Jared Polis

Mr. POLIS

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

Mr. POLIS. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' and defeat the previous question. I urge a ``no'' vote on the rule and the underlying bills. Instead of talking about providing a tax cut for dead Americans, we talk about providing a tax cut for living Americans. Instead of bailing out States and encouraging them to raise their taxes even more, we give them an incentive to reduce their taxes and, at the same time, reduce the Federal tax rate. Yes, we can--si, se puede. Si, se puede. Si, se puede. I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the underlying rule and bill. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. I have a hard time understanding why the Republicans, of all the parties, support H.R. 622, which incentivizes States and Governors to increase their taxes. This is a State and local tax extender. It is a step away from tax reform. It adds billions to our deficit. Do my Republican colleagues realize that this bill and its sister policy deducting State and local income tax simply subsidizes high-tax States? That is what this does. You are saying to Governors, Raise taxes as much as you want, Ohio Governor. Raise taxes as much as you want, Colorado Governor. Don't worry, the Federal Government will bail you out. We are going to have a Federal bailout for your own high taxes. That is what this bill does, and you cannot dispute that. They are saying, Oh, it treats it the same. Oh, well, let's give this same bailout to Texas that we give to Ohio. Okay, let's bail out Texas for their high taxes and Ohio for their high taxes--brilliant, brilliant. It seems like it is at odds with everything the Republican Party pretends to stand for while, here in this body, they are actually advocating to bail out States with high taxes. For me, in some ways, that is actually the most troubling bill we are considering under this rule not because it is the worst policy of the three--that great distinction is owned by directing an enormous tax break to dead people rather than living people--but because the underlying policy of deducting State and local taxes can be defensible. This signals that the majority has no interest in comprehensive tax reform. It moves us further away from tax reform by enshrining one of the tax loopholes that incentivizes States to raise taxes permanently in the Tax Code rather than including it as part of a package that brings down tax rates for American businesses and American individuals. Here on tax day, why aren't we debating tax reform and reducing our tax rates? I am sure to say that there has been someone here on the House floor saying those exact words since 1986, the last time this body took on tax reform, but instead, the House Ways and Means Committee has given us these ``extender'' bills that all the ones passed this year have moved us $317 billion away from tax reform, away from cutting rates for American families and businesses. Each billion that is put in the Tax Code represents an additional billion-dollar hurdle to ever getting a bipartisan tax reform deal done. Now, look, I understand tax reform will be hard. No one agrees on what the final product should look like, even though the President and Chairman Ryan and others have indicated their support for the concept, but it should be and needs to be the goal of this Congress. We can simplify the Tax Code and bring down tax rates. We can streamline the code. We can make sure that businesses invest wherever their productivity is most enhanced rather than optimize their expenditures to fit the Tax Code that lobbyists have inserted here in Washington, D.C. We can champion small businesses and middle class taxpayers rather than dead rich people and States with high sales taxes. These discussions about tax extender policy move the baseline further and further away and make tax reform harder and harder to ever get done. Again, it is not adding any certainty to taxpayers. If you listen to the majority, the folks who understand how these numbers add up at the end of the day, they know they can't take tax extenders that cost tens of billions of dollars completely ``off the table.'' You can't shield that money and still lower rates in the way that they are promising. The numbers just don't work. If extenders like this are ``still on the table,'' why are we even calling this permanent? We are just further confusing people and injecting uncertainty. Republicans are telling Governors: go ahead and raise your sales taxes; we will bail you out. At the same time, they are saying it is not off the table that some day we might cut that for tax reform, but they are moving further and further away from tax reform. This bailout of high-tax States is simply a step away from tax reform and a step towards encouraging Governors to raise their sales tax by letting them know that the Federal Government is here to bail them out. We will debate this bill today, not pay for it, make it harder to get to tax reform, send a message to Republican States like Texas that it is okay to raise your sales tax, but my hope is, hopefully, this is our last one. Maybe we can begin a serious discussion that Chairman Camp started with his outline on tax reform that Chairman Ryan has paid lip service to, and I hope that we will work on a bipartisan proposal that we can begin without haste. Finally, I want to address the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection Advisory Boards Act. Again, Republicans took a bipartisan bill to add a small business advisory board to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. It came back costing $9 million--not billion, not trillion--$9 million. Rather than allowing Members of both sides to come up with a way of paying for it, rather than cutting some bloated line of Federal bureaucracy that both sides could have agreed on to pay for $9 million, they are handcuffing the entire agency with effectively a policy rider pay-for that effectively restricts the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in its entirety rather than extending their arm to come up with a bipartisan pay-for. It should be easy to find a bipartisan pay-for for $9 million. These concepts represent a stark difference between our parties: Democrats wanting to cut taxes for middle class and businesses, Republicans wanting to cut taxes for rich dead people and incentivize States to raise their sales tax. These rules allow for consideration of a tax bill that only serves the needs of a few thousand Americans rather than cutting taxes for the middle class. It allows the consideration of a bill that moves us further away from tax reform by bailing out States like Texas. After a self-executing amendment, this rule would drastically cut the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. We should be having a conversation of comprehensive tax reform. We should be talking about how we can make the Tax Code work better for the middle class and small businesses and bring down rates. We should streamline our Tax Code and make our businesses more competitive. I hope my colleagues oppose this rule and the underlying bill. Mr. Speaker, yesterday was Equal Pay Day. If you defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule that will allow the House to consider H.R. 16, the Paycheck Fairness Act. In one of the wealthiest countries in the world, it is unacceptable that women are paid significantly less than men for filling the exact same role. It is long past time that Congress acted to close the wage gap. This bill would do exactly that. I join Representative DeLauro in advocating we finally enable women, support America's children and families, and end the crippling drag created by the gender pay gap on our Nation's economic prosperity. 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 the gentlewoman an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, before further yielding, I yield myself such time as I may consume to address some of the points of my colleague, the gentleman from Ohio. He asked, Whose money is it? I think if you ask any small- businessperson, any person whom we are talking about here--people that are worth over $10 million--and you say, ``Look, would you rather pay higher taxes while you are alive or after you are dead?'' I would bet almost everybody would rather hold on to more of their money. Whose money is it? Let them keep more of their own while they are alive and pay it after they are dead. I certainly would. I would much rather pay the government after I am dead than while I am alive, if we have to pay them at all. Number two, he said, Why can't we come up with this pay-for? Well, look, this body, at its very best, just came together around a package over $100 billion for SGR. This is $9 million. It is not that hard to pay for $9 million for the U.S. Government. We probably spent $9 million of U.S. Government time just having this debate right here, keeping the lights on and C-SPAN flowing and the Chamber going. For goodness' sake, $9 million--it is easy. If you allowed this to come up under an open rule, Mr. Speaker, plenty of Members could have offered $9 million pay-fors. Take it out of almost any account; it is such a relatively small amount of money. You could take it from almost any government agency you want, and I am sure you can find $9 million to agree on to fund this rather than a backdoor attempt to gut the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Finally, the gentleman from Ohio said nothing in here precludes tax reform. Of course he is right; nothing precludes tax reform. We are just moving further and further away from tax reform by making permanent special interest tax cuts that we all agree are part of the discussion for tax reform to eliminate in order to bring down taxes. So it is moving further and further away. It doesn't preclude it. It makes it harder. Mr. Speaker, yesterday was Equal Pay Day. If we defeat the previous question, we will offer an amendment to the rule that would allow the House to consider H.R. 1619, the Paycheck Fairness Act, introduced by Representative DeLauro, which I am proud to cosponsor. I yield 3\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro) to discuss our proposal.

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

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. The rule here today provides for consideration of three bills, all of which I oppose in their current form. I want to talk about each of those. We also have, under this rule, a closed process. This resolution contains the 19th and 20th closed rules of this Congress. Instead of having an open debate about taxes here on tax day, we see nothing more than recycled partisan measures and attacks on consumer protections that are disguised and under the guise of a small business advisory board, which had historically been a bipartisan effort. While discussing tax legislation on tax day may not seem the most exciting piece of legislative news to our constituents, I hope they are watching today, Mr. Speaker. This rule and this bill we are bringing under it really demonstrate the gulf that exists between our two parties when we talk about things like middle class economics. This is a $296 billion tax cut. So if we have $296 billion in taxes cut, who are we going to cut taxes for? This bill affects 100 families in Colorado. With the same amount of money, $296 billion, we could cut taxes for every American adult by $1,000. That $1,000 would mean a lot to middle class families, Mr. Speaker. It might help pay for your kids' college tuition. It might help pay for a family vacation. But instead of directing money there, we are directing it to the very wealthiest Americans, namely, those who die with more than a $10 million estate for a married couple. I think we see a stark contrast on priorities. While I disagree with the policies and tactics that are under consideration, I think it is important to talk about what a Democratic majority would do here on tax day. We would certainly not be about to consider a bill that applies to literally zero percent of taxpayers, Mr. Speaker. Let me clarify, because that may seem strange to some people that this applies to zero percent of taxpayers. But the bill we are considering with regard to the inheritance tax on estates over $10 million would apply to 0.15 percent of taxpayers. That can be rounded down to zero. It doesn't even apply to those taxpayers. It applies to them after they are dead. So it applies to zero living Americans. Mind you, we won't have a debate about the broken immigration policies that impact over 11 million immigrant workers who would grow the tax base. We won't have discussions on reducing taxes for the middle class, but we are having policies that affect a few thousand dead people, a few thousand rich dead people, I might add. If there were a Democratic majority on tax day, we would be working to provide tax relief to middle class families, rather than offering a bill that would gut one agency whose sole purpose is to protect middle class consumers and delivering a tax break to rich, dead families. We have another bill under this rule, ostensibly about a small business advisory board. This is a worthwhile effort to provide a small business advisory input to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Unfortunately, it is a minimal cost, $9 million, but the Republicans are offering a way of paying for it that guts the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. They are effectively cutting off your arm to remove a splinter in your pinky. Well, look. If the majority was consistent when they say the deficit matters and we must pay for legislation--but we are dealt with two bills that are mutually exclusive. On the one hand, they are handing out $269 billion in deficit spending through providing tax cuts to 1,000 Americans who are already dead. And on the other hand, they are saying this $9 million dollars, somehow we have to figure out a way of paying for, and they are effectively gutting the financial protection agency to do it. That is because this $9 million is apparently a step too far, even though they are offering two bills, one that adds $269 billion to the deficit, and the other adds $42 billion to the deficit, which I will talk about in a minute. In this year alone, the House Ways and Means Committee has given Congress nine tax expenditure bills, at a cost of $317 billion, all unfunded; $317 billion in tax expenditure spending, not even including this $269 billion that they are looking at doing today. And what bothers me most about this rule today is where we say to ourselves: Look, we will spend $269 billion for a tax expenditure for dead rich people, $42 billion on a tax reform that will ultimately make tax reform harder, but we can't spend $9 million on a bill to help small business. I am sure that we all have a lot of ideas on both sides of the aisle about how we can spend money. If we have $269 billion in tax expenditures to use, why don't we direct that to a tax cut for small businesses or to reducing the corporate tax rate, which is one of the highest in the world, or reducing the middle class tax rate? But instead, it is being directed entirely to approximately 100 dead people in Colorado, rather than allowing businesses to keep more of their money so they can reinvest in their infrastructure and create jobs, this precious tax break we are giving to 100 dead people in the State of Colorado. We should be talking about tax reform today. We should be talking about how to reduce taxes for the middle class. Instead, we are having a closed debate about another set of bills that will likely not pass the Senate, and if they got to the President's desk, he would veto. I urge my colleagues to reject this rule. The repeal of the estate tax is very hard to explain to our constituents. That is because it is $269 billion that benefits almost no one--less than 100 people in the State of Colorado. Now, when my friends call this the ``death tax'' or somehow say this will help small business, let's keep in mind, you don't even pay inheritance tax on the first $5 million of your estate, $10 million for a married couple. So you can die with a $5 million small business, a $10 million small business for a couple, and your heirs pay zero tax on that--zero tax. What we are saying now is that the very limited number of families that might have estates of $50 million or $60 million, instead of paying tax on that, should pay zero tax on that and just have the costs of that added to the deficit. There are a lot of ideas about spending $269 billion. We could say, oh, we could spend it on schools or science and research. Or even, if we limit ourselves to what we want to do with taxes, why aren't we lowering taxes on business? Why aren't we talking about reducing the marginal rate? Why aren't we talking about reducing all the tax brackets across the board? Why aren't we talking about a tax refund to middle class families? Instead, we are spending $269 billion on a few hundred dead rich people. From a tax policy standpoint, that has got to be one of the least productive ways to attempt to cut taxes. You want to cut taxes on small businesses? No argument here. Give it to them while they are living. I was a small-businessman before I got here. I would have loved to have been able to keep more of my own money to be able to invest in the growth of my small business rather than receive a tax break when I am already dead. This makes no sense in the world. Look, we would all love to get rid of every tax, wouldn't we--estate tax, business tax, income tax--but we all agree that government needs so much money to function. We have a House budget. The House budget that this body agreed to stipulates a certain amount of tax breaks. It is up to our body to decide how to deliver those tax breaks. I honestly think that almost every businessowner would rather see lower rates while they are alive so they could grow their companies faster, creating growth and employing people, rather than a tax break after they are dead. Proponents of this bill tell stories about how many businesses or farms are harmed every year by the estate tax. Well, how many of those same farms and businesses are harmed by the hard-earned money that they are forced to turn over to the government every year? Why aren't we saying: Give less of your hard-earned income to the government every year? But no, the Republican tax-and-spend approach continues to oppress small businesses with higher and higher taxes, oppress the middle class with higher and higher taxes, while they are only concerned with delivering a tax break to dead rich people. I simply disagree that this is an efficient way to use our Tax Code to spur economic growth. Chairman Ryan knows full well that I am enthusiastic about having a discussion about our Tax Code: how to cut taxes for business, reduce the burden on small businesses, simplify and streamline the Tax Code by reducing tax expenditures, and bringing down tax rates to ensure that the capital expenditures by businesses and reinvesting in businesses are determined by businessowners rather than by lobbyists here in Washington. These bills are a step in the wrong direction, away from tax reform, and are detrimental to the American middle class and to American small businesses. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. POLIS

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

Mr. POLIS

Mr. POLIS. I thank both the gentleman from Texas as well as the gentleman from Massachusetts for the time. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of Equal Pay Day. Today, April 14, marks the day in which women's earnings from January 2014 have reached men's earnings in 2014 alone. In one of the wealthiest, most progressive countries in the world, women still find themselves 3\1/2\ months behind men in wage disbursement. That means that for every dollar earned by men in the United States, only 78 cents are earned by women. For a woman working full time over the span of her career, that means a total loss of $430,000, nearly $500,000. Non-White, disabled, and LGBT women fare even worse, with some making as little as 56 cents to every dollar earned by men in comparable positions. I am proud to join my colleagues today in recognition of the fact that this disparity is not only antiquated, but economically regressive and morally indefensible. It has been proven time and time again that increasing pay for women has a direct and immediate impact on improving our economy and the health of American families. Fairly compensating women is not only the right thing to do, but it would increase consumer demand, create jobs, and raise the GDP. Today, on Lilly Ledbetter's birthday, it is time for Congress to act to enable women to support America's children and families and end this crippling drag on our Nation's economic prosperity and moral stain on our country. It is time we play our part in ending the gender gap.

Mr. POLIS

Mr. POLIS. I thank the gentleman from California for his leadership on this issue and for raising public awareness about the role that Congress should play and is failing to play with regard to making college more affordable. This morning I had the opportunity to meet with the chancellor of one of our flagship State universities in the district I represent, the University of Colorado at Boulder. Chancellor Phil DiStefano came by, and we talked a lot about college affordability. Now, the university, in its own right, I am proud to say, is doing what they can. They are creating a new 3-year program, where students can graduate in 3 years and only have to pay for 3 years of tuition. They are also creating an interest-free installment program, where students can pay their fees spread out over a longer period of time without interest, financed through the university. And I am very proud to report that CU will only increase student tuition by 3 percent this year, which is the lowest increase in several decades. Now, moving from what many of our universities are trying to do in their own right to what Congress can do is where we need to shift the discussion here. Making student loans more affordable, reducing the interest rate, and in some cases, raising the cap available are all absolutely, absolutely critical to help young people afford a higher education that enables them to succeed in the workforce. We are not doing enough. We ought to address some of the cost drivers within higher education. I think we took a good first step with the Affordable Care Act, with looking at some of the costs of health care in education. Another example is looking at some of the costs of content acquisition. Dr. Phil DiStefano was telling me that their library costs of acquiring material and keeping their professional journal subscriptions is increasing at 15 percent a year. One of their cost drivers. That is why some of us here supported a bill--and President Obama took the first steps on this--to make sure that taxpayer- supported research, money that is funded through NIH research--it is funded through NIH or NASA, taxpayer-funded research--is made freely available to the public and is not only available in prescription journals that not only raise the costs for our universities but make access to the very science that we, the people, financed less egalitarian by limiting it to those who can pay for it. In addition, we talked about open source textbooks. Would you believe that after you pay tuition, after you finally, you know--oh, my gosh, with this debt and my parents' help and my job--oh, but then guess what? $1,100 for textbooks. I kid you not. I had heard from a lot of students that their textbooks were $1,100, $1,200. And I asked the chancellor today. I said, Am I hearing from the students in the worst-case scenario? He said, No, that is average. That is average. It is costing the average student $1,100 a semester for the textbooks they need to succeed. We don't need that. We can, through innovation, disintermediate that and have collaborative open source content of the same or superior quality that professors put together for students and is available for free or near free. It doesn't matter if people want it online or as a textbook. The physical act of producing a textbook is only $3 or $4, not $50 or $100. Most of that profit margin goes to textbook companies. Very little is with the authors or the professors who contributed the work. They largely do it for professional consideration and prestige. And if we can build a culture that supports and empowers content platforms that are open source, we can truly bring down those textbook costs which are so onerous for students in higher education. So we should challenge Congress to do something about the looming student debt crisis, not just for the students that are accruing it today, but for people who graduated 5 or 10 years ago and are still suffering under the yoke of the debt that they incurred that allowed them to have a decent job in America.

Mr. POLIS. We can't forget students who financed their education at higher interest rates, when inflation was higher, who years after their graduation still suffer under the yoke of debt. That is the reason why Representative Courtney brought forth his bill. And when I hear from constituents, that is one of the top things that I hear. I hear from people who might have graduated 3 years ago, 5 years ago, even 20 years ago, but their debt load is impacting their ability to live their lives; their ability to buy a home, which they can't do because of it; their ability to have a family simply because of the way or the manner that they financed it or the time they financed it. So I think it is absolutely appropriate for us to find a way to make sure that people are rewarded for their educational achievement and not penalized. The greatest asset our country has is our intellectual capital. It is the ideas and knowledge of our people. That is our greatest asset. Yet in this day and age the fact that we are penalizing people for bettering themselves and for acquiring knowledge that is needed for our economy to succeed is absolutely ridiculous, and that is exactly what we need to do. I invite the gentleman from California to talk about how some of these issues were highlighted in the recent budget debates we had because when a lot of people hear, oh, the Democrats and Republicans are fighting about the budget, it seems very esoteric. They say: What is this budget? What is that budget? Well, these are very important statements because it shows how each party would govern. Specifically, the visions that each budget set forth with regard to higher education, college and how to afford it are night and day. I am hoping that you can talk about, just moments before on the floor of this very House, the budget that, unfortunately, our Republican colleagues passed and then contrast that with the budget that you and I voted for which would have made college more affordable and helped families afford college.

Mr. POLIS

Mr. POLIS. I thank the gentlewoman from New York. Mr. Speaker, this is the time of year where we begin to debate our Nation's budget, ostensibly, our plans for the fiscal future of our Nation. There was a time, far ago in the past, before the invention of the Ryan budget and the Price budgets, when this time of year represented an honest, informed discussion of our different views of the future of our Nation and how to restore fiscal stability. Since the Ryan budget, though, which says it balances, but doesn't; which includes tax revenue for laws that it says it repeals; which creates fiscal growth out of thin air; this discussion, unfortunately, has devolved into nothing more than political theater. Somehow, this year, as we consider this rule today on the first ever Price budgets, the process has fallen even further. Gimmicks are being stacked on gimmicks. The Budget Control Act and its caps are law, and everyone on my side of the aisle stands ready to work together to come to a compromise solution that allows for both our domestic spending needs to be met as well as our national security needs. But that is not the discussion we are having. Instead, we have a budget--or budgets--which completely circumvent common sense and budgetary convention by adding billions of ``base budget'' money to the overseas contingency account, essentially giving President Obama a record slush fund to engage in wars of his choice without consulting the United States Congress. Those are the Republican plans before you. What we have is a fictional budget. But then, that fictional budget wasn't enough for everyone. So here we are, being asked to pass a rule which looks a lot like the rules you might see at an auction at the county fair. The most votes wins the blue ribbon. This isn't the county fair. This is the United States Congress. This is our official budget plan of a major American political party for fiscal years 2016 through 2025. I reject this rule today. We can do better. We can have an honest discussion about our budget priorities and about restoring fiscal stability for the next generation. We deserve a serious proposal rather than this fun and games and gimmicks that we have before us under this rule. I encourage my colleagues to oppose the rule.

Mr. POLIS

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, where to begin? In hearing the majority leader's remarks and in talking about fair elections, how is it fair if only one side has access to the phone numbers and email addresses and not the other side? Can any of us imagine running in our campaigns where only we or only our opponent can call or write emails to the voters? That doesn't make any sense. Talking about 11 days, again, that is fictitious. This rule is about the 1 in 10 cases that take over 100 days. Mr. Speaker, we heard testimony in committee about organizing that lingered on hundreds and hundreds of days. And as our ranking member pointed out, the longer it takes, there is a direct and causal relationship to illegal behavior. The election rules that the NLRB has implemented will help expedite this process to be sure it is done in accordance with the law. It modernizes our antiquated system to level the playing field for workers. These rules set up a fair system so that bad actors that needlessly delay and abuse the electoral system for the sole purpose of having time to coerce employees through mandatory meetings, threats, and even firings won't be rewarded for their bad behavior. This coercion is not just some far-fetched idea. One in 10 cases take over 100 days. Now, why would delaying a union election be a bad thing for union workers? Because during that delay, these workers are forced into rooms, receive threats, are bombarded with texts and emails from the employer--again, from one side in the election--but the other side in the election, absent these rules, doesn't even have access to text or phone. Mr. Speaker, we should be focused on creating new jobs, not destroying them, and growing the middle class, not shrinking it. I urge my colleagues to vote ``no.''

Mr. POLIS

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. The Export-Import Bank ensures that American businesses remain competitive in foreign markets, and reauthorizing it would create certainty for business across this country and is fully permissible under WTO rules. Mr. Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to allow for consideration of legislation which would reauthorize the Export-Import Bank for 7 years. Mr. Speaker, to discuss our proposal, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Washington (Mr. Heck).

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me the customary 30 minutes, and I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the rule and the underlying resolution, Senate Joint Resolution 8, the resolution to overturn the National Labor Relations Board's election rule. The other bill I support, H. Res. 132, which provides for the expenses of the committees of the House. The House Committee on Administration's bipartisan work should be commended because, as we all know, committees that we individual Members of the House are members of play a very important role in the work we do every day. Now, I think it is unfortunate that this bipartisan bill has been packaged with a partisan bill to repeal important, commonsense reforms that were done at the National Labor Relations Board, and they have been wrapped up with a controversial bill. The NLRB's function, as you know, is both to investigate and prosecute unfair labor practices and to provide a legal framework for employees and employers where employees may be seeking to organize in their workplaces for better wages and working conditions. Both of those functions are required of them by the National Labor Relations Act, which has been in place since 1935. The work that the NLRB is doing is important. It is precisely what is required by the National Labor Relations Act. Holding a vote on this resolution will get in the way of the NLRB's pursuing its mandate successfully. Instead of focusing on important issues like shrinking the wage gap and growing the middle class, instead, the Republicans are spinning their wheels to score points by going after the National Labor Relations Board and commonsense reforms to make it function more effectively. The President has already released a statement vowing to veto this resolution, so it is another example of spinning our wheels. It is obvious that neither the Senate nor the House will have enough votes to override this veto, so I ask simply: Why are we wasting our time on this misguided legislation when there are plenty of challenges that our country faces, whether it is balancing the budget, growing the middle class, or dealing with use of force abroad? Instead, we are discussing legislation which won't become law. While we are 3 months into this Congress, I can't even count the amount of hours we have spent on the floor discussing legislation that, as everybody knows, won't become law because we have a President in the White House who said he will veto it. Mr. Speaker, this piece of legislation uses the Congressional Review Act, which is a rare legislative tool that allows the majority to rush through legislation with little debate. In the Senate, normal rules of debate and cloture are not even required, but it does require the President's signature. Now, keep in mind, the Congressional Review Act is used to undo rules that have been promulgated by the executive branch through the Executive Office. So why would a President sign something that undoes his own rules? He simply wouldn't have made those rules in the first place if he didn't want them done. So here we are, without two-thirds of this body, going through these motions on something that we know isn't going to become law. The Congressional Review Act has only been used once to overturn a rule in the entire history of the United States and is there for emergencies. This bill is far from an emergency. Instead, it is packaged with a closed rule--an extreme and unnecessary procedural action--rather than allowing for amendment and discussion of ideas from both sides of the aisle. This resolution would overturn the new and improved election rules at the NLRB which are simply modernizing an antiquated system. The current rules were done before email existed, as an example. And we talk about how important privacy is; we are only talking about email addresses that the employer has. So if employers can use them to lobby their employees one way or the other in a vote, the organizing campaign should also be able to use those same email addresses. If neither side has access to them, that is fine; but if one side has access to them in an election, the other side needs to have access under similar terms. We in this body have a responsibility to protect workers' rights and to provide employers with predictability and an expeditious processing of organizing requests in the workplace. Under the current archaic rules prior to this change, it was far too easy for bad actors to endlessly delay workplace elections. In our committee that Dr. Foxx and I serve on, we got to hear the testimony of a nurse from California who had engaged in an effort in her workplace to organize the nurses that had been delayed time and time again, more than a year before a vote was finally held. Oftentimes, if a year or 2 or 3 go by, there might be different employees, people come and go, the groups of employees change, and often some of these involved in the organizing are subsequently fired. Employers are able to do this by appealing time and time again on issues that have no bearing on the election simply to delay, delay, delay. The modest, commonsense reforms of the election rules truly go a long way in balancing the system and making it work more efficiently. They are standardized practices that are already common through many parts of the country to allow workers to make their own decisions without manipulations, threats, or intimidation from either party. Under current rules, what happens all too often is employers continuously appeal an election with unwarranted litigation so they have time to threaten, coerce, and, far too often, fire workers. By the time the election occurs, workers have moved on, voluntarily or involuntarily, to other jobs or have been threatened so many times they feel they have been forced to vote ``no.'' There is a proven direct and causal relationship between the length of time it takes to hold an election and illegal employer conduct. In other words, bad actors stall the election process and use the system they have to do whatever it takes to win the election. There are hundreds of examples of unscrupulous actors using the current system in this way. The nurse that I mentioned earlier decided that she and her coworkers wanted a better workplace environment and began to organize, but the employer delayed the action multiple times so they had time to threaten the workers via text and email. They even held mandatory meetings with employees to threaten and coerce them into voting against organizing. They even did this under the guise of education. In the end, the nurses were too scared to form a union. Another unfortunate, but telling, example we talked about in committee is a Mercedes-Benz dealership that delayed and stalled an election at every opportunity. The entire process wound up lasting 428 days. With the new rule, the process would have taken 141 days. What I can't understand is how some people think that 428 days is reasonable and that somehow 141 days is an ambush election. I think 428 days for a union election is inexcusable. It is harmful to our families and the economy and harmful to the businesses, the lack of predictability that that brings. The average resolution for an election is 38 days. And we are not dealing with the average here; we are dealing with the outliers. One in 10 election cases are still unresolved after 100 days. There is no excuse for that. It is unthinkable. It is these 10 percent of employers and organizing efforts that this election will impact. The other 90 percent work well. The current NLRB processes work well. We don't need to change their methods. I keep hearing arguments that employees are losing the rights to privacy, but I want to address these points because they are completely false. The companies have work schedules, email addresses, and phone numbers. They often use these to threaten and coerce employees at all hours of the day and night. Those who are organizing already have access to home addresses, but that is all they have. Without work schedules, they might show up when an employee is sleeping or when they are not home. This new rule provides the same information to employers and organizers. If you ask me, a home address--which they already have--is far more intrusive than an email or phone number, and I think that these reforms will, therefore, further the privacy of workers. The rules simply modernize the disclosure requirements, because the last time they were updated people didn't have cell phones and emails. All they had were home addresses, which is why the union organizers currently have access to home addresses. Employers also indicate that they might be surprised by an election. The timeline the employers are referring to of 11 days is essentially impossible in the real world. Moreover, in essentially every case, the employer is fully aware that organizing is occurring long before the petition is filed. Under the new rule, employers will have plenty of time to make their cases, and employees will have plenty of time to make an informed decision. It is important to note that if the resolution were to actually pass and somehow be signed by the President--which it won't be--it would forever prohibit the NLRB or any agency from enacting a substantially similar rule. That means the simple modernization efforts that I hope we could all agree upon, such as allowing parties to file election documents electronically, as this rule does, will be forever off the table, forcing both businesses and workers to use an antiquated and costly system. Mr. Speaker, for these reasons, I oppose the rule and the underlying bill. I reserve the balance of my time.

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

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

Mr. POLIS. I yield the gentleman an additional 2 minutes.

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Heck).

Mr. POLIS. If somebody else shows up, I might yield to him; but with that understanding, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Speaker, I want to talk a little bit about the Export-Import Bank and what they do and why it is so important. First of all, there are a lot of forms of subsidization that are not permitted under trade rules or the WTO. However, there are certain safe harbors for things that are allowed, and all of our major trading partners have something like an Export-Import Bank. What it does is it helps to effectively finance our exports. When we have somebody who wants to buy products from an American company in another country, rather than have that company, itself, have to collect that overseas debt, effectively, that debt is transferred to this pseudopublic entity, the Export-Import Bank, and that, effectively, becomes the collection agent overseas for that debt. It, effectively, allows our exporters to get their payments up front to outsource any risk of no payment occurring. In fact, the U.S. Export Agency is in a better position to collect those debts because people will see them abroad as an entity of the U.S. Government. It works out well, as it is profitable; it is supported by the business community; and it is fully permissible under trade rules. If we fail to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank, we are, effectively, stabbing ourselves in the foot. We are hurting our own export economy. Do we think for 1 minute that other countries are going to stop engaging in similar allowable trade practices that benefit their own manufacturing industries? No, of course not. People across the world are going to scratch their heads just as they do when our own Congress shuts down our government, just as they do when Members of our own Congress undermine our own President diplomatically. They ask: What are the Americans doing? They are doing this to themselves. They are hurting their own exports, and they are hurting their own manufacturing. That is exactly why I hope that we do defeat the previous question and come forward with a clean Export-Import Bank reauthorization, which I am confident would overwhelmingly pass here on the floor of the House. 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, what this discussion really comes down to with regard to the NLRB is whether or not bad actors should continue to get away with abusing an antiquated system for their own advantage. I truly believe--and I hope my colleagues do, too--that employers and employees should have a level playing field with an updated and expeditious processing mechanism. Employers should not be able to endlessly delay and appeal elections and abuse a process that was put in place just as much for them as it was for employees. Organizing has a long and important history in America. Unions and collective bargaining have made sure we have a weekend to spend with our families, a 40-hour workweek, and made sure women are paid fair wages. Organizing has made sure workers are safe from all types and forms of workplace dangers. Countless studies show that the proportion of workers in labor organizations tracks very closely with income for middle class Americans. Critics of this rule don't want a level playing field for labor organizations to fight for the middle class. They want a process that is open to delay and manipulation. Rather than letting workers choose for themselves whether or not they want to join a union, bad actors would prefer to delay or prevent the choice from ever being made at all. This new rule reduces the opportunity for bad actors to play games with the process and applies new technological updates to the process as well. The Republicans, time and time again, seem to want to waste time on grandstanding instead of legislating. This is a perfect example of another bill that won't become law. The Republicans want to tilt the economy toward the wealthy, toward big business, toward CEOs. We were sent here to do the people's work. The new rule for the NLRB is entirely consistent with the legislative intent of the creation of that agency, and it is for the advantage of people who live in our towns and cities. It improves the economy, raises up the middle class, helps give everybody a fair shot at the American Dream. When we talk about the pathway to the American Dream, the pathway to success in our country, the organized labor movement has and continues to make enormous contributions toward making sure that Americans are earning livable wages, that they can support their families and live the American Dream. It is not only the weekends and 40-hour workweeks that they have given us. The organized labor movement continues to fight for the middle class and to fight to grow the middle class and to address some of the increasing trend of income disparities that are threatening our country. Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' and defeat the previous question, and then we will bring forward the Export-Import Bank clean reauthorization that does create jobs for middle class Americans and in manufacturing. Some of those plants will be union and some won't be. That is the choice of the workers. The NLRB bill facilitates that choice. It doesn't presuppose that every workplace will want to organize nor that no workplaces will want to organize. It simply has a fair set of rules in place--fair to businesses, fair to employees, fair to labor, fair to everybody--that allows a decision to be made regarding organizing in the workplace. What is even more important about the effort Mr. Heck talked about is it will allow workers and business owners to participate in a bigger pie. That is what we all want. By reauthorizing the Export-Import Bank, we are creating jobs in our country and the export sector; and that means that the owners of the companies will do well; it means the employees of the companies will do well; it means the management will do well; it means the line workers will do well. So let's participate in a growing pie by passing a clean reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank rather than trying to divide the pie to take more away from working families and the middle class and give more to big businesses. Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' and defeat the previous question. I urge a ``no'' vote on the rule, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Texas (Mr. Al Green).

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

Mr. POLIS

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the wealth of support that has been shown for this amendment, and I hope that we are able to accomplish this amendment. I am thrilled to have the support of the gentleman from Oklahoma. To the extent that it is within our power, it is this body's responsibility to ensure our Federal partners are receiving the very best available objective information. My amendment will allow information that has its repository in our institutions of higher education to be able to serve as advisers for the EPA. I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on my amendment. I yield back the balance of my time.