Jared Polis

Mr. POLIS

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, now is the time for immigration reform. Our Nation is already beginning to see some of the great economic benefits of the DACA and DAPA programs, which I vow to do my best to protect here as we go through the Department of Homeland Security appropriations process. The true benefits of immigration reform--which, according to the Congressional Budget Office, are over $200 billion in deficit reduction, finally securing and establishing security on our border, implementing mandatory workplace enforcement to prevent people who are here illegally from undermining the job market for Americans, and creating over 150,000 jobs for American citizens--can only be recognized if this body takes action and passes immigration reform. We had a bill last session that would have passed the floor of the House, and it already passed the Senate. We begin anew. Rather than living in this Groundhog Day of repetitious repeals of ObamaCare, let's move forward on something that creates economic growth, jobs for Americans, and reduces our deficit. It is called immigration reform.

Mr. POLIS

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

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. When you hear the gentleman from Georgia or the gentlewoman from North Carolina talk about the intent behind these bills, they sound great. We all want a streamlined regulatory process and to help make it more efficient. Unfortunately, when you look at what these bills do, they do the opposite. They add another tier to regulation, with Big Business having a new say in and above what small businesses and community members can do. They add red tape and legal requirements to regulation that don't exist now under statute. It, again, seems to me like the opposite of trying to get input so our regulations best affect the needs of each community, and we have diverse needs across this country. My district is 62 percent Federal land, so when decisions are made on Federal land, like a travel management plan, and on where people can bike and where they can hunt and fish, we want to have our say. The last thing we want is some out-of-state corporate interest determining in some process before we even get our say on how these Federal lands are used. It is absolutely critical that we empower our communities, and this bill does the opposite in the name of adding more bureaucracy and red tape to the regulatory process, presumably, in an attempt to delay or make it less effective than it is. Now, we value, as Americans, the work that the Clean Water Act does, the Clean Air Act, the EPA, our essential protections around public health. They are very, very important. And I think our colleagues agree that they don't want to take those on head on. But this bill would prevent some of those very agencies from doing the work that we have charged them to do, keeping our air clean, our water clean, and they need to be able to do that work and involve local impact in making sure that they do it in a way that protects American health and helps grow our economy and create jobs. We need to make sure that we don't have dumping of industrial waste in the Colorado River, poisoning millions of recreational users. We want to make sure that drilling sites don't use chemical compounds that are toxic or cause birth defects. We can and we must do better. The march of science moves forward. If there are thoughtful improvements to the regulatory process that will help reduce costs and reduce red tape, rather than add red tape, we are happy to have those discussions. But, unfortunately, these bills fall short of that mark. That is why I oppose the rule and the bill. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of my 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 consideration of legislation that would help veterans make it in America by establishing a pilot program to encourage the hiring of veterans in manufacturing jobs. To discuss our thoughtful proposal, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Washington (Ms. DelBene), a leader on veterans issues.

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

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.

Mr. POLIS. My colleague, Ms. DelBene, has offered a concept around a pilot program to encourage the hiring of veterans in manufacturing jobs, the type of middle class agenda that the American public wants this Congress to work on, rather than one that cuts them out of the very rulemaking that is designed to protect us Americans from our health hazards and protect our public lands. I urge my colleagues to vote ``no,'' defeat the previous question, vote ``no'' on the rule and the underlying bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. POLIS

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, it is week five of the 114th Congress, and I really feel like that movie ``Groundhog Day,'' where the same day just keeps repeating itself over and over and over again. This is the 56th time that we have been through this particular exercise, repealing the Affordable Care Act here in the House. We get it. Republicans want to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Go ahead and try to get President Obama's signature on that piece of legislation. It ain't going to happen. But here we go again and again and again. We are considering recycled political gimmicks that everyone here knows deprive the American people of affordable health care and won't create a single job and would increase our deficit by over $200 billion. By the way, there is an accounting trick in the Ryan budget. What the Republican budget does is it keeps all of the ObamaCare taxes and gets rid of all of the benefits. That is the worst of both worlds. The Republicans want you to pay for ObamaCare and not get it. Does that make any sense, Mr. Speaker? We are starting to see the dangers of this strange ``Groundhog Day'' brand of so-called policymaking. This is what happens when we abandon regular order. We don't have markups in committee, we don't have hearings--to jam through partisan legislation under a closed process without an opportunity to even suggest what might replace the Affordable Care Act or what kind of health care policy we want to help make health care more affordable in our country. This bill would leave 27 million Americans out in the cold without health care. What about even more Americans who wouldn't have coverage for preexisting conditions or who wouldn't have access to affordable prescription drugs? This bill would mean real harm and real hardship for people in my district--couples like Mike and Lynn in Loveland, whose health care cost more than their mortgage before the Affordable Care Act. It cost $850 a month. But thanks to the Affordable Care Act, they were able to find a plan that costs $200 a month. Or people like Robin in Eagle County in my district, who could barely afford $600 a month in health care costs but now, thanks to the Affordable Care Act and the tax credits, pays just $132 a month. Another constituent of mine didn't go to the doctor for years because he was uninsured. But because of the Affordable Care Act, he was eligible for the Medicaid expansion. For the first time he received a colonoscopy and doctors discovered and removed a precancerous polyp. Without ACA, that might have become a cancer, costing him his life, not to mention the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayer money for that procedure that were saved thanks to the Affordable Care Act. We can do better. We can escape this endless loop, this ``Groundhog Day,'' and start talking about real job-creating legislation, improvements to health care that Democrats and Republicans can agree on because they make sense for our country. There are real lives at stake. I urge my colleagues to vote ``no.''

Mr. POLIS

Mr. POLIS. I yield the gentlewoman an additional 15 seconds.

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

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Judy Chu).

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee).

Mr. POLIS. I yield the gentlewoman an additional 15 seconds.

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Doggett).

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Castor).

Mr. POLIS. I yield the gentleman an additional 15 seconds.

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

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Deutch).

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern), a member of the Rules Committee.

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas for yielding me the customary 30 minutes, and I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this rule. First of all, when we have spending bills that make it here to the floor of the House, we traditionally have had an open amendment process for those appropriations bills. That allows Members on both sides of the aisle to offer cuts to move things around. At the time of bloated budget deficits, why aren't the Republicans allowing any cuts to be made from this bill? They are not allowing Democrats or Republicans under a closed rule to offer savings to the Federal Government from bloated budgets. They are limiting amendments on two other bills, a completely unrelated anti-regulatory bill and also a bill with regard to Financial Services that I offered an amendment along with Mr. Issa to improve are not allowed under this rule as well. It is a very bad precedent for congressional procedure here in our second week to shut down ideas from both sides of the aisle to make either of these bills better beyond a select few ideas that have apparently been blessed by the Republican majority. I heard in the Rules Committee last night--and my friend, the chair, did as well--a number of very good amendments that were offered, some that I didn't agree with, but I still thought we ought to be able to discuss and debate--I offered a few myself--but hardly any of these are actually allowed to be debated or voted on by the Members of this body. Instead, what the Republicans have done is effectively hijack the discussion of homeland security and safety to instead have a discussion about our broken immigration system. Well, I was ready to go for that. I offered an amendment that would have allowed us to vote on an immigration reform bill as part of the rule, one that passed the Senate with more than two-thirds support last session, one that I believe would still carry the support of more than 60 Senators--I think it would likely pass the House if it had been made in order--but I was shut down. Instead of allowing a discussion about a solution to our broken immigration crisis, the Republicans seek to keep it alive, conflict for the sake of conflict, and to somehow lump families and children in with criminals for the same enforcement priority, which makes no sense to any law enforcement professional or any of our communities, which is why we have a broad coalition of the business community, the faith- based community, the law enforcement community, all outraged over the most recent Republican actions, which seem to cater to the far rightwing of their party, rather than seek pragmatic practical solutions to replace our broken immigration system with one that works. With regard to the Financial Services bill, I offered a bipartisan amendment along with my colleagues, Mr. Issa and Mr. Ellison, to improve transparency, to modernize our financial reporting standards, to ensure that digital data was available and searchable by investors everywhere, to increase transparency with regard to public companies. Unfortunately, it was not allowed to be debated or voted on here on the floor of the House to improve this bill. This is truly an obstructive and undemocratic approach to governing. Instead of the Members of this body--Democrat and Republican--being able to work together and propose ideas to improve bills, we are presented with bills that are ``our way or the highway,'' bills that will never become law, bills that have the threat of veto from the President of the United States, and are presumably only being done to appease the rightwing Republican base. Well, we should have started off this Congress with a fresh sensibility. We could have brought forward a clean Homeland Security Appropriations bill, allowed Members to improve it, to make cuts, to balance our budget deficit, to move things from programs that didn't work to programs that did. We could have brought forth a real jobs bill addressing the needs of working families. Instead, what the Republicans have chosen to do is to play politics and jeopardize the safety of our country and our homeland security over a debate that they want to have with regard to immigration without offering any solutions. One of the things that I took away from the meeting in the Rules Committee last night, in the testimony from Members on both sides of the aisle, is that nobody thought--Democrats or Republicans--that this Republican bill that defunded DACA and undid the executive action would actually solve our broken immigration system. Republicans and Democrats acknowledged it wouldn't. So rather than playing politics with our defense of our homeland, why don't we roll up our sleeves and get to work to actually fix our broken immigration system and replace it with one that works? Now, look, the bill provides for consideration of the Homeland Security bill, but everybody knows it is not a serious attempt at funding the Department of Homeland Security. There is a manufactured crisis, the first step in a sure-to-fail legislative process that the President himself has said he would veto. Why is anybody in this body--reasonable lawmakers, all of them-- placing the funding of Homeland Security at a time of increased national threat--we saw the events in France this last week--putting our defense of our homeland at risk? Yes, our President took action. Some agree with it; some disagree with it. He used the authority that he has been given by this body to establish enforcement priorities with regard to the 10, 11, 12 million people who are here illegally. Guess what, Mr. Speaker, if we don't solve our broken immigration system, there is only going to be more people here illegally; instead of 10 or 11 million, there could be 12 million, 14 million, 15 million, until we get serious about border security, about enforcement, about restoring the rule of law. This bill doesn't do it. This bill says let's support children rather than criminals; let's prevent people that have registered, gotten right by the law, paid a fee, had a background check, had their fingerprints taken, let's prevent them from legally working or going to school; let's hang the threat of tearing them apart from their American kids over their heads. Both sides acknowledge that is not the answer to fixing our broken immigration system. So let's move past this discussion, let's secure our homeland, and let's get to the discussion of how to fix our broken immigration system, which both sides agree this debate is not about. This bill also provides for consideration of the Regulatory Accountability Act, another recycled bill from the last Congress. It is not an immigration reform bill; it is not a jobs bill. It is actually a bill that makes government function even less efficiently than it currently does. It adds 84 new bureaucratic hurdles to make sure our food is toxin- free and safe to eat. It would bury agency rulemaking under a bureaucratic blizzard of hurdles and documentation requirements. This is a paperwork creation bill, this is a government inefficiency bill, the opposite of the direction we should be moving with regard to making government streamlined and more efficient. Finally, this rule provides for consideration of the Financial Services bills, which this body considered last week, but again, when something doesn't pass under suspension, a procedure that requires two- thirds, the rule should hopefully enable Members on both sides of the aisle to improve upon the bill. I offered just such an improvement, as did some of my colleagues. If the goal was to get to two-thirds rather than just pass this bill with a Republican majority, why don't we begin the difficult work of making this bill better, of improving on it, of taking ideas from Democrats and Republicans, to get this bill to the point where two- thirds of this body support it? Unfortunately, that did not occur, and this bill is being brought under a very restrictive rule. We can do better. We can do better than closing down the traditional open process we have around amending appropriations bills. We can restore regular order and allow bills to actually be considered through the committee process here in this Congress, instead of appearing with 48 hours to read for Members of Congress, without even giving the opportunity to amend them. Unfortunately, in the second week here, the Republican majority is already making good governance a farce. I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this rule, to show that Congress can and will do better if you give the Democrats and Republicans who serve in this body the ability to legislate, to offer their ideas, to work with Members on their side of the aisle and the opposite side of the aisle, and to get to a point where we can present a bill that the President of the United States will sign and will become the law of the land. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pascrell).

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

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

Mr. POLIS. We do not need to start this new Congress going down a path of legislative brinkmanship and crises of our own making. We shouldn't be treating funding for our national security like a political pawn. There are differences of opinion about how to solve immigration. There are differences of opinion about the President's actions. The venue for taking out those disagreements is not to put the homeland security of our country at risk. We don't have to attach these controversial amendments to a must-pass bill to keep our borders secure. We have no shortage of other things we should be focusing on. There seems to be pent-up frustration about our broken immigration system. I share that. Let's address our broken immigration system and fix it and pass immigration reform. I tried to do that in the Rules Committee yesterday. Unfortunately, that discussion is not allowed under this rule, and I urge my colleagues to vote down the rule. Instead, we are spending our time here in Congress with yet another crisis of our own making. Instead of solving pressing issues, instead of creating jobs, instead of protecting our homeland, we are putting a bipartisan, important appropriations bill right smack in the middle of an unrelated political fight. The American people can no longer afford an immigration enforcement system that spends extraordinary sums of money every year detaining and deporting individuals with strong ties to their community and who pose no meaningful threat to anyone. We should focus on criminals rather than children. That is exactly what the President's actions do. If the Republicans don't like it, we are happy to work with them to address the underlying issues of immigration and why we have 11 million people living here illegally in the first place. Until we do, this bill doesn't solve a thing. But let's not get hung up over the side issue and make sure that we continue to protect our homeland against a terrorist threat. 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 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Sherman).