Jared Polis

Mr. POLIS

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. In closing, I appreciate the committee of jurisdiction's work and the Rules Committee's work to make 9 out of 10 amendments submitted in order today--that is 9 out of 10. But I have to reiterate again that the one that is most important to not only my home State, but the jurisdictions in which 213 million Americans live--22 States plus the District of Columbia--is omitted from consideration in its appropriate, germane bill. I strongly object to the unnecessary gatekeeping of the Rules Committee and what they have engaged in and the way that they have treated this excellent idea and real-world solution from Mr. Perlmutter and Mr. Heck. Access to banking services is an issue of fundamental importance for all businesses, as the proponents of this bill have argued. Do you know what? That includes State legal marijuana businesses. Just because some Members of Congress--and they are in the minority, by the way, and they are decreasing every day--object to the very existence of these businesses does not mean that they should obstruct the entire legislative process and shut down our ability to make it possible for these businesses to exist, grow, and succeed. The Perlmutter-Heck amendment is a germane, thoughtful solution to a real-world problem, and I hope this House will atone for its error today by swiftly taking up legislation--and there is a stand-alone bill--to solve this banking issue once and for all. This was a discussion that we had in our committee yesterday, but, unfortunately, it is a discussion that we are not allowed to have on the people's floor of the House of Representatives. There is not an amendment that would have somehow legalized or have made any judgment about the legality or the morality of marijuana. It simply would have addressed a banking issue that both proponents and opponents of marijuana law reform agree needs to be addressed. Now, I am happy to have that conversation about how we should treat marijuana federally at a separate point. That is fine. I have legislation to regulate marijuana like alcohol, and others have other ideas. Those who are following at home need to know that the Perlmutter-Heck amendment is not that discussion. It was germane to the bill we were discussing, and it, frankly, gets at the issue of why our banks are being used as a chokepoint for doing business with otherwise legal and legitimate customers as determined by the States. Mr. Speaker, for these reasons, while I support one of the two underlying bills--and I would like to be here to support the other if it would simply deal with the urgent issue of 213 million Americans who live in jurisdictions that face it--I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' and defeat the previous question and to vote ``no'' on the rule. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. POLIS

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 yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Speier).

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. Here we are, week one of 2016 and we have a multifaceted Republican attack on women's health. On the one hand, we are removing the abilities of our safety agencies from making sure that products that are sold are safe. Whether that is shampoo or soap or makeup or a toy for your child, we rely on our health and safety regulators to make sure that nothing that can hurt the American people is put forward. Oftentimes, when there is some kind of litigation around that, we have a process that allows that to be settled to keep dangerous products off the marketplace. In setting up this commission that would only be able to look at the cost of regulation rather than savings from a health and safety regulation, you are deliberately putting in place a process that will lead to additional costs going forward because it doesn't look at both sides of the equation. I would be supportive, as would many Democrats, of a thoughtful approach to a red tape reduction commission, to a regulatory reform commission. What should it look like? It needs to have both industry at the table, as well as consumer health advocates, as well as thoughtful leaders to make up the balance of that committee to side with either side based on the merits. Importantly, their charge needs to be to look at the costs and benefits measured through economic measurements that the staff will be charged with doing, the costs and benefits of reforms, to find out and eliminate regulations that cost more than they benefit and to make sure that we improve and enhance regulations where we can have more savings and more benefit to the American people at a lower cost. It is all about health and protecting the American people and economic efficiency, and the commission can accomplish that. But not the dangerous attack on women's health through this commission in this bill, coupled the very same week with defunding Planned Parenthood, taking low-cost cancer screenings away from hundreds of thousands of Americans, telling 22 million American families you no longer have health insurance, sending a cancellation notice in the first week of the year to 22 million American families that you can't go see the doctor, you can't go to the hospital or you are going to be bankrupt. That is not the kind of progress the American people want. Thankfully, Mr. Speaker, guess what. Neither of these bills are going to become law. President Obama stated he will veto these bills. These bills that hamper the ability of our agencies to protect the health of the American people, these bills that defund Planned Parenthood, this reconciliation, they will be vetoed. Therefore, the first week back, while the Republicans are trying to cancel healthcare insurance for 22 million American families, while they are trying to prevent low-income women from having access to cancer screenings, while they are trying to remove the ability of our health and safety agencies to keep our American people safe, they will not succeed. They are wasting time. Therefore, these bills come at a serious opportunity cost to the American people. The American people want us to use their time and their money to address real problems: to fix our broken immigration system and restore order and security to our border, and to help the millions of Americans suffering under an unlivable minimum wage by increasing it. They want us to tackle reforming our archaic Tax Code by getting rid of special interest tax loopholes and giving the American people lower tax rates in return, rather than allowing Americans to avoid taxes by putting assets in overseas shell corporations. When I was back in my district over the holidays, I didn't have a single constituent say that they wanted to remove or go after the process of creating health and safety regulations. They wanted to hear what we are going to do to create an environment that allows the private sector to create jobs. For that to occur, the American people need to have confidence that the products and services they buy are not going to injure or kill them. But instead, what is on the docket so far? Bills that would actually increase red tape and disable agencies from generating meaningful rulemaking by burying them in having to do mandatory responses, not just to the affected parties, but to every member of the public that wants to comment on a particular settlement or consent decree; and it hands out special interest goodies through the regulatory review process by a commission that would fully be under control of those who have a vested interest in preventing even the most commonsense health and safety regulations. This may be a new year, but it looks like we are playing the same political games. Mr. Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to bring up bipartisan legislation that would close a glaring loophole in our gun laws allowing suspected terrorists to legally buy firearms. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of the amendment in the Record along with extraneous material immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Washington (Ms. DelBene) to further discuss the Republican efforts in our very first week back to take health care away from 22 million Americans and remove resources that women have in place to engage in lifesaving cancer screenings and other affordable family planning services.

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I thank the gentleman from Georgia for yielding me the customary 30 minutes. Over the holidays, like all Members of this body, I was back home and excited about coming back in January to legislate and move the country forward. I was hoping we could tackle some of the big issues of the day: balance a Federal budget; pass immigration reform and secure our borders; and, finally, deal with the contentious issue of what kind of authorization of military force we want to give to the Commander in Chief. These are all important issues I was thinking about and reading about and hoping we would deal with when we got back here. Instead, here we are, our first day back in session. And I point out that most Americans, of course, had to go back to work a couple of days ago. We had a few days more to presumably think about what we wanted to do. And here it is, another attempt to strip health care from over 22 million American families that rely on the healthcare insurance they have today that this reconciliation bill would take away and another attempt to defund Planned Parenthood and strip family planning and cancer screenings away from millions of women across the country, something that ultimately would add to healthcare costs, not to mention the human toll of not diagnosing cancers early, adding to the healthcare costs of this country by having to deal with far too many catastrophic events for what would have been preventable conditions, had they only been identified earlier through access to cancer screenings and family planning services at Planned Parenthood and other locations. This bill that will be brought under one of the rules that is coming forward today would repeal or dismantle the Affordable Care Act for the 62nd time. Again, I was hoping 2016 we would start something new. Instead, I am seeing the same kind of bill that Republicans have brought forward in 2011; they brought it forward in 2012; they brought it forward in 2013; they brought it forward in 2014; they brought it forward in 2015; and here we are, not only bringing it forward in 2016, but doing it as one of the very first bills in the very first week that this Congress is back. Look, I rise in opposition to the rule and both of those underlying bills, H.R. 1155, which is called the Searching for and Cutting Regulations that are Unnecessarily Burdensome, or SCRUB Act, and H.R. 712, the Sunshine for Regulatory Decrees and Settlements Act. These bills will make the American people less safe, potentially removing important safety and health regulations that are already in place for a reason. The gentleman from Georgia says, and I agree, there certainly could be unnecessary regulations on the books. Let's tackle those in a laser- like fashion. And if the Chief Executive won't do it, then let's do it through a legislative approach that targets the authority for a specific set of rules that this body agrees are not necessary or are counterproductive, as we have done in a number of instances, and go after it, rather than somehow saying that, for every rule that is added arbitrarily, another rule needs to be eliminated, there is some presumed magic to the amount of words in rules. The gentleman cited, I think it was 86,000 pages. There is no ideal amount of rules. The least amount of rules and regs that can get the job of keeping the American people safe done is the best, but you never know what that is going to be, and maybe we should strip away 10,000 pages of that, and maybe we need another thousand pages for some new technology and new device that could hurt people if there is not the right safety regulations. We need an adaptive administrative structure to allow our health and safety agencies to do their job so that when people buy a consumer product at the store, they have confidence it is not going to kill them. As a father of a 4-year-old and a 1-year-old, when I buy a toy and get holiday presents for our kids, I want to make sure that those products don't have lead or contaminants in them, make sure that my child won't be severely damaged or hurt by the failure of our health and safety agencies to make sure that those products are safe. That is common sense. I think that is what the American people want out of our health and safety regulators, and these bills would impede their ability to do that. Thirteen of the 16 Democrats who sat on the Judiciary Committee offered dissenting views on H.R. 712, which read, in part: ``This ill- conceived bill imposes numerous new procedural burdens on agencies and courts, intended to dissuade them from using consent decrees and settlement agreements to resolve enforcement actions filed to address agency noncompliance with the law.'' Effectively, what that means is this bill would reduce the cost of noncompliance with our regulations and laws. These burdens include the unworkable requirements that agencies solicit public comments on all proposed consent decrees and settlement agreements, and they respond to every single public comment before submitting them to the court. Now, again, that is an administrative burden that makes it impossible for our eight health and safety agencies to do their job. You might get 100,000 comments on a particular consent decree or settlement agreement, if somebody is ramping up what we call kind of the astroturf side of trying to get people to write in about a particular topic. And to say, somehow, that every single one of those comments has to be responded to before submitting to the court is basically, not just a policy that would slow down this process, but would deter agencies from ever engaging in settlement agreements and consent decrees because it would be so prohibitive, from a staff perspective, they would effectively be unable to do their job. Like all antiregulatory proposals that have been brought forth in this Congress, H.R. 712 is another solution in search of a problem. Those in favor of the bill have failed to provide evidence to support their claim that agencies are somehow conspiring with plaintiffs to enter into consent decrees and settlement agreements. But even if you agree with that claim, this bill wouldn't solve it. All it would do is impose burdensome procedural requirements on agencies and courts that hamstring and prevent the use of consent decrees and settlements which, oftentimes, are a more efficient way for both plaintiffs and defendants to get to a reasonable outcome than interminable processes and legal bills that go on for years and years. The other bill to be considered under this rule is another example of a bill that would make the American people less safe. It is called the SCRUB Act, which is also a dangerous solution in search of a problem. Now, every branch of the government already conducts effective oversight through retrospective review of agency rules. And again, if there are rules that this body disagrees with, we should go after them, go after the authority that this body has chosen to give the agency to make health and safety regulations that keep the American people safe. Each branch of government already conducts oversight and overlooking this array of options that would provide the necessary scalpel for smart regulatory cuts. This is, instead, a meat-cleaver approach that can eliminate health and safety regulations, both good and ill- informed. Rather than creating jobs, growing the economy or making Americans safer, this procedure would burden agencies with additional red tape and waste valuable agency resources and taxpayer dollars at the expense of the health and safety of the American people. As my colleagues have alluded to, H.R. 1155's sole purpose is to actually obstruct the safety and regulatory process by burying agencies in endless red tape and extra costs. It would create legal ambiguity that could lead to increased cost for businesses, for local communities that rely on certainty to plan for the future, as well as uncertainty for consumers and American families who don't know that the products or services that they are buying are safe for them or their children. Now, in principle, it is hard to argue against the notion that agencies should periodically assess whether rules they have implemented should be improved or repealed, and I agree with that concept. That is not in dispute. That is not what this bill is about. Rather than streamlining rulemaking, or eliminating unnecessary rules, which we all want to do, through a thoughtful, retrospective review process, even if it is required periodically, this bill, instead, would result in years of delays for new and necessary health and safety rules by requiring a new rulemaking process for any rule that is eliminated. The SCRUB Act would also establish a regulatory review commission to identify duplicative, redundant, or potentially obsolete regulations. Now, not only would the very creation of this commission be at the cost of taxpayers, as would its limitless resources, hours of staff work that the bill mandates, but the authorizing language of the commission binds it to consider only the costs to affected industries, while ignoring the cost to the general public. So, if an industry, if this commission existed, and they were looking at a regulation around dumping of toxic materials or toys that could hurt kids, the only charge under this statute of that commission would be what are the costs of compliance of this to industry, not what are the savings to American families who won't have to worry about their kid being hospitalized because of a choking hazard for a 3-year-old, or increased cancer rate for a product that contains lead or a carcinogenic agent. They can't look at that side of the equation. Rather than to do a thorough cost-benefit analysis, this kangaroo commission would rather superficially look at the cost to companies of making sure that their products are not dangerous to the American people. That is the wrong way to go about this. Simply put, the SCRUB Act is a solution in search of a problem. There are many tools available to each branch of government to conduct effective oversight and make smart regulatory cuts. I think it is a fine criticism of any administration that they haven't done enough in that regard, and they should. And this body should encourage any President to move forward with cutting unnecessary regulations that cost businesses money and don't threaten the public health and safety. But agencies must adhere to the robust requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act already, the Regulatory Flexibility Act, the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act of 1995, the Paperwork Reduction Act, and the Congressional Review Act, and if some of those can be consolidated, along with new ideas to cut red tape and regulation, you will find strong bipartisan support for that concept. But that is not what this bill does. This bill ties up the ability of our agencies that this Congress has authorized to help keep the American people and American families safe with additional red tape and regulations. It creates a biased commission that, rather than looking at the costs and benefits of health and safety requirements, only looks at the costs. Moreover, final regulations are subject to review by Federal courts already, who are a final backstop to ensure that agencies have not violated the authority that this body has given them, and that they have satisfied all the applicable statutes, and whether agencies have continued input from relevant stakeholders. We have set that process up. Now, if we have a thoughtful way to improve that process, around encouraging more stakeholder involvement, looking at the authority that we have given each agency in certain areas, by all means, let's discuss those kinds of bills, rather than short-circuiting the very process that Congress has put in place to help reduce unnecessary regulations. In many cases, Congress not only mandates that agencies issue a rule, they are doing the work that we have required them to do, but we also prescribe the process already by which they must do so. This bill, if it passes, will continue to waste the government's time, and we are wasting more by even considering this today, as well as this reconciliation bill that would take healthcare coverage away from 22 million Americans. You would think, Mr. Speaker, that if Republicans were bringing forward a bill to remove healthcare insurance from 22 million Americans, you would think that they would have a plan for those 22 million Americans, but they do not. They simply strip them of their existing health care. Twenty-two millions Americans will not be able to see their doctor that they have been seeing for years, know that they can go to the hospital if they need it, or have any adequate health insurance under this reconciliation bill. It defunds Planned Parenthood. It strips affordable planning and lifesaving cancer screenings away from millions of women across the country, precisely at the time that those cancer screenings would be more necessary than ever, if the SCRUB Act passed, which would hamstring our own Federal agencies in their ability to prevent carcinogenic agents from being in consumer products and food products that American people consume. So, again, through these set of bills, the Republicans are saying: We are going to not do the job that we have told our agencies to do in keeping the American people safe; and, at the same time, the results of that lack of safety--more hospital visits, more disease, more sickness, more children choking, more sick kids--we are going to make sure that a lot more of them don't have health care when they need it because of the health and safety regulations that we have removed through tying them up in red tape for years after years. That is not what the American people want. That is not what my constituents want. I strongly encourage my colleagues to oppose the rule and the bill, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. The gentleman from Georgia mentioned that sometimes affected parties aren't in the room during consent decree or settlement discussions. That is a far cry from having to respond to potentially hundreds of thousands or millions of public comments one on one. So, again, if there is a problem that they are trying to solve, let's look at who is in the room and who the affected parties are in making sure they are part of the process, not preventing any meaningful effort for consent decree or settlement from even going forward by putting a completely impossible requirement to fulfill, given the staff that they have, of having to reply to every public comment when we all know that public comments can be artificially ginned up through an Astroturf process to deliberately bog down a process that otherwise could more expeditiously settle a dispute than years and years of legal fees on both sides. I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from New Jersey (Mrs. Watson Coleman) to further discuss today's effort to strip away health care from 22 million American families and to remove the ability of hundreds of thousands of American women to have access to cancer screenings across our country.

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, this bill that we would like to bring forward, if we can defeat the previous question, would help keep the American people safe. The bill would bar the sale of firearms and explosives to those on the FBI's terrorist watch list. On this day, today, Mr. Speaker, there are Americans that can't legally fly because we don't trust them to be in the cabin of an aircraft and are on the no-fly list, but they can quietly assemble an arsenal of deadly weapons fully legally. In what world does that make sense? With the increased risk of terrorist threats, with the occurrences in France, and with what happened in San Bernardino, how can we possibly stand by and say we don't trust somebody because of what we know about them through law enforcement and through the authorized practices that this body has set in place to investigate terrorism? We know enough about them to know that they shouldn't be on an airplane; but if they want to quietly assemble an arsenal of dozens of deadly weapons, that is fine, why not let them do it? We can fix that. By simply defeating the previous question, we can bring forward that bill. I am confident it would have overwhelming support. We can pass it. It is a bipartisan bill. Rather than strip health care from 22 million Americans, rather than risk the health of American families by removing the health and safety processes that we want to put in place to make sure that products and services are safe, rather than defunding Planned Parenthood and preventing hundreds of thousands of American women from having low-cost access to cancer screenings and reproductive health services, instead, let's make sure that those who represent a terrorist threat to our Nation are not able to quietly assemble deadly arsenals to commit terrorist acts. I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' and defeat the previous question. Vote ``no'' on the rule. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. POLIS

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, here we are, the very first day back for the House of Representatives in 2016, and already the House Republicans are rehashing old, toxic attacks on women's access to health care and on working families. Here in 2016 we were hoping to see a House of Representatives that would look forward, forward to reducing the cost of health care for all Americans and to helping pass the bill that would require pay equity for women. Instead, under the guise of this reconciliation bill, a technical term that is coming before the body this week, this Republican bill would defund Planned Parenthood, strip away affordable family planning and lifesaving cancer screenings for millions of American women across the country. It would dismantle the Affordable Care Act. In fact, it is the 62nd vote from this body to repeal that act. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the Republican bill before this body this week would take healthcare coverage away from 22 million Americans next year alone. That is not right for the country, it is not right for women, and it is not right for this body. Let's move forward with a pro-woman agenda, a pro- healthcare agenda, rather than the same toxic bills that they have tried and failed to pass over 62 times.

Mr. POLIS

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

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

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentleman from Wisconsin.

Mr. POLIS. I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, even after we pass this continuing resolution today, we will still be just 5 days away from a government shutdown. That is no way to run the greatest, freest, most prosperous country on the face of the Earth. We agree on so many of the issues. I urge my colleagues to stop the partisan games. We have shown in recent weeks we can produce good, bipartisan legislation when we just put the controversial, divisive poison pills on the side. Look at what we accomplished in transportation and in education. Let's continue that trend. Let's drop the ideological wish list for another time and pass the spending bill without the last- minute hysterics and partisan riders. In recent weeks, Americans have witnessed two senseless, horrific mass shootings: one very near to my district in Colorado that took three lives, and another in San Bernardino, California, that took 14 lives. These slayings are heartbreaking and tragic. Sadly, no one can any longer use the adjective to describe them as ``shocking.'' There have been 355 mass shootings in 2015, which, themselves, are just a small portion of the 48,000 incidents of gun violence so far this year. While I strongly support the rights given to Americans in our Second Amendment, I believe there are commonplace measures that we must take to curtail gun violence. A commonsense improvement we can make is passing legislation to keep individuals who are suspected of terrorist activity from purchasing firearms. If we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule that would allow the House to consider H.R. 1076, the Denying Firearms and Explosives to Dangerous Terrorists Act of 2015. H.R. 1076 would amend the criminal code to stop the issuance of firearm licenses to people on the terrorism watch list. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of the amendment in the Record, along with extraneous material, immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

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

Mr. POLIS. I yield the gentleman an additional 20 seconds.

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer), a senior member of the Ways and Means Committee.

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I thank the gentleman for yielding me the customary 30 minutes. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in opposition--I might add, reluctant opposition--to the rule on two important bills that really shouldn't be controversial: the Senate amendments to H.R. 2250--that is a short-term continuing resolution. It shouldn't be necessary. This body should have acted, but given that the body has not passed through regular order an appropriations process to keep government open, that bill is necessary--and the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act of 2015. H.R. 644, which is often called the Customs bill, is a bill that needs to pass in some form. I want to see it pass. I have voted for it to go to conference. It has a lot of provisions that are extremely important to many Members, to our economy, and to even Americans traveling casually overseas. It increases, finally, the amount of items they can buy as gifts for their friends and then bring back without having to pay duties. But looking at the version that we are considering today under this rule, which does not allow amendments, I think the body would be better taking individual votes on some of the provisions. There is a lot of good in this bill, but there is also a blatant attack on climate science, on environmental protection, and, really, items that serve no purpose in a bill written to facilitate trade. They even put a separate item preventing Internet sales tax, which I support the bill separately, and somehow this wound up in the Customs bill, a totally unrelated measure from a different committee that wound up in this bill at the last minute, this Christmas-tree bill. It wasn't in the House or the Senate version before. I think we do need to give Members a chance to be on the record to approve or not approve these items individually, and I think that would be the open process that this Speaker has committed to. The second item under this rule, the Senate amendments to H.R. 2250, our short-term continuing resolution, is straightforward and is necessary as we near the shutdown of government, which would otherwise occur December 11. Today would be the last day that we would fund government, so, of course, we have to act. You don't hear objection about that. The only objection I hear is: Why does this Congress always wait until the eleventh hour to pass these kinds of bills? It just doesn't make any sense. You don't wait until the day before government shuts down to say: Okay. We will give ourselves a 5-day reprieve. Are we even going to be able to complete the omnibus or continuing resolution in those 5 days? I don't know. Are we going to be back here next Wednesday doing another 3-day or 5-day CR? There is no particular reason that we are doing this, nothing new. No new information about how to better construct funding bills comes to us next week or the week after than we had last week or 2 weeks ago. I don't understand why we didn't do these bills last month. We passed the budget bills. We agreed on the overall dollar figures about a month ago. That is one of the hardest things about figuring out the appropriations bills and spending is what levels are you going to spend. We agreed on that. The House, the Senate, and the President agreed. So that is not even being discussed. Why didn't we do it within a week of that and just be done with it? It makes no sense. So this bill would make December 16 the new deadline to finish Congress' appropriations work and keep government open, and I do think that Members and the public are anxious for us to complete our work. It is also critical that we get a good product. Now, Mr. Speaker, the majority, the Republicans, have previously shown this country their willingness to go into a shutdown, so I hope that we take this new 5-day period to avoid a shutdown permanently rather than just to do another 3 or 5 days again and again and again. Why aren't we sending a bill on appropriations to the President today? From my point of view, it seems like it is nothing more than partisan politics that is keeping it from getting done. I think the votes are here--they have been here, were here a month ago, and were here a week ago--for a commonsense bill that meets the budget that we have already agreed on, that doesn't have completely unrelated Christmas-tree policy riders that were put together in smoke-filled rooms rather than the open process that the new Speaker has committed to. And it is a real opportunity for this body to live up to that promise and put together an appropriations bill that passes overwhelmingly, which I think can absolutely be done. Nearly every single member of the Democratic Caucus has said no divisive or controversial riders. The appropriations bills are not a place for them. You don't bring government to the brink of a shutdown over policy disagreements. You don't say: ``Look, unless we don't fund Planned Parenthood, we are shutting down government. Look, unless you don't ban the EPA from keeping our air clean, we are going to shut down government.'' You can have those debates and you can have those discussions, but it is not appropriate to do that with a threat of shutting down government. Didn't the Republicans recently sign some sort of pledge to have no extraneous or legislation or must-pass bills? Well, what about taking on the President's attempt to protect clean air standards? If Republicans want it, then debate it and pass it. If you want to defund Planned Parenthood, then debate it and pass it, but not in a last- minute, closed package with a threat of closing government. Compromise is what we did on the highway bill to pass a long-term authorization. It worked great. It didn't have what every single Member wanted, and we had to make tough compromises, but we can live with it. It passed overwhelmingly. Compromise is what we took yesterday when I got to go to the White House to see the Every Student Succeeds Act signed, the new Federal education law that replaces No Child Left Behind. It passed overwhelmingly in its final form in both the House and the Senate. Now, a compromise is not seeing how many partisan stocking stuffers you can jam into a must-pass bill before we head home for the holidays. Moving to the Customs enforcement bill, H.R. 644, it is, for the most part, a very positive bill. The Customs bill is about giving the administration the tools they need to make sure we are fighting a fair fight when it comes to trade and to updating and eliminating unintended consequences of other trade laws. I heard Ranking Member Levin testify in the Rules Committee yesterday that the key to enforcement on trade issues was the willingness of the administration to act, and the final step of enforcing our existing and future trade agreements will always fall to the executive branch. But they can't fight those fights without the right tools in the toolbox. That is what the Customs bill does, and this bipartisan bill has a lot of very high-quality elements that we will likely send to the administration before the holidays. It has the full ENFORCE Act, which would require immediate action to investigate and address trade cheats and take measures to stop those who continually attempt to circumvent the penalties already imposed on them. It establishes and funds the Interagency Trade Enforcement Center, which helps agencies find trade cheats and those who engage in illegal dumping that risk putting Americans out of work. It establishes the Trade Enforcement Fund, which would provide critical and dedicated resources to enforce our trade agreements, and it would help with capacity building, an important issue which would help our current and future trading partners implement labor and environmental standards that we push them towards in a real way. The bill also contains important language on ending the importation of goods made from child or forced labor, which is yet another step we are taking towards ending this abominable practice on a global scale. It also includes bipartisan language which gives the executive branch new tools in evaluating and consulting with partner countries who may be manipulating their currency. Mr. Speaker, if we want to be serious with enforcing our trade agreements, then the enforcement provisions in this bill are a major step forward. We may still have to push this Executive when we feel they aren't using these tools, but having these tools available is a critical step. The Customs bill also gives a leg up to American small business. The bill makes commerce at the border more efficient. It modernizes the operation of Customs and Border Patrol; and something that I fought for for many years, it raises the de minimis threshold from $200 to $800, which, again, is important to all Americans who travel overseas. Being able to have smaller items cross our border duty-free is a major win for small businesses and consumers, especially in the e-commerce space on the commercial side, but also for casual tourists who travel overseas. What that means is, when you are reentering this country, if you ever have to fill out one of those forms if you are coming back from Mexico or Canada or Europe, the de minimis threshold was $200, and technically you are responsible for a duty above that. This finally raises it. It hasn't been adjusted for inflation for decades. This raises it to $800, so you can truly bring back gifts for your friends and family. This is important for individuals, and it is important for businesses. The bill makes important technical corrections that are important to companies in my district, like adjusting tariff lines for outdoor wear and footwear. I am also very excited to say, as the cochair of the Nepal Caucus, that the bill includes the Nepal Trade Preferences Act, a very important provision that is a tangible benefit for Nepal's recovering economic market. That is simply the right thing to do. As many here know, Nepal suffered a devastating earthquake on April 25, 2015. Over 9,000 people were killed; 23,000 were injured. The earthquake triggered a series of avalanches on Mt. Everest where 19 people, including one of my constituents, were killed in what was the deadliest day in Mt. Everest history. The country has begun the urgent process of rebuilding. Despite the trying circumstances, Nepal has remained resilient. On December 20, I am proud to say, the democratically elected constituent assembly announced the passage of a new democratic constitution, a remarkable chapter for a country that, until recently, had been mired in civil war and strife. I am honored to join Representative Crenshaw, my cochair on the U.S. Nepal Caucus, in introducing the Nepal Trade Preferences Act, which gives preferential treatment to textile, leather, and apparel products made in Nepal. And the bill facilitates capacity building to help expand the Nepali export market. I am very grateful for the hard work of my colleague from Florida (Mr. Crenshaw), and the simultaneous effort that has been taking place in the Senate under the leadership of Senator Feinstein. Nepal is a very important and strategic ally between global powers, India and China. Cooperation with America to help build capacity and build the Nepali economy and stability is a critical foreign policy priority, in addition to being an economic benefit to the American people. I believe trade can be a mechanism for poverty reduction worldwide. I am heartened to see that this act, which attempts to do that, is included in the Customs bill. With all these great things, why would anybody oppose this bill? Unfortunately, like anything, it is not that easy. I joined my Democratic colleagues in voting against the Customs bill when it was on the House floor last summer. Despite knowing that it needed to get done, I was simply unable to vote for a bill that contained extraneous, unnecessary attacks on climate science, on environmental protections, and on immigrants. These are some of the things that needed to be taken out in the conference committee. They should have been taken out in the conference committee. If they were, I would be proudly 100 percent supporting this bill. If I could, in an open process, I would be amending the bill today to take them out, so that this bill could enjoy broad Democratic support. The only positive thing I can say is that, emerging from conference, this bill is less bad than it was. Included in the underlying report is a renegotiated provision on greenhouse gas emissions and the role in international trade agreements that certainly is not as bad as the version that originally passed the House and, many argue, would not have any significant legally constraining role on agreements negotiated by the chief executive. The House negotiated an objective that would have prohibited the USTR from pursuing trade agreements that obligate United States law or regulation towards global warming and climate change was stripped. It was replaced with an equally nontopical, but somewhat convoluted, provision that is a little difficult to understand. We use new language to bar trade agreements from including obligations to alter U.S. law or regulations surrounding greenhouse gas emissions. To clarify, international trade policy will not be the stage on which the United States establishes and implements strong and thoughtful climate change policy. That is what Congress is for, that is what our States are for, that is what our local governments are for. That must be done. I think we all agree that won't be done through trade agreements. In that sense, the language was only added to speak to a deeply held fear by my Republican Party colleagues to even acknowledge that climate change exists. To my colleagues on the other side, I would say, this is simply not the place for that kind of ideological statement. Further, the language contradicts itself by explicitly allowing the USTR to seek provisions, including those related to global warming and climate change, if doing so would fulfill another negotiating objective. So, we bar negotiators from discussing environmental policy objectives and then flip, allowing them to do so if it meets another objective. Not only is this language unnecessary, it is a messy, convoluted, contradictory-type of compromise that nobody really even knows what it would mean, and is really rife for lawyers on both sides to be debating it for years or decades. The entire world is in Paris right now talking about specifics on fighting climate change. And here we are today, with the only political party in the developed world that still questions the existence of climate change in their very platform, attaching this ridiculous provision to an unrelated Customs bill, embarrassing our own negotiators while they are in Paris. We get it: you don't agree with the rest of the world on this, you don't agree with scientists on this, you don't agree with the majority of Americans on that. We get that. Next year, feel free to pass a resolution that says, we don't believe in climate change, if that is what you want to do. But put it on your letterhead; don't put it into an unrelated Customs bill that is actually important for our economy and for the American people. Stop trying to muddle good bipartisan bills with this sort of divisive, unscientific language that, frankly, not only threatens the environment, but also embarrasses our country. These kinds of provisions have no place in bills like the Customs bill and should have been taken out in the process. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Kind), a member of the Ways and Means Committee.

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, enough is enough. It is time to act. Let's make it harder for criminals and terrorists to quietly assemble arsenals designed to kill innocent Americans. We can do that. We can protect the Second Amendment. We can implement commonsense reforms that keep America safe. There is nothing Congress can do to end gun violence, but we can and we must take action to reduce gun violence. If we defeat the previous question, we will do that. It will pass, and it will become law, and the American people will be safer. Stop standing in the way, Mr. Speaker. I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' to defeat the previous question. I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. POLIS

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, Sandy Hook, Colorado Springs, San Bernardino. How many mass shootings or terrorist attacks will it take for Congress to act to reduce gun violence? We are not talking about infringing upon our important Second Amendment rights, no gun registries, or privacy evaluations. No. We are talking about commonsense reforms to make it harder for terrorists and criminals to get the weapons that allow them to kill people: universal background checks, closing the gun show loophole, making sure that people on the terrorist watch list can't quietly assemble arsenals to do the American people harm. No congressional action can end gun violence, but we can reduce it. We can save lives. We can prevent mass shootings. We can prevent terrorists from assembling the weapons they need to kill innocent Americans. Enough is enough.

Mr. POLIS

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Nevada (Ms. Titus).

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds before I further yield. I agree with many of the critiques from the gentleman from Wisconsin. I think, when you pick apart a lot of the ways that this bill is paid for, you will find that they either won't generate the amount of revenue we think they will or you are borrowing from the outyears, meaning years 5 through 10, to effectively fund years 1 through 5. I know a lot of Members on both sides of the aisle will weigh that in their vote. I wish that the committee could have done better in finding pay-fors. I would like to briefly address the national petroleum reserve. I think it is great that Democrats and Republicans are coming together around selling assets the Federal Government has that are nonproductive assets, like the petroleum reserve that was set up for a time when America relied on foreign oil. We are now net producers of crude oil. I introduced an amendment that was not allowed for the energy bill yesterday to sell down the entire strategic petroleum reserve, which I think we should. However, the accounting for it in this bill shows us magically receiving twice the value per barrel for the price of oil than the futures market actually indicates that we would get. That is simply fictitious accounting in terms of how this bill is paid for. I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer).

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Maxine Waters), the distinguished ranking member of the Committee on Financial Services.