Steve Pearce

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. I thank the gentleman.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of Mr. Lucas' amendment. Contrary to what was said, New Mexico has Cannon Air Force Base, and the listing of the prairie chicken falls right in the bombing regions held by Cannon. For those people who say it is just alarmist, remember 1999 and 2000, when almost all of Camp Pendleton was shut completely down? The marines had to push their boats on the beach, but they couldn't get out because of the endangered species. They, instead, flew their boats over to Utah, set up stakes where the water would have been, and offloaded them there. When we talk about the effect of the Endangered Species Act, we have to remember the past. Remember that it was the spotted owl that shut down 85 percent of the timber logging in this country, only to have the Fish and Wildlife Service say a couple of years ago: Oh, never mind. It wasn't logging that was causing the spotted owl to go extinct. The Fish and Wildlife Service shut down 23,000 jobs in California because of a species. We want our national defense to reign supreme.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 360) to reauthorize the Native American Housing Assistance and Self-Determination Act of 1996, and for other purposes, as amended.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and to add extraneous material on this bill.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. We are here today to support H.R. 360, the Native American Housing Assistance and Self-Determination Reauthorization Act. This is truly a bipartisan bill. It has been over 2 years in the making. Beginning in early 2013, Don Young and Tom Cole, who are both Republicans, joined with me and Democrats Gwen Moore, Denny Heck, Dan Kildee, Tulsi Gabbard, and a host of others from the Democrat side to make a bill that truly works across both aisles and that is widely supported by tribes. Transformational in its opportunities for Native Americans, it has been widely recognized by those tribes. Most importantly, it is a bill for which we can come together and all be proud of cosponsoring. The legislation before us is just that; it shows that colleagues, regardless of political affiliation, can come together and get the job done. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I would like to join with Ms. Moore in recognizing the actions of Ms. Waters, the ranking member, truly, truly asking the questions that needed to be asked, but then finally reconciling on some of those issues. Also, the chairman, Chairman Hensarling, has been in the same position, and Leader McCarthy bringing this bill to the floor as he has, I would like to express that. I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Cole).

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Alaska (Mr. Young). (Mr. YOUNG of Alaska asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. As I go through my district, there are many who wonder why do we have a bill like this. Frankly, it is a treaty responsibility. The responsibility has been signed between the Native Americans and the Federal Government saying that we have a trust responsibility to them. As I travelled around the reservations in my district, I began to be aware of a circumstance that I had not previously been aware of: houses that were maybe several hundred years old, people still living in those. There is one area with no sewer at all. There are cardboard shacks, people living in situations that they should not be living in today. Those things exist. The legislation in front of us today doesn't change the responsibility of the government. It doesn't increase the amount of the dollars flowing to it. It simply tries to make the process a little more streamlined. I would like to acknowledge that HUD, at one point, was rigorously opposing the transparency, rigorously opposing those reforms that we were putting into their systems. They had duplications of processes that would literally take years in order to get approval to build houses, and we simply said it does not have to be that way. A second thing struck me. I watched my family grow out of abject poverty into a home ownership culture. Our first home that we purchased was $800, and then we moved up to a $1,500 home. Finally, we thought we really had arrived when we got to the $2,500 home, and then a $15,000, 5-acre property. And so the pilot project that Mr. Kildee--and he has had great discussions with me--but the pilot project is inserted into the bill in order to facilitate allowing Native Americans to own their own homes on the reservations. It has been very difficult up to now. We addressed those problems which have created a culture of poverty through the years. So, even though we might have a different view on how to get there, we do not, as Democrats and Republicans, disagree on the fact that prosperity will begin with home ownership. And this pilot project in here--completely voluntary--allows people to move directly into home ownership. It allows the Native American tribes to start to encourage home ownership on the reservations in order to preserve the cultures there. The reforms that we have put in for the Native Americans themselves were extremely important. Some of the processes have worked very badly. I have had extraordinarily frank conversations with Native Americans across the country, talking about the need to move to more transparent processes--to processes that make sure the money gets into the homes where they are building them. And so that is the purpose of this legislation. I, again, commend Congresswoman Moore because she and I really started the process. And then Denny Heck, Dan Kildee, Don Young, and Tom Cole were all sitting there, and we chipped away at it from each side. We got the reforms in. We got the wording in that would allow Indian tribes across the country to feel like they are participating in this. It is a very difficult process--again, a 3-year process--and I am proud of the legislation we are bringing to the floor today and proud of the efforts on behalf of each one of the people who have been involved here. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. At one point, Chairman Hensarling earlier in the process said he was not wildly ecstatic about the bill coming before his committee if 100 years from now Native Americans were going to be in the same circumstance they were in today. So, again, that was one of the elements of trying to find and facilitate home ownership among Native Americans so they could begin their growth towards prosperity. When Indian tribes see this bill, they say: If you can actually get that through, if you can actually get both sides to agree on it, it will be transformational. Well, that is what I came here to do. I came here to be a part of things that transform the way that we approach different programs, not to just drift along and reauthorize. And so it is with that backdrop that we began to construct the bill. Again, I would like to thank Ranking Member Waters for her support. I would like to thank Chairman Hensarling and Leader McCarthy for their support. I especially would like to thank my friends on the other side of the aisle for working through the very difficult discussions so that we are able to find a bill that does reach market efficiencies, does make the government more effective and efficient, that does do things that both political parties want to achieve. We all want to achieve the same things. We approach it from a different point of view. So I can't say enough to my friends on the other side of the aisle: Thank you very much for your hard work and dedication. With that, Mr. Speaker, I recommend and request that everyone support this bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. I thank the gentleman for yielding and for bringing this key issue to us on the floor tonight. Mr. Speaker, in November, the voters sent a very loud message to Washington, D.C. Now, they elected a lot of Republicans, but I tell my Republican friends that they weren't affirming our principles so much as they were desperate for a check and a balance against a President whose policies were frightening to them but also whose actions lay outside the bounds of laws that he was constrained by and constitutional constraints on his actions also. He, himself, admitted that multiple times, maybe more than 20 times, saying: I don't have the right to do it--as his own party chastised him and tried to force him into these executive actions, which he ultimately took. He said at one point: I am not the emperor. Are we now to believe that he declares himself to be such? That is the basic question that faces us now. The people of America want this institution called Congress--the House and the Senate together--to operate properly. I think, as much as anything else, the voters were expressing discontent that 380-plus bills from this House were stalled on the other side of the Capitol, never making their way in any form to the floor of the Senate. The people expect to see the issues up here and wrangled about. They want the tension between the two parties' different ideological points of view pulling at the fabric of the ideas in front of us. They are not so much concerned about the next bill. They are concerned about our vision for America and where we would take it, and they are frightened of a President who himself would take on actions which they knew were contrary to the good of the future of the country and that were certainly outside the boundaries of the laws which restrain even the President, because this country believes that not even the President is above the law. So the questions before us are very critical. There are some who are saying: You all in the House have passed a DHS bill, and it is all your way or no way. I beg to differ. We sent our version of a Keystone pipeline bill to the Senate. The Senate made significant changes. They sent that back, and, just today, we sent the bill with the changes, the changes that were brought by Democrats in the Senate. The Senate Democrats allowed the bill to come up for debate. They amended the bill. There are more amendments in this one bill than have been heard in the previous year, total, so the system is working properly. We just sent that bill to the President. We are going to ask him to sign it or to turn it down. The people will have an opinion now about the outcome of whether the President signs it or doesn't sign it. In contrast, look at what is happening with the DHS bill. The Senate Democrats, under Harry Reid, are saying: No, we are going to block it again. There is no debate, and there is no discussion, and there are no more ideas that are going to come in front of this Senate. I think that the American people are going to have the same opinion that they had about Reid's blocking all of the bills that came from the House before. I think that to be the case. At any rate, we in the House have passed our bill. The Senate should either obstruct or move forward. There are many fashions to do both, but the American people are looking and judging because they desperately want an institution that functions. They are not really significantly interested if it functions for Democrat rule or Republican rule. I think what they want is a system that is passing commonsense legislation, guaranteeing that the future of this country will be solid and sound. Then we can build a healthy economy, where everyone has got opportunity and where everyone has a chance to succeed based on the merits of his work. That is not what this President is putting in line, and that is the question before the House now as the Senate twice has rejected or has, maybe, even three times rejected the opportunity to debate the issue. I just calmly tell the American people that we are here, prepared to do the work you sent us to do. We will continue to do it. All you have to do is express your opinions to this body.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. ``No preference shall be given by any regulation of commerce or revenue to the ports of one State over those of another; nor shall vessels bound to, or from, one State, be obliged to enter, clear, or pay duties in another. ``No money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in consequence of appropriations made by law; and a regular statement and account of the receipts and expenditures of all public money shall be published from time to time.''

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and submit extraneous materials for the Record on H.R. 4329, as amended, currently under consideration.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, the Native American Housing Assistance and Self- Determination Act was first signed into law in 1996. This 5-year authorization bill was conceptualized not to simply be another Federal subsidy for Native Americans but rather a bridge to assist millions in creating a better living condition, create housing opportunities, and find prosperity for tribal members. My family's story is exactly this one: when I was born, Dad and Mom had to move the chickens out of the shack that we moved into. That building still has a dirt floor in it today and wires in the windows. I have seen housing conditions similar to this still in New Mexico. I understand that my family made its way up the prosperity ladder starting, first, with owning our own home and, second, with then finding other ways to achieve asset acquisitions, and the same thing can happen for Native Americans. In the last 10 years, NAHASDA, as it is known, has become a driving force for positive change and improvement on tribal lands. Through increased access to safe and affordable housing and lease-to-own programs aimed at providing rural tribes with a means for self-growth, the program has provided flexibility and independence to tribal members nationwide. This year we are not only reauthorizing this critical bill that provides much-needed housing; we are also attempting to continue NAHASDA's tradition of transforming housing programs. We are doing so by capturing and enhancing market efficiencies and the effectiveness of streamlined processes to continue building prosperity, something that has been elusive on tribal lands for too long. I would like to thank all of those who have assisted in the development and promotion of this legislation, Congressman Don Young, Congressman Tom Cole, Congresswoman Gwen Moore, Congressman Denny Heck, and Congresswoman Maxine Waters, who made great suggestions during the markup of this bill. Along with their staffs, they have worked tirelessly to make the reauthorization of this act possible and a truly bipartisan effort that achieves many of the reforms requested by Native American tribes nationwide. Working together, we were able to reduce the burden on tribes and expand the opportunities in Native American housing. These reforms will result in more efficient use of taxpayer money and provide approval of projects with greater speed, allowing tribes to focus money and resources on development and innovation instead of spending inordinate amounts of time and money on administrative requirements. Ultimately, this will provide more families with homes. Mr. Speaker, I commend HUD for truly embracing the need for more modernized programs with more accountability, transparency, and increased self-determination among Native Americans. Their willingness to engage with our offices, my counterparts working on this issue, and the committee has allowed us to create a more united product. Some Native Americans, upon reading the bill, have declared these changes and ideas will become transformational if they are adopted into law. Transformational is what we all came here to do. H.R. 4329 includes a number of reforms, updates, and additions to the originating legislation, which are widely supported across Native American tribes. Since passage out of the Financial Services Committee, our office has received countless letters of support for passage of the bill. In discussions with tribal housing councils and tribal leaders, there was great frustration with HUD for continued delays, and in extreme cases, failure to respond altogether. This legislation includes a compromise way forward to address this shortcoming. It sets a requirement that HUD shall respond to tribes within a 60-day period, ensuring timely responsiveness, but it does this without jeopardizing HUD's oversight responsibility. This reauthorization has a special provision that provides tribal businesses with greater opportunities for employment on tribal housing projects. The bill provides tribes with the flexibility to create independent maximum rent requirements dictated by the needs of their communities and with the flexibility to commingle Indian Health Service funds with NAHASDA money to construct sanitation facilities and greater infrastructure around housing developments. Working with the administration, my legislation includes language to recoup unexpended funds within the program. The agreement that was reached is more accommodating to tribal needs than the original request, allowing more room for tribes to work through their balances while meeting the need for efficiencies in the system. Finally, we have included a new demonstration project in the bill designed to attract greater private financing and more developers to invest private money in housing projects on tribal lands. This program envisions the same privatization projects that occurred on military land and succeeded in providing great numbers of new houses for military individuals in a very short period of time. The objective here is to put more Native Americans in homes and work through the backlog of housing needs in ways unseen before on Native lands. NAHASDA was designed to promote development and increase flexibility so that tribes may meet the unique challenges they face and provide the self-determination tribes deserve. The legislation before you today expands upon these principles and represents an opportunity for greater prosperity for a cross-section of our society that in many parts of the Nation is truly in need of assistance. Finally, I would like to thank Chairman Hensarling and Majority Leader McCarthy and their staff for their willingness to address this issue and working with me to bring it up to date. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, at this time I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Alaska (Mr. Young), who has devoted not just time this year but decades of helping Native Americans.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. There are many different Native American groups across the country who have sent letters of support, including the National American Indian Housing Council, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Southwest Tribal Housing Alliance, Nevada and California Indian housing authorities, and the Northwest Indian Housing Association. In New Mexico, the Acoma Pueblo, Laguna Pueblo, Mescalero Apache, Jicarilla Apache, Santa Clara Pueblo, the Northern Pueblo, Santo Domingo Pueblo, and the Navajo Nation offers its support. Indian tribes all across the country are lending their support. I did note that I had overlooked the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Kildee) on the other side of the aisle. His office was also greatly involved and instrumental in this bill, and I would like to recognize those efforts. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 4329) to reauthorize the Native American Housing Assistance and Self-Determination Act of 1996, and for other purposes, as amended.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, again, recognizing the gentlelady from Hawaii, we had an opportunity to visit on the floor multiple times, and I recognize her inputs and just again would salute her for her support of the bill. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, again, I appreciate the observations by the gentleman. We had time to discuss after the hearing and after the markup, and at that time, it was pointed out that the pilot project is completely voluntary, easy to opt into and easy to opt out of. It is not our intent to trap or entrap anyone, but instead open a door if they desire to go through it. I think there will be tribes that can go in and build all of houses that they need in a very short period of time. That is what we are looking for, but again, I take his observations very seriously, and we have looked for flaws in the program that might be hooks or have unintended consequences. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 2790) to authorize private nonprofit organizations to administer permanent housing rental assistance provided through the Continuum of Care Program under the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, and for other purposes.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and to include extraneous materials for the Record on H.R. 2790, currently under consideration.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, the Housing Assistance Efficiency Act was introduced by Scott Peters in July of 2013 as a technical correction to the 2009 HEARTH Act amendments to the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act. Changes include restoring nonprofit organizations' ability to administer rental assistance programs, as well as alter the way in which HUD reallocates funds. Originally enacted in 1987 as the McKinney Homeless Assistance Act, this legislation created a number of new programs to assist homeless Americans' needs, including food, shelter, health care, and education. Since 1987, it has twice been reauthorized. In 2000, it came to be known as the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, with updates including the creation of the HUD Homeless Assistance Grants, the Department of Labor Homeless Veterans Reintegration Program, and others. In 2009, the Homeless Emergency Assistance and Rapid Transition to Housing, the HEARTH Act, amended McKinney-Vento Homeless to combine the Shelter Plus Care and the Supportive Housing Programs into a single, competitive program. Supported by HUD and the administration, the bill before us today will correct unintended consequences created by the HEARTH Act by allowing existing nonprofits that operate CoC programs for leased housing to homeless families and individuals to continue to manage their McKinney-Vento grants as rental assistance. It restores nonprofit participation and maximum community flexibility by delegating authority to these institutions to administer rental assistance. It allows Innovation of Promising Practices. Providing nonprofits with administration of rental assistance will allow these groups to implement new housing practices, which would better assist the communities they are in. It reduces administrative work by allowing reallocation to occur once a year instead of semiannually. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I would again like to thank the gentleman for his hard work in this area and for bringing this bill forward. We have no other speakers, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 2366) to require the Secretary of the Treasury to mint coins in commemoration of the centennial of World War I, as amended.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous materials for the Record on H.R. 2366, as amended, currently under consideration.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, a few short weeks ago, the world marked the 96th anniversary of the signing of the peace accords between the Allied Forces and Germany that ended what, at the time, was called the Great War. Sadly, it was only the first of what we now call World Wars because it was followed only two short decades later by the beginning of what became known as World War II. That anniversary, which America today calls Veterans Day, was, for years, called Armistice Day, and it is still called that across Europe. Four years from now, November 11, 2018, will mark the signing of that armistice. It will be 100 years since the end of that ugly, bloody war that ushered in aerial warfare, chemical weapons, tanks, and a host of other horrors. Mr. Speaker, in the ensuing century we have not managed to move past war, and it is well that we remember its costs. For that reason, I rise in strong support of this legislation before us, H.R. 2366, introduced by the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Lamborn) along with the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Cleaver). The World War I American Veterans Centennial Commemorative Coin Act calls for the Treasury Secretary to mint and make available for sale no more than 350,000 silver coins in recognition of the centenary of the end of that war. The veterans of the Great War are long gone, the last having died nearly 4 years ago. It is well that we remember, though, that nearly 4 million Americans, men and women, served in uniform during the First World War. Half of them served overseas, and some even volunteered to fight for other Allied armies even before the U.S. entered the war in April of 1917. Of those 4 million veterans, even those who are not students of military history know some of the names, such as General John Joseph Pershing, known as ``Black Jack'' Pershing, who led the American Expeditionary Forces in that war and became the only general of the armies promoted to that rank while he was alive. Sergeant Alvin York was perhaps the best known and most decorated soldier, winning a Medal of Honor for leading an attack on a nest of enemy machine guns at the height of the Meuse-Argonne battles in France, capturing 32 of them and 132 enemies while killing 28. James Norman Hall, an Iowa youngster, went to France before the U.S. entered the war to fly with the American-staffed Lafayette Escadrille of the French Air Corps, and later drifted to the South Seas where he cowrote the ``Mutiny on the Bounty'' trilogy. Mr. Speaker, the coins authorized by this legislation would be sold at a price that would recoup all costs to taxpayers. The sale price would include a surcharge that, after requirements for raising private matching funds are met, would support the work of the World War I Centennial Commission established by the 111th Congress to plan and execute activities marking the centennial of the war. This legislation currently has 302 cosponsors, and a companion bill introduced by Senator Blunt has 72. Mr. Speaker, while not celebrating this or any other war, I urge Members to soberly reflect on the horrors and tragedy of this first global conflict and to support this legislation. I reserve the balance of my time.