Jared Polis

Mr. POLIS

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, to discuss our proposal, I yield 5 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from Massachusetts (Ms. Clark), the lead sponsor of the bill that I am proud to cosponsor.

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

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to close, and I yield myself the balance of my time. I just want to emphasize how important it is that we defeat the previous question. There are so many questions that have been raised. Not only is it in keeping with longstanding precedent for the President to divest and place their assets in a blind trust, but it is more important than ever with this President who has a complex web of assets, nationally and internationally, which are rife with conflicts of interest for the incoming administration. I truly hope we can act in a bipartisan way to defeat the previous question and bring forward Ms. Clark's simple, straightforward bill. It affects future Presidents, Republican and Democratic, and it is a very simple, commonsense piece of legislation simply saying that they will divest and place their assets in a blind trust, something that is important for both the appearance of propriety as well as for the sake of propriety. And yet instead of focusing on legislation to investigate foreign powers undermining our recent election, instead of focusing on preventing conflicts of interest for the incoming administration, instead of focusing on legislation that would create jobs, reduce our deficit, or improve on health care, instead we have partisan legislation that hasn't gone through regular order. It has left 56 new Members representing tens of millions of Americans on the sideline. The House passed a lot of legislation last Congress. That does not mean that we should bring every bill directly to the floor and skip the committee process, because there are 56 new Members who should also have a chance to put their imprint on legislation. The way the majority is bringing bills to the floor, it ignores the concerns of the American public; it ignores pressing issues related to the incoming President. We have this window of time under the outgoing President to send a bill to his desk to require disclosure and divestment from the new President, but that window is rapidly closing. We will only have President Obama in the White House for another week, so time is running short. If we act now and defeat the previous question, hopefully the Senate will act within a few days, and we can get the bill to President Obama. But the timeline is very, very short to do this. I do not expect that Mr. Trump would sign a bill that puts additional requirements on himself, although he would perhaps change that bill to affect future Presidents because it needs to be done. It is kind of shocking that we relied on precedents rather than law in this area. I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' and defeat the previous question so I can bring forward Ms. Clark's bill as my amendment. I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the rule, and I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the underlying bill. I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. POLIS

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

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

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Speaker, so, in summary, when we defeat the previous question, we will then bring forward our bill to establish an independent report on foreign interference in this most recent 2016 election, something that the American people deserve to see, that we need to see. We need to put safeguards in place to prevent our election system from being hijacked by foreign powers. With regard to the rule, Mr. Speaker, it is a bad, closed rule, particularly given the chance that 56 new Members of Congress have not had the opportunity to add their imprint to the bills that are before us. The gentleman mentioned, oh, the Democrats did this 10 years ago. Well, that is hardly an excuse that the American people buy. There were many things about the Democrats' tenure in this body the American people didn't like; and to simply cite some of those less popular elements of Democratic leadership and now say: Well, now we Republicans are going to do earmarks; now we Republicans are going to have a closed process that doesn't allow amendment; now Republicans are going to gut the ethics rule. In over 200 years, you can always cite some precedence for that from both Democrats and Republicans, but those aren't good things. We want to learn from our mistakes, I hope, and not say, just because some Democrat or some Republican did this in 1952, it is a good thing to do today. Mr. Speaker, we are 6 days into the next Congress. After we defeat the rule, hopefully, and defeat the previous question, we can bring forward an independent study on foreign interference. With regard to these two bills, I urge my colleagues to join me in voting ``yes'' on the HALOS Act and, of course, oppose the ridiculously broad H.R. 5, Regulatory Accountability Act, which would simply add more paperwork to the bureaucracy, further reducing the efficiency of a branch of government that many Americans believe is already too inefficient. I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the previous question and ``no'' on the rule. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to close if the gentleman from Georgia is.

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Swalwell).

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee), the distinguished ranking member of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security, and Investigations.

Mr. POLIS. I yield the gentlewoman an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, we have all been very concerned about the reports from our own intelligence agencies about foreign interference in the 2016 American elections. I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cummings) to discuss our proposal, the ranking member of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, when we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to bring up a bill that would establish a national commission to investigate foreign interference in the 2016 election. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of my amendment in the Record along with extraneous material immediately prior to vote on the previous question.

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I thank the gentleman from Georgia for the customary 30 minutes. We will get to the content of the bills in a moment, but there is a procedural issue here that disenfranchises millions of American citizens in this process. We are in the 115th Congress since the founding of this country. We were just sworn in last week to begin that. There are 56 new Members who just started serving last week that have never served in this body before, and there were 56 people that served in the last session who are no longer with us. What we are doing here is we are taking bills that those former Representatives worked on and new Representatives have not worked on and advancing them to the floor without going through committee, without going through the regular order. So, for example, you have two bills, H.R. 5 and H.R. 79. We will talk about them in a moment. These are Committee on Financial Services bills. They should have gone to that committee, and members of that committee, Democratic and Republican, would have had the chance to amend those bills in that committee and mark it up before it comes to the floor. That is the normal process. Both parties are now constituting those committees; we are putting people on them. I heard you, Mr. Speaker, read just before we began this debate how a number of Members were officially appointed to those committees. That is what we do in our first week or two. Fifty-six new Members should have a say on these bills. They will get a vote on the floor on these bills, but they were completely excluded from the committee process that wrote these bills. That is wrong, Mr. Speaker, to not allow 56 new Members of this body to be the lawmakers that the people of their districts elected them to do. In fact, it disenfranchises the tens of millions of people collectively that those 56 Members represent. And I hope that, for future legislation, we can move through regular order and allow the new Members, as well as those who are returning, to be part of the lawmaking process. With regards to these bills, we have largely seen these bills in prior sessions that people who are no longer in this body worked on. The HALOS Act, I was proud to support last session and I am proud to support again. It addresses a potentially real problem. There is guidance from the SEC that--in our Rules Committee meeting yesterday I questioned the subcommittee chair--largely also addresses those concerns, but it is better to do it in statute and it is better to do it in the broader language that is included in the bill, which is why many Democrats--I hope a majority--support the HALOS Act. The United States is the leader in innovation in the global economy, and this is a small piece of that. What we are talking about here are demo days where entrepreneurs can pitch their idea. I, personally, have been able to attend a number of those, and it is a question of who can be in the room when that occurs. Should it only be millionaires who are allowed in that room? Or can it be the next great generation of entrepreneurs? Can it be students? Can it be aspiring entrepreneurs? Can it be community members who want to learn what it means to pitch and how to do it and how ideas are spread, or maybe they are looking for a job? It doesn't change who can invest in those startup companies. They still have to be qualified investors. By the way, I hope we have the opportunity to work with Republicans on the definition of ``qualified investor'' because I think it is unfair to restrict investment opportunities to multimillionaires. We need to allow educated and qualified investors of all levels. Just because somebody is rich doesn't mean that they are a good investor, and just because somebody has not yet earned a lot of money doesn't mean that they can't be trusted to invest $10,000 or $50,000 of their own money. We made progress in the original JOBS Act with the result of crowdfunded investing, but that is only a small piece--almost an insignificant piece. Private placements are the much larger piece of capital formation for venture-stage startups in our country. If there is a way we can have an alternative to the net worth test that allows individuals to, perhaps, take a qualitative test of their knowledge and, therefore, qualify as an investor, they ought to be able to do that, too. This bill does not do any of that. That is a controversial area. It is one that it will take Democrats and Republicans working together on to help fund tomorrow's great companies and allow opportunity for all people, not just millionaires and billionaires. What this bill does is it continues to restrict the actual investors to the millionaires. Okay? But it allows other people in the room at least. That is a start. It allows an MBA student who him- or herself wants to, perhaps, come up with their own company to hear 10 or 20 companies pitch so they can assemble their own deck; somebody who might have a great amount of value to give as a mentor who themselves is a veteran of a number of companies. Maybe they are not quite worth a couple of million dollars. Maybe they are worth only--only, right?-- $500,000. Maybe they were a reasonably successful person worth $500,000, but they have a lot of knowledge to give. Without the HALOS Act, it would be unclear whether that person would even be allowed in that room. So we want to make sure that mentors, up and coming, young entrepreneurs, and, frankly, up-and-coming entrepreneurs of all ages have access to the knowledge and the learning that can occur in these pitch events. Congress has a role in making sure we have laws in place that really help build an environment that promotes innovation. When we passed the JOBS Act in 2012 that allowed for crowdfunding, Congress took a step forward. We have room to go there, room to go with private placements. The HALOS Act is a small step, but it is a good one and a noncontroversial one. It creates a clear path for startups to participate in demo days, sponsored by government entities, nonprofits, angel investment groups, et cetera, and a clear safe harbor from the SEC with regard to the definition of general solicitation to make it clear that business experts and others can be in the room, while maintaining that only existing accredited investors can actually participate in offerings under Regulation D for the purchases or sale of securities that are mentioned in those demonstrations. Currently, sponsors of demo days are relying on the 12-year-old, no- action letter by the SEC to make sure that they don't face the consequences of failing to comply. The guidelines outlined by the SEC's no-action letter are actually incorporated into the HALOS Act. So, in many ways, this clarifies and puts in statute something that has been at the whim of the SEC for too long. The gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Collins) and others will join me in talking about the importance of angel investors for early stage capital to create jobs, to allow tomorrow's great entrepreneur who might not have any resources of their own today to raise the resources they need to hire people and succeed. The Center for Venture Research estimates that U.S. angel investors invested $24.6 billion in about 71,000 small businesses in every area, every congressional district of our country. Many of those were startups in the early stages of building a company. Tomorrow's company that employs 10,000 or even 50,000 people is today's garage startup trying to figure out how to get $50,000 or raise $100,000 to make their payroll or buy their inventory. Angel investors focus their investment on local startups and much more so than, for instance, national venture capital firms that tend to be clustered at the coast. It is an important way we can continue to grow the economy in every ZIP code in this country, across the heartland and the middle of the country, not just the coasts where the venture capital firms themselves are situated. The Colorado-based digital home design firm, Havenly, started by two sisters, utilized demo days as networking opportunities to perfect their pitch to investors, a very common path. After participating in a 500-startup demo day, the pair received nearly $13 million in investment capital from qualified investors. Now Havenly is a thriving business, employs hundreds of interior designers across the country, and I am proud to say it has a staff of 40 people in their Colorado headquarters. Havenly is a perfect example of how demo days provide opportunities to startups that create real jobs for real people in our country. The HALOS Act simply gives the same opportunities to other startups that thousands of others have had when getting off the ground. I believe the HALOS Act is the appropriate approach to regulatory relief. I appreciate the bipartisan nature of the legislation. It is targeted to provide clarity around a specific potential problem and certainty around what these events can entail. Now, there is another bill under this rule as well. It is a bad bill. It is not a strong bipartisan bill. It is called H.R. 79. Since we began the 115th Congress here, the Republicans are promoting a deregulation agenda. Often this agenda results in this body, Congress, potentially being buried in having to do inordinate amounts of work to review the executive branch of government. Now, we all believe in oversight of the executive branch. Believe me, Mr. Speaker, you are going to hear many Democrats speaking up about how important oversight of the executive branch is, particularly for the incoming administration. We are not the executive branch. Congress delegates authority to agencies, under the laws we write, to fill in gaps and decide how best to implement the law. If we disagree, we can always change or amend the authorizing statute to make more clear the intent of this body. However, these bills being brought to the floor by the Republicans would either require Congress to spell out exactly what ways to implement a policy in a changing world or give the authority of how to interpret and implement law to the judicial system, neither of which are wise or expedient choices regardless of who occupies the Presidency. While I certainly will have more sympathy with this approach with President Trump in the White House than President Obama in the White House, I still believe this is the wrong way to go about the separation of powers under our Constitution. This bill sets out 60 new analytical requirements that agency actions must meet before they can be implemented. In other words, any attempt by agencies to protect the public from toxic substances, make sure our planes and trains are meeting safety regulations, or make sure our food is toxin free would be subject to 60 new bureaucratic hurdles, effectively creating more and more red tape to tie the bureaucracy up rather than make their work quicker and more efficient, which is what Democrats seek to do. This bill would bury the agency rulemaking process under a blizzard of bureaucratic hurdles and documentation requirements, literally burying the executive and administrative branch of government in red tape and paperwork. This bill would hold the regulatory process hostage to the whims of the very corporations and bureaucrats whose rulemaking it is designed to address. The process that the bills call for have been roundly discredited by so many experts on regulatory policy from the left and the right and consumer advocates as well. The administrative law and regulatory practices section of the American Bar Association stated that these burdens would reduce transparency, reduce public input, threaten public safety, and, most importantly, not result in any better rules. This bill is nothing other than a recycled effort that 56 Members of this body have not had a chance to participate in writing through the committee process to slow down the government and get in the way of agency rulemakings that are critical for protecting public health, safety, and our environment. We are simply failing our constituents that we are elected to serve by spending time on legislation that would deliberately sabotage our own ability for our government to function efficiently. This is a bill that would make government less efficient. That is not what I hear when I am back home from my constituents--Democrat, Republican, Independent. I don't hear: Go to Washington to make government less efficient. My constituents want government to be more efficient. Finally, this bill is being considered under a structured rule limiting the amendment process. There were over 30 amendments filed. Yet, we are only considering 16 amendments under this very overly restrictive rule. This is particularly onerous because, again, there was no opportunity for the 56 new Members through the committee process to amend this bill. There was a new Member that appeared before the Rules Committee yesterday. Unfortunately, he was not even allowed to advance his amendment to the floor under this rule. Another example is an amendment offered by a new Member, Ms. Blunt Rochester, who filed an amendment that would ensure that LGBT employees are protected from workplace discrimination. It would allow Federal agencies that are tasked with protecting the civil rights of employees to continue to do their work without being hamstrung with unnecessary requirements. Civil rights protections do not fit neatly into a corporate monetary analysis, and our government has a responsibility to ensure that all Americans are protected from arbitrary or unjust discrimination based on race, gender, sexual orientation, or gender identity. Given the breadth and scope of this legislation, an open amendment process would have allowed this amendment to be debated if the majority wanted, perhaps even voted down, although I hope the majority would have approved it. It would have produced a more thoughtful piece of legislation. Yet, we are not even allowed to have that debate on the floor of the House, which is why this rule is wrong and why I stand in strong opposition to it. We should be considering legislation to create permanent, high-paying jobs, investing in infrastructure to grow our communities, fixing our broken immigration system, and streamlining and improving our tax system through tax reform rather than recycling old bills that 56 Members have not even had the opportunity to put their imprint on. I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the rule for those very reasons. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. POLIS. I yield an additional 1 minute to the gentleman from Maryland.

Mr. POLIS

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, you might recall, during the campaign, President-elect Donald Trump promised to build a wall with Mexico and, of course, make the Mexican Government pay for it. Well, now we are hearing that Republicans intend to come to this body, Congress, to spend your hard-earned money and mine, American taxpayer money, to build a wall with Mexico. They are estimating $10 billion to $12 billion. Well, do you know what? In comprehensive immigration reform, which I was proud to support last session, we had over $40 billion for border security. So apparently Donald Trump is building one-quarter of the wall, all directly with deficit spending. In comprehensive immigration reform, we not only paid for that border security, not only paid for that $40 billion and required people who were here illegally to pay fines and register and get right with the law, it actually would reduce the budget deficit by over $200 billion over 10 years. So what we have is one-quarter of the wall and deficit spending with Donald Trump. With Democrats, four times the wall and reduce the deficit by $200 billion. Mr. Speaker, the choice is obvious.

Mr. POLIS

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, as Members of Congress, we know it is truly a privilege to serve because of the people we serve. Today, I want to acknowledge two very special constituents of mine who are retiring this year. Josie and Rollie Heath are beloved members of the community in Boulder, Colorado. The pair moved to Boulder, Colorado, in the 1970s, where their family and love grew alongside their history of public service. In a recent newspaper article, Josie said that people say to her: Oh, now that you are retiring, you can do what you want to do. And she thinks: Well, I have been doing what I want to do. This month, Josie retired after 20 years as the head of The Community Foundation Boulder County. Prior to that, she was a county commissioner, and she served in the Carter and Clinton administrations. When I was 15 years old, I volunteered on her United States Senate race in 1990. Early next month, Rollie Heath, a 23-year veteran of the Army, is retiring as a State Senator. Prior to the legislature, he had a career in international business and founded the Rocky Mountain World Trade Center. For Rollie and Josie, their jobs weren't simply about the work they did. They were about building community. Both served on so many boards and advocated for so many just causes. Above all, they have remained true to themselves as purveyors of progress in all that they do. I am honored not only to be their Congressman but to be their friend. On behalf of the United States House of Representatives, I congratulate them on their life's work, and I look forward to joining them in future adventures.

Mr. POLIS

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I thank the gentleman for yielding me the customary time, but I have to say that I think that this somewhat breaks with the custom of this body not to delay floor proceedings during the reorganization of the Democratic Caucus. I know that, when the Democrats were in the majority, we routinely gave deference to the Republican Conference's plan for retreats and for caucus reorganizations. We have before us several contested races. Of course, the Nation's business comes first, which is why we are here making the case on these bills. I would like to add that I hope that this is not the tone we are going to be setting for the next Congress. I think it is very important that, despite our differences on policies, both conferences are respectful of the responsibilities that Members have not only within the institution of Congress but within their respective conferences and caucuses. On our side, we will be brief because we do have additional responsibilities, as I mentioned. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Oregon (Ms. Bonamici).

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I just want to note that this rule contains two completely different bills. The first is the 21st Century Cures Act, which would help address many of the health crises that we face. The other bill is H.R. 6392, the Systemic Risk Designation Improvement Act, that would weaken many of the protections that were put in place in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform bill. So there are two very different bills here under one rule, a very closed process which the Democrats will be opposing. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer).

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 1 minute to the gentleman from Oregon.

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Again, I do want to point out, in breaking with custom, there were many other Democrats who wanted to discuss this bill; but, as we speak, the Democratic Caucus is having elections for the vice chair position. While we were on the floor, we had elections for the whip position and the assistant leader position, both of which I was unable to participate in because, of course, I had to conduct the business of the Nation. But, again, I would hope that both parties are respectful of the scheduling requirements that are incumbent upon being a member of one of the two major parties of this body. In the past, we have always been able to work in when Republican Conference has a retreat or a reorganization meeting. I think that is important to this body because, while, of course, as Americans and Representatives we have responsibilities to the institution of Congress, as elected officials of the Democratic or Republican Party, we do have a responsibility to select our leaders and establish our rules. I don't think that the amount of time that either party spends doing that is unreasonable, but I think that it is very important that both parties and leadership of this body, the Speaker and the majority leader, are respectful of that while, of course, understanding we have important people's business to conduct. There were, of course, many other options. This House could have come to order and gotten this work done at 8 in the morning or they could do it later in the afternoon. There are a number of different ways we could have worked around the previously scheduled reorganization of the Democratic Caucus. Frankly, I am disappointed not just for myself having been unable to participate in those party functions, but also on behalf of other members of the Democratic Caucus who were unable to come and speak on these very important issues because of playing active roles in running for or supporting or speaking on behalf of various candidates for party positions, which is occurring as I speak. This bill has two completely unrelated bills that are in it. Again, the 21st Century Cures Act has strong bipartisan support. I add my voice to those who have praised this legislation, and hopefully it will challenge the next Congress to continue to move forward with facilitating the approval process. I have often heard the approval process, for instance, for a new drug for inception to market can often be in excess of $1 billion or $2 billion. We hear a number of different figures tossed around. I think sometimes it is in the high hundreds of millions. Sometimes it is as high as 1.5 or 2 billion. Regardless, that is one of the reasons that there is an upward pressure on prices for proprietary prescription drugs. It is also one of the reasons that lifesaving prescription drugs are often unavailable here even while they are on the market in Europe and other areas. Of course, without compromising safety--and Democrats and Republicans agree on that--there needs to be a way that we can facilitate, particularly in the realm of personalized medicine, bringing new lifesaving products to market in an affordable way. An excellent model for that that has saved hundreds of thousands of lives was put in place during the first administration of the first George Bush, which provided an expedited route for HIV drugs. Thanks to that route that was used for many of the HIV drugs, some of which are still in use today, hundreds of thousands of people affected by HIV, including many LGBT Americans, are still alive today because of that effort. I am also confident, because of today's effort with the 21st Century Cures Act, it will save the lives of many more Americans. Again, it is a starting point. We have room to go. The other bill would, for some reason--it is not something I hear from constituents, but apparently it is something Republicans want to do--exempt some of the very biggest banks from some of the requirements under Dodd-Frank regarding ensuring their stability and preventing them from failing. It is my understanding it only affects a few dozen banks, the very largest banks, banks that are worth tens or hundreds of billions of dollars. I am sure they like it. It probably reduces their ability to have to comply. But there is a reason those requirements were put in place for those very big banks. We are worried that the failure of any one or certainly multiple banks could create a systemic risk and lead to future bailouts. So I strongly believe that this bill before us today on the banking regulations, if it were to become the law, it would increase the likelihood of future bailouts, which surprises me because many of us have been traditionally opposed to those very kinds of bailouts. It is my understanding there is one remaining speaker on the other side, so I reserve the balance of my time to allow that speaker to speak.

Mr. POLIS. Is the gentleman prepared to close?

Mr. POLIS. Is the gentleman prepared to close?

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.