Black, they are Latino, they are Asian. They are young, they are old. Some of them are senior citizens. These workers, some of them were born in the United States, and some of them came here from other places. They are diverse, but they are unified in the idea that in America we ought to have a fair economy that makes sure that everybody can climb the ladder of success, not just a few who want to concentrate wealth at the very top. Then after they get to the top, they don't want to pay any taxes, they don't want to pay for public services, and they want to divide people. They want to divide people. These workers, they don't care if you are straight or gay. They want to know, Are you down with raising the wage? They don't care if you are Latino or maybe you are Black. They don't care. They care about, are you for an economic ladder that everyone can climb if they work hard. We are in an America today where the people at the top, many of them are highly divisive. They want to split the straight from the gay, the Black from the White. They want to break everybody up because they know that is the only way they can keep the control that they have. So we are unified around our common humanity, our love of this country and our belief that this is the land of opportunity. That is just not some slogan. It has got to be real, and it has got to mean something. And anybody who puts in a hard week of work ought to be able to do well by their family. Here is one of the most amazing things. This statistic really blew me out. And by the way, please just ask me to yield when you are sick of me going on. I just thought I would share this little statistic with you because it really did shock me, because, you know, the conservative rightwing is very proud of how they claim, Oh, we are self-reliant. We don't ask anybody for anything. We believe people should work for themselves. And they are real hard on folks with government assistance. But did you know that--I am looking for this statistic right here. I had it just a moment ago. It blew my mind when I saw it. It showed that if you add up all of the public assistance that low- wage workers have to rely on because their bosses will not pay them properly--Uncle Sam has to pay if the people don't have a livable wage. If they don't have enough for rent and food because their job won't pay them enough, then these people go on public assistance. If you add up all that public assistance, it basically is a subsidy to Big Business, and I think that number is about $150 billion. It is about $150 billion of welfare, welfare that some of these conservative corporate types are mooching off the American people. And their chest is always poked out about how we work for ourselves. We don't rely on anyone. Well, wait a minute. These folks work hard every day, getting splattered with grease, pushing a broom, making hamburgers, customer after customer, on your feet all day long. These folks work hard, but $150 billion of accumulated subsidy to the working poor. I will never forget how Walmart--yes, I said the name. And by the way, I want to congratulate them for raising the wage. You ought to say what is good when it happens. Thank you, Walmart, for raising the wage. But I do have to tell on you a little bit because last Christmas, which is the spirit of giving, they put out a bucket asking their customers to put canned goods in the bucket so that their customers would give canned food goods so that they would distribute them to their workers. I am sure somebody thought that was a clever business idea. Wait a minute. You want the customers to give free canned goods to your workers because you will not pay them? You know, McDonald's had this proposed budget that was proposing, I don't know, all kinds of crazy things that--undignified things people were asked to do. At the end of the day, though, I just want to say that these workers who have gone out, over 200 cities, where workers are going out on strike, saying that we need to get paid more, I am very proud of these people. This is a great American tradition. Civil disobedience, striking has been something in America, sometimes when you don't have any bargaining power, when you don't have a union, when the National Labor Relations Board will not protect you quickly enough because it has been weakened by the conservative wing, then you have got to strike. What else are you going to do? America's elected leaders and CEOs are finally waking up to the reality that a low-wage economy, in which many can't afford basic necessities and are forced to rely on public aid, isn't good for working families, or the economy, or the taxpayer. Last year, the President issued executive orders that ensured the minimum wage and workplace protections for Americans working under Federal contracts. And over the last few months, what we have seen is that employers like Walmart, Target, T.J. Maxx, McDonald's, have announced raises for the employees. Do you really believe they would have done it without these strikes? Absolutely not. They wouldn't have given these poor folks a penny. They had to go on strike. They had to. They had no choice. They were pushed to the brink. I am about to yield back to the gentlelady, but I just want to tell folks about the model employer and labor rights. In Congress we can help support this movement by continuing to join workers in their strikes and by fighting for action at the Federal level. The Congressional Progressive Caucus is calling for a model employer executive order that gives preference for Federal contracts to companies that do more than just pay the minimum by providing things like livable wages, paid leave, health benefits, and respecting their employees' right to collectively bargain. That will restore the American middle class. As I take my seat, I just want to point out to the gentlewoman from New Jersey, in 1957 there were a lot of things that America needed to improve. We had racism, segregation. Women could not rise to their potential. There were a lot of things America needed to do better at. But in 1957, about 35 percent of the American workforce was in a union. And guess what? One person could feed a family of four. One person could feed a family of four. Now, because people have been pushing trickle-down economics, Reaganomics, whatever, and we say we are going to squeeze the workers, we are going to offshore their job, the rich won't pay any taxes, and we are not going to provide any services, and we are going to break the unions, now, for 40 years, we have seen wages flat, and we have seen this thing happen. We have seen these bad outcomes. But you know what? Today is a new day. People are wise to it, and they are unifying together to push back and make a brand new economy where we can have the public sector and the private sector work together for the betterment of the American people.

Mr. ELLISON

Mr. ELLISON. Mr. Chair, I would like to submit a letter that was signed by over 4,800 faith leaders supporting the Congressional Progressive Caucus' alternative budget. Dear Representative: As clergy and faith leaders of many faiths, we urge you to support The People's Budget, introduced by the co-chairs of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Congressmen Keith Ellison and Raul Grijalva. The Federal budget should reflect our values and shared priorities, and we believe that this proposal achieves that goal. The teachings of our respective faiths are steeped in the understanding that we have a communal responsibility to care for the most vulnerable in society. Feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, ensuring that all workers receive a fair wage are not simply policy positions: they are sacred obligations. The People's Budget would create desperately-needed, good paying jobs, repeal sequester and all Budget Control Act spending caps and end Corporate Inversions that allow U.S. companies to avoid paying taxes. The Budget's proposals invest in veterans, women, communities of color and their families and K-12 education. It expands the Earned Income Tax Credit and unemployment insurance and enhances the social safety net. It reauthorizes the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) and implements comprehensive immigration reform, including a pathway to citizenship. In short, The People's Budget, if passed, would set our nation back on the path toward a fair and healthy economy. These priorities were among those laid out by the Washington, DC Interfaith community in releasing our own Faithful Budget, which lays out how government spending could align with these moral priorities: http://bit.ly/faithful-budget. The ``People's Budget'' echoes many of the key proposals outlined in the Faithful Budget, so we're proud to support it. You can read more about the ``People's Budget'' here: http://bit.ly/peoples-budget. Our government should serve all of its citizens. By bolstering the social safety net for those who most need it and prioritizing measures that reduce the growing inequality in our nation, The People's Budget does just that, and it deserves the support of Congress. We urge you to vote for it when it comes to the House Floor. Thank you for your consideration.

Mr. ELLISON

Mr. ELLISON. I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Conyers), the dean of the House of Representatives and my good friend.

Mr. ELLISON. Madam Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I would like to stand while using this visual aid so that I can show clearly that the people's budget--the people's budget which we will enter today and will have debate on right now--is the right budget for the American people because it puts the American people first. The people's budget has it firmly in mind, ``We, the people''; and so when we think about how we should pull together a plan for the Nation's spending and the Nation's receipts, revenue, and how we plan out what we are going to spend money on, this people's budget is the thing. Let me start just by talking about where we are now and how we must respond to the American people's needs. Corporations are pocketing record profits by driving down wages with one hand and increasing the cost of building basic building blocks of a happy life on the other. Where does that leave working families? Huddled around a dinner table with their paychecks, doing the math in their head, wondering if they can make ends meet this month. This shows, clearly, median income for all families down 8 percent between 2000 and 2012; price of rent is up; medical care is up; child care is up; higher education is way up. The people's budget responds directly to the needs of the American people, first, by putting forth the most important thing and what we believe is the most important metric and measurement of any budget: How many jobs do you create? The people's budget creates 8.4 million jobs and raises wages by: investing $820 billion in infrastructure and rebuilding our Nation's roads and bridges and our broadband and things like that; providing aid to States to help local governments rehire teachers, firefighters, police officers; supporting a minimum wage increase and increasing funding for worker protection agencies to enforce wage laws; and, finally, funding student loan programs that help businesses grow. The people's budget brings down the cost for the building blocks of the American Dream. At a time when too many young people are getting priced out of a college education situation, our budget offers debt- free college for all; and for students who are already paying back their student loans, we offer affordable loan refinancing. To reduce health care costs, the people's budget removes the 40 percent excise tax on high-cost health care plans and provides for a public option for consumers. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that a public option would offer premiums that are 7 to 8 percent lower than those offered by private plans. To help parents take care of their children, our budget expands family tax credits and develops a fund to provide eligible low-income families with access to health care. At the bottom line, Madam Chair, is this: the richest nation in the history of the world at what may well be argued its richest point in its history should be a place where working people can look forward to an American Dream, where they don't have to huddle around the table at the end of the week and wonder if they are going to make it. So we offer the people's budget. Madam Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Grijalva), my cochair.

Mr. ELLISON. Madam Chair, may I inquire how much time I have remaining?

Mr. ELLISON. Madam Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee), former chairperson of the Progressive Caucus, the Black Caucus, and Appropriations Committee member.

Mr. ELLISON. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. ELLISON. Madam Chairman, I yield such time as she may consume to the gentlewoman from New Jersey (Mrs. Watson Coleman), a freshman Member who is a very well-respected member of the Progressive Caucus.

Mr. ELLISON. Madam Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Washington State (Mr. McDermott) of the Ways and Means Committee. (Mr. McDERMOTT asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. ELLISON. Madam Chair, may I inquire how much time both sides have remaining?

Mr. ELLISON. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. ELLISON. Madam Chair, as the designee of the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Grijalva), I have an amendment at the desk, and I rise to offer an alternative budget on behalf of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

Mr. ELLISON. Madam Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Nadler).

Mr. ELLISON. I yield an additional 15 seconds to the gentleman.