Jamie Raskin

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. The gentleman from Georgia has given me a lot to think about here. The very first thing that I need to clear up is that 85 percent of the Federal workforce does not live in the national capital region. It is true that the local delegations from Maryland and Virginia and the District of Columbia are sensitive to these continuing assaults on the Federal workforce because we have so many workers who live here, but, again, 85 percent of the workforce lives all over the country. I just learned that there are 100,000 civilian Federal workers in Georgia who also were affected by this government shutdown and lockout of the Federal workers, and I am sure the distinguished gentleman from Georgia heard the same kinds of complaints from his constituents that I heard from mine about not being able to balance their checkbooks, not being able to pay the mortgage or pay the rent because of what took place with the shutdown. The President froze Federal worker pay without any hearings. The President froze Federal worker pay without any markups, and he did it without consulting any of us. That is something that he did. Now, of course, we know that the 115th Congress, the last Congress, became famous--or perhaps I should say infamous--for being the most closed Congress in U.S. history, bringing us the most number of closed rules on the floor, shutting down debate, bringing us so many bills without hearings or markup. We would have loved to have been able to have hearings and markup for this bill, but the Committee on Oversight and Reform wasn't organized until yesterday. We are all recovering from the shocks of the Federal Government shutdown. We are all trying to catch our breath from what has been imposed on the country. We have been consumed entirely with the question of the government shutdown. So when the new rules come into focus and are activated on March 1, which is when they are supposed to come in, we have every intention of being a dramatically more open Congress than what we saw in the last Congress. But we appreciate the push from our friends. They should give us the push. Certainly, they know what it is like to close down debate because they did it for so many years. Now I understand they are suggesting, as a substitute resolution, what they want instead is a prohibition on raises for Federal employees with delinquent tax debt. It is very clear that the Federal civilian workforce is graded on an annual basis, and you can get five different kinds of rankings. These are dealt with in the promotion process, in all kinds of personnel actions, including exclusion and separation in cases of delinquency where Federal workers are not performing. So the idea that the Federal civil service has existed all of this time without the ability to have incentives and disincentives and sanctions for nonperformance is, of course, quite apart from reality. I am amazed that my friends would be immodest enough to raise the question of taxes in their opposition to this legislation. The first problem, of course, is that they passed a $1.5 trillion tax cut for the wealthiest corporations and people in America--$1.5 trillion. Mr. Speaker, a trillion dollars is a thousand billion dollars. So they piled what it is going to be a $1.9 trillion addition to our national debt over the next decade, at least. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that it adds at least $1.9 trillion to our debt, yet they come back and say that they don't want to give a 2.6 percent pay increase to our Federal workers, who were just furloughed or compelled to go to work with no pay for the last 35 days. Prohibition on raises for Federal employees with delinquent tax debt, that is their attempt to distract everybody from the pay raise that America's Federal workforce needs. What about the President of the United States? What about his taxes? Are they finally going to support release of President Trump's taxes, which is what the last four decades of Presidents, Republicans and Democrats alike, have done? No. They maintain a demure and respectful silence towards the President on that one. They are not interested in the President releasing his taxes, but they want to use the fact that maybe there is a Federal worker who wasn't able to pay his or her taxes as justification for not giving America's Federal workforce a pay raise. That is quite remarkable to me, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time to close.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield the gentlewoman from Texas an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my dear friend from Georgia for his thoughtful comments, especially for conceding that the Federal workers do deserve a paycheck at the end of the week, and I am glad that we can start off a new season here where we agree that Federal workers deserve and need to be paid. I suppose we still have this difference about whether or not they deserve a pay raise. Yes, the substance is clear. We are fighting for a 2.6 percent pay raise for the Federal civilian workforce to match the 2.6 percent pay raise that has gone into effect for the military servicemembers who are serving our country with their hard work and their sacrifice. Mr. Speaker, our message is clear. There is a message that is built into there, because when you are deciding whether or not to give your workers a raise or give them a pay freeze or you are deciding whether or not to praise them or to compel them to work for free for 35 days or to furlough them, there is a message built into that. So we are the employer of these 2 million people who have come to work for the Federal Government, and there is a message there. It is not just the money for their families, it is not just the money to pay the mortgage and to pay the rent and for the car bills and for the food bills and for health insurance and so on. There is a message there, and the message is simple: we stand with the Federal workers. That is the message. We embrace that message that is built into the pay raise here. But I have to disagree with my friend if he says that all we are doing is sending that message that we stand with the Federal workers. That is not all we are doing, we are giving them a pay raise they deserve. We have got tens of thousands of people who work at the Pentagon who go dressed as military servicemembers every day, and we have tens of thousands who go dressed as civilians, they work side by side, and they work together for the country. Shouldn't they all get a pay raise? Don't all of them deserve a pay raise? Now, Mr. Speaker, my friend invites us to believe that because we are giving the workforce a pay raise, we can't continue to implement civil service rules that are meant to get rid of the rare bad apple that you get in the Federal workforce. Why not? Why can't we use the other mechanisms that are in place to reward workers? If we want to improve those, then I am so happy to work with my friend on the Rules Committee to develop legislation to do that. But I am afraid that is an irrelevant distraction from the matter at hand. The matter at hand today is whether or not we are going to give the same pay raise to civilian workers that we have given to military workers. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, on Tuesday, the Rules Committee met and reported a rule, House Resolution 87, providing for consideration of H.R. 790, the Federal Civilian Workforce Pay Raise Fairness Act of 2019. The rule provides for consideration of the legislation under a structured rule. The rule self-executes a manager's amendment, which strikes section 3 of the bill and makes certain other technical corrections to it. The rule makes in order three amendments. The rule provides 1 hour of debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and the ranking member of the Committee on Oversight and Reform. Finally, the rule provides suspension authority through the legislative day of February 8, 2019. Mr. Speaker, H.R. 790 will provide for a 2.6 percent pay increase for Federal civilian workers in 2019, beginning with the date of passage, and this brings the civilian pay increase in parity with the automatic adjustment of pay for military servicemembers, which is also 2.6 percent. The President's fiscal year 2019 budget requested a 2.6 percent increase in basic pay for military servicemembers equivalent to the statutory formula. This increase went into effect on January 1. But on August 30 of last year, President Trump announced that he would issue a downward adjustment of the pay increase for civilian employees because of a national emergency or serious economic conditions affecting the general welfare. He proposed to set the civilian pay increase at zero, no raise. On December 28 of last year, he followed through on this announcement by signing an executive order overriding the automatic 2.1 percent pay increase civilian workers were set to receive and replacing it with zero. Congress can override and Congress should override this executive order with legislation providing for a pay increase for our hardworking Federal civilian workers. H.R. 790 does just that with a reasonable 2.6 percent increase, matching the increase going into effect for military servicemembers. Mr. Speaker, if there is any redeeming feature to the sordid chaos of the 35-day government shutdown, the longest in U.S. history, surely, it is that it reminded America that our Federal workforce is indispensable to our commerce, to our economy, to our society, and to our way of life. We have been reminded that if you take away the air traffic controllers, you take away air travel. If you take away the Transportation Security Administration agents, you take away transportation security. If you take away the Park Service rangers and the Park Service maintenance personnel, you take away our ability to enjoy the national parks free of liter, garbage, backed-up sewage, and criminal activity. If you take away the food safety inspectors from the FDA and other agencies, you threaten the food supply with E. coli, salmonella, and insect infestation. If you shut down the EPA, you empower the polluters to foul the air and dirty the waters. If you shut down the Department of Justice, you throw a monkey wrench into the ability of law enforcement to go after the Mafia, Medicare fraud, white-collar crime, human trafficking, and all of the criminal enterprises endangering public safety. If you shut down the National Weather Service, you threaten transportation, travel, and public safety. If you stop paying Customs and Border Protection officers, you weaken border security and you demoralize our Border Patrol. If you shut down NOAA, you disable America's first responders in the campaign to meet the challenges of climate change. All of it has an effect on the private sector, too. If you furlough the people writing checks for home mortgages, farm subsidies, State Department personnel, and private contractor payments, you threaten to ruin private contractors, home purchases, small farmers, and small businesses. If you were to cut off the VA, you would cut off the veterans. And if you were to pull the plug on the Social Security Administration, you would threaten tens of millions of Americans who depend on Social Security. The contribution that more than 2.1 million Federal employees make to our country is indispensable; it is incalculable; and it is irreplaceable. Mr. Speaker, throughout the 35-day self-identified Donald Trump shutdown, the American people not only witnessed the surpassing dedication and patriotism of the Federal workforce, 30 percent of which is made up of veterans, but we were reminded of the critical nature of the work that they do for all of us. They deserve a raise, and we should override President Trump's insulting and embarrassing 2019 pay freeze for the Federal workforce. To be clear, Federal workers deserved a raise before the shutdown. The Federal Salary Council, an advisory body of the executive branch established to provide recommendations on locality pay, found at the end of last year that, ``Federal employee salaries on average lag behind those of the private sector by almost 31 percent,'' a finding based on U.S. Department of Labor data covering more than 250 different occupational categories. 900,000 Federal workers earn less than $60,000 a year, and we have seen in the soup kitchens and in the pantries, and the desperate pleas of our constituents for their families, how many Federal workers are just one or two paychecks away from disaster. So Federal workers deserved a raise before the shutdown when 800,000 of them were furloughed or compelled to go to work without any pay and they had to take out loans from family members or credit unions just to pay their monthly bills. They deserved a raise before President Trump imposed the Federal hiring freeze in 2017 and before he froze Federal worker pay in 2019. They deserved a raise before he tried to cut their health benefits and before he issued three executive orders that would have made it easier to fire Federal workers and destroy their collective bargaining rights, orders that were promptly struck down in Federal court. But if the Federal workers deserved a raise and needed one before President Trump declared war on the workforce for the American Government, before Steve Bannon defined the goal of the administration as ``deconstruction of the administrative state,'' before they were derided by the President as Democrats and vilified as the deep state, surely, the economic and moral debacle of the shutdown makes this modest 2.6 percent pay raise a powerful and inescapable imperative today. Mr. Speaker, the Federal Government simply must do much better as an employer of our own people. How many private employers would try to retain their best workers and attract great new workers by attacking and furloughing the workforce, by accusing the employees of disloyalty, by freezing their pay, and then by compelling them to work for 35 days with no salary at all? It would never work for the vast majority of private-sector employers. All over America, we read of workers demoralized and defeated, thinking of leaving their Federal jobs because of the sheer folly and cruelty of this most recent episode and because the President, I am sorry to report, is again threatening another shutdown with nothing but complicity from many of our friends across the aisle. On top of all the anxiety induced by the shutdown, we know that between 30 and 35 percent of the Federal workforce is eligible to retire within the next 5 years. How will we replace them and replenish the ranks of this embattled and besieged workforce? These are our people, Mr. Speaker. These are our workers. These are our constituents. These are the people who make America work. Federal workers do not live the lifestyles of the rich and famous. They don't jet down to Mar-a-Lago at personal or government expense. And they can't afford the $36 cheeseburger at the Trump Hotel. The Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur Ross, will never be able to figure out why they can't just call up a friendly banker for a loan, just as Lara Trump will not be able to see why the 35-day shutdown caused something more than an eentsy-weentsy ``little bit of pain'' for them as they are invited to suffer in service of the greater glory of the Trump administration agenda. Our public servants, civilian and military alike, deserve better from us, whether they work as a civilian officer or uniformed officer at the Pentagon; whether they are safeguarding air travel or the air or the water or the climate or our food supply; whether they are taking care of our treasured national parks; or treating breast cancer patients or finding the cure for cystic fibrosis or multiple sclerosis; or running our museums; or cutting Social Security checks; or preparing the President's meals at the White House; or guarding the coastline with the Coast Guard; or making the justice system work as judges, prosecutors, defenders, clerks, and marshals. They deserve better from us. They need a pay raise, not a pay freeze. They deserve our respect, not our contempt. They don't ask to be deified, but they don't deserve to be demonized. They have an important job to do. Let's pay them for it. Let's invest in our Federal workforce. I urge all of our colleagues to come together to pass H.R. 790, the Federal Civilian Workforce Pay Raise Fairness Act of 2019. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Woodall), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only. General Leave

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 87 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, I thank Ms. Pingree and Mr. Perlmutter for their leadership. I welcome all questions from you guys and any other colleagues here, and from any Republicans present. Anybody who wants to pose a question to me, I am all for it. Madam Speaker, Lara Trump, who is President Trump's daughter-in-law and re-election campaign adviser, recently had a message for the furloughed workers and people working without pay. It will all be worth it, she assures us. ``Listen, it's not fair to you, and we all get that; but this is so much bigger than any one person,'' she said in an interview with ``Bold TV''. ``It is a little bit of pain, but it's going to be for the future of our country.'' No, this is not a little bit of pain. A little bit of pain is losing your earring at the White House Christmas party. That is a little bit of pain. This is a lot of pain that the American people are experiencing right now. It is day 34, and tens of thousands of my constituents are suffering because of the shutdown. Military veteran air traffic controllers in Frederick County are being forced to work with no pay, and having to borrow money from their kids' 529 college accounts, with a 10 percent penalty, in order to put food on the table and to pay their mortgage. FDA workers living in Bethesda sent home from the job with no pay, when they are supposed to be keeping our food supply safe from E. coli, salmonella and insect infestation. Dozens of scientists, researchers, secretaries, technicians, park rangers, IT workers, all thrust into a nightmare of closed offices, closed daycare, no gross pay, no net pay, and a suffering economy. There are thousands of private contract employees in my district, Madam Speaker, who have not earned a dollar in a month, and they are never going to get repaid for it. There are Uber drivers telling me they are making one-third of what they usually make because our regional economy is depressed in Maryland, Virginia, and D.C., because of the government shutdown. And we know that that is symptomatic of what is going on across the country, because more than 80 percent of Federal workers don't live in the national capital region. One of my constituents has been a Federal employee for 27 years, first in the Interior Department, and then in the National Park Service, who says: ``This is the first time that I've had to question whether I made the right choice in public service, and the first time I've had to reach into my retirement funds to make sure that my wife and I can pay our bills as they come due this week and next.'' He describes fellow Park Service employees living lives of quiet desperation. And of course they would be, because they are being maligned and typecast by the President of the United States, who derides all of the Federal workers as Democrats. He says they're all Democrats. Well, first of all, it is not true. But what difference does it make? They are Americans. We used to have Presidents of the United States who stood with all Americans, not with those from a particular political party, not just with those who agreed with the President or showed blind loyalty to the President. We used to have Presidents who were loyal to the American people and to our Constitution. ``All are suffering,'' my constituent writes, ``mostly silently, not looking for pity, but just for Congress and the White House to do their job.'' Now, we might think this shutdown is some kind of freak outburst by an admittedly erratic and impetuous President. But, Madam Speaker, I represent tens of thousands of Federal workers, and I am afraid that there is a method to this madness, and I know what it is; because I was there in January 2017 when the President issued an executive order freezing all Federal hiring, demoralizing, and even crippling agencies throughout our government. I was there when they adopted, in January of 2017, the Holman Rule, giving Congress the power to reduce Federal workers' salaries, and even abolish their positions, simply by slipping riders into appropriations bills. I watched them try to ban the use of the words ``climate change'' by Federal scientists in official documents. And I saw them propose hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts to Federal workers' wages and health benefits. I saw the President, in September of last year, announce his decision to rescind modest, across-the-board, statutory pay increases and locality pay increases of 1.9 percent for the Federal workforce. And I have watched them try to bust the Federal worker unions by making it easier to fire Federal employees and trying to undo the existing collective bargaining contracts, a series of moves that were fought by the AFGE and NTEU and were finally reversed in court. Madam Speaker, the original political philosopher of this administration, Steve Bannon, told us very clearly what was the principal and overriding political aim of this administration when he essentially declared war on our government and its workforce. He stated at the outset of the administration that the new administration is in an unending battle for a deconstruction of the administrative state. ``Every day it is going to be a fight,'' he said. And by the administrative state, he means my constituents, who are working to protect our air, protect our water, protect our planet and the climate at the EPA, at NOAA, and throughout the Federal Government. He means the civil servants at the Department of Justice who are prosecuting mobsters and white collar criminals; the IRS agents who are trying to catch tax scofflaws and collect money so we have a government. He means the people at NOAA who are trying to save us from the horrors of ocean acidification, the collapse of the glaciers, and the cataclysmic weather events that have overtaken us in the age of global warming. He means the hardworking scientists and researchers at the NIH who are working to cure colon cancer and breast cancer, cystic fibrosis, and multiple sclerosis, and even malignant narcissistic personality disorder. Madam Speaker, does America recognize what is happening to us? We have a President who has essentially declared war on our own government, on our own civil servants. This is a complete betrayal of the oath of office. He is sworn to uphold and defend the law, not to frustrate and thwart it. The first paragraph of the Constitution creates a covenant to form a more perfect union, but the President has given us the longest shutdown in American history. He is driving a wedge through the union. To establish justice. But they have defunded the Department of Justice. To ensure domestic tranquility, but the Department of Homeland Security is not being funded and our Border Patrol agents are being forced to work with no pay. To provide for the common defense, but our Coast Guard officers have been held hostage, along with the rest of the Federal workforce. To promote the general welfare, but 800,000 Federal workers are being forced to work with no pay, or sent home from jobs that the American people desperately want them to do. And to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, but, instead, we are now threatening to bequeath to our children a dysfunctional government, degraded regulatory capacity to clean our air and water, a chaotic and unequal economy, and a comprehensive climate disaster. And who wins? Who benefits? Who profits from it? Well, we know it is not the American people. The overwhelming number of American people in every poll says open up the government right now. Put the Federal workers back to work. And it is not the Federal workforce, which has been put through hell over the last month. It is not the business community, which is suffering. It is none of us who are benefiting, because the whole economy is hurting. But Donald Trump has a profound admiration for autocrats and kleptocrats, tyrants and dictators all over the world. Putin in Russia, Orban in Hungary, Duterte in the Philippines, the homicidal Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman. All of these are the heroes of the President, and it must be a delicious sight for them to see as the President dismantles the government of our own country. They don't shut down the government in Russia. They are not shutting down the government in Hungary. They are not shutting down the government in the Philippines, but he has shut down our own government. Who wins? Who benefits from this outrageous and scandalous offense against America? Well, it is not a partisan issue. I think the American people are increasingly unified every day against this horror. And now we had the first great Republican President, Abraham Lincoln, who unified America by working to save the Union and defend the government. And now we have got a Republican President who is driving a wedge through the Union, and has closed the government down. Will that be his legacy? Will this disgraceful offense against our Constitution and government be the legacy of this President? Or will, somehow, someone get to the President and tell him that our people are hurting? It is not a little bit of pain. And I know they can't understand why Federal workers are going to food banks. Then they should come on out to the food banks. I invite them to come join me at the food banks in my district where I have been going. You will meet lots of Federal workers and their families there, because in this economy there are a lot of people who are living from paycheck to paycheck, and tomorrow, that is two paychecks that people have missed, and they have missed them in the course of not doing the jobs that America needs them to do. Madam Speaker, I want to thank Ms. Pingree for yielding this time, and I just urge all of our colleagues on both sides of the aisle and the President to please let America get back to work, and to open the government immediately.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, I rise today to share an excellent op-ed written by my colleague Mr. Bill Pascrell, entitled, ``Why is Congress so dumb?'' In this lucid essay, Rep. Pascrell discusses the systematic demolition of Congress' power to assemble accurate information, conduct investigations and develop sound policy. It is an imperative of the 116th Congress that we rebuild Congressional capacity to govern with the information we need. In his piece, which appeared in the Washington Post, Mr. Pascrell writes: In a year of congressional low lights, the hearings we held with Silicon Valley leaders last fall may have been the lowest. One of my colleagues in the House asked Google CEO Sundar Pichai about the workings of an iPhone--a rival Apple product. Another colleague asked Face book head Mark Zuckerberg, ``If you're not listening to us on the phone, who is?'' One senator was flabbergasted to learn that Facebook makes money from advertising. Over hours of testimony, my fellow members of Congress struggled to grapple with technologies used daily by most Americans and with the functions of the Internet itself. Given an opportunity to expose the most powerful businesses on Earth to sunlight and scrutiny, the hearings did little to answer tough questions about the tech titans' monopolies or the impact of their platforms. It's not because lawmakers are too stupid to understand Facebook. It's because our available resources and our policy staffs, the brains of Congress, have been so depleted that we can't do our jobs properly. Americans who bemoan a broken Congress rightly focus on ethical questions and electoral partisanship. But the tech hearings demonstrated that our greatest deficiency may be knowledge, not cooperation. Our founts of independent information have been cut off, our investigatory muscles atrophied, our committees stripped oftheir ability to develop policy, our small staffs overwhelmed by the army of lobbyists who roam Washington. Congress is increasingly unable to comprehend a world growing more socially, economically and technologically multifaceted--and we did this to ourselves. When the 110th Congress opened in 2007, Democrats rode into office on a tide of outrage at the George W. Bush administration and the Republican Congress, which had looked the other way during the Tom DeLay, Jack Abramoff and Duke Cunningham scandals. My colleagues and I focused our energies on exposing corruption. But we missed crucial opportunities to reform the institution of Congress. As my party assumes a new majority in the House, we confront similar circumstances and have a second chance to begin the hard work of nursing our chamber back to strength. Our decay as an institution began in 1995, when conservatives, led by then-Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), carried out a full-scale war on government. Gingrich began by slashing the congressional workforce by one-third. He aimed particular ire at Congress's brain, firing 1 of every 3 staffers at the Government Accountability Office, the Congressional Research Service and the Congressional Budget Office. He defunded the Office of Technology Assessment, a tech-focused think tank. Social scientists have called those moves Congress's self-lobotomy, and the cuts remain largely unreversed. Gingrich's actions didn't stop with Congress's mind: He went for its arms and legs, too, as he dismantled the committee system, taking power from chairmen and shifting it to leadership. His successors as speaker have entrenched this practice. While there was a 35 percent decline in committee staffing from 1994 to 2014, funding over that period for leadership staff rose 89 percent. This imbalance has defanged many of our committees, as bills originating in leadership offices and K Street suites are forced through without analysis or alteration. Very often, lawmakers never even see important legislation until right before we vote on it. During the debate over the Republicans' 2017 tax package, hours before the floor vote, then-Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) tweeted a lobbying firm's summary of GOP amendments to the bill before she and her colleagues had had a chance to read the legislation. A similar process played out during the Republicans' other signature effort of the last Congress, the failed repeal of the Affordable Care Act. Their bill would have remade one- sixth ofthe U.S. economy, but it was not subject to hearings and was introduced just a few hours before being voted on in the dead of night. This is what happens when legislation is no longer grown organically through hearings and debate. Congress does not have the resources to counter the growth of corporate lobbying. Between 1980 and 2006, the number of organizations in Washington with lobbying arms more than doubled, and lobbying expenditures between 1983 and 2013 ballooned from $200 million to $3.2 billion. A stunning 2015 study found that corporations now devote more resources to lobby Congress than Congress spends to fund itself. During the 2017 fight over the tax legislation, the watchdog group Public Citizen found that there were more than 6,200 registered tax lobbyists, vs. 130 aides on the Senate Finance Committee and the Joint Committee on Taxation, a staggering ratio approaching 50-to-1 disfavoring the American people. In 2016 in the House, there were just 1,300 aides on all committees combined, a number that includes clerical and communications workers. Our expert policy staffs are dwarfed by the lobbying class. The practical impact of this disparity is impossible to overstate as lobbyists flood our offices with information on issues and legislation--information on which many lawmakers have become reliant. Just a few weeks ago, at the end of the session, I witnessed the biennial tradition of departing members of Congress relinquishing their suites to the incoming class. As lawmakers emptied their desks and cabinets, the office hallways were clogged with dumpsters overflowing with reports, white papers, massaged data and other materials, a perfect illustration of the proliferating junk dropped off by lobbyists. Congress remade its committees in the 1970s to challenge Richard Nixon's presidency and move power to rank-and-file lawmakers. Many segregationist chairmen were ousted and replaced by reformers, and committees and subcommittees were given flexibility to study issues under their purview. It's no accident that some of the most significant legislation and oversight by Congress--Title IX; the Clean Water Act; the Watergate, Pike and Church hearings--came from this period. Congress had strengthened its pillars, hired smart people and accessed the best information available. Following the reforms of the 1970s, the House held some 6,000 hearings per year. But eventually, the number of House hearings fell--from a tick above 4,000 in 1994 to barely more than 2,000 in 2014. On the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, of which I am a member, oversight hearings are virtually nonexistent, as is developing legislation. We had no hearings in 2017 on the bill that would dramatically rewrite our tax code. And in the last Congress, we didn't haul in any administration officials for a single public hearing on the renegotiation ofthe North American Free Trade Agreement. Assessing this state of affairs in a 2017 report, the Congressional Management Foundation noted that committees ``have been meeting less often than at almost any other time in recent history.'' This neglect has become the norm. Instead, leadership, lobbyists and the White House decide how to solve policy problems. Indeed, Congress has allowed the White House to dominate policymaking. Trade is a perfect illustration. Despite our current president's braggadocio, most Americans would be surprised to learn ultimate trade power rests with Congress. But over and over we've willingly, even eagerly, handed off that responsibility given to us by Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. President Trump's power to renegotiate NAFTA was granted by Congress, as was his power to issue tariffs, allowed under the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. I disagreed with the decision in 2015 to give President Barack Obama--a member of my own party--fast track power to advance the Trans-Pacific Partnership. During that debate, I sat stupefied as some members of our committee sought to award not only Obama but also future, unknown executives an extended and open-ended authority to make other deals. Congress was prepared to simply abdicate our job. Perhaps the most striking instance of political interference I've seen in my career occurred in the Ways and Means Committee in 2014. Then-Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) had toiled for months with Democrats, Republicans and budget experts to craft a comprehensive tax reform bill. I may not have loved the final product, but I respected the process. Republican leadership killed the proposal almost immediately after it was unveiled. The reason? They wanted to deny Obama a legislative accomplishment. For decades, nearly every piece of legislation would reach the floor via committee, but beginning in the 1990s, the rate began to drop. In the 113th Congress, approximately 40 percent of big-ticket legislation bypassed committees. Before 1994, Camp would have informed the speaker of his proposal and brought it to the floor. Now, a chairman has much less power to realize meaningful legislation. Meanwhile, longstanding House rules have essentially blocked the amendment process on the floor, meaning bills can't be modified by members of the wider chamber. In addition to committee weakness, House lawmakers collectively employ fewer staffers today than they did in 1980. Between 1980 and 2016, when the U.S. population rose by nearly 97 million people and districts grew by 40 percent on average (about 200,000 people per seat), the number of aides in House member offices decreased, to 6,880, and total House staff increased less than 1 percent, to 9,420. The first lobe of Congress's brain we can bulk back up is the Congressional Research Service. The CRS provides studies from talented experts spanning law, defense, trade, science, industry and other realms. Some of our greatest oversight triumphs--Watergate, Iran-contra, the Freedom of information Act--were achieved with the CRS's support. Great nations build libraries, and much of the CRS is housed in the Library of Congress's Madison Building. But the CRS has become a political target. In 2012, a CRS report finding that tax cuts do not generate revenue enraged my Republican colleagues, who had the report pulled and began browbeating CRS experts. According to figures supplied by the CRS, the next year, the service saw its funding cut by $5 million, nearly 5 percent, recovering to previous levels only in 2015. (The CRS did get big funding bumps in recent years.) The Congressional Budget Office and the Government Accountability Office, crown jewels of our body that provide nonpartisan budget projections, are similarly ignored or maligned for partisan purposes. Last year, when the CBO debunked claims that the GOP tax plan would create jobs, Republicans savaged the agency instead of improving the law. It reminded one of my colleagues, Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), of an episode of`The Simpsons'' in which Springfield residents, rescued from a hurtling comet, resolve to raze the town observatory. The GAO also furnishes rich information to Congress on virtually any subject. Last year I requested and obtained a study on the live-events ticket market. It was a probing report with fresh data. Former senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), one of the most conservative lawmakers of the past generation, praised the GAO, estimating that every dollar of funding for the agency potentially saved Americans $90. Nonetheless, from 1980 to 2015, GAO staffing was cut by one- fifth. While I never had the pleasure of collaborating with the Office of Technology Assessment, its reputation is legendary. Like the GAO, it operated as a think tank for Congress, tasked with studying science and technology issues. The OTA was Congress's only agency solely conducting scholarly work on these issues until Gingrich disemboweled it. Today, few members of Congress know it ever existed. The congressional hearings on big tech showcased my colleagues' inability to wrap their heads around basic technologies. But our challenges don't stop at Silicon Valley. Biomedical research, CRISPR, space exploration, artificial intelligence, election security, self-driving cars and, most pressingly, climate change are also on Congress's plate. And we are functioning like an abacus seeking to decipher string theory. By one estimate, the federal government spends $94 billion on information technology, while Congress spends $0 on independent assessments of technology issues. We are crying out for help to guide our thinking on these emerging areas. I have backed motions to bring the OTA back to life, and I was heartened last year when the House Appropriations Committee approved funding for a study on the feasibility of a new OTA. The creation in the House rules of a Select Committee for the Modernization of Congress in this new I session is a terrific beginning--and a signal that Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Rules Committee Chairman Jim McGovern (D- Mass.) understand the importance of these issues. Providing capital and staff to the institution should be a major priority in the 116th Congress. The budgets we approve fund 445 executive departments, agencies, commissions and other federal bodies. But for every $3,000 the United States spends per American on government programs, we allocate only $6 to oversee them. After decades of disinvesting in itself, Congress has become captured by outside interests and partisans. Lawmakers should be guided by independent scholars, researchers and policy specialists. We must recognize our difficulties in comprehending an impossibly complex world. Undoing the mindless destruction of 1994 will take a lot of effort, but with investment, we can make Congress work again.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I continue to be baffled about why some of my colleagues think that opening the Government of the United States--our government--is a poison pill and something they can't support. Look how far we have fallen, Madam Speaker. We are voting for billions of dollars in aid to the people of Florida, and the people of Texas and California and Puerto Rico, so we can deal with the mounting natural crises and emergencies around the country. We need to open the government to do it, and there are those who say that is too high a price. They want to get the aid to the people, but it is too high a price to reopen our own government. We can't find an example of another democratic country where the chief executive has shut down his own government the way that President Trump has done in this case. We know that he expresses a lot of admiration for Vladimir Putin in Russia and for Orban in Hungary and for Duterte in the Philippines and the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, who recently ordered out for the assassination of a journalist for The Washington Post. Those are his friends. Those are the people he looks up to. So maybe he thinks this is a normal way of doing business. Well, it is not in the United States of America. Let them close the government in Russia. Let them send the workforce in Hungary home. Let them put the civil servants in the Philippines at rest. Why don't they shut down the government of Saudi Arabia? Why are they doing this to the people of the United States of America? We are not playing games. He is playing a game with us. He is holding us hostage over his pet obsession, and the American people know it. Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Oregon (Ms. Bonamici).

Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution.

Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Madam Speaker, I thank my friend and colleague for conceding the fairness of the amendment process that we have adopted here today, and I do hope that it will be the beginning of a new era in Congress where we can work together and bring in the best ideas from everybody. Having said that, we still have a disagreement, and the disagreement is this: We brought forward four continuing resolutions that incorporated the language that came from Republicans in the Senate, and were voted out on a 92-6 basis, in order to pass it. Now, my distinguished colleague says, well, maybe the Republicans in the House would have felt differently about that. Well, of course, they controlled the House in the last session, but they adjourned without us ever taking it up. They adjourned into Christmas break and into a shutdown. We were left with this mess when we got into power. That is why our first order of business must be to reopen the Government of the United States. We have offered multiple continuing resolutions in order to do that. In fact, I think a dozen of my Republican colleagues have already voted for different CRs in order to keep the government going. So when the gentleman kindly asks: ``Well, how can you expect us to do this?'' lots of Republicans understand the urgency of reopening the government. One position says: We will reopen the government if you do what we want. Our position is: Let's reopen the government. You see the difference there? We are not holding anybody hostage. There is no political ransom. We are not making any demands. We are saying: Let's pass this legislation that has overwhelming, if not unanimous, support to get disaster relief to our people, and let's reopen the government so we can get them the relief. Instead, we get accused of playing political games. They call reopening the Government of the United States a poison pill. That has to be making some history in itself. The word ``emergency'' has been bandied about a lot, Madam Speaker, over the last few weeks. The President even threatened to invoke emergency powers that he thinks he has in order to impose his fantasy wall on the government when it is very clear that he didn't get it through 2 years of a Republican-controlled House and Senate. And he is not getting it through this Congress, and he didn't get the funding from the Mexican Government, which was what the original promise was. So now he wants to see if he can find emergency powers to do it, but he has delayed the emergency. Think about that. It is as if you saw an emergency in your neighborhood, and you say: Well, instead of calling the police or the fire department, I will wait a few weeks to do it. That is not a real emergency. What is a real emergency? Well, climate change is obviously a real emergency. The entire weight of scientific evidence tells us that is a real emergency. The government shutdown is an emergency for more than 800,000 Federal employees who now have to explain to their kids why they don't have a paycheck and why they are borrowing from their own retirement funds or from the kids' college funds. Where people can't get needed medical care, they are not able to pay for medically indicated conditions they have because they don't have the money to do it, that is an emergency. Hurricanes Florence and Michael, those are emergencies, and that is why we want to get aid to the people there. That is what this legislation is all about. The California wildfires, which killed dozens of Americans, that is an emergency. That is why we are trying to get aid out to the people of California. But a legislative debate over the proper means of homeland security when we spent more than $9 billion on homeland security over the last decade, and our side is fighting for the best innovations, the best technology to invest in border security? That is not an emergency. That is a legislative debate that we can have. So we go back to the basic point: Let's get aid to our people, from Puerto Rico to North Carolina and South Carolina, from Florida to Texas. That is what this bill does. It gets aid to our people. It reopens the Government of the United States. It puts us back in the business of promoting the general welfare. That is what we have been sent here to do, to promote justice and the general welfare and domestic tranquility, not shut down the government. Let's open it up, and let's get aid to the people of the United States of America. I urge a ``yes'' vote on the rule.

Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Madam Speaker, our beloved colleagues across the aisle have asked us to come back to the negotiating table and to compromise. Madam Speaker, we have compromised. The bills that we started out passing were bills that were overwhelmingly or unanimously passed by the Republicans in committee or on the floor of the Senate, so we are passing their bills to reopen the government. The very first order of business is to reopen the government. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, may I ask how much time I have remaining.

Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, the first thing I am afraid I need to point out is that certain of our friends on the other side of the aisle are experiencing a kind of a political speech impediment where they are unable to correctly pronounce the name of our party. We are the Democratic Party, not the Democrat Party. I was reading a biography of Franklin D. Roosevelt recently called ``Traitor to His Class,'' which was very interesting. He said: If you don't want to call us the Democratic Party, call us the democracy. So those would be the two choices that would be the most suitable, at least from our side of the aisle. The second thing I want to point out is this is a clean continuing resolution. We have not loaded it up with a bunch of partisan sweeteners or ideological ``gotcha'' resolutions. This is a clean continuing resolution to get disaster assistance to our people, the people of the United States, and it opens up our government to make that assistance possible so we can end the manmade disaster of the shutdown. So I think that it well suits those who are saying they both want to get the aid to Americans and they want the government of the United States to be reopened. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Nevada (Mrs. Lee).

Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Washington State for his comments. I would urge him to stick with his original instinct to support the legislation. He said that he finds lots of important stuff in it, aiding the victims of hurricanes and earthquakes and floods and so on. All of that is absolutely right. That is why we are voting for it. We urge him to vote for it, too. He says that we are playing politics in a shameful way, that we are engaged in partisan politics, by adding a measure to reopen the Government of the United States that will allow us to get aid to all of these people and to allow all our workers to be paid. What I consider shameful is holding the Government of the United States of America, the Federal workforce, private contractors, and the people hostage over a policy debate. We have never seen anything like this before, and now it is the longest shutdown in history. So let's reopen the government. And we are willing to debate anything you want, but we can't do it in a hostage-taking, ransom-type situation. Since when did opening the Government of the United States become a poison pill? I just don't see that. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Escobar).

Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Madam Speaker, I thank the distinguished gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Cole), my friend, for his very thoughtful words and that kind welcome to the Rules Committee. I have heard nothing but wonderful things about how he operates on the Rules Committee, and we are indeed fortunate to have him serving in this capacity. I really do look forward to working with him in the months and years ahead. And I admit that it has been a somewhat awkward process trying to reopen the government of the United States. This shutdown is unique for at least two reasons I can think of. One is it is already the longest shutdown in the history of the United States; and the second is that, when the shutdown began last year under the 115th Congress, it was the only time that the Congress adjourned during a shutdown. So rather than stay and try to work it out, we were adjourned before recess, and the Congress went home, so it was left in the hands of the new majority and the new 116th Congress to try to get it going again, which is why, yes, it is the absolute first order of business for us to open up the Government of the United States. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Shalala), who is also a new and a distinguished member of the Rules Committee.

Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, on Tuesday, the Rules Committee met and reported a rule, House Resolution 43, providing for consideration of H.R. 268, making supplemental appropriations for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2019, and for other purposes. The rule provides for consideration of the legislation under a structured rule. The rule makes in order 15 amendments from Members on both sides of the aisle. The rule provides for 1 hour of debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking member of the Appropriations Committee. The rule also waives the requirement for two- thirds vote to consider a report from the Committee on Rules on the same day it is presented to the House with respect to any resolution reported through the legislative day of January 23, relating to a measure making or continuing appropriations for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2019. Madam Speaker, I rise now in support of the rule for H.R. 268, our emergency disaster relief bill, to provide $12.14 billion in recovery and relief assistance for millions of Americans suffering from the damage caused by recent hurricanes, typhoons, mudslides, flooding, earthquakes, and wildfires. These national disasters follow decades of scientific warnings to Congress that accelerating climate change would bring us extreme weather events characterized by unprecedented ferocity and violence, and here we are in the middle of the global crisis of climate change dealing with profound natural catastrophes like these. Last year, Hurricane Michael, the most intense hurricane ever to strike the Florida panhandle brought winds surpassing 125 miles per hour and gusts of up to 200 miles per hour, killing 45 people who were crushed and drowned by the hurricane, and inflicting $40 billion in economic damages, and $5 billion in insured losses. In 2018, the people of California, who have lost 10 million acres of forest in the last decade to wildfires, experienced the deadliest and most destructive wildfire season in recorded history with more than 8,500 fires burning an area of 1,893,913 acres, the largest area of burned acreage ever recorded in a fire season in the United States of America. An astonishing 7,100 structures burned to the ground. In July and August, it seemed like the entire State was ablaze with the worst damage taking place in northern California which was declared a disaster area. Millions of people in San Francisco and the bay area were forced to wear gas masks to go to school or to go to work. In November, yet another round of wildfires visited massive destruction of life, limb, and property on the people of California. One fire, the so-called Camp fire, displaced tens of thousands of people and killed at least 86 men, women, and children, burning many of them to death in their cars or as they sought refuge and tried to flee from their cars and run down the road. The fire, which lasted many days, annihilated more than 18,000 structures and buildings and destroyed the entire town of Paradise, turning it into an inferno, a hell on Earth. This was in our country. The same kinds of astonishing events that destroyed entire communities in Florida and in California were experienced by people all over America last year: hurricane devastation in Puerto Rico, Texas, and the Carolinas; unprecedented flooding and drought all over America; and typhoons in the territories, a catalogue of climate-change intensified misery and suffering that the entire Congress should see as calling upon the decency and resources of the American people to address. The $12 billion legislation the majority brings forward today in H.R. 268 will ensure that communities across the land can recover from these disasters with the resources that they need to rebuild. The bill helps farmers suffering from crop and livestock losses, coastal communities rebuilding their infrastructure and preparing to weather future storms; dislocated workers, veterans, students, and other Americans displaced and uprooted by these catastrophes. The bill invests in restoration of disaster-damaged forests. It sends aids to local communities to restore more than 250,000 acres of watershed. It funds restoration of rural communities. It offers $600 million to continue disaster nutrition benefits to the hard-hit people of Puerto Rico, still reeling from Hurricane Maria, and it allocates critical funding for social services, mental health, education, nutrition assistance, and infrastructure resiliency in communities across the land. We will rebuild our transportation systems with this legislation. We will repair housing. We will repair businesses and public infrastructure. We will repair and reconstruct hurricane-damaged Veterans Administration and Department of Defense bases and facilities across the country. But the majority is not stopping there. We are not just offering aid to States and local communities across the land to rebuild and renew. We are reopening the Government of the United States so we can actually send this aid, so we can offer the expert technical assistance these communities need, and so we can use the full apparatus of our government, including the currently closed down Department of Homeland Security and the Coast Guard where our hardworking personnel are not being paid, to get America moving again The National Governors Association, a bipartisan group of Governors from the 50 States called for an immediate reopening of the government that will allow for the release of $85 billion in Federal aid and loan assistance that is being held up because a third of the government has been shut down. That is the Governors of our States, the people closest to surveying the damage on the ground. Indeed, by reopening the Government of the United States of America, we are not just helping to address the disasters that have befallen our people across the country; we are ending the manmade disaster of the government shutdown. And when I say it is manmade, I don't mean to use archaic sexist language, Madam Speaker. I am trying to be precise. This is the shutdown that one man, President Donald Trump, gave us and proudly claimed as his own in the December 11 White House meeting when he said, ``I am proud to shut down the government, Chuck. I will take the mantle. I will be the one to shut it down,'' said the President of the United States. ``I'm not going to blame you for it.'' So far this shutdown that the President is proud to have delivered to his people has closed nine Federal departments: Department of State, Department of Agriculture, Department of the Interior, Department of Commerce, Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security, Department of the Treasury, HUD, and Department of Transportation. It has caused 800,000 Federal workers to be furloughed or compelled to work with no pay at all. It has threatened public safety in national parks which are overflowing with garbage and backed up waste in the bathrooms. It has threatened the tax refunds of millions of Americans. It has threatened 38 million low-income Americans who depend on SNAP benefits for proper nutrition for their families, and it has unleashed profound chaos and anxiety in the land. In my congressional district, tens of thousands of Federal workers have been denied pay; air traffic controllers, Coast Guard personnel, NIH researchers, scientists at NOAA. I have heard from scientists at the FDA who have been furloughed and prevented from working on the prevention and containment of E. coli, salmonella, and insect infestation of our food supply. I have spoken to an Army veteran who has spent the rest of his career after leaving the Army as an air traffic controller who now must raid his own retirement plan and his daughter's 529 college plan with a 10 percent penalty in order to pay his mortgage. I have spoken to several constituents who have been forced to pay their mortgages with credit cards or loans from other family members, and I have talked to constituents who have been forced to forego medical treatments because they can't balance their checkbooks, when they are ordered to work but receive a pay stub like many have emailed to me, showing zero net pay, zero gross pay. Hundreds of thousands of people who work for private contractors and small businesses working with the government across America have been injured as well; many furloughed, laid off, or fired with no real promise of making their money back, unlike the Federal workers who at least, I hope, should be getting their money back because of legislation that the majority has brought forward. But the 172,000 Federal workers in my State are losing $778 million every 2 weeks, and the State has already lost more than $60 million in taxes. The economic reverberations are awful, and they are spreading. Now, this shutdown is a brutal assault on the separation of powers and the Constitution of the United States: It does not form a more perfect Union. It does not establish justice. It shuts the Justice Department down. It does not ensure domestic tranquility. It defunds the Department of Homeland Security. It does not provide for the common defense, but it robs our Coast Guard personnel of their paychecks. It does not promote the general welfare, but it furloughs food inspectors. It cheats civil servants out of their salaries; it promotes tax fraud by locking IRS agents out of their offices; and it idles environmental scientists, diplomats, air traffic controllers, and TSA agents who are calling in sick because they can't even afford to get to work now. This policy is not in service of ``we, the people,'' and that is why every public opinion poll shows the American people overwhelmingly rejecting the Trump shutdown, this scandalous assault on the public good. In America, we don't hold the government or the workforce or the people hostage over a policy dispute. That is an absolute betrayal of the separation of powers and how government is supposed to work in the United States of America. Now, my good friends across the aisle should be confronting the shutdown with us. We are asking them to join us in getting the emergency aid to our people all across the land and in reopening the government. I know it wasn't their idea, Madam Speaker. I know they were backed into this situation by President Trump and FOX News and Ann Coulter, whom the President apparently saw on TV and then changed his mind and decided to shut the government down. But now, I am afraid that our friends across the aisle have become enablers of the President, and now they own a piece of the shutdown. The party of Abraham Lincoln, who saved the Union with malice for none and charity for all, has become the party of Donald Trump, who shut down the government with charity for none and malice for all. Let's put an end to it right now, Madam Speaker. In the age of climate change, we have no time left for these foolish and self- destructive games. We must act as first responders for the American people. Our new majority in the House of Representatives is up to the task. We are ready to govern. We are ready to lead. Let's help our people recover from the natural disasters which have been exacerbated by climate change, and let's end the manmade disaster of the shutdown of our own government right now. Americans know the truth of this situation. Let's act together to end the Trump shutdown, which the American people rightfully despise and deplore. Let's put the government back to work for the general welfare, starting with the millions of Americans still buffeted by the terrifying weather calamities of 2018. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may be given 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks.

Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Cole), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only. General Leave

Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 43 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, I thank the chairman very much. Madam Speaker, 800,000 American workers, 800,000 workers in our Federal workforce, have either been sent home and furloughed with no check or told to report to work with no check, with no payment. I have got air traffic controllers living in my district, Madam Speaker, who have had to take money out of their kids' 529 college funds. They have had to take money out of their own retirement funds in order to pay their family bills, and there is a 10 percent penalty for doing that. Who is going to pay them back the 10 percent? Is the President of the United States going to do that? What about my constituents? I have tens of thousands of Federal workers. What about my constituents who are being forced to put their mortgage on a credit card this month? Who is going to pay them back? And what about the dishonor and the humiliation brought on our government by this? The President of the United States didn't do this to hundreds of thousands of workers in Putin's Russia or in Orban's Hungary or in Duterte's Philippines. This is our people that he did this to. These are our workers, who he sent home with no paycheck. People are texting me. They are emailing me their paystubs today, which say zero dollars gross, zero dollars net, after having worked 40 or 50 hours this week. I have scientists in my district who are working on preventing outbreaks of E. coli contamination, salmonella, insect infestation of our food supply, and they have been told not to go to work. Madam Speaker, this is an outright outrage and a scandal. At the very least, we can pass, on a unanimous, bipartisan basis, this legislation to try to repair the damage by saying that every Federal worker will get back every penny that he or she is owed by the United States Government. We need to make sure that, if this ever happens again, if the President ever holds the Federal workforce, the government, and the people hostage again, that the Federal workforce will not be the ones who have to pay for it. We should pass this immediately, and we should reopen the government immediately.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I support the bill, which is designed to promote the transparency and accountability of Federal agencies. It would require agencies to include in their budget justifications to Congress a summary of the recommendations made by GAO or the agency's inspector general in the prior year. Agencies also would be required to explain what steps they are actually taking to address these recommendations by GAO or their IG or, if they disagree with those recommendations, why. The GAO and inspectors general provide critical oversight of the executive branch of government and provide Congress with invaluable assistance in helping hold any Presidential administration accountable for its actions and policies. Knowing what agencies are doing or not doing to address GAO and IG recommendations will definitely assist us in Congress in conducting our constitutional oversight responsibilities. This is a commonsense measure that all Members should support. I am delighted to advance it on a bipartisan basis. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.