Steny Hoyer

Mr. HOYER

Mr. HOYER. Madam Speaker, we are confronting a very serious situation, as all of us know, and that is we have not reached agreement on how to fund the government between now and September 30 of this year. Almost one-third of fiscal year 2018 is gone. At some point in time-- the majority leader is not available right now, therefore, I am not asking him to yield, because he has something important that he is doing now--but at some point in time, Madam Speaker, I am hoping that the majority leader will come before us and we can have a colloquy on what we intend to do during the course of this day, perhaps tomorrow, perhaps Sunday, perhaps Monday, perhaps Tuesday, in order to get the business of the country done. I am urging my Members to be available on very short notice so that they can complete the work of funding our government for fiscal year 2018. I hope that all other Members will be available to do so as well. That is our responsibility. We have not yet met that responsibility. Therefore, I want to give notice to my Members that we need to be here. The Senate has not acted. We do not know what they will do. We need to be available for their action. I know the majority leader suggested that it was okay to leave and go home. I want to make it clear that is not my view. We have not completed our work. The American public expects us to do that. I would hope that we would all remain available to complete the work of funding the government between now and fiscal year 2018 ending, of course, on September 30.

Mr. HOYER

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding. Mr. Speaker, we are now 4 months into the fiscal year and this is our fourth continuing resolution. The gentleman says now is the time to work things out. Every Democrat voted to extend the fiscal year by 90 days. Nothing was worked out. Why? Because you spent all your time on a tax bill giving 83 percent of the resources to the richest people in America. Republicans control all the levers of the legislative process: the House, the Senate, the White House. They have the votes on their own to keep the government open or choose to shut it down, as they did by policy some years ago for 16 days. We don't want to shut down the government. Keeping the government open by passing appropriations bills is the most basic responsibility of any governing majority. This governing majority has not sent a single--not one--appropriation bill to the President of the United States, not one. Republicans ought to have gotten this work done in the spring and summer, but they wasted their time trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act. That is all they did. After failing to do so, they asked for more time in September, and we voted, every one of us, to give them that time. They squandered it. They had to do two more extensions. They squandered that time, and now they want us to have another time where they can squander more time. Instead of using the extra time to do the job of governing, they wasted it on passing a tax overhaul that added $1.5 trillion in new deficit spending and raised taxes on the middle class. So here we are again, Mr. Speaker. Americans are right to be frustrated by the inability or unwillingness of the Republican-led Congress to do its job and keep the government open. You have 241 votes. Get them. Get them. You have the authority to do it, and you have the responsibility to do it. Get the votes. Even some Republican lawmakers are openly expressing frustration with their own leadership. Let me quote Representative Mark Meadows. He hit the nail on the head yesterday when he asked: ``What's the plan? When are we going to deal with immigration?'' The previous speaker talked about dealing with it. We haven't dealt with it. Put something on the floor. You haven't done it. ``When are we going to deal with spending?'' This is Mark Meadows. ``At what point do you quit kicking the can down the road''--this is Mark Meadows, Republican, not me--``and passing just another continuing resolution in hopes that things get better in a few weeks?'' Democrats don't want the government to shut down.

Mr. HOYER. We don't have the power to shut it down either. It is entirely in the hands of the majority. By the way, on that previous CR, 90 of your Members voted against it. Did they vote against the military? Did they vote against the first responders? Did they vote against education funding? And we wring our hands about the military funding. Do you think it is any easier to run a nondefense agency with a CR? You are wrong if you think that. They undermine our domestic agencies as well, and I hope that they are equally worried about the impact that doing one short- term funding bill after another has on the domestic side. Americans are frustrated that their Congress can't agree on what we agree on. Republicans have previously supported the principles of parity when raising spending caps. That was the Paul Ryan deal. He is the Speaker. He said, yes, we will increase military and domestic the same. That was his deal, Paul Ryan, the Speaker. That is all we are asking for, ``Paul Ryan, make your deal again,'' and he won't do it. Instead, he just wants to keep kicking the can down the road once, twice, thrice, now four times. Yes, we want, as the previous speaker said, all DREAMers to stay in this country. We all want to reauthorize the CHIP program to prevent 9 million children from losing their health insurance. I dare you to put it on the floor. It will pass with every vote in this House. No, you want to blackmail us into passing something that we don't like and we don't think is good for the country.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, we want to address other urgent health priorities as well. You want to pass CHIP, but you do not want to pass the community health centers. My colleague Betty McCollum told us about that. Many CHIP children will have no place to go--you pass the bill, but no place to go. So why don't Republicans sit down and reach agreement? Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues across the aisle, don't shut down the government. I implore them. Use your majority not to delay but to govern. And I tell them, Democrats are still ready to work with you, as we have been throughout, to sit down and reach bipartisan compromise on our most pressing challenges. We voted to give you 120 days to do that; now you want some more time. You come to the door and ask for some cake, and your neighbor says, ``Come back tomorrow,'' and you come back tomorrow and you ask for the same thing, and he says, ``Come back tomorrow,'' and you go back the next day, and he says the same thing, ``Come back tomorrow.'' That is what the Republicans are saying, ``come back tomorrow,'' ``come back tomorrow,'' ``come back tomorrow,'' but there has been no tomorrow. Vote against this CR.

Mr. HOYER

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. McCarthy), my friend and the majority leader, for the purpose of inquiring about the schedule for the week to come. (Mr. McCARTHY asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for that information. I presume the CR, or continuing resolution, is anticipated, as the gentleman referenced. Is that accurate? Mr. Speaker, I yield to my friend.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for that. Will that continuing resolution be clean, from the gentleman's standpoint--that is to say, it will not include other items on it--or does the gentleman have any anticipation that other items might be included on that? Mr. Speaker, I yield to my friend.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman and I had the opportunity to be at the White House with the President earlier this week. He and I are attempting to work on seeing if we can make sure that we protect our DREAMers. I think we saw a unanimous opinion in the White House among the 17 Republicans and 7 or 8 Democrats who were there that it ought to be done. I was pleased the President said that it ought to be done, and ought to be done quickly. I appreciate the gentleman's efforts on that score. Obviously, we also need to do something with the Children's Health Insurance Program. We have talked about that before. We need to do something with respect to the supplemental for Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, as well as Florida and Texas. Obviously, we passed a supplemental here, and it did not pass in the Senate. Hopefully, the Senate will address that, and we can address it coming back across the aisle. In addition, we are going to have to, as the gentleman referred to, establish caps. We still, at this late hour, late date, do not have a figure for the Appropriations Committee to use in terms of what they will mark their bills to. You mentioned it, but does the gentleman have any update or degree of confidence that will be done within the next few days? Mr. Speaker, I yield to my friend.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. Mr. Speaker, nobody has any intention, of course, of holding the military hostage. Secretary Mattis and his predecessors have all believed that a CR is damaging to the military's ability to move forward and plan. I would suggest to my friend, the majority leader, Mr. Speaker, that it is equally damaging to the nondefense side of the budget. Administrators and secretaries cannot plan for what resources they will have a month out, 2 months out, or until September 30 and the end of the fiscal year. Reaching agreement is important on both sides of the budget. In addition, I would respectfully hope that we can pursue the policy and agreement that we made and on which Speaker Ryan was a principal on your side of the aisle and Senator Murray was the principal on our side of the aisle and reached agreement on the parity of increase--not parity of expenditures, because we spend more on defense, but parity of increase. Mr. Speaker, I would hope we could pursue that. It would accelerate agreement on how we are going forward. I know the gentleman is going to be working on both of those efforts. I appreciate that and look forward to working with him. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. HOYER

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, what a sad state of affairs. There are scores of critically important issues that need to be considered by this House, not the least of which is funding our government. We failed to do that, and now we are confronted with a bill that is recycled, and we have added two natural resources bills on it that could have passed unanimously. I am a big defender of Native Tribes' rights and sovereignty, and I know that my colleagues on both sides of the aisle remain committed to their sovereignty as well. This bill, however, is about undermining the National Labor Relations Act, not about Tribal sovereignty. That act, the National Labor Relations Act, safeguards workers' rights to organize and bargain collectively. Most of my friends on the other side of the aisle are not for that. I know that. I have seen them vote that way. No matter where you work, the basic protections for American workers, however, ought to apply. It is already settled law that the National Labor Relations Act and other worker protection laws apply to businesses even on Tribal lands outside the context of inherently governmental functions carried out by Tribal governments. This was not decided by some faceless bureaucrat. This was a court of our land that made this decision. Instead of undermining workers' rights, this House ought to be moving forward with policies that help our workers and their families make it in America as part of a strong middle class. That means raising wages. It means making childcare more affordable. It means expanding access to opportunities like higher education, homeownership, and a secure retirement. Those are the issues that Democrats continue to be focused on. That is not what this bill focuses on. Instead, Republicans are focused not on helping workers, but trying to pit one group, Tribes, against another group, workers. That is not what we ought to have in this country. And they are attaching popular, noncontroversial natural resources bills to this legislation. They have nothing to do with this legislation and would pass overwhelmingly. I am going to vote against this bill, and I hope they will bring the natural resources bills back so we can pass those, as everybody wants to do. This is not the kind of regular order Speaker Ryan promised when he took the gavel and that Republicans promised when they took the majority.

Mr. HOYER. As I said at the beginning, we are bringing this bill to the floor, a retread. This is not new legislation that they are offering. The only thing new about it is they put two natural resources bills attached to it. We should be focused, as I said before, on reaching agreement on appropriation bills, on caps, on protecting DREAMers, on making sure that CHIP children aren't left aside, not this bill. But those bills aren't scheduled today, and they are not scheduled next week as far as I know. Maybe the majority leader will give me better information tomorrow. In fact, what we really ought to be working on now, as I say, are those appropriation bills. But, under the Republican majority, we are still stuck working on fiscal year 2018 when we are already nearly halfway through. I urge my colleagues not to oppose Tribal sovereignty, not to oppose the rights of our Native American brothers and sisters. We are for them, but not to be pitted against workers making a decent, acceptable wage so they can live with some quality of life. It is not enough to give the upper 1 percent a huge tax cut and pretend that you are helping the middle class, the workers. In fact, in this bill, you are doing exactly the opposite. I urge my colleagues to oppose this bill and stand up for workers, whether they are Native Americans or whoever they may be. Stand up for workers. Respect workers. Understand that workers made this country great, and they deserve our support and our protection. Defeat this bill.

Mr. HOYER

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mrs. Lowey for yielding. Here we are again, Mr. Speaker. Two weeks ago, the Republican majority asked for another 2 weeks to write an appropriations package to fund the government, yet now they are asking to kick the can down the road one more time. We all knew that those 2 weeks were a pretense for getting the votes to pass their tax bill. We didn't make any progress on a bipartisan appropriations bill. Before that, Republicans asked for an additional 12 weeks in September. We all voted to give that 12 weeks. All of us know exactly why the can keeps being kicked farther and farther down the road. It is because the majority cannot muster a majority of their own Members to support bipartisan funding bills. Because the governing party, which controls the House, the Senate, and the White House, has not been able to govern. Senate Republican Whip John Cornyn said on Sunday: ``The can always seems to be kicked down the road.'' Yet here we are again with Republicans doing exactly that. Mr. Speaker, let's call the CR for what it is: a chaotic retreat from rational, regular, and fiscal responsibility. We have alongside it a supplemental funding bill that provides some additional emergency relief to those affected by natural disasters, but it ought to do more, in my opinion, to help those in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. It has been 3 months since Hurricanes Irma and Maria devastated Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, and since Hurricane Harvey visited so much water on Houston. Many still do not have electricity or running water in Puerto Rico. These are our fellow Americans. We owe it to them and to ourselves to help them in their time of need. Mr. Speaker, Congress can do better, and it should do better. We should act in a bipartisan way. I was on the Appropriations Committee as an active member for 23 years. I was a member of the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Subcommittee. I told people that you could take the 13 of us--we were eight Democrats and five Republicans-- and thrown us up in the air, we would have come down in random seats, had a markup, and you would have been hard-pressed to identify the Democrat or the Republican, because we believed our responsibility was to fund the priorities of this country. Now, I know that we passed 12 bills.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, the Appropriations Committee used to be an extraordinarily bipartisan committee where we worked together, not on a partisan basis, but on a basis of trying to determine which priorities were important for our country, what funds were needed so that agencies could operate in an effective way. That, unfortunately, is not happening the way it did. So, Mr. Speaker, I urge my Republican friends, who control this House, and all the levers of government, to work with Democrats on making sure that all those who need emergency disaster relief, as well as those who need funds to operate their government agencies in a way that serves America best--I urge us to work together toward that end. I urge us because nobody believes these CRs are good policy, but they, unfortunately, are becoming regular, if not regular order.

Mr. HOYER

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, the other thing that the chairman did not say is that, after your last round of tax cuts, we had the deepest recession anybody in this body has experienced, starting in December 2007, when you had the Presidency, the House, and the Senate. You are at it again. Mr. Speaker, I rise in sadness and disappointment that the House passed such an irresponsible, dangerous, and debt-exploding legislation yesterday. We should be better than this. We should be more responsible than this. This bill gives 83 percent of its benefits to just 1 percent of the richest Americans. Why didn't we have it reversed and give 83 percent to the people you talk about, Mr. Chairman? It takes 13 million people off their health insurance coverage and it raises the deficit by $1.5 trillion. There can be little doubt that the majority party is fixated on cutting taxes for the richest in our country. Defeat this bill. Do right by the American people.

Mr. HOYER

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, will my friend yield?

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me. Mr. Speaker, I agree with everything the gentleman said. Maybe he is not the best floor director--I have got a pretty good one myself--but he is a very, very good floor director.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I was going to say that one of the problems that I have with Mr. Bravo is that he thinks that Louisiana crabs are better than Maryland crabs, but loyalty is an important aspect of our service. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to join my friend, Mr. Scalise, the majority whip, and thank Matt Bravo for the leadership that he has given on this floor, and particularly on behalf of my floor staff with whom he has worked very closely, both when he was with Mr. Cantor, with whom I worked very closely, and now Mr. Scalise, with whom I work closely. We thank him for his service to this House. Every time I rise, I say, whether it is a Democratic or a Republican staffer who works this floor, they work with all of us, and they work in a way that tries to facilitate the doing of the people's business. They are not always as successful as they would like to be. It is the fault of the Members, not of the staff. They have good plans that go awry because the Members do not cooperate. Mr. Speaker, I would like to tell Matt that I understand that very well. Mr. Speaker, we want to thank Matt for the very collegial, positive, constructive way in which he has worked with my staff, with the leader's staff, with other staff on this side of the aisle, as well as staff on his side of the aisle to assure that we can, to the best extent possible, work in a constructive way on behalf of the American people. I am sure that Matt will be as successful in future endeavors as he has been here, and, if so, very, very successful indeed. Mr. Speaker, I thank the majority whip for yielding me time, and I wish Matt Bravo the very best.

Mr. HOYER

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I was here in 1981. They said the 1981 bill would pay for itself. David Stockman, a former colleague from Michigan, was here. He was at OMB. A few years later, he wrote a book and he said: I said it would pay for itself, and I knew that was not true. The same can be said of this bill. Mr. Speaker, history will indeed remember this vote. Future generations of Americans will remember who cast their votes to raise taxes on 86 million middle class households and heap another $1.5 trillion in deficits onto our children and our grandchildren. They will remember who cast their votes for a plan that gives 83 percent of its benefits to 1 percent of the American people. They will remember that President Trump promised that the middle class would get a tax cut and wealthy individuals like him would not, before turning his back on that promise. They will remember those who cast their vote to kick 13 million Americans off their health insurance coverage. They will remember those who acted with the full knowledge that their votes would trigger a $25 billion cut to Medicare. I know you said you are going to waive it, which would simply add $25 billion more to the deficit. Posterity will also remember those who stood up in the face of this dangerous and partisan bill and said ``no.'' Those of us who vote against it are doing so not because we oppose tax reform. On the contrary. We recognize, as most Americans do, that this bill is not tax reform. It is a tax giveaway to those who don't need our help, paid for by those who need it the most. This is reckless and dangerous deficit spending at its worst. In 1986, Democrats and Republicans worked together in good faith and over many months in an open, transparent, and regular order process to craft real, bipartisan tax reform that helped the middle class without adding a dime to the deficit. Not a single dime. This has not been an open process. This has not been bipartisan. This has not been transparent or through regular order. This raises taxes, as I said, on 86 million Americans, who will pay more taxes 10 years from now than they do today. It gives 83 percent of the tax cuts to the top 1 percent, not the $59,000 family that Paul Ryan talked about, but to those families making over $900,000 a year.

Mr. HOYER. This bill adds $1.5 trillion to the deficit. This is not tax reform. So Republicans may pat themselves on the back in the coming days for having finally passed something out of Congress. Unfortunately, it is a bad thing. I urge them to remember that this vote may be the most consequential of their careers, and not positively. I say to my friends across the aisle: Stand up and say ``no'' with us and commit to start working on a product all Members of the Chamber can be proud of, as was the case in 1986. That is what Ronald Reagan did. In 1986, Reagan did not go down this reckless and irresponsible path. Stand up for the principles you used to espouse but are now about to abandon. Stand up for fiscal responsibility. Stand up for the middle class. Stand up for what the American people hope we would do. This is not it.

Mr. HOYER

Mr. HOYER. Reclaiming my time, let me say to the gentleman very respectfully: Do not expect cooperation from our side if we don't get cooperation from your side, if we don't get some inclusion in making decisions. We are, after all, 194 Members of this body. From time to time, you and I do work together. When we work together, we get majorities and we pass pieces of legislation. You have not passed a single controversial fiscal bill on this floor without our substantial help until last week. You got about 230 on that last bill. But let me tell you, the reason we voted against it is because we knew exactly what was going to happen: nothing. There would be no agreement to CHIP; there is no agreement on CHIP. There would be no agreement on FISA; there has been no agreement on FISA. There would be no agreement on flood control; there has been no agreement on flood control. So we knew that we were not going to get any bipartisan buy- in, so all we were doing is delaying the inevitable. Let me tell you, when we did defeat the homeland security bill--you remember that, I am sure; we did, and you were in the majority--you came back to the floor and said that we are going to meet tomorrow. We reached an agreement, and we passed it. Very frankly, you have never heard us say that, as a policy, in order to get the ACA repealed or Gingrich wanted to get some fiscal thing done, that we would shut down the government. Three times you shut it down in 1995 and 1996. Three times, intentionally. That was your policy. Yes, if you are going to take the government hostage and force us to do something that we think is inimical to the best interests of this country, yes, Mr. Leader, you will leave us with no other option: to pretend that we are keeping government moving but not getting any agreement. I talked to you very sincerely 4 months ago about one of the things that we wanted to get done before the end of this year is getting DREAMers protected who are now vulnerable and very scared that they are going to be sent back to someplace they do not know, have not lived in, brought here as children through no fault of their own, gone to elementary school, junior high school, high school, college, served in the military, working at jobs, and vetted to make sure that they haven't done anything wrong. They are afraid of being sent back home-- not back home. Excuse me. I say that. That is not their home. This is their home. Nothing has been done on that. I know you have a task force and talked about it, but we haven't done anything. There is no reason why we can't. I think we have 300 votes on this floor to get that done.

Mr. HOYER. I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I rise for the purpose of inquiring of the majority leader of the schedule for the week to come. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. McCarthy). (Mr. McCARTHY asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for that information. First of all, Mr. Speaker, I want to say that the majority leader and I, as well as his predecessor, Mr. Cantor, have worked together on what we call a Hackathon, which is a meeting annually of individuals involved in the high-tech community in how better to communicate, how better to process information, how better to make transparent the work of this body and make the actions of this body accessible to the general public as they happen. I want to thank the majority leader for continuing to cosponsor this effort with me and to be a leader on this effort. We just had the President sign--I think yesterday, maybe the day before--a piece of legislation, which will try to make the government more facile in bringing its technology up to date so that it can operate more efficiently and more effectively. So I thank the majority leader for working together in a positive way to make this institution work better and to make it more accessible and better known to the American people. I thank him also for the schedule that he has put forward. Mr. Speaker, the majority leader mentioned a number of things that the tax bill that is going to be coming before us will do. I don't believe that the conference report is available for review at this point in time. Can the majority leader perhaps enlighten me as to whether or not the conference report is available now to be reviewed? Or, if not, when it will be available? Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. It is my understanding that that will be on the floor as early as Tuesday of next week. Is that accurate? Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I would simply observe that what the majority leader did not mention--again, I have not seen the conference report, so this is not based upon a review of the conference report, but this is based upon the Senate bill and the House bills that were passed by both bodies--was that it will increase the debt of our country by some $1.5 trillion and a minimum of $1 trillion. It will raise taxes on some 78 million Americans between $50,000 of income and $150,000 of income. I am assuming that the elimination of the mandate is still in the conference report. I am not sure, but the information I have is that it is still in the report. Mr. Speaker, that will cost 13 million people to be uninsured as a result. I have information, Mr. Speaker, that what the conference report does is reduce taxes on some of the wealthiest people in America. I am not sure how they offset that--maybe with a mandate, maybe with something else--but 62 percent of the bill's resources go to the top 1 percent in America. Mr. Speaker, Speaker Ryan spoke on this floor about the average family making $59,000 a year. He mentioned that that family will get, under the House bill--again, I haven't seen the conference report-- $1,182 per year in a tax cut. What the Speaker did not mention is that the family in the top 1 percent will get a tax cut of $1,198 per week. Per week, Mr. Speaker. In other words, 52 times what the struggling American will get, what the American who Speaker Ryan said may not be able to come up with $500 if they have a crisis with a refrigerator or their heating unit, something of that nature, or their car breaks down will get. Mr. Speaker, we on this side of the aisle do not believe that this bill addresses relief for the struggling working men and women of this country. Mr. Speaker, it is clear, in all of the polling, that the average working American shares that view. They believe correctly that this is a tax cut for the rich and a few sprinkles to the middle class. I am sure the leader will have something to say on that. In addition, Mr. Speaker, it is ironic that what will happen in this tax bill is we will phase out. We will--again, I have not seen the conference report, so I don't know exactly whether that is true or not, but in both the House and Senate bills, we phased out--we didn't phase out, we proposed to be phased out. The benefits to those middle-income, hardworking Americans will see their benefits phased out. That will not be true of corporations. It will not be true of the wealthiest in our country. So it is troubling, Mr. Speaker, that a bill of this magnitude is being rushed to judgment. In 1986, the gentleman, in making his announcement, said we have been working on this for 31 years. Now, I presume he was talking about from 1986 to 2017. What he did not say, Mr. Speaker, is, in 1986, we had 30 days of public hearings on a bill. Thirty days of public hearings. What he did not say is that we had 450 witnesses during those public hearings testifying about the taxes. What he did not say is that there were nearly 4 months of hearings on the 1986 reform bill. And what he did not say is that the Ways and Means Committee conducted 26 days of markup. This bill has received less than 7 days of markup in both bodies and in the conference. This is being rushed to judgment. The American people, by substantial numbers, believe this bill is not good for them. Now, Mr. Collins said that he talked to a donor and the donor said: Don't call me again if you don't pass this tax bill. I get that. I don't know who the donor was and I don't know how rich the donor was, but obviously the donor thought that he had a real stake or she had a real stake in this tax bill. We regret that we are not doing as we did in 1986, because what the majority leader did not mention either was that the 1986 bill was a bipartisan bill with President Reagan and Speaker O'Neill supporting it, and with Chairman Rostenkowski, a Democratic chair of the House Ways and Means Committee; and a Republican chair of the Senate Finance Committee, Bob Packwood from Oregon, supporting the bill. It was a bipartisan bill. And what the majority leader did not mention is the 1986 bill did not add a single cent to the deficit. It was paid for. Mr. Speaker, this bill is a much lesser product than it could have been. We on this side of the aisle, Mr. Speaker, think we need tax reform. We are prepared to support tax reform. We believe we need to bring down the corporate rate. We believe we need to make sure that small businesses can prosper and grow into large businesses. What we don't believe in, Mr. Speaker, is simply having a bill that advantages the best-off in our country and says that the advantages we give to the middle class will be phased out in a little bit, about 5 years. So, Mr. Speaker, we will, according to the majority leader, consider this bill next week. It will not be bipartisan, and that is a shame. It will not be positive for the country because it will put us even more deeply into debt, and the people who pay that bill, ultimately, will be our children. And on both sides of the aisle--we don't have a lot of Members on the floor, but I say to every Member on the floor, every Member on this floor, I am sure, at some point in time you have given a speech somewhere that said: ``We care about the debt. We are going to bring down the debt.'' This bill does not do it. This bill exacerbates the debt. Anybody who believes that this bill is going to pay for itself through dynamic scoring and economic growth is kidding themselves. It is a rationalization to vote for a bill for which the main imperative is political, not policy, because my Republican colleagues, Mr. Speaker, believe that, if they don't pass this bill, they will lose the next election. I have heard that argument over and over and over again. That is not a reason to vote for this bill. It is a reason to say: Let's go back to the table. Let's include Mr. Neal in the consideration, the ranking member. Let's include Mr. Wyden, the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee. Let's include Mr. McCarthy and me to try to see if we can reach a bipartisan, positive, constructive piece of legislation which will, like the 1986 legislation, enjoy the support of a wide range of the American people and their Representatives. Mr. Speaker, we had an election yesterday in Alabama. Mr. Jones won that election. Mr. Strange, the incumbent Republican representing Alabama right now, lost the primary. He has no mandate. Why rush this bill through? This bill, if it were passed on December 31 of next year, would affect the 2018 taxes that would be filed in April of 2019. The need to rush this bill, Mr. Speaker, seems to be that, and the reason for having no hearings, the reason for having no witnesses, is because this bill, on its merit, cannot sustain itself. Now, let me read you a quote, Mr. Speaker: ``I think the message of the moment is that the American people, all across the country, are asking us, even in the most liberal State, Massachusetts, to stop this healthcare bill. I think that means there will be no more healthcare votes in the Senate prior to the swearing in of Scott Brown, whenever that may be.'' That statement was made on January 20, 2010, by the present majority leader who was then, of course, the minority leader. And his proposition was: You ought to wait until Scott Brown is here so that Massachusetts can have its vote counted. But hypocritically, he has changed his tune today when Alabama, a very conservative State, the opposite of Massachusetts, has voted to elect Doug Jones to the Senate. I don't hear Mr. McConnell or anybody else saying: Let's wait for the duly elected Member of the United States Senate from Alabama to be seated so that he will have an opportunity to vote on this extraordinarily consequential vote and, in my opinion, negative consequences to our country. Mr. Speaker, I am sure the majority leader might have some comments he wants to make in response, and, therefore, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. McCarthy).