Jared Polis

Mr. POLIS

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), the minority whip.

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. If we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to allow for consideration of legislation that would reauthorize the Export-Import Bank for 7 years. The Export-Import Bank allows American businesses to compete in global markets and supports hundreds of thousands of jobs. 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 the gentlewoman an additional 20 seconds.

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I think the problem with the idea of the gentleman from Texas is that the base bill is so bad, it could take this body weeks or months to fix it. Meanwhile, we are 1 day away from the Export-Import Bank's reauthorization. At least let's get that done, and then we are happy to begin the work of trying to fix this terrible bill. Although, again, it might be more productive just to defeat it, send it back to Appropriations, and have them come up with a better base bill. I am proud to yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Sherman).

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Heck), a leader in the effort to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank.

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

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Slaughter), the ranking member of the Committee on Rules, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, we were hoping at least Mr. Boyle's would be accepted. But, Mr. Speaker, I yield to another Member of Congress from California (Mr. Cardenas), a leader in the fight to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Brendan F. Boyle) for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Maxine Waters), the ranking member of the Committee on Financial Services, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Sherman) for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Tonko) for the purpose of a unanimous consent.

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Al Green) for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Ashford) for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from the great State of California (Ms. Maxine Waters), to discuss the previous question and the Export-Import Bank.

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Speaker, I think it is clear what we would like to do, what Democrats would like to do, like the probusiness Members of this House would try to do, we want to, with 1 legislative day left, bring forward a reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank for the reasons that have been made abundantly clear by my Democratic colleagues and I know an idea that is shared by many, perhaps less outspoken, Members on your side of the aisle who also support reauthorizing the Export-Import Bank. Let's have a clean vote. If we defeat the previous question, that is exactly what we will bring forward, a 7-year authorization that I believe will pass this body. Now, let's talk about what this House is choosing to do instead under these rules--two bills that are not urgent, are not timely, both of which would need Presidential vetoes: the Ratepayer Protection Act of 2015, which I will talk about, which, again, will go nowhere, even if it gets out of both chambers, will get a Presidential veto and won't have two-thirds in this body to override; and Interior Appropriations, which needs to be done, but could be done next week, while we are up against a deadline of the expiration of the Export-Import Bank. The Ratepayer Protection Act pertains to the recently proposed clean power plan, which establishes emission guidelines for States to follow in developing plans to control carbon pollution from existing coal and natural gas-fired power plants. Like so many Presidential initiatives, it stems out of the President's legitimate authority to act in areas under his statutory authority when this body fails to act. I applaud the President for using his existing executive powers on immigration. I applaud the President for using his existing executive powers for a clean power plan to work with the States and the EPA. What this bill would do, however, is suspend the implementation of the clean power plan and extend all compliance and submission deadlines until a judicial review can be completed, already in process. On this point, let me make one thing very clear, that there is no existent rule and that the proposed clean power plan is a proposal. Let's give the executive branch the opportunity to at least come forward with a final proposal before this body decides that it somehow wants to invalidate that very proposal. I have discussed this proposal with many folks in my district, and there are issues that need to be worked out to make this regulation feasible. I have talked to and heard from rural electric utilities and from many others, and we all want to make sure that ratepayers are not detrimentally impacted, but the answer is not to cut the process short. That is why developers are actually working with the EPA through a public input process, which includes rural electric utilities and others, an unprecedented reach of outreach opportunities that the EPA is doing, including in my district. They are saying that they want to amend this proposed rule to make it work better. If a majority of this body doesn't like the final result, then it is time to talk about how we want to amend it and how this body would rather deal with emissions and carbon reduction. There are plenty of other opportunities. Several years ago, this body considered a cap-and-trade program. I am a cosponsor of a bill with Mr. Delaney that would implement a carbon tax and would use the income from that to reduce the corporate tax rate and reduce the tax burden on American businesses. There are plenty of good ideas out there, but let's at least see what the administration and the EPA come up with and then respond to its final proposal with meaningful legislation to address our carbon emissions. Passing this bill now would prematurely undermine the EPA's collaborative effort, instead of encouraging them to involve multiple stakeholders in reducing carbon emissions. Under current law, the EPA is required to develop and implement a Federal plan for any State that fails to submit its own State plan. This means that the passage of this bill would overturn that existing requirement in the Clean Air Act as it pertains to the clean power plan, which means the State would find itself in a place in which, if it fails to utilize the flexibility this rule provides, it might have a plan that they have not been part of forming. I urge my colleagues to reflect on a position that not only disregards science but that runs in opposition to business, to the religious community, and to our national and global security. Congress can constructively weigh in on reducing carbon emissions, and I encourage this body to do so. There are a number of great bills that would provide a statutory mechanism to reduce our carbon emissions. Instead of going that route, this body is saying that we don't even want to see what the President comes up with or what the EPA comes up with. We want to invalidate it before they even finalize it. We want to invalidate the hard work of listening to rural electric utilities; of listening to ratepayer groups; and, instead, throw it all out because, somehow, politicians in Washington know better. That is simply not the right answer, and the American people will not stand for it. Let's talk about the other bill that the Republicans are bringing forth under this rule instead of reauthorizing the Export-Import Bank-- the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations bill. First of all, I always try to talk about what is good in a bill. I do want to commend the chairman and the ranking member of the subcommittee for including the Payments in Lieu of Taxes program, or PILT. As a Representative of a district that is 62 percent owned by the Federal Government and, therefore, untaxable by our local taxing jurisdictions, I know how important it is to ensure the sustainability of our county programs, particularly those that affect our Federal lands; but much of the remainder of the bill and the reasoning for my opposition to it is the drastic approach it takes to nearly every other environmental, energy, and animal welfare issue facing our Nation. The bill fails to deal with the issue of fire sharing, which is a mechanism utilized that takes money from the Forest Service and gives it to emergency response systems in the wake of wildfires. This limits the Forest Service's resources and capabilities that could be used for the protection of the watershed and for the insurance of access and accountability of maintenance on Forest Service lands, especially those like some in my district that are affected by forest fires. This bill sets backward priorities for the Bureau of Land Management, funding the continuation and expansion of oil and gas permitting when it doesn't facilitate the zoning of solar or wind projects as my bipartisan bill with Mr. Gosar would do. The National Park Service, facing a backlog of over $11 billion, is drastically cut under this bill. The bill also fails to address the fact that offshore oil and gas operations require an inspection fee while onshore wells do not. This bill fails to address the looming expiration of the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which helps American citizens, businesses, homeowners, and communities protect important lands and resources. It also includes, as Mr. Grijalva pointed out, a number of policy riders, any one of which would be grounds for a veto by the President of the United States. It fails to adequately fund the Environmental Protection Agency, and it circumvents its ability to enforce and ensure protections granted to critical species under the Endangered Species Act. This bill needs a lot of work. I suggest we reject it, send it back to the Appropriations Committee, and let them come up with a more meaningful effort to fund our Department of the Interior, a goal that all of us share. I also urge my colleagues to reject the Ratepayer Protection Act of 2015, a bill that seeks to proactively invalidate the process of listening, as the Environmental Protection Agency has done, to many stakeholders across my district and across this country. Instead, Mr. Speaker, I call upon my colleagues to defeat the previous question so that, with 1 day remaining, we can move to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank, protect over 130,000 American jobs, help American small businesses compete in an increasingly global economy, and grow our export-related economy in Colorado and across the Nation. I encourage my colleagues to reject the previous question and reject the rule. I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, we have one legislative day until the expiration of the Export-Import Bank's authorization. We are going to get to talk about this EPA rule in a few minutes, but there are many Members on my side of the aisle who want to bring forward in the form of a previous question, the only procedural way that we can advance this important piece of legislation to the floor before the House goes home in July, to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank. Reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank would strengthen our Nation's economy. It would provide stability and certainty for American businesses. The Export-Import Bank assists tens of thousands of small- and medium-sized businesses throughout the country. In fact, nearly 90 percent of Export-Import's transactions are with small businesses, and the Bank directly supports 164,000 private sector jobs at over 3,300 companies. In August, I was honored to receive a visit from Export-Import Bank President Fred Hochberg, who came to my district to highlight the kinds of jobs and companies that Export-Import really benefits and discuss ways that it can work together with some of our local Colorado small businesses. Together, we visited Boulder-based Droplet Measurement Technologies, which was named the Export-Import Bank's 2015 Small Business Exporter of the Year for its work in cloud and aerosol measurements. Roughly two-thirds of this small company's sales come from exports. Mr. Speaker, that is the kind of growing business that Export-Import Bank supports--export-related jobs so important in today's global economy--not just the brand names, not big companies, but the types of small-and mid-sized firms that need and deserve our support to compete on the global market. FiberLok in Fort Collins is a specialty-based printing company in my district that provides heat transfer graphic products like computer mouses and drink coaster rugs. It is family-owned with 70 employees, and about 40 percent of its business is international. They sell worldwide, including Germany, Mexico, and the U.K. In 2008, the company discovered Export-Import Bank through a direct mail campaign that targeted small businesses, and they have been using the small business multibuyer credit insurance since, and through that, with the help of that program, export sales have grown 15 to 20 percent, and the Bank has supported over 2.7 million of FiberLok's exports. Mr. Speaker, I understand that there are some on the other side of the aisle that have a philosophical problem with the existence of the charter of the authorization for this Bank. If that is the case, surely unilateral disarmament is not the solution. Perhaps instruct our trade negotiators to remove backdoor subsidies at other export-import banks that other nations have, but as long as these types of efforts are permitted under WTO and trade rules, and as long as other nations support the export economy in their countries through programs like the Export-Import Bank, why would we want to unilaterally disarm? It makes no sense and puts American businesses and American exporters at a disadvantage and would lead to the outsourcing of even more jobs overseas. Financing assistance from this Bank--which, incidentally, costs zero money to taxpayers--helps ensure that U.S. companies are competing on a level playing field. Canada, China, and Japan, over 60 other nations, have similar banks that extend even more export financing to their businesses. Mr. Speaker, there is strong, bipartisan support for the renewal of the Bank's charter. I urge every Member who supports that to help defeat the previous question so we can offer our amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. POLIS

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, this body can do better. If we defeat this rule, we might have an opportunity to do something about the deficit, to do something about it by going back and getting a rule that if this body chooses to proceed with repealing the medical device tax allows a commonsense way for that to be paid for. If we repeal this rule, we can go back and look at improving the advisory panel rather than repealing it in its entirety, making sure that, if there are costs associated with that, that they are paid for in a real way rather than a way that is illusory. Mr. Speaker, if we repeal this rule, we can go back and bring forward Mr. Burgess' and my bill that would allow proper scoring around preventative health care. That would allow a proper discussion on whether this way of paying for a repeal of the advisory panel is even a real way of paying for anything or not. For those reasons, Mr. Speaker, I strongly urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' and 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. I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. POLIS. I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Wisconsin (Ms. Moore), the ranking member on the Financial Services Subcommittee on Monetary Policy and Trade.

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the remainder of my time. First, with regard to the comments of the gentleman from Texas on the preventative health fund, I want to give a few examples of the important ways that fund helps reduce health care costs. For instance, expenditures on hospitals promoting breast-feeding, on breast and cervical cancer early awareness and diagnosis. So, I mean, again, the fund community initiative that support breast- feeding mothers has a demonstrable effect in reducing the incidence of disease in infants and promotes better health. With regard to early identification: breast cancer screenings, outreach through State, territorial, and tribal health organizations, chronic disease self-management--again, making sure that people have better compliance with their regime that can reduce health care costs. So there are a lot of items in there that I am confident, if our bill were to pass--the bill that I cosponsor with the gentleman from Texas-- clearly that $9 billion in savings is illusory. Now whether that will come back as a net-positive program or not, under the new CBO scoring, we will just need to pass our bill to see. But it wouldn't be $9 billion. Again, maybe it would be $3 billion in savings. Maybe it would be $1 billion. Again, maybe it would be a negative amount because these preventative expenditures could very well save more than they cost because if you can get an early diagnosis around breast and cervical cancer, not only does it lead to a better outcome for the patient but saves a lot more money, as does making sure that people are able to successfully manage their chronic diseases and not wind up in emergency rooms at a very high cost. We have before us--no bones about it--two more partial repeals of the Affordable Care Act. So far this year, the Republicans have brought to the floor $586 billion in unpaid-for tax extenders and special interest tax expenditures. Those bills have blown through the sequestration caps, all while continuing to cut funding for education programs, violence prevention initiatives, and medical research. This bill adds another $25 billion to that $586 billion. Again, everybody likes to have their cake and eat it too. But unfortunately budgets have to work, and numbers have to add up. That is why I was particularly disappointed that the Rules Committee didn't allow my amendment that would have simply paid for the medical device tax repeal to come forward. Instead, the Republicans are insisting on adding $25 billion on top of the $586 billion in expenditures that they are blowing through the deficit with and increasing the size of the deficit by half a trillion dollars. This bill also provides for consideration of a bill that cuts $9 billion from the preventative health initiatives to repeal an advisory board. Again, I would argue that we won't know if that is truly paid for or not until our other bill passes, and I hope that we can bring forward the bill I share with Mr. Burgess to allow for the proper scoring of that. So I am ready to say that I don't know if it is paid for or not. I suspect it is not. I suspect that it might cost us more money in the long run to repeal the important expenditures around breast and cervical cancer early diagnosis and chronic disease self-management, but the only way to know that for sure would be to change the way that the CBO scores the bills to allow for preventative measures to show the savings that are reasonably estimated by experts absent any particular bias. Mr. Speaker, I think there is a lot of interest in reforming the Advisory Board, and I think that is a valid conversation to have: What should its priorities be? What should the reporting process be? What should the membership be composed of? But repealing it and adding costs and preventing simple, cost-saving recommendations from even coming to Congress, how does that make sense? And how does that further the goal of providing high-quality health care to the American people at the lowest cost possible? We also shouldn't be taking funding away for programs that help Americans prevent injuries or illness in order to pay for the repeal of an advisory board that makes nonbinding recommendations to Congress. Mr. Speaker, a vote for this rule is yet another vote for misplaced priorities, for increasing the Federal deficit, and for passing policies that are at odds with the needs of the American people and constitute the 62nd time that this body has chosen to repeal part of the Affordable Care Act rather than move forward with a future-oriented agenda to help the American people. This is a vote to add billions of dollars to our deficit at the expense of the basic healthcare needs of the American people. 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, if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to allow for the consideration of legislation that would reauthorize the Export-Import Bank for 7 years. To discuss our proposal, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Maxine Waters), the distinguished ranking member on the Committee on Financial Services.

Mr. POLIS

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