Jody Hice

Mr. HICE of Georgia

Mr. HICE of Georgia. Madam Chair, I would remind my friend that the executive branch is already required to divest. As it relates to finding it laughable that I made a comment about the inability of the majority party to govern, I don't find that a laughing matter at all. Week after week--week after week after week right now--we are coming into this people's House, wasting time on messaging bills and amendments, as we are doing even right now, that have no chance of going anywhere. It is an absolute waste of time and continual evidence being proven right before us that this majority has lost its capacity to govern because of its obsession to go after this President. This amendment before us here is a clear example of yet another step in that direction. This is what it is. Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. HICE of Georgia. Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. HICE of Georgia

Mr. HICE of Georgia. Madam Speaker, on the afternoon of June 25th, I was delayed in returning to the Capitol due to a meeting with President Donald Trump at the White House. Had I been present, I would have voted NAY Roll Call No. 403; NAY on Roll Call No. 404; YEA on Roll Call No. 405; and NAY on Roll Call No. 406.

Mr. HICE of Georgia

Mr. HICE of Georgia. Madam Speaker, we have been hearing for quite some time Democrats saying that the President and Republicans have not been coming to the table on this issue. What nonsense. For months, we have watched Democrats absolutely deny that there is a crisis. Actually, I have, on my desk, a list of page after page after page of quotes from my colleagues who are denying a crisis at the border. Not only have Republicans for nearly 40 years been ringing the alarm on this issue, but we have been highlighting caravan after caravan after caravan coming to our southern border. In May, we had 144,000 apprehended, nearly 700,000 to date, and that number is expected to go well over a million. Do we have a humanitarian crisis at the border? Yes. Do we have a border security crisis? Yes. But this bill does not even adequately fund ICE. It does not pay overtime for border personnel.

Mr. HICE of Georgia. Madam Speaker, it does not have any means to investigate human traffickers. It lacks funding for the Department of Justice immigration courts. It ties the hands of the President to take action on securing our borders. Madam Speaker, it is time for Democrats to come to the table. Let's address this issue the way it ought to be addressed.

Mr. HICE of Georgia

Mr. HICE of Georgia. Madam Chair, I thank my colleague, Mr. Allen, for his leadership in this. The U.S. Army's Cyber Center of Excellence is critical for cyberspace operations, signal and communications networks, and electronic warfare. The center carries out its important mission by developing mission doctrine, educational programs, personnel, and facilities solutions. It is of the utmost importance that we make sure this tradition of training world-class, highly skilled cyber professionals is kept intact. Madam Chair, I urge passage of the Allen-Hice amendment to fully fund this project, and I urge all my colleagues to do the same. I thank my neighbor and my friend for yielding the time, and it is an honor to work with Mr. Allen on this important amendment.

Mr. HICE of Georgia

Mr. HICE of Georgia. Mr. Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. HICE of Georgia. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I rise today because of my deep concerns over our national debt. At a time when our Federal debt exceeds $22 trillion, I believe it is time that we make every effort possible to rein in spending so that we are not shackling future generations with this burden. Division C of H.R. 3055 funds the EPA, Department of the Interior, and other land management agencies at $37.4 billion and increases spending by $1.6 billion over fiscal year 2019 levels. The spending level in this division is 23.6 percent over the President's budget request. That is almost $7 billion over the request, Mr. Chairman. We are not even close. Without question, there are areas within these Federal agencies that need improvement. For example, we need desperately to fix the National Park Service maintenance backlog, and I commend Ranking Member Bishop for his diligent work on that effort, and would urge passage, and at least bring to the floor his thoughtful and cost-effective bill to address that issue. But at the end of the day, the bottom line is our constituents back home are required week after week, month after month to make tough choices when it comes to planning their own household budgets, and we need to do the same right here in Congress. My proposed amendment will reduce spending levels to the President's original budget request so that, just like our constituents back home, we go back to the table, we go back to the drawing board, and we make those same tough decisions. Mr. Chairman, I urge adoption of my amendment to rein in spending, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. HICE of Georgia. Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. HICE of Georgia

Mr. HICE of Georgia. Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. HICE of Georgia. Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. HICE of Georgia

Mr. HICE of Georgia. Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. HICE of Georgia. Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. HICE of Georgia. Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. HICE of Georgia. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. HICE of Georgia. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. HICE of Georgia

Mr. HICE of Georgia. Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. HICE of Georgia

Mr. HICE of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend for yielding. As one who just returned from the border, and having personally seen the enormity of the crisis there, I ask unanimous consent to call up H.R. 3056, an emergency supplemental to provide critically needed funding for the humanitarian crisis at the border, and I ask for its immediate action and consideration.

Mr. HICE of Georgia

Mr. HICE of Georgia. Madam Speaker, I thank my good friend for yielding, and I appreciate those kind words. Madam Speaker, I rise with my colleagues this evening in support of the Republican Study Committee budget for 2020. Here in Congress, there are immense problems and vast issues that we deal with, and sometimes they can feel overwhelming. For that reason, it is important that we have a purpose, that we have a vision, that we have a pathway to get us out of some of the issues that we face and to give us a sense of purpose for getting through those things, a playbook, if you will. Madam Speaker, I just want to publicly commend my colleagues who have labored so diligently to put together this draft. I especially want to recognize the RSC chairman, Mike Johnson, and the Spending Task Force chairman, Jim Banks, my good friend. Their leadership has been invaluable, and we are deeply appreciative to all of them. I am particularly pleased that in this budget they have included a proposal to eliminate official time. This is something I have been working on for a long time. For those who may not be familiar with it, official time allows a Federal employee who is part of a union to conduct union activities in the course of their workday even if that means not doing the job that they were hired to do. In many cases, people are hired to do a job and yet 100 percent of their time is spent doing Federal union activities, and so the taxpayer is paying these people to do a job which they are not doing. It ends up these agencies have to hire someone else to do a job while the first individual is doing union activities rather than that for which they were hired. Over the years since I have been here, I have personally tried to cut some of the official time usage. That didn't work. We have tried diligently to reform official time, to no avail. We have even tried to just provide some degree of transparency, and yet in every attempt, everything that we have tried to do, we have faced tremendous opposition both from Federal employee unions and many of their allies here in Congress. Make no mistake, the opposition is real; it is strong; it is entrenched in this place. And yet we have got to continue to move forward. We have got to try to address these issues. The Federal bureaucracy has tremendous power and influence over our lives, and yet in this case of official time, there is little to no transparency or accountability. To add to the problem, it is virtually impossible to remove a Federal employee. According to the GAO, the Government Accountability Office, it can take between 170 and 370 days to remove a bad actor, a bad worker in a Federal position, and this is because of the appeals process, grievances that can be filed, complaints that just drag on and on and on. There are thousands, by the way, of Federal employees who agree with me. Recently, a survey found that 31 percent of Federal employees feel that there are few to little steps taken to remove or deal with poor- performing employees in the Federal Government. So, Madam Speaker, we need to restore fiscal sanity around here. We need to enforce accountability and instill transparency in our Federal Government, and I believe this RSC budget is a step in that direction. It rises in stark contrast to the nonexistent budget of the Democratic majority. So with that, again, I thank my friend for yielding to me.

Mr. HICE of Georgia

Mr. HICE of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, the threat to religious liberty and religious toleration in the People's Republic of China is of grave concern. Over the past several years there has been an ever increasing intolerance of religious minorities. Article 36 of the Constitution of the People's Republic of China guarantees the freedom of religious belief. Yet the rights and safety of religious minorities in the country are very much in question. China is the home to nearly 90 million Christians, and the country is anticipated to be home to the most Christians in the world by 2030. Yet, over the last several years, the percentage of persecution cases have risen year over year. Furthermore, the government has increasingly required churches to be state approved, churches have been razed and worshippers subjected to detainment, physical interrogation, and thought reform conditioning. In the west, in Xinjiang Province, the United Nations has reported the government to be holding roughly one million Uygurs without charge. Those who have escaped have testified to being repeatedly told that God did not exist and that they would only be fed after acknowledging the greatness of communism. Mr. Speaker, I encourage this Congress and our President to take appropriate actions to promote religious freedom of religious minorities in the People's Republic of China.

Mr. HICE of Georgia

Mr. HICE of Georgia. Madam Speaker, I thank my good friend, Mrs. Lesko, for yielding some time. H.R. 9 is an attempt simply to force the President to reenter an ineffectual international agreement, one that pushes the United States to adopt burdensome, painful measures and hold us to a standard that no other country that is a part of the agreement has bothered to meet themselves, all to do something that we are already doing, and that is lowering greenhouse gas emissions. But H.R. 9 is not the real agenda of our Democratic colleagues. To understand what the real Democratic Party wants to do, one need look no further than H. Res. 109, better known as the Green New Deal. Look, people in my district are not asking where I stand or what I think about the Paris climate agreement, but they are asking, eagerly, where I stand on the Green New Deal. Everywhere I go, people are asking about it. Last night, on a telephone townhall, several questions were asking where I stood on this. They are concerned that their Representative might support a proposal that would drastically increase their energy bills. And businesses I talk to want to know whether or not I would support what amounts to a torrent of heavyhanded regulations. I assure you, as I did them, that I do not. I strongly oppose the Green New Deal, but I cannot say the same for my colleagues across the aisle. Madam Speaker, 92 Democrats have cosponsored the Green New Deal, and nearly every Democrat running for President has endorsed it. It seems clear that this really is the new policy platform for the Democratic Party. I know that many of my Democratic colleagues disagree with me. They believe strongly in the policies of the Green New Deal, and I am sure some of their constituents would agree as well. But I am also positive that their constituents, Democratic constituents, want to know where their Representative stands on this issue just as much as mine want to know where I stand. So let's have a vote. But let's be frank with each other. The Speaker would not allow a recorded vote. Speaker Pelosi knows very likely that to have a vote on the Green New Deal could cost the Democrats the majority. So, look, here is the deal. We Republicans are more than happy to go on record with our opposition to the Green New Deal, and we are more than happy to help our Democratic colleagues go on record with their support for the Green New Deal. So help us defeat the previous question. As my friend, Mrs. Lesko, has said, if we defeat the previous question, then we will amend the rule and enable a vote on the Green New Deal, and I hope to have support in that regard. But I understand it may be difficult for some of my colleagues across the aisle to do so, and if they are unable to help support us on this previous question, then I have another opportunity. If we do not defeat the previous question immediately following this vote series, I am going to file a discharge petition to ensure a vote on the Green New Deal. I encourage all Members here to vote against the previous question, vote against the rule, and sign the discharge petition. Let's have a vote on the Green New Deal. Again, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding this time.

Mr. HICE of Georgia

Mr. HICE of Georgia. Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. HICE of Georgia. Madam Chair, the Office of Government Ethics is a prevention and education agency. OGE is responsible for ensuring compliance with ethics requirements, such as financial disclosure and conflict of interest rules. These are the folks that the executive branch employees call when they have an ethics question. Their mission is to advise Federal employees on ethics matters. OGE is not an investigative office, but that is exactly what H.R. 1 wants to turn OGE into, by granting the director the authority to subpoena information and records. Here is the thing. OGE does not even need to have subpoena authority. It already has the power to request any information needed from Federal agencies, and the Federal agencies are required to comply under the Ethics in Government Act. The only reason to give subpoena authority is to empower OGE to harass executive branch employees. This is not farfetched, Madam Chair. The former director of OGE, Shaub, was openly hostile to the Trump administration and to Mr. Trump personally, even before he took office. Under Shaub, OGE went so far as using its official Twitter account in an attempt to coerce President-Elect Trump to divest his business interests. That is not what OGE's role is supposed to be. We don't want to allow an office that has become so partisan to have subpoena authority and thereby open the door to overt harassment to executive branch employees. I would just remind my Democrat friends that if this bill does become law--and it won't--but if it does, a future Democratic administration will eventually also have to deal with the same type of issues with the Office of Government Ethics. Let me further remind everyone that the inspector general of the agency already has authority to subpoena information and documents, so we don't need to expand this and extend it to the director. At the end of the day, this bill has much bigger problems than this small OGE subpoena authority provision. It is a bad bill. I will not be supporting it, obviously, but I know that many of my friends on the other side of the aisle will be supporting this bill. Frankly, there is no amendment that is made in order by the Rules Committee that can fix this legislation. Some amendments, I believe, including this one, can at least make it marginally better, but it is a bad bill through and through. I believe the American people, frankly, are going to be outraged when they find out what is in this piece of legislation, such as public financing for congressional candidates. The American people don't want that. They don't want tax dollars, particularly, six times going to Federal candidates. And then there is the automatic voter registration requirement. I think the American people will be irate when they find out about this. This particular provision forces States to transfer individuals' personal information from government agencies and services and then transfer those over to election officials for voter registration. Obviously, that is a violation of the 10th Amendment, but it is even worse than that. The Democratic authors of this legislation will not tell the American people that this provision will lead to huge numbers of illegal aliens and noncitizens being registered to vote. And here is the problem. Illegal aliens and noncitizens use government agencies and services. Their information, according to H.R. 1, would then be sent to election officials, along with everyone else's, and they will be registered to vote. The only safeguard that H.R. 1 has to prevent an illegal alien from being automatically registered to vote is if the alien proactively declines, which is not likely to happen because they don't want to draw attention to themselves to begin with because they are here illegally. So for us to expect that they would go publicly and draw attention to themselves, it just simply is not going to happen. That just flies in the face of logic. Not only does H.R. 1 make it significantly more likely for ineligible voters to be registered, it also makes it next to impossible for States to remove ineligible voters from the voter registration list once they are on there. I doubt that anyone could have devised a better way, or a worse way, as it really is, to ensure illegal aliens get registered to vote. I urge my colleagues to vote against H.R. 1, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. HICE of Georgia

Mr. HICE of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak on H.R. 1235, the MSPB Temporary Term Extension Act. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle know that I personally am committed to ensuring the successful operation of the Merit Systems Protection Board, also known as MSPB. In fact, last Congress, I introduced H.R. 6391, the MSPB Reauthorization Act of 2018. My bill would have reauthorized the Board and made other vital reforms. The Committee on Oversight and Government Reform reported the bill favorably, but without a single vote from my colleagues on the other side of the aisle. We all know an effective and functional MSPB is important to the health of our Federal workforce. MSPB's primary responsibility is to adjudicate appeals of Federal personnel actions. MSPB also plays a vital role in Federal whistleblower protections. To be effective and issue decisions, MSPB needs at least a two-member quorum, but the Board has not had a quorum for over 2 years. In January 2017, Mark Robbins, as my friend mentioned, become the sole remaining member of MSPB. Last year, Mr. Robbins' 7-year term came to an end, and he was granted a 1-year extension as authorized by law, but that extension ends this week. Starting Friday, the MSPB will be without a single Board member. My colleagues claim this bill is an emergency measure to prevent the MSPB from extending this crisis of leadership, but I disagree. The real problem is the lack of a quorum. Without a quorum for the last 2 years, a backlog of undecided appeals has grown to over 1,700 cases. Mr. Robbins cannot fix that problem on his own. His continued tenure will not resolve those cases. In December, the President selected Mr. Robbins to serve as the general counsel at the Office of Personnel Management, so for the last 10 weeks, he has served in both capacities at OPM and MSPB. Mr. Robbins is planning to serve at OPM in his full capacity beginning this Friday. Mr. Robbins has stayed at MSPB as long as he has out of a sense of duty to MSPB and its mission. I trust that my colleagues do not intend to use this bill to coerce Mr. Robbins to stay any longer than he wants to. I urge my colleagues to join me in applauding Mr. Robbins for his dedication to MSPB, the Federal workforce, the President, and our country. I also urge my colleagues to join me in supporting the Senate's confirmation of President Trump's nominees. We owe it to our Federal workers to give MSPB a quorum so the board can do the important job that Congress gave it to do. In the future, I certainly hope we can work together to provide certainty to Federal workers and whistleblowers by making MSPB operational once again. Mr. Speaker, I have no further speakers, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. HICE of Georgia

Mr. HICE of Georgia. ``In all cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make. ``The Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment, shall be by Jury; and such Trial shall be held in the State where the said Crimes shall have been committed; but when not committed within any State, the Trial shall be at such Place or Places as the Congress may by Law have directed.'' Section 3: ``Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open court. ``The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.''