Andy Harris

Mr. HARRIS

Mr. HARRIS. Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. HARRIS. Madam Chair, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. HARRIS. Madam Chair, I don't oppose the amendment, because this is a very important topic. There is no question about it. This is another one of the ways that our country needs improvement. Certainly, the Federal Government is an appropriate place to look for strategies to do that improvement. Here is the problem: We have to set priorities. If this is a priority--look, we have a trillion-dollar deficit. And this should be a priority. Let's find a program that is not as important, decrease the funding to that program, increase the funding to this program. Madam Chair, that is not the approach the amendment takes. We are now up to $22 million, if all the amendments pass that we have discussed since just the last amendment vote--$22 million coming from the Secretary's management account. You know, this is having your cake and eating it too. This is saying: This is important, but I am not going to make the tough decision of what is less important. Because it is mythical to believe that we are going to cut $22 million out of a growing agency's budget to manage that growing agency and not have an effect. So, that is why I reluctantly rise to oppose it. Madam Chair, it is about priorities. They send us to make the tough decisions. The tough decision isn't to say: Here are all the things. Let's go fund them all. The tough decision is: This is what needs priority. And this does need priority. The tough decision is asking what has less priority, not going to that magical, bottomless well of the Secretary's management funds, because, Madam Chair, we are up to $22 million. And that is just since this vote. I haven't totaled up before the last vote series. At some point, the Secretary is going to have to start taking out loans. So, Madam Chair, again, I reluctantly rise to oppose the amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HARRIS. Madam Chair, I join the gentlewoman from California in recognizing the incredible importance of this. I have stated that. Having your cake and eating it too is not related specifically to this amendment, but the idea that we have been discussing now for 2 hours, that we have all these things that are good--they probably are priorities--but the tough decision is to find where we are going to-- and not pretend that the Secretary's management budget is an endless well. That is just pretending. Madam Chair, that is why 9 percent of Americans have a favorable view of Congress. Because, in our households, when we make a decision about a priority to spend money on something here, we take it out of somewhere else where we are not going to spend money, and not make- believe stuff. So, Madam Chair, again: Well intentioned, well needed. We need to set priorities, and then we need to find places to make the cuts to fund those priorities. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. HARRIS. Madam Chair, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. HARRIS. Madam Chair, there are a lot of wonderful things we can do, but here is the problem: Since the last vote series, we have actually cut management by $22 million, and now we expect them to do more. This is wanting to have your cake and eat it too. Literally, this amendment causes the administration to have to spend more. Look, that could be a priority, but, if we pass all the amendments that we have considered since 1 p.m.--1 a.m.--I am sorry--East Coast time when we had the last vote series, we have cut the Secretary's ability by $22 million to do these things. So you have got to choose: Do you want this, or do you want to cut the Secretary's budget? This is what priorities are all about. So, no matter how useful this could be, Madam Chair, I would urge my colleagues, if we pass the amendments that cut tens of millions of dollars from management, then we can't accomplish this. Madam Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HARRIS. Madam Chair, again, it is nice to believe that, somehow, if we put this language in, we are going to save money somehow. This was the promise of the ACA: If we just insure more people, for instance, they won't use the emergency room as much. Remember that? Back in 2010, they said: Oh, we are using the emergency room a whole lot. All we have to do is pass the ACA and our emergency room usage will go down. What happened? It went up 20 percent. Healthcare spending actually went up. Now, look, having insurance is a good thing. No question about it. I am a physician. I get it. But, to say that we are going to save money by doing this--no. This is going to cost money because management has to obtain these figures. If this was going to save money, this is easy. Let's find someplace to pay for it rather than the Secretary's account if it is this great money saver. As useful as this could be, again, I would urge my colleagues: If we pass all the amendments, again, just the $22 million in cuts to management since the last vote series, we can't afford this. Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. HARRIS. Madam Chair, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. HARRIS. Madam Chair, here we go again. I mean, let's play some more pretend. Look, it's 3:30 in the morning, America is watching. This is why they have a 9 percent favorable rating of us. The fact of the matter is, this whole budget is pretend. It pretends that our current statute, under the Budget Control Act, isn't at a billions of dollars lower level. So the committee pretended and said, we are going to pretend that the statute is something else, and we are going to spend all this money, including over $500 million more for AIDS. Laudable. It is pretend though. So what does this amendment do? It just pretends a little more. It pretends that we can take that $5 million because, Madam Chair, this comes from that same fund. This is the Secretary's management fund. We are up to $27 million we have taken in just 2\1/2\ short hours. This isn't a bottomless well. I get it. We want to make a point that--and look, congratulations to the President. The President's State of the Union address, standing right on that podium, said that we have to have a struggle and a fight to end HIV/AIDS. But you don't do it by taking the money from the Secretary's management fund, now up to $27 million in just 2\1/2\ short hours. Find it somewhere else. If this is so important, find it somewhere else. Don't play pretend. We are not going to fool the American people. When they make a budget decision today, they choose to do something that they think is important. They choose not to do something that they think is less important. That is the way they expect us to act, not play pretend. We have a $22 trillion debt, a $1 trillion deficit, and we are playing pretend at 3:30 in the morning. No wonder we have a 9 percent favorable rating. No wonder Americans don't trust Congress, because they know we make this stuff up. Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. HARRIS. Madam Chair, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. HARRIS. Madam Chair, well, we finally have a prioritization here. This amendment actually takes money from one program that it thinks is not as important and puts it in another program it thinks is underfunded. But that is interesting because, look, the Inspector Generals are very important. God knows the Inspector General over at Justice is doing a very important job right now. He has got to look into what the heck went on over in the senior levels of the Department of Justice that resulted in that Steele dossier, paid for by a campaign, actually ending up causing an investigation during a political campaign. Oh, those Inspector Generals are important. I will agree with on you that. But this bill already increases the funding of the Inspector General by 4 percent, higher than inflation. The bill already has an increase. Most people would think that is enough. Most Americans, if they got a 4 percent increase in their paycheck, they would go, wow, this is great. This is more than inflation. We want to do a little more. But that is not the problem with this. It is where the money comes from. You see, because the money comes from already-reduced funding at the Office of Labor Management Standards. So what is the Office of Labor Management because, you know, Madam Chair, we have--at 3:45 Eastern Time we probably don't have millions of people watching, but we have Americans watching who might be asking, what is this Office of Labor Management? This is the one that actually sees that unions are following the rules. Now, that is actually pretty important now, because there was a major Supreme Court decision called Janus last year that actually said that unions can't force their members to pay dues for political purposes. That is a broad, new responsibility. So the fact of the matter is that the Supreme Court has basically said there is this broad, new responsibility for the Office of Labor- Management Standards because, Madam Chair, we already have reports of how unions are kind of gaming this and not really complying with the Supreme Court. The committee already cut it. Madam Chair, I do commend the gentleman, because if he has been here a while--well, he may not have been here for the last couple of hours, but I have said, look, when we fund one program more, we have got to fund another program less. Madam Chair, I congratulate the gentleman for doing it. I just disagree with what the gentleman wants to fund less, because this is critical, because American workers who don't believe in the politics of what their union is promoting shouldn't be forced to pay for that political advocacy. Janus was clear on that. It is also clear that unions are trying to get around that, and the enforcement is through the Office of Labor-Management Standards. We should be increasing this, not decreasing it as it was in the baseline budget, and certainly not decreasing it further, as the gentleman has proposed. Madam Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HARRIS. Madam Chair, I stand corrected. The gentleman is absolutely right. It is the unions actually forcing nonunion members to pay. And it is equally egregious. It equally is enforced under this, and that is why I oppose it. We should actually be increasing the funds. Again, I congratulate the gentleman for setting priorities. I just disagree with his priorities. Madam Chair, I urge the Members to oppose the amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. HARRIS. Madam Chair, I claim the time in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. HARRIS. Madam Chair, there is no arguing that these programs are important, but, again, we have to set priorities. This doesn't say this program is important, and this other one is less important so we are going to take money from it. In fact, it takes money from CMS management. Now, that is kind of interesting, because I have a lot of seniors in my district who depend upon Medicare being administered properly. Thirteen thousand seniors enter Medicare every day, and what this amendment does is cut the funding to HHS that oversees the management of CMS, oversees the management of those 13,000 people entering Medicare every day. I have no argument with these school health programs. They are important. But if they are important, then we have to choose what is less important. I wouldn't have chosen, certainly, the management of the Medicare program. I think the seniors in my district would beg to differ that that is a good priority choice. For that reason, Madam Chair, I reluctantly oppose the amendment because it doesn't set the priorities that need to be set, despite how important they are. Madam Chair, I thank the gentlewoman from Massachusetts for recognizing the importance of these programs. Madam Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HARRIS. Madam Chair, again, I am not going to argue about the importance of the clinics, but to somehow suggest that a program that is a complete subsidy program--Madam Chair, all we have to do is just read. This is, again, why the American people just have to read the amendment. The amendment doesn't say anything about forcing administrative savings. It says we are going to administratively cut. It doesn't suggest how savings are going to be found. Again, it is important to get that $5 million for this program, but for heaven's sake, the fact of the matter is we have to make priority decisions. I would offer that cutting the administration for Medicare, when we take 13,000 people into the program every day, is not the proper offset for this. Parliamentary Inquiries

Mr. HARRIS. Madam Chair, parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. HARRIS. Parliamentary inquiry, Madam Chair. Does any time remain on that side?

Mr. HARRIS. Madam Chair, parliamentary inquiry. Does any time remain on that side?

Mr. HARRIS. Madam Chair, that is what I thought. That is what I thought. Madam Chair, parliamentary inquiry. So it is inappropriate for someone to speak while I have the floor. Is that correct?

Mr. HARRIS. Madam Chair, parliamentary inquiry. That was not a hypothetical question. Someone was speaking while I had the floor.

Mr. HARRIS. Madam Chair, I move to adjourn.

Mr. HARRIS. Madam Chair, I move that the Committee rise. Madam Chair, I will repeat my parliamentary inquiry, and I may withdraw the motion. Is it appropriate for someone to speak while someone else has the floor?

Mr. HARRIS. Madam Chair, so I assume that answer validates my point. Madam Chair, I withdraw the motion to rise.

Mr. HARRIS. Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Andy Harris

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