Jim McGovern

Mr. McGOVERN

Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Neguse), to discuss our proposal.

Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from New Mexico (Ms. Leger Fernandez).

Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania, my good friend, for yielding me the customary 30 minutes, and I yield myself such time as I may consume. Madam Speaker, I will just take a moment first to recognize the loss of our dear colleague and historic trailblazer, Dianne Feinstein. The longest serving woman in the United States Senate, Senator Feinstein was a political giant. She fought hard for her constituents in California, passionately defended American civil liberties, and was a strong voice for national security as chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee. She broke more glass ceilings in her career than most thought was possible, and she will be missed. She left behind an incredible legacy. May she rest in peace. Now, Madam Speaker, I have the unfortunate task of turning to the business before us, a CR that the Republicans have brought forward. Again, I mentioned legacy with regard to Senator Feinstein. I ask my friends, is this their legacy? Is this what they want people to remember their service by? This bill, that was just dropped on us a few hours ago, really is a piece of garbage, and that is putting it nicely. Madam Speaker, the clock is ticking; less than 40 hours from a total MAGA Republican government shutdown. Less than 40 hours, and today we are here to consider the Republicans' latest continuing resolution that has absolutely no chance of becoming law. This version of the CR we are considering won't pass the Senate. It just won't. We all know that. Hell, I don't even think it is going to pass the House, it is so bad; and it will not be signed into law by President Biden. We all know that. We got this text late last night, and thanks to the quick work of Democratic Rules and Appropriations staff, we have some preliminary analysis about what this CR means for the American people. Let me tell you, the cuts in this bill are even worse than what was proposed before. They are going in the wrong direction. House Republicans' earliest CR slashed essential programs by 8 percent, an 8 percent across-the-board mindless cut. This new version now has across-the-board cuts by 30 percent or more; by 30 percent or more. It is effectively a partial shutdown bill. They slash investments in cancer research. They eliminate public education by cutting funding for Head Start. They fail to support communities recovering from natural disasters. It cuts money for wildfire suppression by 50 percent. Haven't they been paying attention? The wildfires in Maui and in the western part of the Country. I mean, communities are desperate for help, and my friends propose a bill that would cut money for wildfire suppression by 57 percent. What planet are my friends living on? They cut loans and grants for farmers in rural communities. They defund law enforcement. Republicans want to talk about fentanyl? They cut money from the DEA. What are they thinking? You can't make this stuff up, Madam Speaker. We estimate that if Republicans get their way, if this thing were ever to become law, up to 1 million seniors will be kicked off of Meals on Wheels. My friend from Pennsylvania talks about, oh, we are upholding our obligation to protect our national security. I will remind the gentleman and my friends on the other side of the aisle that national security means more than the number of bombs we have in our arsenal. It means the quality of life for our people. It means whether or not our senior citizens have security in their retirement years. It means whether they have access to food. It means whether or not people have jobs and whether or not people can have a decent living in this country. That has to be part of the discussion on national security, and this bill just blows all that up. We expect WIC to get at least a 30 percent cut. Women, infants, and children will go hungry because of Republicans' misplaced priorities. Talk about cruelty. In the Rules Committee just not too long ago this morning, I asked my friends, who claim that they were well-versed in all the details of this bill, is the 30 percent cut in WIC accurate? Is that correct? There was silence. How many women, infants, and children will be cut off from the benefit if this were to pass? There was silence. No one knows. We do know, thanks to the work of the staff, that there is a 30 percent cut and a 74 percent cut in LIHEAP, a program that keeps Americans warm during the winter. I come from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. We have cold winters. The gentleman comes from Pennsylvania. It gets cold in Pennsylvania, too. Winter is coming. Everybody represents constituencies that rely on this program to heat their homes, and my friends cut it by 74 percent. What are my friends thinking? Give me a goddamn break. This is wrong. What are you doing? When it comes to keeping seniors warm or providing pregnant mothers and their babies food, Republicans have a problem, but the sky is the limit if it is a defense contract--cost overruns be dammed. They have no problem with tax cuts for corporations or for millionaires or billionaires, no problem with heaping more subsidy giveaways to the fossil fuel industry. Let me just say, we do not share the same values, and this is proof of that, Madam Speaker. This is proof of that. This majority is a failure. The day Speaker McCarthy handed his gavel over to the MAGA/QAnon fringe, this was the inevitable outcome. The government will shut down tomorrow. Let me repeat that: The government will shut down tomorrow. Let me say to my Republican friends: You own this. You did this, and this is just plain stupid. Stop wasting time and work with us to get this done in a bipartisan way. Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to join us in defeating this rule. I mean, we are wasting time today. This is a total waste of time. Let's defeat this rule and force the Rules Committee to go back up and come up with a rule that will allow a bipartisan bill to come before the floor. Let's end this clown show once and for all. The American people are watching. They are frustrated by all of this, and I hope that my friends on the other side of the aisle, my moderate friends on the other side of the aisle, will join us in defeating this rule. We appreciate the statements that have been made, calling out the incompetence of the Republican leadership, but now I think it is time to put your votes where your quotes are. We have to stop this. Now is the time to send that message, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman's commentary and his critique of Republican leadership, but what I didn't hear is how he was going to vote on this rule or how he is going to vote on the underlying bill. The bottom line is, quotes are fine, but votes are better. Votes are more important here. By the way, this bill that we are talking about guts things like LIHEAP, cuts it by 74 percent, which will impact people in New York, which will impact people in Pennsylvania and all over this country. The bottom line, Madam Speaker, is that if we want to get rid of the nonsense and get to the business of funding government in a bipartisan way, then we need to stop this now. We need to sit in a room in a bipartisan way and figure this out. That is what the United States Senate is doing. My Republican friends have never once talked to the Democratic leadership here about trying to come up with a compromise. Republicans never once talked to our ranking members about how we come to a middle ground. It has always been their way or the highway. By the way, it is not just their way. It is their far-rightwing way, going way, way in the wrong direction. Madam Speaker, the CR we are considering in this rule is not just shameful. It is a partisan measure. It is also, as I have said, a complete waste of time, time we do not have. Tomorrow, the government shuts down. This will not keep the government open. It will not keep it functioning for the American people. It does the opposite. It ensures a shutdown will occur, and if anybody is opposed to a shutdown, then stand with us right now and say no to this nonsense. Madam Speaker, I am urging that we defeat the previous question, and if we do, I will offer an amendment to the rule for swift consideration of the Senate's bipartisan continuing resolution to fund the government after they send it to the House. Once we receive the Senate CR, the chair and/or ranking member of the Appropriations Committee can call it up as a privileged question without further action from the Rules Committee. There will be 1 hour of debate, and the House will have an up or down vote on keeping the government running while full-year funding is being negotiated. We can send the bill straight to the President's desk. During the 2013 shutdown, a Senate CR was privileged under the House rules until the Republican majority turned that off. We aren't even at the procedural stage yet because House Republicans have failed to advance any real plan to fund the government. They would rather fight with one another than negotiate with the Senate. Some have even openly called for a government shutdown, and we have been through those quotes of Republican after Republican saying they relish a government shutdown. We can fix this right now. If anything deserves to be privileged for consideration on this floor, it is a bill to keep the government open. That is so vitally important, Madam Speaker. Clearly, it is time for the adults in the room to step up to the plate. We need to give Congress more time. Again, I ask my moderate friends on the other side of the aisle not to follow the fringe of their party down this path. It is my hope that some reasonable Republicans who are interested in governing will join with us in this effort. So reject this insanity of cheering on a government shutdown and abandon the sinking ship that is MAGA extremism. Moderates have a chance to say enough is enough. A bipartisan CR would be temporary, but it is better than nothing. We need the time to work all this stuff out. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of my amendment into the Record along with any extraneous materials immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I wonder whether the DCCC writes the gentleman's speeches because what the gentleman from Colorado quoted was his words in a speech. Talk is cheap around here. Votes are the currency of the realm in this place. The choice is clear, and the gentleman has made clear where he stands. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania (Ms. Scanlon), a distinguished member of the Rules Committee.

Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I would just say to the gentlewoman, we are not here to support Republicans. We are here to support our constituents. Madam Speaker, if the President were presented with H.R. 5525, he would veto it, so this is a complete waste of time. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to include in a Record a Statement of Administration Policy on this underlying bill.

Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania.

Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I remind the gentleman from Michigan that if the Republicans' shutdown moves forward, he has 5,607 people in his district who are Federal employees who will lose their paycheck. In the Rules Committee today, Madam Speaker, Democrats offered an amendment saying, yeah, we are happy to talk about how to keep Social Security and Medicare solvent, but we want to guarantee that we are not going to cut people's benefits, and the Republicans rejected that. We know what this is about. This is about going after Social Security and trying to make it solvent by cutting people's benefits, and Democrats are against that unequivocally. Madam Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).

Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to the time remaining.

Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I will point out to the gentleman who just spoke that the Senate can't even take up the Homeland Security appropriations bill because the way the Republicans wrote the rule was that they are not going to send it over until the Senate passes H.R. 2 without changing a comma and the President signs it into law. Lots of luck with that. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Speaker, it is an absolute joke that we are here today dealing with this, as I said at the beginning of my remarks, piece of garbage. That is what it is. This is not a serious attempt at legislating. This is a MAGA Republican press release at best, and it is a lousy press release. All the priorities that are in this bill represent deep cuts to things that matter to Democrats. When we talk about national security, we don't only talk about the size of our military and the number of bombs we have. We talk about whether or not people in this country have access to jobs, whether they have food, whether or not we have good schools, whether or not people have access to healthcare and retirement security. We talk about things like the purity of our environment. My Republican friends talk about bombs and about tax cuts for the rich and for big corporations. They don't care about the people who are at the heart and soul of our concerns on the Democratic side. If they did, they wouldn't cut and slash programs like WIC, the women, infants, and children program, providing basic nutrition for low-income, pregnant moms and newborn babies. They wouldn't cut LIHEAP, a program that provides vulnerable people with help to be able to heat their homes in winter. They wouldn't cut it by 74 percent. Who does that? Who thinks like that? Who would come to the floor and defend that kind of garbage? The bottom line is, we don't share the same values. It is that simple. I want to tell you, we are going to fight as hard as we can against all the things that you claim you value in this book because this is not what America is about. Basically, this is about turning our back on people. This is essentially a government shutdown in and of itself. Let me just close with a couple of comments to our moderate friends who go on MSNBC and give all these quotes about how they want a balance and how they want this. They criticize their leadership, and then they come to the floor and vote with the majority. Enough of that. It is votes, not quotes, that matter. It is votes, not quotes. If you really want to avoid a government shutdown, to the so-called moderates on the other side of the aisle, vote with us. Vote ``no'' on the previous question so we can guarantee that the Senate-passed bill will have a vote here in the House. Vote ``no'' on the rule so we don't have to waste all this time today arguing over this nonsense, this hardline, rightwing garbage that guts the heart and soul of our social safety net. We can do so much better. At the end of the day, we have to come together, Democrats and Republicans, and come up with a bill. My friends keep on going in the wrong direction. They keep on going further and further to the right. That is a road to nowhere. The Senate, to their credit, Democrats and Republicans, are talking. You guys can't even talk with yourselves. You are fighting amongst yourselves. This is a radical idea: Maybe sit down and try to negotiate a bipartisan solution here because you control one-half of one branch of government--and barely. You would never know it when you see this kind of stuff come to the floor. Enough of the nonsense. People send us here, at a minimum, to keep the lights on. You have to do that. Work with us. Stop this nonsense. Again, vote ``no'' on the previous question, vote ``no'' on this garbage. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Neguse), a distinguished member of the Rules Committee.

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. Madam Speaker, current U.S. policy towards Cuba is best described as continuing the sanctions and policies of Donald Trump. Every day, our policies hurt the Cuban people. One thing the United States can do to provide relief is to remove Cuba from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list. There is absolutely no reason for Cuba to be on that list, none. And its impact affects nearly every global, financial, and economic institution. Many European nations and U.S. allies want to help relieve the suffering of the Cuban people, especially in the areas of health and basic needs. But their hands are tied because of the SST list and its onerous financial restrictions and punishments. Our policy is a relic from the Cold War, and quite frankly, it is cruel. It drives increased migration to our southern border, and it makes no sense. It is an embarrassment. Madam Speaker, I voted for Joe Biden, not Donald Trump. The President needs to do better. He could begin by removing Cuba from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list today.

Mr. McGOVERN

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

Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time to close. First of all, I thank the gentleman from Oklahoma. I think he did the best job he could defending this. He is very skillful in utilizing the English language. I always appreciate listening to him on these matters, but we all know what this is really about. We all had a chance to vote our conscience up or down. Those who voted to strike Ukraine aid can go home and tell their constituents they voted to strike Ukraine's aid. It is not that complicated. The fact of the matter is, Republicans have not done a single productive thing this week. They passed only one appropriations bill all year, and they are sitting here wasting time while the clock runs out. It is not just me saying that. Listen to our Republican colleagues. Listen to Mike Lawler. He said, ``This is not conservative Republicanism. This is stupidity, the idea we are going to shut the government down when we don't control the Senate, we don't control the White House. If the clown show of colleagues that refuse to actually govern does not want to pass a CR, I will do everything we need to do to make sure a CR passes.'' Congressman Marc Molinaro says, ``The goal here is to avert a shutdown.'' Guess what? This procedural vote is his chance to stand up and show the extremists. Instead of wasting our time in the clown show, vote against this rule. Congressman Anthony D'Esposito says he is ready to explore each and every option possible to make sure that we don't shut the government down. If Mr. D'Esposito is watching, vote against this rule. Congressman Dusty Johnson says, ``The government should not shut down. That would be an exceptionally stupid thing to do.'' Well, I agree. He should vote down this rule so we can get to work on preventing a shutdown. I am going to say directly to all of my colleagues, this vote is their chance to end the clown show. The only thing that matters around here is their votes. Everything else is BS. Maybe they should focus less on getting quotes and more on how they vote. Vote against this clown show. Vote against this rule. By the way, it works. It works for the Freedom Caucus and for the most extreme elements of this Chamber. They vote down rules, and they get these crazy things put into rules. They get everything they want. It is enough of the talk. If there are moderate Republicans out there who do not want this government to shut down, now is the time to put their vote where their rhetoric is. Enough of the talk. We need action. Finally, let me say to the chairman of the Rules Committee, the chairman said 5 days ago, ``We will see how this week unfolds.'' Well, this week has unfolded, and the Republican Party is still at war with itself. We are still no closer to avoiding a shutdown. What is happening here is so painfully transparent to anyone that is watching. It is because all Kevin McCarthy seems to care about is keeping his job. He should care about what a shutdown would do to his constituents, but he doesn't. He appears to care more about keeping his job than doing his job. As I said last night, and I will say again, calling Republican leadership a clown show is doing a disservice to actual working clowns. This process is one of the most rotten, corrupt, rigged things I have seen in all my time here. Shame on the Speaker. I have never seen anything like this: Using the rules to overturn a democratic vote on the House floor. Again, the vote was 339-93. 339-93. I mean, we don't get votes like that around here. Yet, one Member--we don't even know who is responsible for the language that we are dealing with here today. No one put their name on it, but this is awful, and I strongly reject this whole process. I again make an appeal to the moderate Republicans, if there are any out there, you know, stand with us, show us with their vote that they want things to change now, that they do not want a shutdown. Vote down this sham rule and force the leadership to go back up to the Rules Committee and do what they should have done a long time ago, work on a CR that can get a bipartisan vote in the House, a bipartisan vote in the Senate, and we can avoid a shutdown, and we can prevent a lot of misery for millions and millions of people in this country. Shutdowns, contrary to what you hear by many on the other side of the aisle, are a bad thing. It represents a failure of this institution to do its most basic job, and that is keep the lights on. I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the rule, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Oklahoma, my good friend, the chairman of the Rules Committee, for yielding me the customary 30 minutes, and I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, in 57 hours, this government will shut down. Federal workers will be sent home. Members of the Armed Forces will defend our country without pay. Programs that feed hungry moms and newborns will stop. Travelers will face airport delays. Critical research on diseases like cancer and Alzheimer's will grind to a halt. You would think that last night, when the Rules Committee held an emergency meeting, that it would be on stopping the shutdown. That is the actual emergency, Mr. Speaker, that is facing our country. You would be wrong. Instead of a bipartisan CR that can pass, we are back at the eleventh hour to amend a rule, the first rule this majority passed in weeks, because, once again, Speaker McCarthy is letting extreme MAGA Republicans blackmail him. What we are doing here is absurd. This assistance for Ukraine has been in the Defense bill for years, well before the latest invasion by Russia. This isn't even the Ukraine funding that President Zelenskyy asked for or the funding the administration requested. This shouldn't be controversial. First, it was in the bill, then it wasn't, then it was. Then, yesterday, we had a standalone vote on Ukraine funding, and the House voted overwhelmingly, 339-93, a majority of the majority, an overwhelming vote against stripping the Ukraine assistance in this bill. Instead of accepting that loss, extreme MAGA Republicans are blackmailing Kevin McCarthy. Here we are, rigging the rules to undo that vote. They want to overturn the will of this House. They refuse to accept the fact that they lost. What is it with Republicans refusing to accept when they lose? Why can't you accept a loss? Why can't you respect the vote? I guess there is a pattern here. We saw it when they didn't want to accept the Presidential election. Here on the House floor, we see when extreme MAGA, rightwing Republicans don't get their way, when they lose overwhelmingly, they can't accept a loss. They go to the Rules Committee and say: Rig the process. Did Trump call them and tell them to do this? I mean, this is so unbelievably wrong. The gentleman from Oklahoma has said some Members have very strong moral objections to assisting Ukraine. Okay. I have strong moral objections to the billions and billions of dollars of blank checks that were given to the Pentagon. I have strong moral objections to the fact that we refuse to ban the transfer of cluster munitions to other countries around the world, but guess what? It is our job as Members of Congress to weigh the pros and cons and vote yes or no. If people do not want to make those tough decisions, don't run for Congress. I appreciate that the gentleman from Oklahoma voted for and supports giving Ukraine the tools they need to defend themselves, but what the gentleman is doing here is making it exponentially more likely that this Ukraine funding will not become law. Because if this doesn't make a difference, if these bills are moving together and this is all just about giving people yet another chance to vote on something they already voted on, what is the point? The rule provides 30 minutes of debate on this sidecar Ukraine funding bill, 30 minutes, 15 minutes on each side. What a debate that is going to be. I will tell you what the point of all of this is. Let me read you the words of our colleague Marjorie Taylor Greene when she left the Republican Conference meeting this morning. She told the reporter: ``We are not funding Ukraine. That is what I heard in there.'' Let me inform the gentlewoman: We all had a chance to vote our conscience, up or down. Those who voted to strike Ukraine aid can go home and tell their constituents that they voted to strike Ukraine aid. It is not that complicated. What concerns many of us is the signal these extreme MAGA Republicans are sending to Putin. Putin is an authoritarian thug. What he is doing in Ukraine is sick. His troops are shelling nuclear power plants, killing civilians, bombing hospitals, abducting women, massacring people. My MAGA colleagues want to send him a message, and that message is: Just hold on a little longer. Wait a little longer and you can do whatever you want. This House had a vote, and we are here to overturn it, all because Speaker McCarthy is letting extreme MAGA Republicans blackmail him because he cares more about keeping his job than doing his job. Mr. Speaker, I urge a ``no'' vote, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the comments from my good friend from Oklahoma, and he knows I have great affection for him, but I am dizzy from all the spin, quite frankly. First, about the CR, what we know is that what may or may not pass in the House, based on the fact that the Freedom Caucus seems to be calling the shots, will never pass the Senate. We know whatever will come out of the Rules Committee in the next 24 hours or 48 hours or whatever, if anything, if ever, will not be able to get the votes not just amongst Democrats but amongst Republicans in the Senate. Secondly, we do know that the Senate is working in a bipartisan way. They already have clotured and moved forward with the process to bring up a CR, with an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote, but we know what they pass would pass this House if put on the floor. The reason why this government will, in all likelihood, shut down is because the Speaker of the House is so beholden to a small group of the most extreme Members that he won't put that on the floor. He will rig it so that we do not have a chance to be able to vote on it. That is how this government will shut down. My good friend talks about how this is really no big deal. It is just another vote, and everybody should be happy, but let me ask, if this were good for Ukraine and Ukraine's ability to defend itself against Russia's illegal war, then why would members of the pro-Putin caucus even agree to this? If everyone genuinely thought there was no difference between keeping the funding in the Defense bill and moving it separately, why insist on all of this? The answer is really simple: Republicans who seem to be enamored with Putin want this funding sent separately to the Senate because they know that is their best shot to prevent this money from going to Ukraine at all. In fact, when Marjorie Taylor Greene left the Republican Conference meeting this morning--I quoted her already, but I will quote it again. She said: ``We are not funding Ukraine. That is what I heard in there.'' Plus, we all know that there are Senators like Rand Paul and Tommy Tuberville who will block a separate Ukraine funding bill from moving forward. They are actively preventing the Senate from completing its work as we speak. This is not a flaw in the sidecar plan. It is a main feature and a goal. Let's be clear. This funding that we are talking about here is longstanding security assistance. It has been in the Defense bill for years, even before Putin invaded Ukraine. This is not the supplemental funding that President Zelenskyy requested when he met with Speaker McCarthy last week. This is not the supplemental funding the administration requested in their emergency funding request. It is not the supplemental funding that the Senate is trying to put in their bipartisan CR. Spare me the argument that somehow this is a good thing and gives everybody a chance for their voice to be heard on this topic. If everybody wanted their voice to be heard on this topic, you would have speaker after speaker right now speaking on this bill and speaking about their concerns about our Ukraine policy. There is no one over there. Let's all be real about what is happening. The House already had its voice heard, and it overwhelmingly voted to support funding in the Defense bill, a three-fourths majority. You can't get that many people to agree on lunch in this place, and it is a majority of your majority. The pro-Putin extremists didn't like the outcome, so they talked the Speaker into rigging the vote. That is what this is all about. Mr. Speaker, I am here to offer the House the opportunity to demonstrate for a third time that we stand by Ukraine in their time of need, and I urge that we defeat the previous question. If we do, I will offer an amendment that would strike the provision of the rule eliminating security assistance funding for Ukraine. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of my amendment into the Record, along with any extraneous material immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Minnesota (Ms. McCollum) to discuss this proposal.

Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I have nothing but great affection for the gentleman from Oklahoma, but we have to deal with the reality that we are now living in. This quote from Minority Leader McConnell was just tweeted out today with a message to the House Republicans on how a shutdown would impact the border. Mr. McConnell says: ``Shutting down the government is a choice, and it is a choice that would make the crisis at the southern border even worse.'' He says it is a choice because he sees what is happening here. He sees that the Republicans in this Chamber have made a choice to shut the government down. We didn't hear anything today about the border, but yesterday or the day before we did hear a lot about the border. Senator McConnell says that it would make the crisis at our southern border even worse. He is concerned. He is the Republican leader in the Senate. He is concerned by the action of the Republicans in this House. He sees that a small group of Republicans are calling the shots. They don't even represent the majority of the majority here. It is really quite extraordinary that we are at this moment. Rather than moving in a direction where we can get a bipartisan CR passed in both the House and the Senate and one that will be signed by the President, my Republican friends in the House are going in the wrong direction. We are running out of time. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Quigley).

Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, a lot of Democrats were sounding the alarm bells over the debt ceiling issue because our credit was actually downgraded. That is not a good thing. After we got a deal, which thank God we did, the extreme MAGA Republicans blackmailed the Speaker of the House into not respecting that deal. We have a problem right now. I should also point out that we had a long discussion on the border, and I am still puzzled why you are bringing a Homeland Security appropriations bill to the floor that actually cuts funding for border security. I don't quite get that. You added a provision that says that if you pass an appropriations bill on Homeland Security, it is kept at the desk, and it can't go to the Senate for a vote unless this crazy bill, H.R. 2, is passed by the Senate and signed into law by the President, without even changing a comma. I don't know what brilliant legislative mind thought that up. The bottom line is, this is not serious. Let me again read a quote from Senator McConnell. He said: A vote against a standard short-term funding measure is a vote against paying over $1 billion in salary for CBP and ICE agents. I don't know how my Republican friends are going to defend the border. Maybe with volunteers. Come on; I mean, at some point we have to get serious. Let me also just say--and, again, you can't make this stuff up-- Republicans are holding their first impeachment hearing today with just hours to go until a shutdown. What is wrong with them? Breaking news indicates it was a failure. The hearing was a total failure. Republican staffers are telling reporters that it was, ``an unmitigated disaster.'' Another GOP staffer says, ``Comer has lost control.'' Another GOP person said, ``Comer botched this bad.'' This was supposed to be their big bombshell, and it was a total dud. Not a single one of their witnesses could come up with a shred of evidence against the President. Let's see what they said. Their lead witness, Jonathan Turley, who they roll out every chance they can, was on FOX News constantly, said: I do not believe that the current evidence would support Articles of Impeachment. That is their star witness. Their other lead witness, Bruce Dubinsky, said: I am not here today to even suggest that there was corruption, fraud, or any wrongdoing. The list of Members on the other side saying this impeachment inquiry is a sham is getting longer and longer by the hour, and the clock keeps ticking toward a shutdown. Instead of a bipartisan CR that can pass, here we are wasting time. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert into the Record an article from The Daily Beast, ``Star GOP Witness Immediately Pours Cold Water on Biden Impeachment.''

Mr. McGOVERN. Again, the gentleman mentioned what is wrong with sending this separate bill to the Senate. I thought I explained that. Let me explain it in two words: Paul and Tuberville. I mean, these Senators are unhinged. Tuberville is holding up military promotions and Paul delays everything. We see that he is trying to delay Senate consideration on the CR. Sending this over and expecting that there is quick action? I mean, we all know what is going to happen, and we all know that people like Marjorie Taylor Greene, who insisted on this, did so because they think they have a better chance of derailing everything. I find it interesting, Mr. Speaker, that nobody put their name on this amendment. I don't know whose idea this was. I don't know who the author of this particular provision is to strip out Ukraine money, but anyway, that is a mystery that we will have to try to solve. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Smith), the distinguished ranking member of the Armed Services Committee.

Mr. McGOVERN. How much time do I have remaining, Mr. Speaker.

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