Jim McGovern

Mr. McGOVERN

Mr. McGOVERN. I yield an additional 2 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland.

Mr. McGOVERN. I yield an additional 1 minute to the gentleman.

Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I want to associate myself with the remarks of our distinguished whip. It is frustrating to serve in the people's House and watch as this leadership purposely tries to avoid doing the people's business. It is frustrating when you go home and you talk to farmers, and they want to know where the farm bill is. It is frustrating when you talk to people about immigration, and they look at what happened in the United States Senate, where it passed overwhelmingly with bipartisan support, and we can't even get anything scheduled here. We can't even get anything scheduled here. It is frustrating when people are still reeling over the fact that the Republicans shut the government down, and they want to make sure we don't repeat it. Yet we have no budget resolution, no budget conference that has been put together to make sure that we are on a road where we don't have any more of these Ted Cruz-led shutdowns around here. So it is very frustrating. I think the gentleman from Maryland said it very clearly--that the American people are frustrated. It is not just Democrats. It is Democrats and Republicans that are frustrated. Parliamentary Inquiry

Mr. McGOVERN. I yield to the gentleman from Texas for a parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. McGOVERN. So we don't want another Ted Cruz-led shutdown here in the House of Representatives. I think the American people are fed up with that. Then, as the distinguished minority whip pointed out, I mean, we are not even in session more than 6 full days from now until the end of the year, which is absolutely unconscionable. You say to yourself, Well, maybe the Republicans are planning to do something in the future; maybe they have an agenda for the future. Then we read in Politico that last Thursday, a group of House Republicans filed into Majority Leader Eric Cantor's Capitol office suite and received a blank piece of paper labeled, ``Agenda 2014.'' This is their agenda for 2014. A Republican political aide put it more bluntly by saying, ``What we have done so far this year clearly hasn't worked.'' This is their agenda for next year. It might as well be the agenda for the rest of this year. It is nothing, nothing that is improving the quality of life for the people that we represent. Again, it fuels a cynicism all across the country that the majority party here doesn't seem to care about what happens to regular people, and that is very, very disconcerting. I guess they could go back and say that their big accomplishment was that they complained about the Affordable Care Act. Over 40-something times, they brought bills to the floor to try to repeal it, never once offering an alternative to improve it, never once giving an alternative idea that would help address the fact that tens of millions of our citizens don't have health insurance. Millions do have health insurance, but it is really not health insurance because when they get sick, they realize they have been paying for a policy that provides them nothing. There is no alternative agenda to try to address those issues; it is just that they are against it. I guess it is easy to say ``no,'' but the bottom line is, I think the American people are looking for us to say ``yes'' to some things. So, Mr. Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to bring up House Resolution 424, Ranking Member Slaughter's resolution prohibiting an adjournment of the House until we adopt a budget conference report. What that means is that we should not adjourn until we do our job. That shouldn't be a radical idea. I would like to think there is bipartisan consensus that we ought to do our job, and that is what this would require. So, Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of the amendment into the Record, along with extraneous material, immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' and defeat the previous question. I urge a ``no'' vote on the rule and on the underlying bills which, to be honest with you, are a waste of our time. They are going nowhere in the Senate, and the President has already issued a veto threat on them. With one last urging of my Republican colleagues to stay here and do your work, Mr. Speaker, with that, I yield back the balance of my time.

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

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

Mr. McGOVERN

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

Mr. McGOVERN

Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, today, Representative Joe Pitts and I introduced a bipartisan resolution to protect Burma's Rohingya minority and other ethnic and religious minority groups in Burma. While Burma has begun a gradual transition from decades of military rule to a fledgling democracy, Burma's Rohingya minority has experienced a shocking rise in targeted attacks at the hands of Burma's Buddhist majority, along with increased instances of arbitrary arrests, detention, and extortion of Rohingya and other Muslim communities across the country. All signs indicate that the Rohingya and other Muslim communities in Burma remain at extreme risk to further forms of persecution and violence. My colleagues and I therefore introduce this resolution to call for an end to the persecution of Burma's Rohingya minority and the protection of all ethnic and religious minority groups in Burma. I urge my colleagues to join us on this resolution calling for an end to the persecution of the Rohingya people and the protection of Burma's ethnic and religious minorities.

Mr. McGOVERN

Mr. McGOVERN. I yield an additional minute to the gentleman.

Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, let me again remind my colleagues that not a single hearing was held on this bill. Not a single markup was held on this bill, nothing, and it is coming to the floor under a closed rule. My Republican friends believe that nobody in this House, Democrats or Republicans, have any right to offer an opinion or an alternative. We are given 1 hour of debate on this. It is not evenly split among the committees of jurisdiction. One committee of jurisdiction. This is a joke. This is not what you promised. This is not the open process. This is not the transparent process on major pieces of legislation that we were promised. This is a joke. I will insert into the Record a Statement of Administration Policy that says that the President, if presented with H.R. 3350, would veto it. This is a colossal waste of time. Statement of Administration Policy H.R. 3350--Keep Your Health Plan Act of 2013 (Rep. Upton, R-MI, and 161 cosponsors, Nov. 14, 2013) The Administration strongly opposes House passage of H.R. 3350 because it threatens the health care security of hard working, middle class families. The Nation is experiencing the slowest growth in health spending in the last 50 years. Since 2008, growth in private health insurance spending stayed between three and four percent--significantly lower than earlier this decade when growth reached almost 12 percent. With health care costs rising at such low rates, this bill would be a major step back. H.R. 3350 rolls back the progress made by allowing insurers to continue to sell new plans that deploy practices such as not offering coverage for people with pre-existing conditions, charging women more than men, and continuing yearly caps on the amount of care that enrollees receive. The Administration supports policies that allow people to keep the health plans that they have. But, policies that reverse the progress made to extend quality, affordable coverage to millions of uninsured, hardworking, middle class families are not the solution. Rather than refighting old political battles to sabotage the health care law, the Congress should work with the Administration to improve the law and move forward. If the President were presented with H.R. 3350, he would veto it.

Mr. McGOVERN. I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).

Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I yield the gentlewoman an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. What the gentleman conveniently leaves out are the hundreds of hours of hearings and markups that occurred in the committees of jurisdiction on the Affordable Care Act. The committees of jurisdiction were just cut out of this. It is becoming a pattern in this House. This is not the only bill where the committees of jurisdiction have been cut out of the process, where Members' voices have been silenced, where they are enforcing rules with an iron fist in this Chamber. So this, unfortunately, is not unique. It is a pattern. But to suggest that we don't have the time to offer amendments is just ridiculous. We have plenty of time. We could debate this all day if we wanted to, and Members could have an opportunity, both Democrats and Republicans, to amend this, given the fact that they were denied that right in the committees of jurisdiction. Mr. Speaker, I will enter into the Record an article that appeared in the National Review Online, entitled, ``Boehner: Upton Bill a Step on Path to ObamaCare Repeal,'' because what is going on here is very simple. If you believe that 40 million Americans should be without health insurance, then vote for this bill. That is what they want to do. They want to repeal the Affordable Care Act to go back to a point at which it was perfectly acceptable and okay to have 40 million Americans without health insurance. Now, many of us found that statistic unconscionable in this country, the richest country in the history of the world, and we thought it was bad policy to allow for so many uninsured Americans because that also resulted in higher health care costs, but that is what the goal here is. The goal here is to undo all of the protections that allow you to keep your kids on your insurance policies until they are 26, that prohibit insurance companies from discriminating against women because they define being a female as a preexisting condition, and all of these artificial rules and regulations that insurance companies threw upon people, these insurance policies that people bought thinking they had insurance only to find out when they got sick they had nothing. If you want to go back to that, then side with my Republican friends; but what we want to do here is work as we did in Massachusetts, by the way, with Governor Romney, in order to make this work. I will tell you, for the life of me, I don't understand why this is such a radical idea to guarantee everybody in this country good, quality health insurance. [From the National Review, Nov. 13, 2013] Boehner: Upton Bill a Step on Path to Obamacare Repeal (By Jonathan Strong) Before the government shutdown in July, as the defund push from Senators Ted Cruz and Mike Lee was just starting to gain steam, Speaker John Boehner laid-out his preferred Obamacare strategy to House Republicans in a closed-door conference meeting, telling them the GOP could repeal the law with ``targeted strikes that will ultimately dissolve the Obamacare coalition.'' This morning, in another conference meeting, Boehner reminded his colleagues about that strategy and explained how bringing the ``keep your plan'' bill introduced by Representative Fred Upton to the House floor Friday fits into it. ``Remember the strategy for stopping Obamacare we laid out to you back in July. It had two components: Aggressive, coordinated oversight, and targeted legislative strikes aimed at shattering the legislative coalition the president has used to force his law on the nation,'' Boehner said, according to a person in the room. ``That plan is being executed as we speak. But none of it will be effective if we aren't communicating. If we aren't telling the stories our constituents are sharing, then we're letting them down. It means we aren't doing our best to stop this law,'' he added. With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone), the ranking member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, who suffered a long and arduous Rules Committee last night.

Mr. McGOVERN. I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman talks about faith. I think the American people have lost faith in the Republican leadership of this House. My friends are so obsessed with this health care bill that they actually shut the government down. Ted Cruz was the Speaker of the House here for a month. I mean, they shut the government down because they do not believe that 40 million uninsured Americans ought to have health insurance. Ezra Klein, in his Washington Post piece on November 14, writes about the Upton bill. He says: It doesn't solve the cancelations problem, but it does manage to put Republicans on the side of insurers, who want to continue discriminating against preexisting conditions. That is what this is all about: giving the insurance companies more of what they want. If you want to know why, follow the money. It is no secret where the insurance companies' allegiances are. Quite frankly, my friends have had 3 years in control to give us their alternative. They have said ``no'' to everything. No, no, no. They try to undercut and repeal everything. What have they offered in 3 years? What is their prescription for the uninsured in America? Take two tax breaks and call me in the morning. That is the best they could come up with. This is a good bill, and we need to work to implement it so that we can make sure that every single American has access to good, quality health insurance. With that, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Maloney).

Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, at this point, it is my privilege to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews). (Mr. ANDREWS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Burgess) for yielding me the time; and I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong, strong opposition to this closed rule and to the underlying bill. This is effort number 46, by my count, to gut the Affordable Care Act. Before I discuss the problems with the underlying bill, let me address, just so the record is clear, the latest example of lousy process foisted upon this House by the Republican leadership. The bill before us today would make sweeping and significant changes to the Affordable Care Act and, thus, to the Nation's health care system. It would profoundly affect the lives of millions of Americans, upend the individual market, and add confusion and uncertainty into an already complicated situation. So how many hearings did the Republicans hold on this bill? Zero. Let me repeat that: zero. How many expert witnesses did they call? Zip. How many markups did they have in the committees of jurisdiction? Nada. Yet again, Republican promises of regular order and a thoughtful legislative process have been thrown out the window. And with all due respect to my friend from Texas, to stand here and say with a straight face that this is some kind of an emergency, we can't have any amendments made in order, we just don't have the time, defies comprehension. We have a rule that is closed that allows for 1 hour of debate--not even split amongst the committees of jurisdiction. This bill, by right, is not only an Energy and Commerce bill, it is a Ways and Means bill, but the Ways and Means Committee doesn't get any time to debate this bill. Mr. Speaker, 1 hour. You mean we couldn't have 2 hours of debate and a few amendments? Or 3 hours of debate and a few more amendments? Or 5 hours of debate or a whole day of debate, given the fact that you didn't hold any hearings on this bill? Give me a break. This is not the way to run the House of Representatives. This is not the way you promised you would run the House of Representatives. And, by contrast, on the Affordable Care Act, we had hundreds of hours of debate and markups in which Republican amendments were actually accepted. Now you may not like the Affordable Care Act, but it went through a process. This went through no process. This was just brought up to the Rules Committee, and we are told to bring it right to the floor. This is not a serious attempt to fix the Affordable Care Act. This is a political statement, and I understand the temptation behind it. Believe me, no one is more frustrated by the problems with the rollout of the Affordable Care Act than those of us who voted for it, believe in it, and want it to work. But instead of working with us to try to actually fix the problems and make the law work, the Republicans have brought forth this Upton bill. Now, Mr. Speaker, let me be very clear about this bill. It is an attempt to drag us back to the bad old days of the American health care system. It would allow insurance companies to go back to offering cut- rate, shoddy policies that lack the consumer protections required by the Affordable Care Act. So if you want to go back to a system where insurance companies could turn people away because they are sick, by all means vote for this bill. If you want to go back to a time when women were charged higher rates than men because being a female counted as a preexisting condition, then vote for the Upton bill. If you believe that insurers should be allowed to eliminate somebody's coverage if they get sick or are older or if they have a child or for no good reason whatsoever, then the Upton bill is for you. In short, a vote for the Upton bill is a vote in favor of everything the American people say that they hate about the health care system in this country. Yesterday, in the Rules Committee, my friend, Dr. Burgess, made it very clear that the Upton bill is not an attempt to fix the Affordable Care Act. They are only interested in full repeal. They are perfectly satisfied with 40 million Americans having no health insurance at all. Speaker Boehner made a similar statement yesterday. As I said, the rollout of the health care plan has not been perfect, and I know that my own home State of Massachusetts, the rollout of our State health care law was not perfect either. But Democrats in Massachusetts did not go out of their way over and over and over again to sabotage it just because a Republican Governor named Mitt Romney signed it into law. We worked to make it better. And by 2009, I am proud to say, my congressional district had the highest rate of insurance coverage in the entire country. That is a good thing. If my Republican friends think that we are going to go back to a system where we in Massachusetts did the right thing but ended up paying for the uncompensated care of people in Texas, North Carolina, Utah, or anywhere else, they are wrong. At some point, we have to get serious about the goal of providing good quality, affordable health insurance to every American. The Upton bill gets us no closer to that goal. It is yet another political waste of time. Mr. Speaker, let me just close by making this observation. What this debate is about--and it has turned into an ideological debate--is whether or not you believe that every single American in this country is entitled to good quality health insurance or not. My friends on the other side of the aisle obviously believe that it is okay that 40 million Americans don't have health insurance, because for the last few years they haven't offered anything other than repeal--repeal, repeal, repeal--and offering nothing as a substitute. They think it is okay to let the insurance companies decide whether you get health care or not based on a preexisting condition or whether you are a female or whether or not you are too old or too sick or whatever. They have been perfectly satisfied with the broken system that was in place. So that is the choice here. And I would urge my colleagues to understand that there is something wrong with the fact that, in the greatest country in the world and the richest country in the history of the world, so many of our fellow citizens don't have health care, don't have access to health insurance. And we can fix that. By fixing that, we not only improve the quality of life for our neighbors, our friends, and our fellow citizens, but we also help control health care costs. Because one of the biggest drivers of increased health care costs is the uncompensated care pool. So let's get serious. Let's stop this political posturing. I know you don't like the President. You have gone out of your way to say some things that are so outrageous, it is hard for me to believe that Members of Congress would say such things. But get over it and do what is right for the American people. Vote ``no'' on this closed rule. Vote ``no'' on the underlying bill. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. McGOVERN

Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, last Wednesday, I had the privilege of joining Monte Belmonte, who is a radio host at WRSI in Northampton, Massachusetts, on a 26-mile walk to raise awareness about the issue of hunger and to raise money for the Western Massachusetts Food Bank. It was an incredible experience. My legs are sore, but it was inspiring to be part of that march. For the entire 26 miles we were joined by a diverse group of people, people like Bill Stapleton, who is the president of the Northampton Cooperative Bank; Andrew Morehouse, who is the director of the Western Massachusetts Food Bank. We were joined by Dan Finn of Pioneer Valley Local First and a fellow named Sean Berry, who runs Four Season Liquor Store in Hadley. Along the way, various people joined us for part of the march. We met with school groups along the way. We even marched along with a group called Mutton and Mead, who put on a medieval festival every year in western Massachusetts. And as we marched, people would stop their cars to offer their support and offer some money; but they would also tell us stories about people they knew who are hungry in our community. Young kids in schools, some of them who marched with us, told us stories about how they had seen firsthand hunger. Some of them raised money to support the march. We also stopped at a place called the Amherst Survival Center. It is a food pantry, a place for low-income people to get clothes, sometimes medical advice, sometimes counseling. And when we stopped there, the director handed me a bunch of plates, paper plates, where people who go to the Amherst Survival Center, and some people who work there, wanted to send a message to me and to Congress. I want to read some of these plates. This one says: Try going hungry. Hunger hurts. The pantry provides. This one is: I read the news about SNAP and I am afraid my family will go to bed hungry. How is this possible? Another person wrote: I think everyone has a right to healthy food, which is why the pantry is so important. Linda wrote: Dear Congress, please help us who need the help. I didn't think I would ever be like this. This person wrote: No SNAP, no food. This person wrote: I work and I am seeking more work. My husband works. It is not enough. ``Dear Congress, access to affordable food is a basic human right,'' signed by Shelley. ``What's for dinner? Nothing without the pantry,'' wrote Emily. Working in the pantry has opened my eyes to see all the wonderful people struggling in the community. Dear Congress, we need your help. Blessings. Food stamps help American agriculture. Hunger and homelessness in America? I could go on and on and read some of these plates, and the reason why I am doing this is because we are so inundated with facts and figures and statistics that somehow I think we have lost our ability to feel them. These are real people. These are real people who are struggling, real people who are working with struggling families. They deserve a voice. And one of the things that people are concerned about is Congress making their lives worse. We are considering a farm bill; and in the House version of the farm bill, there is a $40 billion cut in SNAP--3.8 million people would lose their benefits. Hundreds of thousands of kids would no longer have access to free breakfast and lunch at school; 170,000 veterans would lose their benefits. Mr. Speaker, we can do so much better. One of the things we are here for is to help the people like those who go to the Amherst Survival Center. One of the things that we are here for is to respond to the concerns that we heard along the way as I marched with Monte Belmonte and his crew. You know, it is nice that this march was a success and they raised a lot of money for the Western Massachusetts Food Bank, but it is not enough. These food banks and these food pantries are at capacity. We can't make things worse. Surely in the richest country in the history of the world we can do better. We can end hunger. So, Mr. Speaker, I would urge all my colleagues, as we start to consider the farm bill, please do not support a farm bill that makes more people hungry. Let's do the right thing. This is a problem that we can solve. Again, I want to thank Monte Belmonte and all the people at WRSI and Northampton for their compassion, for their activism, for helping people in need; but we need to be inspired by people like those who marched with me from Northampton to Greenfield, and we need to do the right thing.

Mr. McGOVERN

Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, the Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) Washington Project Center opened 40 years ago to bridge the divide between scientific research and social policy recommendations. Since 1973, more than 1,100 WPI students have completed more than 400 projects for government agencies, community-based companies and institutions, multinational corporations, and nonprofit partners. The Center's success became the model for the WPI Global Studies Program, which has seen more than 22,000 budding scientists and engineers successfully complete and implement 3,600 projects across a wide range of areas, including environment, consumer protection, patents and copyrights and art and history. At WPI's 39 centers across the world--covering four continents and cities ranging from Alberta to Zurich to Bangkok to Cape Town to Panama City--students work with some of the world's largest companies, most influential non-profit and non-governmental organizations and most important scientific governmental agencies. Among the centers is the Venice Project Center, founded in 1988 by WPI Professor and native Venetian Fabio Carrera. In his 25 years of leading students to Venice, Carrera has spearheaded invaluable research about, among other areas, erosion within the city's famed canals, which was captured in a book by the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). These great young minds bring ingenious approaches to an outstanding array of challenges--and the projects fundamentally change the students, building leaders who possess passion, proficiency, and a certainty that their life's work can change the world. Mr. Speaker, I'm so proud to represent WPI, a world renowned institution for higher learning committed to educating our next generation of leaders. While WPI students are working to better communities across the globe, their longstanding history of service to my hometown of Worcester, Massachusetts, should also be recognized. I commend WPI students, faculty, leadership, and staff for their commitment to science education and global leadership. I ask my colleagues to join me today in recognizing their incredible achievements.

Mr. McGOVERN

Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, a week ago Monday, October 21, was the 1- year anniversary of the death of my friend, Senator George McGovern of South Dakota. We shared the same last name, but we weren't related. I interned for him when I was in college and he was in the United States Senate. I embraced his liberalism. I admired his service to our country in World War II, where he served as a bomber pilot, and I respected very much his politics, the way he did politics, understanding the importance of reaching across the aisle, of working to build coalitions to solve big problems. In particular, I admired the work that he did to end hunger, working with people like Senator Bob Dole, a Republican from Kansas. He even worked with President Richard Nixon, who defeated him in the 1972 election, winning 49 States over Senator McGovern. President Nixon held the first and only White House conference on food and nutrition. That conference helped spur a whole bunch of legislative activity aimed at improving nutrition for everybody in this country and aimed at ending hunger, which was a problem. George McGovern and Bob Dole, and even Richard Nixon, believed that in the richest country in the history of the world nobody ought to go hunger. I think of Senator McGovern often, especially now when I see what is happening in this Congress. On Friday, November 1, a couple of days from now, the moneys that were put into the SNAP program, formerly known as food stamps, to help provide additional resources for people to buy food in this country, those reinvestment moneys will come to an end. There will be a $5 billion cut in the SNAP program on Friday. Every single beneficiary will see a reduction in their food benefit. That includes 22 million kids, 9 million elderly people and disabled, and it includes 900,000 veterans. We say we want to support our veterans, but many of them have come back and found it difficult to find a job or found it difficult to find a job that pays a living wage, and they rely on the SNAP program so they can put food on the table for their families. Yet, on Friday, 900,000 veterans who are on the SNAP program will see a reduction in their benefit. A family of three will see a reduction of about $30 per month in their benefit. That is about 16 meals a month for a family of three. That is an awful thing that is about to happen, but what is more awful is what is coming down the road. This House of Representatives passed a farm bill that includes, on top of this $5 billion cut, an additional $40 billion in cuts in the SNAP program. That would mean 3.8 million people currently receiving the benefit will be thrown off the program. Hundreds of thousands of children who rely on the free breakfast and lunch program will lose that benefit. I have been to many schools where I have seen kids staring off into space because they haven't had anything to eat. You can't learn if you are hungry. That $40 billion cut that this House of Representatives voted for would throw 170,000 veterans off the program entirely. Today, we are going to have the first meeting of the conference committee on the farm bill. I am privileged enough to be one of the conferees. I am going to tell my colleagues that I want very much for there to be a farm bill. I represent a lot of agriculture in Massachusetts. My farmers want a farm bill. Farmers all across the country want a farm bill. We need a farm bill for this country. I am willing to be flexible and I am willing to compromise and I am willing to accept things that maybe I don't like entirely because that is the way you compromise. What I am not willing to do, and what every Member of this House should not be willing to do, is to support a farm bill that makes hunger worse in this country. As we speak, there are 50 million Americans who are hungry--50 million; 17 million are kids. We all should be ashamed. Who is to blame for this? We all share the blame because hunger is a political condition. We can solve this. We know what to do. We just don't have the political will. We kind of turn a blind eye to the problem of hunger in America. It is a problem, by the way, that not only costs dearly in terms of human suffering, but it costs us all in terms of kids who can't learn in school and avoidable health care costs. We need a farm bill, Mr. Speaker, but let the price of that farm bill not be to increase hunger in America. Let's remember George McGovern, let's remember Bob Dole, let's remember people who understood the importance of combating hunger in America.

Mr. McGOVERN

Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Florida for yielding me the time. Mr. Speaker, let me first of all begin by opposing the rule. This House is becoming much too closed. I would remind my Republican colleagues of the promises they made when they took over this place. They promised a more open and more transparent House of Representatives. What we have seen is closed and restricted rules time and time and time again. There is no reason why this can't be an open rule. So I would urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to vote against the rule. Secondly, with regard to the underlying bill, it is my intention to support the underlying bill, but I do have serious reservations. The proponents of this bill talk about the streamlining provisions that are in this bill that somehow streamline the environmental review process and that somehow the environmental review process causes delays. I would remind my colleagues that the facts are clear that delays are caused by funding that doesn't correspond to the demand. The last WRRDA bill authorized over $23 billion in new projects, and since that time appropriations have been at $1.5 billion per year. The Ryan budget, which my Republican colleagues seem to love so much, will cut that by another third. Add to that sequestration and all the other budget cuts that my colleagues are proposing here, it is lack of money, not environmental reviews, that is causing the delays. Further, environmental reviews are really the only way voters have any say about the Federal projects in their community. We need a WRRDA bill, but we don't need to sacrifice the environmental review process or a process that allows our constituents to have a say on how projects proceed. I hope when this bill moves to conference committee with the Senate, we can fix some of these, I think, egregious problems with the bill with regard to the environmental review process. We do need a WRRDA bill, and we also need a transportation bill. I would hope my colleagues on the other side could convince the Tea Party members to allow that to come to the floor because we have an aging infrastructure, not only in terms of water projects but in terms of highways, roads, and bridges. I could go on and on and on. If we get this right, we can create some jobs. I urge my colleagues to oppose the rule, and support the underlying bill.

Mr. McGOVERN

Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I just want to take a few minutes here to speak about another aspect of this shutdown and, indeed, some of the policies that we have approved of here in this House of Representatives, policies that have adversely impacted most, especially the poor and the hungry and the vulnerable. We have 50 million people in the United States of America who are hungry; 17 million are children. This shutdown and this sequester and the farm bill that this House of Representatives approved goes after the very programs that provide so many of our needy people in this country food. That is it, nothing else but food. We have a hunger problem in the United States of America, and we all should be ashamed of that. This shutdown, coupled with the sequester, has threatened programs like WIC--the Women, Infants, and Children program. It has gone after the SNAP program, which used to be known as food stamps, threatening the amount that people get to be able to put food on their tables. It has threatened funding for food banks. We have had food banks all across this country that have shut down because of the sequester and also because of what this shutdown has done. We are a much better country than that. I know that the majority of people in this Chamber, deep down, care about the most vulnerable, but we haven't acted that way. There is a pattern in this House of Representatives and this Republican-led Congress that has diminished the plight of poor people, that has trivialized the need for people to be able to put food on their tables for their families and for their children. We passed a farm bill in the Congress here that cuts food stamps by $40 billion. That would mean 3.8 million people who currently rely on this benefit would be thrown off the program. We would literally be taking food away from families who need it. It would throw hundreds of thousands of children off the free breakfast and lunch program at school. That cut would result in over 170,000 veterans being thrown off that program. Veterans--men and women who have served our country overseas in battle, who are having trouble finding a job, getting stability in their lives, who need this program to be able to put food on their tables for themselves and their families--we are going to throw them off the program. That is just not right. That is just not right. The farm bill is going to go to conference, and my hope is that we can come to some sort of a bipartisan agreement to reverse kind of the negative aspects of what the House has done. We can do much better. We can do much better. We need to do much better. Mr. Speaker, it is not fashionable in this House of Representatives to worry about the poor, I guess maybe because they don't have super PACs; they don't donate to our campaigns; they don't have big lobbies here in Washington. But if government stands for anything, we need to stand for those people. Donald Trump doesn't need us, doesn't need government; but some returning veteran who cannot find a job, or some single mother who is trying to raise her kids and doesn't have enough to put food on the table, or some unemployed man who has worked all of his life and all of a sudden because of this lousy economy has found himself without a job and is trying to support his family, they need us, and we need to be there for them. That should not be a controversial or radical idea; yet, in this House of Representatives, it has been. So, from the shutdown to the sequester to the farm bill, over and over and over again, we have targeted the most vulnerable. Mr. Speaker, we need to reverse this trend. When this is all over with, I hope we can come together in a bipartisan way and actually talk about hunger; and I hope that the White House will come forward and embrace a White House conference on food and nutrition so we can have some leadership at the national level to come up with a plan to end hunger and to end poverty in this country.

Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, the Republican government shutdown has been a disaster. A lot of people all across this country have been hurt. Hopefully, the press reports that I am reading this morning are true and that, by the end of the day, this House of Representatives will support a Senate compromise that will reopen our government and will avoid our defaulting on our debt. So, I hope that in a bipartisan way, before this day is out, we can come together and do that. This shutdown and this threat of default has made this Chamber look ridiculous. People of every political persuasion are disappointed in the behavior, especially of some elements of this House that have driven us to this shutdown and threatened a default of our Nation for the first time in history. End Hunger Now

Mr. McGOVERN

Mr. McGOVERN. I want to thank the gentlelady from North Carolina for her graciousness in allowing my side a few more minutes. I appreciate it very much. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 15 seconds. If we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule that will allow the House to vote on the Senate's clean continuing resolution so that we can send it to the President for his signature today and end this government shutdown. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of the amendment into the Record, along with extraneous materials, immediately prior to the vote on the previous question, and I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' and defeat the previous question.