Alcee Hastings

Mr. HASTINGS

Mr. HASTINGS. Mr. Speaker, I have heard that often. Will the Speaker direct me to what I said that was anything more than what is a fact here. Can the Chair tell me what I said that was dealing with the personality of the President.

Mr. HASTINGS. I yield the gentleman an additional 1 minute.

Mr. HASTINGS. Mr. Speaker, would the Chair be so kind as to advise my good friend and I what amount of time remains?

Mr. HASTINGS. Mr. Speaker, I would advise my friend that I anticipate one more speaker, but at this time I reserve the balance of my time.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mr. HASTINGS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I am sure that my friends across the aisle have their hearts in the right place, but we need to be clear that these messaging bills do little to nothing to protect our police officers. If we truly wanted to help our brave officers and first responders, we would pass sensible gun reform legislation. We would take guns out of the hands of the mentally ill and domestic abusers; not make it easier for them to acquire such weapons as my friends across the aisle have done on so many occasions. If we truly wanted to protect our officers and first responders, we would work diligently to provide them with the best mental health and wellness programs money can buy rather than leaving them to mend unseen wounds on their own. If my friends across the aisle truly wanted to help this country's law enforcement officers, they would champion funding for community policing initiatives because I think we all know that a community that trusts its police officers, and police officers who trust their community, will live a far safer and richer life. I might add, my colleague Debbie Wasserman Schultz and I, along with law enforcement officials in south Florida, have been about the business of trying to make that a reality, and funding for those programs is particularly important to all of our communities. Mr. Speaker, we all applaud and thank our law enforcement officers and first responders for the brave and invaluable work that they do, day in and day out, in our communities. But we cannot bury our heads in the sand any longer and believe that, by simply passing messaging bills, we are actually making our communities safer for our officers or the citizens for whom they swear an oath to protect. We have heard outstanding comments from our friends and our colleagues who came to speak today. All of them spoke of heartfelt circumstances regarding fallen officers. And toward that end, there is absolutely nothing that I disagree with that has been said. I just simply ask that we take into consideration how we can best help and keep safe law enforcement officers. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. HASTINGS

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

Mr. HASTINGS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I thank my good friend, the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Cole), for yielding me the customary 30 minutes for debate. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to debate the rule for consideration of the Consolidated Appropriations Act for fiscal year 2017. As you know, this $1 trillion omnibus will provide discretionary funding for most of the Federal Government for the remaining 5 months of fiscal year 2017. Before moving to the specifics of the legislation, we need to get a few things straight. It bears repeating that the appropriations measures contained in this bill should have been passed months ago. While I am glad that we have arrived at this compromise, and the words of my good friend from Oklahoma, I certainly support with regard to the extraordinary work of the chairman and the ranking member, and their respective staffs, as well as all the appropriators, generally, and their staffs, they have done a good job with reference to the measure, as far as compromise is concerned. But the fact remains that the bill is 7 months late. The House Committee on Appropriations is already hard at work for fiscal year 2018, and yet this body is still trying to fund programs for the current fiscal year. The root cause of this disarray does not lie with the Appropriations Committee but with the majority's leadership, or lack thereof, in this Congress and in the White House. I also need to level another critique at my friends across the aisle who have time and again brought us to the brink of a government shutdown. We needed months of negotiations and three continuing resolutions to keep the government funded. Much of the time, poison pill riders gummed up the works. Among other things, the majority continuously tries to strip funding from women's healthcare organizations, slash environmental protections, and end protections for Federal employees through the appropriations process. Well, here we are, Mr. Speaker, 7 months later, with a bill that does none of these things. Yet we do it again and again, lurching from manufactured crisis to manufactured crisis. I said yesterday or the day before in the Rules Committee that we will be back here with a stopgap measure and repeat this same crisis routine that we have done for many of the years that I have had the privilege of serving in this body. Mr. Speaker, maybe next time we will skip the grandstanding and start off with a commonsense measure from the get-go. This brings me to the bill itself. The measure includes $1.07 trillion in base discretionary budget authority, including $551 billion in base defense spending, $518.5 billion in base nondefense spending, $62.1 billion in overseas contingency operations defense spending, and $16.5 billion in overseas contingency operations nondefense spending. More than 160 partisan toxic riders were floated but kept out of the legislation. Despite Donald John Trump's insistence on draconian cuts, the omnibus includes $1.2 billion in additional nondefense budget authority. It provides funding to alleviate Puerto Rico's emergency budget shortfall and their underfunded Medicaid program. It increases funding for the National Institutes of Health by $2 billion. It provides $1.1 billion in disaster assistance for regions affected by storms and flooding in 2015 and 2016, and it includes $900 million in humanitarian assistance to alleviate international famine. Toward that end, with reference to famine in the world, we are witnessing a rising number of countries that are experiencing famine. Without identifying them all, it is estimated that some 20 million people in the world are at risk of dying from starvation. In this country, too many people are in a position of being hungry during the course of a day. In the land of plenty, we can do better. In this vein, I was pleased to see the inclusion of language that will positively impact the district that I serve and every other district that faces the threat of natural disasters. Toward that end, my good friend from Oklahoma is absolutely correct. In the compromise measure, there are some things that will impact all of our districts, and that is, in my judgment, as it should be. Additionally, I am one of few Members around here who continuously argues that Members should have earmark responsibilities so that they can be held accountable for things that are vital in their districts rather than allowing the bureaucracy to dominate that sphere. The language clarifies a provision of the Fair Labor Standards Act, codifying the Department of Labor's views on lifting the work restrictions on insurance claims adjusters responding to disasters. When a natural disaster strikes, like a hurricane or a wildfire, insurance adjusters are there to help those affected piece their lives back together and get back on their feet. By ensuring that adjusters can quickly and readily respond to disasters, this codification helps them complete their important work. I did say in the Rules Committee, and I have said for 20 years here, that this Congress needs a disaster relief committee that is constituted of all of the chairs of the committees of jurisdiction. It is not complicated. It is something that is done in other countries so that when these disasters occur--be they fire, flood, hurricane, tornado, or any disaster--we can respond more quickly than we do now, rather than allowing for the residual remains of the kinds of disasters that we experience in this country. Just this past weekend, at least 16 lives were lost and many people were injured in tornadic activity in the States of Alabama, Mississippi, and Arkansas and floods in Missouri, and we need to respond to those. Additionally, something else that I want to say that I consider to be important are the responsibilities of FEMA. While I believe they do an extraordinary job with what they are allowed to work with, I don't know what it takes to get across to people that FEMA can only react when there are a certain number of people that have lost their homes. Please know this: when 1 person loses their home to a natural disaster, it is just as important as if 1,000 or 100,000 lost their home; and we, this Congress, need to be able to respond to that 1 the same way we do to 1,000. Furthermore, I was glad to see that the bill includes year-round Pell grants to provide 1 million students in this country with an additional average award of $1,650, and it permanently extends health insurance benefits for retired mineworkers. I might add that that has been and will continue to be a bipartisan effort to provide for the health of those mineworkers. Hopefully, in spite of all the talk coming out of the White House, we may, one day, find a way to help those that have lost their jobs because of the industrial changes transition to good jobs. But what is included in this bill is just as important as what is not. In his first major budget negotiation, Donald John Trump made many demands that were defeated. He requested $30 billion in additional defense spending and $3 billion to fund construction of a U.S.-Mexico border wall and is around crowing that there is money in this bill to do something about the wall, and there is not. The President wanted policy riders to restrict sanctuary cities from receiving Federal grants. He wanted to defund Planned Parenthood and undermine health care. As I have already said, there were 160 riders that were floated here in this measure but are not included. Rather than governing responsibly, Donald John Trump and the House Freedom Caucus have spent a good deal of time and energy pushing partisan interests, from repealing health care to gutting the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and successful programs like community development block grants. All of these programs are fully funded in this measure. As the President gets cozy with authoritarian strongmen around the world and revisits the history of the Civil War--and for your information, Donald Trump, it was slavery that caused the war--Congress has stepped up and asserted itself, and I am glad. I have said repeatedly that the legislative branch has given too much authority not to this President but to the one before him, the one before him, and the one before that one. We have continuously ceded our authority. So it is understood by virtue of this action and, I hope, future action that the legislature is an equal branch of our government, and we need to act like it. Funding the government is one of the most important responsibilities Congress has. There are, undeniably, differences in policy priorities between Members in this body, Democrats and Republicans, and differences between Democrats and differences between Republicans in this body, but holding the Federal budget hostage is not the way to work through these problems. This measure is a responsible compromise that serves the interests of the American public, and that is what we came here to do. My good friend from Oklahoma, last night in the Rules Committee, said that the people that win in this measure are the American people, and I agree with him. That is why I was even dismayed and, quite frankly, disturbed at the irresponsible comment that Donald John Trump tweeted yesterday morning that what this country needs is ``a good shutdown'' in September. I made it a point, when we were in the Rules Committee, to ask the fine young gentleman that works with me to learn the context because I just can't believe that this man comes out and says that this institution needs to have ``a good shutdown.'' Donald John Trump, there is no such thing as a good shutdown. The President champions a government shutdown not only to his but to his party's peril. The hardworking and working poor Americans are at peril with that kind of undertaking. He does so to the peril of our men and women fighting overseas, to the peril of working families and their health care, to education, and to safe, clean, and secure communities. Donald John Trump may think he can run the country on Twitter while daydreaming of taxpayer-funded jaunts to his private golf club, but he needs to wise up. We don't need a good shutdown. We need a good leader. If he continues and isn't prepared to get serious, then he needs to get out of the way. As my colleague Congressman McGovern said yesterday, rather than a shutdown, the President ought to shut his mouth. I will put it another way from the vernacular: zip his lip, put that Twitter off somewhere on the side and let birds tweet while he talks sensibly to the American people. Maybe the President thinks that if the government shuts down people suddenly don't need to pay taxes and that national parks become free. Maybe he thinks that if the government shuts down--if we have a good government shutdown--every regulation suddenly stops and corporations are free to run wild without complying to clean water or clean air standards. I don't know what he is thinking. I don't think anybody else around here knows what he is thinking. I am not even certain he knows what he is thinking. And to be honest, I would be afraid to see what is going on in his head. But here is what I do know. According to the financial ratings agency Standard & Poor's, the 2013 government shutdown cost the United States--the American people--$24 billion. According to a report from the Council of Economic Advisers, it sidetracked the creation of as many as 120,000 jobs. I hope you are listening, Donald John Trump, because these aren't alternative facts. The furloughs amounted to more than 5.5 million days' worth of Federal employment lost spread across dozens of agencies. Businesses that relied on tourism lost out on more than a half-billion dollars. The Small Business Administration couldn't process some 700 applications for $140 million in small businesses loans. According to the U.S. Travel Association, the 16-day shutdown cost $152 million per day in lost travel spending. According to CNBC, 2 weeks into the latest shutdown, the Internal Revenue Service reported a backlog of 1.2 million verification requests that could not be processed. Mr. Speaker, we don't need a good government shutdown. We don't need a shutdown at all. We just got through a 7-month negotiation to keep the government open. Naturally, the media picked up on the fact that Donald John Trump got virtually none of his priorities. When the report started to air, he threw a political temper tantrum and took to Twitter to undermine the compromise. I will be honest at this point: it is nothing new, so it shouldn't surprise anyone; nor should the backlash that ensued or his sudden change of heart. In just a few hours, Donald John Trump went from condemning the deal and whining about the rules of the Senate to hailing it as a great compromise. I must have missed that chapter in his ``The Art of the Deal.'' So let's leave it at this: we need to do more, not less, to strengthen our communities and help working families. I urge President Donald John Trump to move past the campaign rhetoric and get serious. I hope you are listening, sir, because you can put that in a tweet. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HASTINGS. Mr. Speaker, would you be kind enough to advise how much time remains?

Mr. HASTINGS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, news flash here for those that might have been trying to make plans for leaving here tomorrow morning: it appears that House Republicans are intent on trying to bring TrumpCare back to life. The Republican healthcare bill was bad the first time, bad the second time, and its latest iteration is even worse. In addition to kicking 24 million people off their health coverage, gutting Medicaid in order to give a trillion-dollar tax cut--mostly to the richest Americans--and dismantling the requirement to provide the essential health benefits, the latest proposal completely guts protections for people with preexisting conditions and imposes an unlimited age tax on older Americans. Now we see in the press that the Republican leadership is trying to cut yet another backroom deal on expensive, high-risk pools to try and muster enough votes to pass this monstrosity. Mr. Speaker, this bill has not gone through regular order from the start. There have been no hearings. There is no CBO score. We are reading in the press that even more changes are on the horizon. I wish I could start reading in the press or looking at television and just have people that have the responsibility and leadership to inform those of us that are in the minority just what the plan really constitutes and when it will be put forward. Every single Member in this institution should be as outraged as I am, regardless of party. This is a bill that will affect every American. Therefore, if we defeat the previous question, I am going to offer an amendment to the rule that would change the rules of the House to prevent any healthcare-related legislation from being considered if it does not have a CBO cost estimate; or if it would deny health coverage or require higher premiums due to preexisting conditions; impose lifetime limits on health coverage; prevent individuals under age 26 from being covered under their parents' plans; reduce the number of people receiving health care under the Affordable Care Act; increase costs to seniors by reopening the doughnut hole and raising prescription drug costs; require people to pay for preventive services, including cancer screening; reduce Medicare solvency or change the Medicare guarantee; or reduce Federal taxes on the 1 percent of the population with the highest incomes or increase taxes on the 80 percent of hardworking Americans earning moderate to low income. Every American deserves affordable, high-quality health care. This amendment would ensure that the Republican bill can't sacrifice that goal in favor of giving tax cuts to the wealthy. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of my amendment in the Record, along with extraneous material, immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

Mr. HASTINGS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Neal), the ranking member of the Committee on Ways and Means, to discuss the proposal.

Mr. HASTINGS. Mr. Speaker, I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. HASTINGS. Mr. Speaker, I yield the gentleman from Massachusetts an additional 2 minutes.

Mr. HASTINGS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Langevin), my friend.

Mr. HASTINGS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume to close. The President has said that Americans would win so much, they would be tired of winning. I think for once he and I may be in agreement. Today's measure advances medical research, protects coal miners, fights back against the opioid epidemic and international disasters, and protects funding for science, education, and health care. It should not have taken us 7 months to get here. But I hope this measure will give the Appropriations Committee a springboard for fiscal year 2018. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. HASTINGS

Mr. HASTINGS. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the life of Coach Donald Thompson, the legendary coach of the Pahokee High School Football Team, who sadly passed away on April 10, 2017 at the age of 76. Coach Thompson was born in Harrisburg, Arkansas on Valentine's Day in 1941. He spent his formative years in Pahokee, Florida, where he made friends in classrooms and on the football field, many of whom remained close throughout his life. Coach Thompson went to college and played nose tackle for the Citadel Bulldogs in Charleston, South Carolina. In his junior year, his team won the Tangerine Bowl. He was then transferred to the University of Arkansas at Monticello, where he played football for the Boll Weevils and graduated with a degree in education. After college, Coach Thompson began his career, first in coaching and teaching, then as a regional sales manager for weightlifting companies, before he was offered the head coaching position at Pahokee High School. He coached the Blue Devils from 1984 to 1992, co-founded the famous Muck Bowl, an annual game that draws fans from throughout the Glades area and beyond. Coach Thompson guided his team to the first of many state championships in 1989. For these and many other exemplary accomplishments, on and off the gridiron, he was inducted into the Palm Beach County Sports Hall of Fame in 2008. Even after he retired from coaching, and despite deteriorating health, he continued to volunteer with the team, cleaning uniforms, fixing helmets and praying with players during practices and games. He loved being a part of the Pahokee High School Football Team and athletic program. Although he was highly regarded as a football coach, his true passions were his faith, family and friends. His true calling was to be an example to his family and everyone he encountered, especially his fellow congregants at the First United Church of Pahokee, his football players and the children of Pahokee. In ``Coach T,'' many found a man who would happily be the father figure they wanted and needed. His calming voice, caring demeanor and strength of character endeared him to everyone. Coach Thompson also loved sailing, spending countless hours on the waters of South Florida sailing his beloved Lake Okeechobee with his loving wife of 52 years, Alice, and his family. Coach Donald Thompson was truly one of a kind--a fine sportsman, a real gentleman and a credit to mankind. I was fortunate to know him and call him my friend. He will be dearly missed.