Jared Polis

Mr. POLIS

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Frankel) for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

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

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Roybal-Allard) for the purpose of a unanimous consent request.

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

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

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. If Congress doesn't act, the Department of Homeland Security will shut down in 2 days. Republicans are playing a very dangerous game with our Nation's security. Today, I am giving the House a fourth chance to have a straight up or down vote on a clean DHS funding bill. If we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to bring up H.R. 861, which will fund the Department of Homeland Security through the end of fiscal year 2015 without any poison pill provisions. We need to put an end to this stalemate and take immediate action to keep our country safe. 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 gentleman from Texas (Mr. Doggett).

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Before I get back to education, I want to point out that there is a very unusual component to this rule. There is something called self- executing language, which means that the rule is effectively like a bill, and the language is around a very hot button divisive topic-- namely, abortion. There is actually a provision in this rule that effectively becomes a passed bill--it is self-executing--that would defund school-based health centers if they have any information about referrals or directions or any abortion-related materials. In fact, the language is so vague, they wouldn't even be able to display, under this, antiabortion-related materials. It says: The center will not provide abortion-related materials, referrals, or directions for abortion services to any such student. It would essentially prevent a school from providing information to a child about alternatives to abortion, like adoption or other options that a young parent might have, to be able to stay in school. If this rule passes with this self-executing amendment, I believe that the number of abortions will increase in the country as a result. This is an anti-choice, pro-abortion measure that has been inserted into this rule, and it is very restrictive on our school districts. It is a very unusual procedural tactic. I have never seen, in my 6 years here, a rule used for self-executing language around a divisive topic like abortion. No debate on the amendment--even these other amendments on education under this bill, they have 10 minutes of debate, and they have 20 minutes of debate. This is a secret attempt to get language into a bill that we were not even shown, I think, 3 minutes before we voted on it in the Rules Committee yesterday--just another example of the problems with this ad hoc lawmaking process without the right thought going into bills. I don't even think that the sponsor of this, who is Representative Neugebauer, meant to exclude information about alternatives to abortion or other options that people might choose; but, unfortunately, the language of the self-executed amendment would prohibit that as well. Mr. Speaker, instead of engaging in these partisan fights, I wish that at least one of our unanimous consent requests had been granted to fund the Department of Homeland Security. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case. We are instead discussing a very divisive bill. Some of my colleagues talked about funding. I want to elaborate a little more about what this so-called portability was. Portability sounds great. Of course, funds should follow the student. The net effect of this version of portability that is in this bill is that resources are transferred out of schools that serve a lot of at- risk and poor children to schools that serve a lower percentage of poor or at-risk children. What this means in districts like mine or districts across the country is, on the ground, schools that serve 60, 70, 80 percent low- income families will lose two staff people, three staff people--in some cases, maybe even four staff people. They will lose teachers. They will lose paraprofessionals. They will be taken out of their budget, and they would be added to the budget of some of the wealthier schools in the district. Now, look, if we all want to add staff to all schools, I mean, my goodness, if we can find funding to add staff to some of the wealthier schools--I know that there are many schools that have a lower socioeconomic risk in my district--parents would love more staff, but the right answer is not to take those staff out of the schools that serve the most at-risk kids. That is what this bill does, which is why no Democrats on our committee supported it. It is a step in the opposite direction. Honestly, Mr. Speaker, it is hard to even get to the discussion of getting accountability right--expanding and replicating what works and changing what doesn't work and encouraging innovation--when the basic funding parameters of the bill do the opposite of what we need to do: take money out of the schools that serve the most at-risk kids which, under whatever accountability system we use, are likely the schools that need more investment. I urge my colleagues to oppose this rule with the self-executing abortion language, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Kildee), a member of the Committee on Financial Services.

Mr. POLIS

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Oregon (Ms. Bonamici).

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to offer an amendment today that would amend the Charter Schools Program in title III for the underlying bill and make a positive improvement. As you know, the Charter Schools Program not only is a lifeline for growing and replicating public charter schools, but we want to see the benefit of that innovation spread across other public schools. I am very grateful to both the underlying bill and the Democratic substitute, which both have very strong language--in fact, nearly identical--about helping quality public charter schools grow and expand. As many of my colleagues are quick to point out, traditional public schools are also doing innovative things and are showing growth every day. For the foreseeable future, the vast majority of students in the country will continue to attend district public schools. District public schools are innovating to provide meaningful programs for students and are helping to narrow the achievement gap in our country every day. As my colleagues know, I am quick to point out the benefit of innovation that public charter schools allow, including the two that I founded in Colorado and New Mexico. My amendment, which I am offering with Mr. Rokita, would encourage charter schools and traditional public schools to collaborate and share best practices. They need not operate in their own separate silos. Both can learn from one another. Both kinds of school governance bring ideas to the table that can improve the quality of education for all students. This amendment would simply encourage public schools with traditional governance through a school district and public charter schools to work together so that both parties can learn from the others' success. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Chairman, over 40 States now allow for public charter schools, Washington State being the newest. Like other kinds of public schools, we find across the country high-quality public charter schools as well as poorly performing public charter schools. Charter schools are not an answer; they are not a problem. They are an opportunity; they are a way that there can be more flexibility at the site level. Some have extended schooldays; some have a differentiated curriculum than the district; some partner very closely with community nonprofits to provide wraparound services. Before I came to Congress, Mr. Chairman, I had the opportunity to found two charter schools, and I served as superintendent of one. The New America School, which now has five campuses in New Mexico and Colorado, works with new immigrants and English language learners to help them gain proficiency in reading and writing English and getting a high school-level diploma. Many of the students that we recruited to attend our school were not in school before; they worked odd jobs. We had a flexible schedule day or night. We had to provide day care because just under half of our young women who attend that school have children themselves. I also had the opportunity to be a cofounder of the Academy of Urban Learning, which works with homeless youth and youth in transitional housing in Denver, Colorado. What this sense of Congress does is it simply supports the public charter school movement, which has long had near universal bipartisan support, and it calls upon and supports more quality public charter schools. I want to separate this from, of course, some of the issues that my colleagues perhaps on both sides of the aisle have with particular low-quality schools, whether they are charter schools or neighborhood schools or something in between, like innovation schools, which Colorado allows. If the school is poor quality, hopefully it is a school that not only the Member of Congress who represents that district has a problem with, but hopefully the school board and the superintendent also want to take the steps necessary to improve the quality of that public school. To the extent that we have methodologies and models for successful public charter schools, we need more of them just as we need more high- quality neighborhood schools and just as we need more high-quality magnet schools. I hope that this can be incorporated as a sense of Congress. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. POLIS

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the remainder of the time. Mr. Chairman, studies have shown that for every dollar invested in quality early childhood education, it can actually save $7 to $9 of taxpayer money over the lifetime of that child in schools over the next 12 years. That is an actual savings. If we were to score this in an accurate way, on a 10-year basis, the investment in quality preschool would save money. Like the gentleman from Minnesota, of course I am interested in improving Head Start and building upon it, but this is a different and broader approach than Head Start. This program impacts middle class communities who also stand to benefit from quality early childhood education that often they can't afford on their own dime. Now, what we need is a targeted approach, and that is really the crucial difference between this amendment and the existing program. The need for a unique approach to preschool has been recognized across the Nation. It is time for the Federal Government to recognize what States and districts are crying out for. It is time to address the need for high- quality early childhood education in a dedicated and comprehensive way, and that is what this amendment does. By investing in early childhood, we can prevent learning gaps from arising before they arise. We can reduce the need for special education and IDEA, and we can save money by reducing youth adjudication rates, grade repetition rates, and other costly interventions that are necessary if children don't have that opportunity when they are 3 or 4 years old. I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on the amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. POLIS

Mr. POLIS. Good. Good. We are all still in our thirties. But look, I think that what is happening is that when people of all ages, but particularly young people look at Congress and they look at this kind of thing with, ``Well, you, yourselves, are shutting down security?'' when they look at that, when they look at when the whole government shut down, again, do we remember why? Not really. I don't remember why the Republicans shut down government. There wasn't really a reason. They gave up, and they reopened it. It didn't make sense. When people see that, they lose faith in this institution; they lose faith in democracy; they lose faith in themselves. We can't allow that to happen. The only way for this body to change, for the quality of government to change, is for people to be invested in that change, to have that same sense of solidarity that came after 9/11, not just around disasters, but every day; when it is election day, to make sure to vote; when it is time to write and call your Congressperson, if you have a Congressperson who thinks it is okay to shut down the Department of Homeland Security, call that Congressperson, show up at their town hall meeting. Guess what. It is not okay to play games with our national security. As my colleague from Pennsylvania pointed out, many kindergartners are more mature than somebody who either wants to have it their way or not at all and to send all the toys home. That is really what we face here in this scenario. I think we have really hit upon one of the reasons that people of all ages, but particularly younger people, are losing faith not just in this institution, but as a part of the democracy it represents and how it really is our role to try and reinfuse that hope in not just, again, the competency of this institution, but the institution of representative government and the vision that our Founding Fathers put in place through the Constitution.

Mr. POLIS. Will the gentleman yield for another question? There are a few categories that the DREAMers are able to serve in the military. You mention their language talent. As somebody who, himself, is in the military, don't you think we are missing out on a lot of potential among kids that have already gone through the DACA program, but we are still not admitting as regular enlistees or no less given the chance to become officers? I know a kid in my district, his whole life, he wanted to be in the military. He didn't even find out that he wasn't American until he was 15. He went through DACA, he did everything right, and they are still not letting him join the military. What kind of talent are we missing out on by not letting these DACA kids enlist in the regular manner?

Mr. POLIS. We had a young lady from our district--you mentioned people--we had a young lady from our district, 19, from Lafayette, Colorado, who tried to get over to Turkey and then to Syria to join ISIS. Fortunately, for her parents, for her family, frankly, for her own life, thanks to the efforts of the Department of Homeland Security, it was interdicted. Her travel plans were detected, and she was detained at the airport and not allowed to join ISIS. Thank goodness we had the Department of Homeland Security connecting those difficult-to-connect dots. I don't even know how they did it to this day because, obviously, people go to Turkey on tourism all the time, but they used several points of information to figure out that this young lady was trying to join ISIS, and, thankfully, they were able to return her to her family. That is the kind of thing that, unfortunately, happens every day across our country. If in 3 days this Congress doesn't take action, we are tying our own hands behind our back in our fight against terrorism, which makes absolutely no sense. Look, you and I, Mr. Swalwell, I am sure, were equally passionate about our views on immigration. We would love to see DACA expanded, and I would love to see a pathway to citizenship, but it would never cross my mind, no matter how I want to see those things, that I would shut down the security of the country just to get it. I think most Americans don't think that way. I mean, here we are as some of the young Members, I think that perhaps some colleagues on the other side are acting even younger, like preschoolers and kindergartners here, where they either get all the toys or they are not letting anybody else play with them.

Mr. POLIS. We haven't named them yet. That is the approach here. If they don't get their exact way, well, fine, we are not going to keep the Nation safe. I mean, that just doesn't make sense in any deliberative body, like we all grew up thinking that Congress was the lofty deliberative body. That just doesn't make sense, that kind of reasoning.

Mr. POLIS. As I like to remind my friend from California, there is not really a strict age limit, per se, of the Future Forum, but I am very proud to still be under the 40 number, at least for another half year.

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California for getting this time for this important message and to just talk with people. That is really what this body, at its very best, does: we talk amongst ourselves, we solve problems. What you are hearing about today, namely, that we are 3 days away from shutting down our own national security, is an example of this body not solving a problem--in fact, causing a problem. You think: Who is causing this? Why is our security going to shut down in 3 days? Who is doing this? Who is shutting down the Department of Homeland Security? The sad answer is that we are doing it to ourselves. There is no reason for this manufactured crisis. I want to share my story from 9/11. 9/11 is something that, in our generation, we all remember where we were. It is like the Kennedy assassination to our grandparents' generation or like the Moon landing. Everybody knows exactly where they were and what they were doing when we heard about the Twin Towers. I was at a conference near Washington, D.C., here. Like anybody who was near one of the sites, it was scary because we didn't know what was going on. The rumor was: all planes are flying into buildings, we are under attack. They thought there were bombs at one point. It was a madhouse to try to escape the area and get out of the city. We drove all the way back to Colorado, and I never got to see what was happening to the towers in realtime or the immediate aftermath because, for the next 25 hours, I was just listening to it on the radio in the car, and my friend and I took turns driving. That was a unique moment when people came together. It didn't matter if you were Democrat or Republican. Our petty differences melted by the wayside as we came together around a national response. In many ways, it is sad to see our Nation go back to those same kind of partisan divisions which, unfortunately, reduce our national security. When we are talking about the Department of Homeland Security--which I would point out was set up after 9/11. That was set up to ensure that something like 9/11 doesn't happen again. It coordinated agencies in a new way that didn't occur before, encouraged intelligence sharing among the agencies about domestic threats, and now, a lot of that work is just 3 days away from being defunded over a totally different issue, one that we are happy to talk about, by the way. I mean, we talk about DREAMers and what a pathway to citizenship could look like and immigration reform and what the President can do and can't do, and those are all important discussions, and there are many diverse opinions in this body about them. I would hope nobody with any opinion, no matter how extreme, would hold our national security hostage over this. I am reminded of what one of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle said, disappointed in his own party over this particular strategy. He said: ``Unfortunately, we have taken a hostage that we don't want to shoot.'' I think that is very much the case. Yes, they are taking our own security of our Nation and the Department of Homeland Security hostage. Do they actually want to shoot that hostage? Our friends and colleagues on the other side of the aisle, they are not bad people. They believe in protecting our country. I hope they don't go through with it, but they have gotten themselves into this predicament over rhetoric that threatens to jeopardize our national security.

Mr. POLIS

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, this is pretty immediate. We need to get this done this week. Therefore, I ask unanimous consent that the House bring up H.R. 861, the clean Department of Homeland Security funding bill, that will keep the Department open so we can keep the American people safe.

Mr. POLIS

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman, Dr. Foxx, for yielding me the customary 30 minutes, and I yield myself such time as I may consume. I also express through you my wishes for her recovery, and I also appreciate her patriotism in doing her duty to God and country here today despite her respiratory duress. I hope that goes noted, that she is doing a great job representing her party on this bill. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the rule and the underlying bills, the Unfunded Mandates Information and Transparency Act and the Small Business Regulatory Flexibility Improvements Act. The titles of these bills, while lengthy, seem to suggest that somehow these efforts are designed to increase transparency or help small business. Their actual impact is quite frankly the opposite. By allowing rules to be written behind closed doors by big businesses and effectively preventing Federal agencies from promoting the national interests as they are supposed to and adding additional bureaucratic red tape and paperwork, these bills represent an assault on the health and safety of our Nation's families and threaten to drown our government in mountains and mountains of unnecessary paperwork. I think that the release of the President's budget this week shows a contrast between the priorities of both parties' agendas. The President's budget focused on Main Street, offering new ideas for how we can meet the infrastructure needs of our country and reform our corporate tax system to make American businesses more competitive. Unfortunately, what we continue to see here in this body from the Republicans is a ``Groundhog Day'' scenario where every day, every week--it is like the movie--we are talking about the same thing over and over again. We have acted on repealing the Affordable Care Act 56 times in this body. Here, we are back with another set of bills that echo other bills again and again and again. Now, I understand why many people want to do this once and go through it. People ran on repealing ObamaCare, and people ran on passing these bills. Once they are done, we will see what the other body does. But to keep coming back, rather than dealing with the critical national priorities, I think simply shows a detachment from reality. That is one of the reasons the public holds this body in such low regard. The bill that we considered 2 weeks ago added 65 new analytical requirements to the process of rulemaking--more red tape, more hurdles. I think what we are seeing here today is maybe that is not enough red tape. We are now looking at bills that allow big business to weigh in before the public, creating even more hurdles before regulations become public and are implemented. H.R. 50 would effectively require agencies to consult with the private sector before the public is even made aware of the bill, let alone engaged in the rulemaking. This blocks transparency and handicaps public input. I agree we want to make sure that business has the opportunity to weigh in, but we want to make sure that every stakeholder in a rulemaking process has the opportunity to weigh in equally. In my State of Colorado, I would be concerned about the erosion of our protection of our great natural areas like Rocky Mountain National Park which is a protected site. We celebrated its 100th anniversary as a national park just last week. In those 100 years, the Rocky Mountains have been thriving. If you visit the park today, you can find streams, elk, bighorn sheep, and fields of wildflowers; but if we hadn't designated the park a national treasure and created a comprehensive management plan for its protection, we might very well have lost not only something that relates to our national pride and is beautiful but, frankly, is the economic driver in Estes Park and Grand County for much of the economic activity in and around the National Park. H.R. 50 would threaten the ability of the National Park Service to create the kind of management plan that the economy has thrived under in my home State of Colorado and in my district. It would essentially create a veto power for legislators and interests that don't believe in the protection of public lands or are willing to threaten the health of our families for enhancement of their bottom line. There is always going to be somebody that objects. Again, we have a thriving tourism economy relating to Rocky Mountain National Park, but I am sure there is some company somewhere that would have some interest that is countervailing to the interests of job creation in our community, and that is why we need to have a transparent and accessible process of listening to stakeholders in as expeditious a way as possible. We need a system that allows the Fort Collins native who hikes through the Rockies every weekend or the New Yorker who visits the snowcapped mountains every spring the ability to participate in protecting those natural resources and the protection of our public health. We need to listen to the small businesses, the hospitality sector, and the restaurants and lodges that serve our tourism communities, but by allowing an unfair advantage to out-of-State corporate interests, we threaten the very principle that makes us American, the ability to participate in our decisions of government at the level closest to where we are affected. H.R. 50 is a dangerous precedent for policy. It allows additional red tape to be thrown at government agencies, representing unnecessary delays and costs that prevent us from creating jobs and growing our economy. We need to move forward with a middle class agenda for our country rather than continuing to live in this Groundhog Day scenario of repetitious bills that don't discuss how to grow our economy or grow the middle class. Yesterday, this body attempted to repeal the Affordable Care Act for the 56th time. Today, the Republicans are making two attempts at what I consider to be a very similar thing, damage the regulatory process at all costs, which we already did and we are doing again. They want to see additional red tape and bureaucracy added--whether it is clean air, whether it is clean water, whether it is consumers, whether it is protecting our children--regardless of the particular area with which we operate. Instead of having a cumulative look at regulations, we should have a look at cumulative impacts of all the legislation that has been brought before this body and how that impacts small businesses and regulations. Earlier this year, the House passed the Regulatory Accountability Act. That bill alone added 65 new checkpoints to the regulatory process. This bill would prevent transparency and allow big business to weigh in on regulations--before small businesses, before consumers, before other stakeholders--and add an additional tier and red tape to the regulatory process. We need to move forward with improving our regulatory structure. I don't think there is any disagreement about that. Some of that can be done through executive action and some in a collaborative, bipartisan way to streamline the regulatory process to reduce hurdles for small businesses while meeting the goals of protecting the American public. Unfortunately, these bills do neither of those. I encourage my colleagues to oppose the rule and the underlying bills. I reserve the balance of my time.