Mick Mulvaney

Mr. MULVANEY

Mr. MULVANEY. Mr. Speaker, as the House prepares next week to take up a discussion about Planned Parenthood, I want to speak very briefly to what the debate is not about. It is not about women's health. The proposal that many of us are making to this House is that we simply take this money away from Planned Parenthood and move it to federally qualified healthcare clinics, clinics that provide better services and more services to women. There are 13,000 of these clinics versus 900 Planned Parenthood units, services that go to women that Planned Parenthood does not provide. Planned Parenthood does not do mammograms; the clinics do. This debate is not about women's health care, and anyone who wants you to believe that it is, is simply afraid to tell you what it is really about, which is whether or not we should give taxpayer money to an entity that sells pieces of dead children.

Mr. MULVANEY

Mr. MULVANEY. I thank the gentleman from North Carolina. I thank him for doing this. I think it is wonderful that we are having a night designated as the people's night. You would think that we would do that just every day in here, but I think that more often than not we probably don't, so it is good to be here to talk about things that affect the people. Some things that affect the people, Mr. Speaker, back where I live is Operation Choke Point. Where I live, people buy guns at gun shows. They use pawnshops. They might go to a payday lender every now and again. They might go and buy ammunition. Because of what has happened in Operation Choke Point the last year and a half or so, they are starting to lose the ability to do that. I want to explain to people very briefly what Operation Choke Point is. This is not some rightwing conspiracy. It is not some Internet myth. This has been acknowledged by the Department of Justice. Several years ago, the DOJ, along with the FDIC, one of the banking regulators, set out to attack legal businesses, businesses that were perfectly legal and permitted under the law, but they were in disfavor with this administration. Instead of trying to drive those businesses out of business by using the law, this administration decided to use the regulatory environment. Instead of going directly after those businesses, this administration went after their banks and said: Look, we know that this pawnshop is a legal business, and we know that you have done business with them for a long time, but we could really make your life difficult if you continue to bank this particular pawnshop. In fact, your life will be much easier if you didn't bank this pawnshop. Time and again, Mr. Speaker, what we found was these small businesses--a woman-owned business in my district--losing their banking relationships. The banks that had 25-year relationships with them would come to them and say: Look, we simply can't bank with you anymore. It is too difficult to do. There is too much pressure to stop. I had a woman-owned business, a pawnshop in my district. She tried to expand the business so that the business was big enough to give to both of her sons. She was a single mother. She wanted to get the business big enough to where both boys could inherit part of the business. She went to her local bank where she had more than a 20-year relationship, and she was told that, no, that she was now too hot to handle. Not only could they not give her a loan to expand the business, they had to pull back on the services they already provided. There is another business elsewhere in the State, a large financial concern, and a little tiny piece of what they do is payday lending. You can say what you want to about it, Mr. Speaker. You may not like payday lending. A lot of people don't. But people use it, and people need it. I will never forget when I was in the State legislature, we had a hearing on payday lending. One of the witnesses that spoke before me in the senate was an employee of one of the local credit unions. I knew who she was. I walked up to her afterwards and said: You are here to talk in favor of payday lending? She said: Yes. I said: But you work for a credit union. She said: Yes. I said: Why are you here? She said: Because everybody in town knows who I am. I am having a tough divorce, and I need a little bit of money. If I go to my local bank or I go to my credit union where I work, everybody is going to know about it. I don't want people to know about my business. She needed that particular service. Folks need this service. It may not be the proudest thing we do as a nation, but people need it. This company in Greenville, South Carolina, had a little, tiny piece of their business in payday, a 30-year banking relationship for all the rest of their businesses. The bank came over one day and said: Look, we are under a great deal of pressure. We are going to have to pull all our relationships with you. Maybe 5, maybe 2\1/2\ percent of their business was payday, and now this large employer in my district is struggling to find financial services. It is so offensive, Mr. Speaker, that a couple of months ago, the DOJ finally acknowledged that it was wrong, and they agreed to stop the program. The FDIC agreed to stop as well. All I can tell you is that while the letter went out saying it was stopped, we are still hearing stories to this day that it is still going on. My dad told me about a year ago, I had been here 3 years at the time, and he started paying attention to politics after I got here. He said: Do you want to know the difference, Mick, between government today and government when I was your age? I said: What is that, Dad? He said: When I was your age, you might not like what the government did, you might not like the party that was in power, but it never even occurred to us to be afraid of the government. It never even occurred to us that we might be targeted for what we believe or what we think or what we do for a living. That is what is different now. Mr. Speaker, people are afraid of their government. And if you are home tonight, you are watching this, and you run an ammunition store in Union, South Carolina, you are legitimately afraid that the government is going to try and come and put you out of business. That is a dramatic change, Mr. Speaker, and not a change for the better. To that extent, a group of men and women come here tonight at the invitation of the good gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Walker), come and just tell people that we think it is wrong, too, we have heard what they have had to say back home, and just deliver the message that they are not alone, that there are some men and women here in Washington who are just as outraged as they are, and they are dedicated to making sure that when our time here is done, they won't have to fear their government anymore. So with that, I thank the gentleman from North Carolina, again, for setting up this Special Order.

Mr. MULVANEY

Mr. MULVANEY. I thank my friend, Mr. Luetkemeyer, and I thank the chairman. What we are up here talking about is a program where the government is trying to put legal businesses out of business--that is what Operation Choke Point is--legal businesses that some people don't like especially within the administration, pawnshops, payday lenders, ammunition manufacturers, gun shops, but legal businesses. With all due respect to my friend from Pennsylvania, we have had hearings on this. In fact, the Department of Justice has claimed they have stopped this program. They have agreed with us that they shouldn't be doing this. Now, we don't believe they are actually doing that. We have indications from what is happening back in our districts that even though the Department of Justice says they have stopped Operation Choke Point, that it is still going on. So here is my question, Mr. Chairman: Who supports this program? The Department of Justice says it is wrong. The Department of Justice says it is not even doing it. So who would get up here on this floor and say: ``I think Operation Choke Point is a great idea. I think we should go ahead and continue to use means within the Department of Justice to drive legal businesses out of business''? I'm not really sure how you defend that position. This is real for me in my district, Mr. Chairman. I have a woman- owned business in my home county who cannot get money to expand her pawnshop. I have businesses elsewhere in South Carolina that have a little tiny piece of their large financial services business in payday lending. They have been cut off from their financial relationships of 25 years. They can't get banking services. That is why the DOJ said they were going to stop. We just don't happen to believe them. Mr. Chairman, we should support this amendment because it is the appropriate thing to do, to my good friend from Pennsylvania, because that is how we work. We defund programs that we don't like. And if the DOJ says they are not doing it anyway, what is the harm in voting for the amendment? So I would ask again, who could possibly be against the amendment? Who could possibly be for Operation Choke Point? I hope we have overwhelming and broad support for Mr. Luetkemeyer's amendment later on this evening.

Mr. MULVANEY

Mr. MULVANEY. Mr. Schweikert, thank you for the opportunity to talk about this a little bit without the pressures of the 2-minute timer or a 3-minute timer, actually talk about something in detail for a change in this House because it merits the discussion. My experience with it, Mr. Schweikert, was exactly the same as yours--they are not exactly the same. I am not from the resort part of South Carolina. Mr. Sanford and Mr. Rice get that. I am from the more rural inland part of the State; but we have got a lot of freeways and a lot of small businesses operating hotels, a lot of them owned by Asian Americans. I was approached by a group of Indian American hotel owners last year. These are folks, mom-and-pop operations, that might own one hotel, they might own two. They told me the same story you just told about these pool lifts having to go in. A lot of them, like your friends with the resorts, had the portable lifts, so if anybody ever asked for help getting into and out of a pool by themselves, they had the ability to do that. Of course, similar to your story, none of them had ever been asked. The Department of Justice came in and said: You know what, we are going to require you, under the terms of the Americans with Disabilities Act, to put these fixed pool lifts in every single body of water that you have; so if you have a regular size pool, a kiddie pool, and a hot tub, that is three of these fixed lifts. It was a tremendous burden on these small businesses who, as you mentioned, wanted to help folks who needed help in getting in and out of the pool, but just wanted to do it with a portable machine, as opposed to a standard machine. They came in, and they said: Look, Mr. Mulvaney, we have seen this act before. This is how we got rid of diving boards. This is why we don't have any diving boards. Years ago, people said they were an attractive nuisance. Kids were jumping off of them and hurting themselves, so now that entire generation of Americans has grown up without diving boards. What is going to happen now is that the next generation of Americans is going to grow up without swimming pools at hotels for the exact reason that you have just mentioned. We spent 40 years getting rid of these things that children could climb up on and jump off of into the pool, and now the Department of Justice has required these hotel owners to come in and put the exact same thing back in. It is no longer a diving board. Now it is a mechanical chair. But to an 8-year-old, it looks like something to climb up and jump off of. So they were lamenting the fact not only that their business is going to be hurt but that part of the enjoyment of coming to the hotel would be gone and not available to their customers, and that eventually, you would see them start filling in their swimming pools. Unfortunately, I think that is the way that we are moving. But they also talked about something--and this is to the point of the article that you just mentioned, The Economist from April 25, which is that there was a private right of action in the regulations that came forward. And what this means, to folks who aren't familiar with what that means, is that anybody can sue. In fact, in the United States of America, when anybody can sue, typically, anybody does sue. The article goes into great length about one very, very energetic plaintiff who filed 529 lawsuits against small-business owners at hotels throughout the southeast. In fact, in one particular period of time, they hit 50 hotels in a row shortly after the regulation became effective so that they could file their lawsuit against the hotel owners. I will read one of my favorite passages in the article, which is something that should be enlightening for all of us: ``There is evidence that lawyers explicitly target small businesses, which are more likely to pay up without a fight.'' There we go. That is what we have done in the name of helping people whom folks were already trying to help. But in the name of having the government tell small business and large business how to help people, what do we end up with? Essentially a jobs bill for the plaintiff's bar. Before we started today, the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Schweikert) and I were talking about why we were going to take a few minutes to talk about this. As my friend from Massachusetts, Barney Frank, said before he left: ``Everybody always says, `I hate to say I told you so,' but the truth of the matter is, people love saying, `I told you so.''' This is exactly what we said would happen. And why the Department of Justice saw fit to single out small business hoteliers who were already trying to help people and say, You know what, we know better than you how to help people. You think these portable units are good? Well, we think the fixed units are better. And trust us because we are from the government, and we are here to help you. What do we end up with as a result of the government trying to fix the problem? We end up with small businesses making less money. And I know not a lot of people are sympathetic to that. I certainly am. I used to be a small-business person. And believe me, the people who worked for me liked it when I made money. So did I. But I recognize the fact that a lot of people are not sympathetic to small business. But small business makes less money. Kids are going to have less access to swimming pools as they travel the country. Think about that for a second. How absurd is that, that we are going to end up filling in swimming pools in order to prevent lawsuits. And then lastly, and the worst is, you will end up with a situation where all we have done is empower a small group of overzealous trial lawyers and their plaintiffs. It is a sad story but one that we hear again and again in America. And I only hope that the next time the government comes up with an idea like this on how to fix things, they will look to what is happening now to the small-business hotel owners as an example of government gone wrong.

Mr. MULVANEY. I would suggest to you, Mr. Schweikert, that you were, in fact, being insensitive: you were being insensitive to the trial bar.

Mr. MULVANEY. Listen, I had the same experience as you did, Mr. Schweikert. I was in the Longworth House Office Building a couple years back. You and I wrote a bill together to try to either delay or prevent the DOJ from putting this regulation into effect, and we had people literally protesting outside of our office, folks from the disability community who wanted this particular accommodation. And I am completely sympathetic to that. What I think they failed to see at the time and failed to grasp was, number one, they were already being accommodated. My guess is that 99.9 percent of the people who came to protest had never asked to use one of these portable lifts at hoteliers, so they were not aware of the fact that they were there but, at the same time, they never gave any thought to the unintended consequences of this particular piece of regulation that the DOJ promulgated. And I think that, again, is a lesson to be learned. A government that is big enough to give you everything that you want is big enough to take from you everything that you have. And this, in a very small way, is what we saw in the promulgation of this particular regulation.

Mr. MULVANEY. We will get equality, Mr. Schweikert. We will have equal access to the swimming pools under this regulation because no one will have the access. That will be the ultimate result here. In an effort to make it accessible to everybody, we will end up making it accessible to no one, and in the final analysis, that is a sad state of equality that I don't think anybody should applaud.

Mr. MULVANEY. Mr. Schweikert, thank you for the opportunity. The Budget

Mr. MULVANEY

Mr. MULVANEY. Mr. Chairman, I want to read something at the beginning of this: ``Abuse of the overseas contingency operation global war on terror cap adjustment is a backdoor loophole that undermines the integrity of the budget process.'' It goes on to say that the Budget Committee will oppose increases above the levels the administration and our military commanders say are needed to carry out operations unless it can be clearly demonstrated that such amounts are war related. That is from last year's House-passed budget report. Last year, this body took a position that we were not going to use the OCO budget, the global war on terror budget, in order to get around the BCA caps. The appropriations bill, as currently offered, does exactly that. It spends about $532 million in the OCO budget for matters that the Department of Defense admits are not war related. These are matters that the Department of Defense included in its original base defense budget request, but for which there wasn't enough money under the BCA caps. So what the appropriators have done is taken those requests which are admittedly not war related and buried it in this appropriations bill, using the OCO money in order to violate the caps. By the way, the money goes to overseas bases, bases in Italy, Poland, Bahrain, Niger, Djibouti, and Oman, admitted by the Defense Department not to be war related, yet is in the war budget today. All I ask, Mr. Chairman, is this: If we agree as a body that we cannot live within the BCA caps and we agree that the defense of the Nation takes more money than is permitted under the BCA caps, then let's break the caps. But let's do it honestly, let's do it openly, and let's tell the people here why we have to do it and where the money is going. The OCO budget has been described by members of both the Democrat Party and the Republican Party alike as a slush fund, as a bad way to do business. The Defense Department doesn't even like using this type of money because it does not allow them to budget properly. It is a desperate act, and it is a dishonest act when it comes to following the law. The Budget Control Act is the law of the land. It passed in the House, it passed in the Senate, and it was signed by the President. And this appropriations bill seeks to break the law and seeks to do it in such a way that isn't even honest about how it is going forward. So with that, Mr. Chairman, I respectfully request that folks would support the Mulvaney-Van Hollen amendment and strike the OCO-GWOT money from this particular appropriations bill. With that, Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time. point of order

Mr. MULVANEY. Mr. Chairman, my understanding is that this amendment seeks to strike title IV on page 62, which is exactly where we are when I was called to the podium.

Mr. MULVANEY. Mr. Chairman, I have a parliamentary inquiry as to the point of order.

Mr. MULVANEY. Is the point of order that we have not yet reached the appropriate time for making this particular amendment?

Mr. MULVANEY. Would the gentleman from Pennsylvania restate the point?

Mr. MULVANEY. Mr. Chairman, my understanding is that we are on page 62. That is the page I think on which title IV is printed. My amendment does nothing more than strikes all of title IV. So it seems like this is wholly the appropriate time to deal with that particular amendment and, in fact, may be out of order if I don't offer it right now.

Mr. MULVANEY. Parliamentary inquiry, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. MULVANEY. Is the ruling without prejudice as to my ability to offer the amendment at a later time?

Mr. MULVANEY. I respect that, Mr. Chairman. I don't believe that responds to my parliamentary inquiry. Is the Chair's ruling with or without prejudice as to my ability to bring the same amendment at a later time?

Mr. MULVANEY. I respect that, Mr. Chairman. I am not asking the Chair for an advisory opinion. I am asking the Chair to clarify the ruling the Chair has already made. Is it with or without prejudice?

Mr. MULVANEY. Parliamentary inquiry, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. MULVANEY. Again, I am new at this. I understand that we are sort of working our way through this. Here is my question: If this was the inappropriate time for me to bring this amendment, why was I summoned to the podium?

Mr. MULVANEY. Further parliamentary inquiry, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. MULVANEY. My amendment was read. Amendment Offered by Mr. Van Hollen

Mr. MULVANEY. I have an amendment at the desk to strike the second paragraph of title IV.

Mr. MULVANEY. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk. I am moving to strike the second paragraph of title IV.

Mr. MULVANEY. Mr. Chairman, unless Mr. Van Hollen has anything to add, I believe the same arguments that we just made on his previous amendment stand for this one, and I reserve the balance of my time.