Jamie Raskin

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I am here to discuss a very serious issue, which are the mounting threats and criticism of Robert Mueller's investigation into criminality taking place in the course of the Presidential election with interference by the Russians and possible collusion with various Americans working with him. But I want to start by putting this in a general context, Mr. Speaker. Tom Paine said: ``In the monarchies, the king is law; but in the democracies, the law is king.'' We place everything on the rule of law here in the United States of America. It is how we control the people who occupy the highest offices of government and control vast amounts of resources that belong to the people of the United States. In the monarchies and in the dictatorships, the people have no control over those who occupy government; but in the democracies, in the constitutional societies, we exercise control over the people who lead the government to make sure that they don't abuse their power for improper purposes: for private gain, for the enrichment of particular classes, or for the perpetuation of their own political power. Now, when we took office at the beginning of this year, Mr. Speaker, we received an Intelligence Committee report, signed by 18 intelligence agencies: the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and on and on. They all told us the same thing, which is that Vladimir Putin had attempted to interfere and had interfered in the American election through cyber espionage and cyber sabotage in an effort to determine the outcome of our election. That took place. We knew that way back when we first took office. Now, in the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which I serve on, and in the House Judiciary Committee, which I serve on, we were told--and we have been told for months going all the way back to the beginning of the year--that we don't need to investigate this assault on the sovereignty of the American people in our own election because there is an excellent lawyer and law enforcement official in charge of the special counsel investigation: Robert Mueller. Indeed, Robert Mueller is a man of extraordinary and, perhaps, singular qualification. He is a decorated war hero from the Vietnam war; a U.S. attorney, who had been the U.S. attorney for both the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the State of California; a former Director of the FBI. And do you know what? Robert Mueller is a registered Republican. He was named as special counsel by another registered Republican and another widely heralded and highly-qualified law enforcement official: Rod Rosenstein, who had been a career attorney in the Department of Justice, and then the U.S. attorney appointed by President Bush in the great State of Maryland, my home State; and who is presently the Deputy Attorney General of the United States, appointed by another Republican: Attorney General Sessions. So Attorney General Sessions appointed Rod Rosenstein, who is the Deputy Attorney General, a Republican; and Rod Rosenstein appointed another Republican and a widely admired and highly-qualified law enforcement official, Robert Mueller, to take over as the special counsel. Now, with all these Republicans in charge of the investigation and with the Republicans here in Congress saying, ``no, we won't do any investigations of our own,'' despite past practice, we have to ask why Special Counsel Robert Mueller this week has suddenly come under withering fire by our GOP colleagues in the most ferocious organized attack on a Federal prosecution and prosecutor I have ever seen. Well, the answer, alas, is obvious. They are attacking Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his fine team of lawyers and investigators because Mueller and his team are doing their jobs and justice is being done. There have already been two guilty pleas arising from this investigation: one from President Trump's former National Security Advisor, General Flynn, who pled guilty to lying to the FBI about Trump-Russia; and another criminal confession and guilty plea from the former foreign policy assistant, George Papadopoulos, who also took full responsibility for his criminal conduct in lying about Trump- Russia to the FBI. And there have been sweeping criminal indictments handed down by the Mueller team, the special counsel, against Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign manager, and his associate, Rick Gates. Now, for all we know, this might be the end of it. The special counsel isn't talking. He is not leaking. He is doing his job. But it is also possible that the investigation is just getting started and that they are closing in on even higher targets: perhaps Jared Kushner, the all-purpose Trump aide and the President's son-in-law, perhaps he is within the scopes of this investigation; perhaps Donald Trump, Jr.; and perhaps the President of the United States himself, Donald Trump. And so the White House has issued its apparently desperate and cornered animal orders. The President cries chaos and let's slip the dogs of war against Special Counsel Mueller and the rule of law. This week, Trump has called the Mueller investigation--an investigation led by a Republican, who is named by a Republican, who is named by a Republican--he calls this investigation ``the single greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history.'' And I don't want to hear from any of my colleagues, either, GOP on the other side, Well, you can't take seriously what the President says because he is disconnecting from reality or he is paranoid or he is delusional, unless you are willing to try to activate the provisions of the 25th Amendment. We must take the President's word seriously. And, in the meantime, of course, our friends across the aisle, Mr. Speaker, are going along with everything the President says and everything that he does, and they are enabling his attempt to defame the special counsel, Mr. Mueller, and to attack the work of the FBI. The President calls the FBI an agency in tatters, and an onslaught has followed in the media. On FOX News, a full-scale campaign against the FBI has arisen with lots of people comparing the FBI to the KGB, which is amusing because, if that were true, they would like the FBI-- because Donald Trump's best buddy in foreign relations and FOX News' beloved kleptocrat authoritarian dictator abroad is Vladimir Putin, the former chief of the KGB. But they compare our FBI, the tens of thousands of men and women who have given their lives to law enforcement in our country, they compare the FBI to the KGB under a totalitarian government. Newt Gingrich calls Mueller corrupt, Newt Gingrich who was officially reprimanded right here, Mr. Speaker, right where we stand today, by this body. In a vote of 395-28, he was reprimanded and disciplined for violating the rules of this body, and he calls the former FBI Director, Special Counsel Mueller corrupt in an effort to undermine and discredit the special counsel investigation. And now this propaganda campaign comes to the official channels of the House of Representatives. Yesterday, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appeared before the House Judiciary Committee for an oversight hearing, and I was appalled and I was amazed at the way our GOP colleagues attacked him with a series of completely phony, overblown, and misleading accusations. They are in full-scale assault mode now. They are in a frenzied wild goose chase to find anything possible to discredit Special Counsel Mueller and his investigators in his team. And guess what, they finally found their villain. This week they found their villain, and they pounced on him. It is an FBI agent named Peter Strzok, who was working on the Mueller investigation but was removed from it this summer when it was discovered that he had sent a bunch of text messages to his apparent girlfriend criticizing a number of politicians, including Donald Trump, whom he called an idiot, Mr. Speaker. I think he was watching one of the Presidential debates where he sent a text message to his girlfriend, writing: ``OMG, he is an idiot.'' That is the way I am reading the texts that were revealed to us yesterday. Now, he was probably one of millions of people to send that exact same text across the country. It wasn't a very nice thing to say, but he said it. He also called Bernie Sanders, the Democratic candidate for President, the Vermont U.S. Senator, an idiot. He called Trump an idiot; he called Sanders an idiot; and he had even more choice, unspeakable words for my friend, the former Governor of Maryland, Martin O'Malley, which I don't think I can repeat on the floor, Mr. Speaker. All right. Mr. Strzok was speaking his mind in these private texts, but it raised the potentiality of bias in one of the agents working on the team. And so what did Mr. Mueller do when he learned of it? He fired him immediately. He got him off of the investigation, removed him from the investigation, and put him into a different part of the FBI. He removed him immediately from the investigation. Unlike President Trump, for example, who took 18 days to fire General Flynn after learning that Flynn was a serial liar about his connections with Russia. So it took President Trump 18 days. Mr. Mueller fired the guy immediately because people make mistakes, they do the wrong thing, and Mueller said: I don't want him on my team. He removed him, and they put him somewhere else. Now, that should have been the end of the matter; right? It sounds like the end of the story is not a big deal. But, on the eve of our hearing yesterday, we received a dump of hundreds of these private text messages between Mr. Strzok and his friend, Ms. Page, and they make, no doubt, for titillating, fascinating, engrossing reading as these two people make their observations about the Presidential campaign. It's like ``Anna Karenina'' or ``House of Cards.'' It is fascinating. It is the kind of trivial gossip that people get into sometimes in this town. I was amazed to learn that the Department of Justice itself--not Mueller, not his team, but the Department of Justice--the formal public affairs channel had actually orchestrated this dump of text messages that were revealed in the course of an ongoing Department of Justice investigation, inspector general investigation. They took this material from the middle of an investigation, called up a whole bunch of reporters and brought them in to show them these texts. Why? Well, nobody could really explain it. I asked Mr. Rosenstein yesterday, and he couldn't explain what really--he said: Well, it had been approved. I said: ``Was there any precedent for it? Was there any precedent for the Department of Justice revealing material that turned up in the middle of an ongoing investigation to reporters? He couldn't name any. It wasn't even in the press conference. So that took place. That strikes me as very odd that there are people in the Department of Justice who apparently are cooperating with this effort to undermine the integrity and the strength of the special counsel investigation. Well, the key thing to understand is that all of those text messages are totally irrelevant. The great text message love story saga, which was dumped on us, is an irrelevant distraction. Mr. Mueller got rid of Mr. Strzok, removed him from the team, end of story. Of course, FBI agents, prosecutors are allowed to have a political party. Mueller's got one; it is Republican. Rosenstein's got one; he is a Republican. That is fine. You can be Republican. You can be Democrat. You are not allowed to have your political ideas affect your work to the point that you are biased. So I take it Mr. Mueller figured that those text messages suggested the possibility of bias, not just against Bernie Sanders and Martin O'Malley, but also against Donald Trump, and they said: Okay. We will remove him from the team. He is gone. But yesterday, that is all the Republicans wanted to talk about, this great trumped up, fake text message scandal--totally irrelevant. The only one who, to his credit, tried to make it relevant was a Republican colleague who said this is fruit of the poisonous tree, and he repeated it numerous times. He intoned the words, ``fruit of the poisonous tree.'' Well, I am a law professor, so I know what ``fruit of the poisonous tree'' means. It is a Fourth Amendment doctrine which says that, if you have got an illegal search or seizure by the government, you cannot use evidence that is obtained by virtue of an illegal search or an illegal seizure against someone in court. If the government tries to use it, then the so-called exclusionary rule is activated, and you exclude evidence that is derived from an illegal search or seizure. But there is no illegal search or seizure, and there is not even an allegation of an illegal search or seizure. All they have got is text messages between two lovebirds, and that is it. I asked Mr. Rosenstein yesterday, I said: Was there an illegal search or seizure? Is there an allegation of an illegal search or seizure? No, none at all. So what is the relevance of all that stuff? Nothing. They found one FBI agent who is removed during the summertime for trashing a bunch of politicians on both sides of the aisle. They find that guy. They talk only about the fact that he called the President of the United States an idiot, which we must concede hardly makes him an original critic of the President. Okay. They find that one guy, and then suddenly they want to use that to claim that bias infects the whole operation, the whole investigation. And why are they doing that? Well, look, if they just want to put up a propaganda smoke screen, that is within their First Amendment rights to do so and within their rights under the Speech or Debate Clause. The problem is that there is mounting fear and anxiety that this is trying to set the stage for President Trump to fire Robert Mueller, perhaps the most admired law enforcement official and prosecutor in the country, that they are setting the stage to fire him with all this trumped-up stuff about a bunch of texts between some lovebirds. That is it. That is all they have got. After all this time, that is what they are using to try to discredit Robert Mueller and his team, who, at the time of his appointment, they described as unimpeachable, beyond reproach, and so on. But now that he is doing his job and it looks like the momentum of the investigation is leading to the very top of the U.S. Government, they may be looking for a reason to fire him. Well, this is an emergency, a constitutional emergency if this is going to happen. This is why we are blowing the whistle on it. I am delighted to be joined by a great legislator, someone whose career is woven into the fabric of the U.S. House of Representatives. He is the minority whip of this body, and I am just delighted to yield now to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer).

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the great contributions that have been rendered to our country and to my home state of Maryland by my constituent and wonderful friend, Stanton Gildenhorn. I offer these remarks just a few days ahead of Stan's 75th birthday next week. Stan is a well-known public servant, politico, and television personality in our community. He got his start as the youngest staffer in President John F. Kennedy's White House and later worked for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Stan earned a J.D. from the George Washington University School of Law and worked as an attorney in private practice for many years, including in Rockville. He also put his superior legal skills to good use to benefit our community by working at non-profit organizations like the Montgomery County Humane Society and serving as both the Chairman and Counsel for the Montgomery County Democratic Central Committee. A passionate political thinker and strategist, Stan has managed or worked on dozens of campaigns in the last 40 years, at nearly every level of government, and chaired the Montgomery County Charter Review Commission. He was a fixture on national and local television shows for decades, and continues to offer valuable and incisive political commentary today. I am honored to recognize the important contributions of my constituent, Mr. Stanton Gildenhorn today and hope this chamber will join me in wishing him a happy 75th birthday.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to share with my colleagues a beautiful letter I received from my constituent Linda Sobel Katz, a former legislative aide to one of my predecessors in the House of Representatives from Maryland's 8th Congressional District, Representative Michael Barnes. To summarize Linda's thoughts would be a disservice to her passionate and eloquent message about America's priorities today, so I will simply include in the Record her letter: ``In the late 70s and early 80s, I was honored to be an aide to Maryland Congressman Mike Barnes on international human rights issues. It was my job to help Rep. Barnes speak out for those suffering discrimination and worse in their homelands. The climate in Congress was different then. Democrats and Republicans willingly forged coalitions to protect and rescue individuals from hostile leadership far from our shores. As a communications consultant, this is the path I have chosen for my life's work--to champion causes to help better humanity and our environment. ``Never did I ever think I would need to speak out for myself, especially to the esteemed U.S. Congress--once a beacon of democracy, fairness, and justice to the free world and those silenced by totalitarianism. ``As an American citizen who deeply cherishes our land, I am horrified by the indifference of the majority in Congress who would strike out against innocent Americans. First, against children who are losing their CHIP coverage. To what gain? And now, against Americans suffering from one of humankind's worst diseases--cancer. To what benefit? ``What you are doing is causing a sense of powerlessness and despair among those you have a sworn duty to protect. I am such a constituent. As of this writing, you still have not restored the Children's Health Insurance Program, CHIP, which expired September 30. And you show the worst side of your natures by denying coverage for cancer treatment to those over 65 and paying for Medicare. ``I have been raising my granddaughter Sabrina, as her legal guardian, for the past 10 years since the death of her mother when Sabrina was four. During this time, I also spent seven years caring for a husband with Alzheimer's. Formerly co-owner of an insurance agency, my husband Hershel was denied long-term care coverage because of two prior heart attacks in his 40s and 50s. CHIP has been a godsend. ``We paid for Hershel's huge health needs out of pocket, and it was nerve-wracking to consider whether our family could survive financially. ``I am grateful that we are able to live in my home of nearly 40 years in a comforting neighborhood of Silver Spring, just outside the Nation's Capital. ``Less than a year after my husband's passing in November 2015--with no symptoms, other than a yellow tinge to my eyeballs, and feeling in good health--I was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, one of the most deadly forms of this insidious disease. I have been in chemotherapy at Georgetown University Hospital for a year and remain stable after an initial setback that prevented me from undergoing a previously planned Whipple surgery to remove the tumor. ``But chemotherapy is not a permanent fix and has its own limiting side effects. With my oncologist, we must explore clinical trials and other emerging treatments to find a way for me to stay alive so I can continue to raise my granddaughter, now 13 and in 8th grade. Robust federal funding for cancer research is so critical to the survival of cancer patients. And so is the reassurance of coverage for treatment through Medicare. ``Dear Members of Congress, do not wash your hands of cancer patients on Medicare. So many of us continue to contribute to family life and society in myriad, constructive ways. Surely, you must have family members, friends, and constituents suffering from cancer through no fault of their own. Why strip away our hope and ability to live fully and be useful members of our communities? Why choose to be cruel, heartless, and mindless leaders lacking compassion for your fellow citizens? You are fostering an unjust world, not the America that sets the example for civilized behavior and wins universal respect. ``I have a personal wish to live five more years so that I can continue to raise my beautiful, bright, and wise granddaughter and see her graduate from high school and be launched into a future of service and commitment in a gracious and caring world. ``Yes, she does wonder what will happen to her if I die because cancer treatment is no longer accessible to me, especially knowing that her U.S. government precipitated this hostile action. What a tremendous burden for a young teen! ``So, I ask: What will you do to ensure that children have a healthy future and that cancer patients get the care they deserve? Our health care system should be a model in a world still craving for leadership from America. Do not let us down.'' In closing, Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to heed this thoughtful message and ensure that children in our country have meaningful access to health care; to have the courage to stand up for the cancer patients, the sick and suffering, the chronically-ill and their families who rely on Medicare to keep them alive; and to demonstrate, as Linda says, true American leadership. America is counting on Congress. Let us act with wisdom and decency comporting with our highest values.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 20 seconds to the gentlewoman from Florida.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I rise in favor of the legislation. I want to thank the honorable gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Goodlatte) for his leadership on this and also salute Representatives Kustoff and Kilmer for their introduction of this legislation. It is important legislation, Mr. Speaker, because it extends protections under current Federal law for religious real property. We know there is no religious free exercise for our people if they are too afraid to go to church or to synagogue or to the mosque. Currently, section 247 of the Federal criminal code prohibits both the damaging of religious property because of the property's religious character and the intentional obstruction--by force or threats of force--of anyone's exercise of their religious beliefs. H.R. 1730 clarifies that not just force but threats of force against religious property are included in this prohibition. In addition, the bill provides that the damaging or obstructing of such property that results in damages exceeding $5,000 constitutes a felony punishable by up to 3 years in prison. Finally, H.R. 1730 clarifies that real property covered by the statute includes property leased by a nonprofit, religiously affiliated organization. The importance of the bill, of course, is underscored by the recent upsurge, as Mr. Goodlatte said, in bomb threats, hate crimes, and vandalism committed against churches, synagogues, mosques, and other communities of faith, a wave of hate that is now etched in the public's mind by the shocking events in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August, which began at a local synagogue. The Hate Crimes Statistics for 2016 released by the FBI indicate that anti-Semitic hate crimes increased 20 percent from the prior year. There has been an alarming surge committed not just against synagogues, but against churches and mosques in 2017. We know that violent attacks against religious facilities have always accompanied waves of racial terror in our history. In the 1960s, African-American churches in many parts of the country were vandalized, fire bombed, and burned during the struggle for civil rights in the South. In the 1990s, there was a resurgence of arsons committed against African-American churches. In response, Congress passed the Church Arson Prevention Act in 1996 to make it clear that such behavior was also on the wrong side of the law. Yet, in 2017, here we are again, facing another rise in hate crimes. We must do more to prevent and fight these threats to our most basic First Amendment freedoms that our people have, including the right of our citizens to practice their religion of choice. While some may disagree with the religious practice of others, what they may not do is use physical obstruction, force, or threats of force to deny other people the right to worship as they choose. No American should ever have to choose between their faith and their personal security and the safety of their family. Therefore, I strongly support H.R. 1730, and I urge all of my colleagues to do the same. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record a letter from the American Jewish Committee and a letter from the Anti-Defamation League. AJC, Global Jewish Advocacy, Washington, DC, November 1, 2017. Hon. Robert Goodlatte, Chairman. Hon. John Conyers, Ranking Member, House Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, Washington, DC. Dear Chairman Goodlatte and Ranking Member Conyers: I write on behalf of the American Jewish Committee (AJC), the global Jewish advocacy organization, in strong support of H.R. 1730, the Combating Anti-Semitism Act of 2017 (which we understand will be renamed the Protecting Religiously Affiliated Institutions Act of 2017). This critically needed bipartisan legislation, introduced by Rep. David Kustoff with Rep. Derek Kilmer as chief cosponsor, addresses long-standing gaps in Federal hate crimes law. H.R. 1730 amends the Church Arson Prevention Act of 1996 (18 U.S.C. Sec. 241) (CAPA), which covers attacks on religious real property, to bring all religiously affiliated institutions--such as community centers--under the scope of its protections. The bill also amends CAPA so as to encompass threats against, as well as acts that result in damage or destruction to, religious real property. Further, H.R. 1730 enhances the penalty for intentional damage to religious real property, which is at the moment only at a misdemeanor level unless there is bodily injury to a person. In addition to closing these gaps in the law, enactment of H.R. 1730 will send a signal of zero tolerance for hate crimes against people of faith. Hate crimes against religious institutions are on the rise in our country. Since January 2017, at least five mosques have suffered arson attacks, while dozens of Jewish, Muslim, Christian, and other religious institutions have been vandalized. These attacks are intolerable. They infringe on the Constitution's protection of the free exercise of religion. Moreover, crimes against religious institutions are intended to create an atmosphere of fear that deters community members from attending worship services and social involvement. They pose a danger to the religious freedom and security of all Americans. In light of the violent anti-Semitic and racist white nationalist rally held in Charlottesville, Virginia, this legislation is more important than ever. We as a nation must take action in response. For these reasons, AJC strongly urges your support for, and speedy action on, the Combating Anti-Semitism Act. Respectfully, Richard Foltin.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Wasserman Schultz), my distinguished colleague.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Kilmer), the distinguished coauthor of this legislation.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Schneider), my colleague on the House Judiciary Committee.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield the gentleman from Washington an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to close, and I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, the First Amendment protects every citizen's right to free exercise of religion, and we, in Congress, must be zealous and vigilant partners with the Constitution in that enterprise. From Charleston, South Carolina, to Charlottesville, Virginia; from suburban Maryland, where racial bias incidents are up 80 percent in my congressional district in 2017, to California, Oregon, and all over the country, America has seen a surge in threats and violence against individuals and religious real property in our country, all in an effort to deter our citizens from practicing their faith, or simply to assault or kill them for doing so. There has also been a rise in threats made by telephone, in person, by email, or by phone all over the country, including to churches, synagogues, and mosques. In the first 7 months of this year, there were 63 reported incidents against mosques across 26 States, spanning from Florida to Hawaii. Clearly, Congress must act. We have excellent legislation in H.R. 1730 to expand our law to include threats of force, as well as to toughen up the penalties for this kind of conduct. Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this important legislation, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I thank Representative Jayapal for her wonderful remarks and her terrific leadership here on behalf of the people of Washington and on behalf of middle class and working class Americans all across the country. Mr. Speaker, may I trouble you to ask how much time I have remaining.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, the Progressive Caucus greatly appreciates this time to talk with the American people. For me, it is always one of my favorite moments in the tremendously busy weeks that we have got here on Capitol Hill and in Congress. I represent 800,000 people in Maryland's Eighth Congressional District, which includes Montgomery County, Frederick County, and Carroll County. I have the honor of going to work for them, essentially, 7 days a week. I live just about 25 minutes from Capitol Hill, and I take the Metro or drive to work, come back home, and I get to spend pretty much every day both with my district and with my colleagues here in Congress. This is a special time of the week for me because so many of my colleagues are on airplanes or on trains going back to where they come from, and they spend a lot of their time on Mondays and Fridays traveling. I get to be here, and I get to work. I have a little more time to think, Mr. Speaker. Because we are so buffeted by events, tweets, conflicts, and controversies, we don't always have time to think. I get to use the time on Mondays, Thursday nights, and Fridays to be a little bit more reflective and deliberative about what it is we are doing here in Washington. I want to start by just bringing everybody up to date about an alarming new legislative development before I get back to the tax bill, which will be next week's problem. Yesterday, the House of Representatives passed something that they call the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017. The entire bill is fraudulent, beginning with its name, because it asserts that it has something to do with reciprocity, but it doesn't. Right now, any State that has a law governing the issuance of concealed carry permits to its citizens can decide to work with its neighbor to allow a reciprocal arrangement. About half of the States have done that; they have deals with their neighbors. But this act would wipe all of the reciprocity agreements out. It would impose one national standard on everybody in America, reducing everybody to the lowest, most permissive States in the Union in terms of concealed carry. Now, in my State, in Maryland, we have a number of very serious hurdles to get over before you get the right to carry a loaded concealed weapon. You can't be mentally unstable or dangerous. You can't be a domestic offender. You can't be a violent criminal convict, a felon, or a misdemeanant. You have got to show that you know how to use weaponry, and so on. We take it very seriously. Several dozen States have similar laws; others have much laxer and much looser laws. That is federalism. Everybody decides for themselves. But this legislation that they passed yesterday would wipe out the State laws of every State in the country and drag us down to the bottom. It is not a race to the bottom; it is a plunge to the bottom. They say that if you can get a concealed carry permit in any State-- and in some States like Florida, there are 1.7 million people with concealed carry permits--you can go anywhere in the country. It is a passport to override the laws of every other State in the Union. There are more than 14 million concealed carry permits in the United States, and now, suddenly, that is 14 million more people with guns who can come to your State, over your State laws, when you don't want it. Oh, and guess what else they have snuck in here. The people who claim not to like litigation have created a whole new cause of action. They can sue the police officers if they feel the police officers have detained them too long. But, of course, the police officers are going to detain them too long because they have to figure out whether or not they have a right to the gun. In the nationalization of concealed carry, have they created a bureaucracy, a computer where we are able to figure out whether someone is carrying a real concealed carry permit or a fake ID concealed carry permit? No, not at all. That is put upon you, your State, to try to figure it out. If you hold the person too long, they can sue you, and guess what: attorneys' fees for the police officers, attorneys' fees awarded against the sheriffs, attorneys' fees against our law enforcement officers for trying to keep us safe by trying to enforce our State laws. Now, we have two opportunities to stop this. One is in the U.S. Senate. I already spoke to one Senator who was absolutely dumbfounded and amazed that such legislation would even be introduced, after more than two centuries of the history of the United States, somebody would put in a bill to try to extinguish the State concealed carry laws all across the country and give other people who wouldn't have the right to get a gun in your State the right to come there; and this after some of the worst firearms massacres and disasters in our history: the Las Vegas attack, which led to the deaths of 59 of our countrymen and countrywomen, and the attack in Sutherland Springs, Texas, which killed dozens of people. The gun violence has even come here to Washington and to the Capitol and to the Members of Congress, ourselves, and still we haven't done anything. We don't take up a universal criminal background check to close the internet loophole, to close the private sale loophole of people selling guns in the parking lot at 7-Eleven, so we close the loopholes that make us an absolute outlier in terms of the civilized world. We don't take that up. We don't take up legislation to ban military-style assault weapons, like the ones that were used in Newtown, Connecticut, to assassinate 20 schoolchildren at pointblank range. We don't take up that legislation. We don't even take up the legislation that they promised, which we thought that they wanted to do, which was to get rid of the bump stocks. No, that faded away, too. Instead, they bring us this proposal to drive us deeper into the cycles of gun violence and misery that the NRA and the GOP have taken us to in America. So, there are two opportunities to stop this madness. One is in the United States Senate, but the other is this: the pretended champions of the U.S. Constitution are violating the Constitution; they are trampling the Constitution. Why? Well, the Congress of the United States is an institution with limited enumerated powers. We don't have the right to do whatever we want as Congress. We have to exercise a real power. Well, what power is being exercised here? Well, there are only a couple of possible candidates. One, they say we are regulating commerce, but that is patently absurd. There is no commerce that is being regulated in any way at all. It doesn't say anything about business and it doesn't say anything about money. There is no commerce. The Supreme Court authority is very clear about that. That is why the Supreme Court struck down the Gun-Free School Zones Act, which my friends across the aisle were totally opposed to. They said: Well, that has nothing to do with commerce. The possession of a gun within a school zone has nothing to do with commerce. You have to strike it down. Well, equally, the possession of your concealed carry weapon has nothing to do with commerce either. So that doesn't help them. Then they would say: Well, really what we are doing is we are vindicating the Second Amendment. The Second Amendment gives you the right to do it. There are a couple of odd things about that. One is that, if the Second Amendment gave you the right to take a concealed carry gun anywhere you want in the country, why has no court ever said that, and why aren't they just bringing a lawsuit? The Federal courts across the land have been overwhelmingly clear that the Second Amendment does not give you a right to carry a loaded concealed gun. You don't get that right under the Second Amendment. If you have that right, you get it from your State government. I thought that was something that my friends across the aisle believed in: federalism and State powers and State rights. But, no, they would say: Well, this is an enforcement of the Second Amendment. I suppose the Supreme Court also struck down that bit of trickery in a case called City of Boerne v. Flores, which dealt with the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. There, Congress said, overwhelmingly--I think it was unanimous--we are going to overrule, essentially, the laws of the States and say that any burden on people's religious free exercise is presumptively unconstitutional, unless you can show that there is a compelling interest in your State against it. The Supreme Court said: Wait, where does Congress get the power to do that? Congress said: Well, we are just enforcing people's free exercise rights. The Supreme Court said: You don't enforce people's rights by changing the meaning of the right. Similarly, you don't enforce the Second Amendment right, which, undoubtedly, exists under the 2008 Heller decision, which said you have a right to a handgun for self-defense, you have a rifle for purposes of hunting and recreation, but you don't extend those rights, change the meaning of those rights in the name of the Second Amendment and then say that is where Congress gets its power. On that theory, the Supreme Court said in the RFRA case--striking down the Religious Freedom Restoration Act as it applies to States--there would be no limit at all to Federal power, and that can't be right. My friends celebrated yesterday having passed an unconstitutional bill--unconstitutional. We have no power to trample the handiwork of the States all over the country. The State legislatures have the power under the 10th Amendment, and Congress lacks the power in Article I to define what concealed carry policy is going to be in the States. That is up to the States. So, if they want to become the absolute enemies of the State legislatures and State power and State rights, be my guest. But what they have is an unconstitutional piece of legislation as well as a deeply dangerous and ill-thought-out piece of legislation. The last thing I want to say about it is, like almost everything else they bring to us now, there were no hearings on it. Now, think about that. Here we are, one of the greatest legislative bodies on the planet Earth--Abraham Lincoln sat in this body; John F. Kennedy sat in this body; some of the greatest legislators who ever existed were here--and they are passing bills without so much as a single hearing. They just bring it up for a vote. So we whip out our phones, and we are trying to google to find out about the issue. That is how I found out, for example, that more than 1,100 people carrying concealed carry weapons had committed homicides or mass shootings or killing of police or suicides--with their guns. And now they want open season. If you want to allow anybody in your State to get a concealed carry weapon, be our guest. Don't impose that rule on the people of Maryland. We don't want it, thank you very much. We have already decided what we have got, and that is true of State legislatures all across the land. Their so-called reciprocity legislation is actually a demolition of reciprocity, because lots of States have entered into reciprocal agreements that will be extinguished by their law. So without so much as a hearing, without any real debate or discussion, without them even realizing that they are violating the Constitution, they go ahead and pass this law. All right. But that, of course, is just a distraction from the main order of business this month, which is demolition of America's middle class. I am sorry to put it in such cogent and compressed terms, but there is no other way to describe what The New York Times calls the worst piece of tax legislation ever introduced in the history of our country. Now, America has gotten the point about the GOP tax plan. People know it is highway robbery. People know it is a mugging of the working class and the middle class by the largest corporations and the richest people in the country. They know it is an outrageous decision to drive the country into $1.5 trillion more deficit, more debt, all to enrich the robber barons and the cyber barons of our time. They want to cut corporate taxes from 35 percent to 20 percent at a time of record corporate profits. Why? Why would you do that? They say that if we bestow this extraordinary windfall, bonus present on corporate America, that somehow we are going to get more jobs out of it. But wait a second. We are at a time of record corporate profits right now. If all they needed was more profits, more dividends to create jobs, then we would be seeing them right now. We are in a time of economic growth, and any economist you ask, who is not in the pay of the proponents, will tell you it is a deranged thing to cut corporate taxes at a time of record corporate profits. Why would we do that? They say it will lead to economic development. Nonsense. Show me one example where trickle-down economics has ever worked. It doesn't work, for a very simple reason. You give more money to the people at the top of society, they pocket it, they send it overseas to their Swiss bank accounts or to the Cayman Islands or more yachts. That is what they do with it. If you want economic growth, you do what Franklin D. Roosevelt did. You invest in the middle class, you invest in working people. Business growth comes from demand, and demand comes from a strong middle class that is able to buy stuff. If you starve the middle class, there is no demand. The rich take their money and they park it overseas. That is what our oligarchs do. That is what the Russian oligarchs do. That is how Donald Trump has stayed in business. The Russian oligarchs have been renting out his condos and offices in the Trump Tower in New York and coming to the Trump Hotel. They have got their surplus profits they are exporting from Russia going right into the Trump enterprises. Our oligarchs do the exact same thing. You want real growth, you want strong growth, you want fairness, you want a democratic society, you invest in the middle class, not the largest corporations, not the wealthiest people in the country. Now, there is a strong link here to our campaign finance regime. Again, every public opinion poll shows Americans know it. You think you can fool the American people. You cannot fool the American people. Americans know this tax bill is a great deal if you have your own lobbyist; it is a great deal if you have your own Political Action Committee; it is a great deal if you are in the Trump Cabinet, it is going to be perfect for you; and if your last name is Trump, this is absolute utopia. But if you don't have your own PAC, if you don't have your own lobbyist, watch out, watch out in this bill. The Boston Globe's Annie Linskey had a great article with the title: ``The Koch brothers (and their friends) want President Trump's tax cut. Very badly.'' Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity, a Koch group, said: ``It's the most significant Federal effort we've ever taken on.'' Congratulations to the Koch brothers. They are about to get their own signature tax bill. All the GOP politicians are saying the same thing in the newspapers. You can just check it out. They say the same thing: We are calling up the millionaires and billionaires for campaign contributions, and they say, ``You deliver us that tax bill first. You get nothing from us until you deliver us that tax plan. You guys haven't done anything in Washington. You haven't thrown 30 or 40 million off their healthcare yet. We haven't gotten what we wanted. You deliver us that tax bill. That is what we want.'' Of course, Trump's Cabinet needs no outside push even from the campaign donors. It is the wealthiest Cabinet in U.S. history. Guess what it is worth. $20 million? $50 million? $100 million? $1 billion? No. The Trump Cabinet is worth $4.3 billion. $4.3 billion is what their Cabinet is worth. They all love the tax plan, and they should. You know why? They wrote it. You know who they wrote it for? Them. Just like for the Trump family, they are going to abolish the estate tax, which applies to only 2 out of every 1,000 richest people in the country. It is only the wealthiest people who pay the estate tax now, and they want to wipe it out, costing the rest of us $65 billion or $70 billion. They want to collide, they want to contradict, they want to trample an essential principle of America that our Founders started off with, which is opposition to hereditary government, like kings, and opposition to hereditary wealth, hereditary aristocracy. The Founders, like Ben Franklin and Tom Paine and Alexander Hamilton, they knew that the intergenerational transmission of huge fortunes was a threat to democracy. At a certain point, people don't want to just buy a bigger house or another house or a third house or a fourth house or a yacht. At a certain point, they want to buy a governorship, they want to buy a U.S. Senate seat, they want to buy the Presidency of the United States. So what is at stake here is not just whether we are going to have some semblance of fairness in the economy. It is bad enough that we have got one of the most unequal economies on Earth today. That is bad enough. They want a government that is plutocratic, a government that responds only to the wealthiest class in society. So they want to abolish the estate tax. They want to abolish the alternative minimum tax. That is the only reason that Donald Trump paid any taxes at all in the one year that we know he paid any taxes in the last 2 decades, the alternative minimum tax. So of course they want to get rid of that. For the middle class, well, no breaks there. They want to get rid of the college student loan interest deduction. If you are struggling to get into the middle class, to go to college, if you had a deduction on the college student loan interest: Gone. They don't want it. Healthcare expenses. You spend more than 10 percent of your income on healthcare expenses, long-term care for someone in your family who has Alzheimer's disease; you have a kid in your family who has autism going into a private school for kids with special needs, right now you can deduct that. They want to get rid of that. They want to get rid of the State and local tax deduction, which half of my communities use, targeted right at those States, like Maryland, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, California, and Illinois, that invest heavily in education and infrastructure. So they just want to get rid of that. Here's something else, another snake writhing in the grass of this terrible bill. They want to repeal the Johnson amendment. This is named after Lyndon Johnson when he was a Senator. So we are taking you back to the 1950s and 1960s. It was a very simple amendment that is essentially a logical corollary to the First Amendment, to the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause. It says that 501(c)(3) organizations, churches, universities, not-for-profit entities cannot engage in political campaigning, in electioneering. Guess what the Koch brothers and the Mercers have tucked into this one. They are going to get rid of the Johnson amendment. So the Koch brothers, if they want to spend $1 billion trying to define American politics in the name of plutocracy, now it will be tax deductible. Right now, they can spend it under Citizens United, they can spend whatever they want, but they have got to pay for it. Now they put it into a church or to churches, the ``Church of the Golden Plutocracy,'' and then they can deduct it on their taxes and the church can now be involved in politics, it can spend money in politics, it can electioneer, it can endorse candidates for office, and it remains a tax-exempt entity. Now, the smart churches, which is most churches, have opposed it. They said: Don't give us that power, because the next step is people are going to turn around and say, ``Wait a second. Why are we getting tax deductible contributions in churches? Why are we tax exempt if we are getting involved in politics like everybody else?'' That will be the logical question. Indeed, it threatens the very existence of the 501(c)(3) organization by tearing down that wall over tax-exempt contributions, which Sheldon Adelson and the Koch brothers and the Mercers want so badly. Very clever, their divine dark money loophole, very clever. They are going to find a way that they can control our politics, deduct it from their taxes, and corrupt the entire not-for-profit sector, the churches and the synagogues and the mosques and so on. I wish I could leave you with cheerier news tonight, but the U.S. Congress is on the verge of passing the worst tax proposal in American history that offends every value that we cherish in this country. Why are the people who are pushing it, who are doing quadruple backflips in the middle of the night, hiding it from us? It took us 2 years and 10 months to pass the 1986 bipartisan tax legislation. Here, this is behind the scenes in the dark, speed of light, dark of night, the whole thing. Why are they willing to do it even though it is rejected now by 2-1 or 3-1 in every public opinion poll? People understand it is highway robbery. Why are they willing to do it? Well, what is the worst that could happen to them? Think about it. The worst that could happen to somebody who votes for this is they lose and they go to work for the Koch brothers, they go to work for the Mercers, they go to work for Sheldon Adelson, and the highway robbery is complete. Now, popular protests stopped the plan to throw tens of millions of people off their healthcare. Despite the fact that the GOP controls the House, the Senate, the White House, and even the Supreme Court--they control all of it--yet popular protests around the country stopped it. Mr. Speaker, that is the only thing that can stop us now, because so many of my colleagues across the aisle have decided to walk the plank for the Koch brothers and for the billionaire cabinet. They have decided to throw in with the oligarchs, the American oligarchs, and the plutocrats. So popular protests, people speaking out and contacting their Members, will be our only hope of showing that this is an absolute insult and affront to American democracy; not just middle class economics, economics for everybody, but democratic politics; politics for everybody, not just the elite. I thank the Speaker for granting us this opportunity to allow us to express our intense anxiety about what might happen next week. I wish the Speaker a good weekend. I hope that everyone will have the opportunity to consider the implications of what is taking place. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to be here on behalf of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. We are going to have some discussion about recent developments in Congress over this week, and we are going to focus on the proposed tax legislation. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Washington (Ms. Jayapal), vice chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. She is going to talk about what that plan means for working people in America.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, there have been 914 cases of non-self- defense killings by private citizens holding permits to carry concealed loaded handguns in the last 10 years, which translates into 1,119 Americans dead by homicide, mass shooting, suicide, and murder of police officers under concealed carry permit laws in the States. In Florida, for example--I saw my friend, Mr. Rutherford, up there-- in August, concealed handgun permit holder, Everett Miller, shot and killed two Kissimmee, Florida, police officers. Now, if you want to give everybody the right to a concealed carry permit in your States, fine. But don't impose that on the people of Maryland. We have got our own laws, thank you. Since January, we have had 397 gun massacres in America defined as a slaying of four people or more. Two of them--Las Vegas, which left 58 people dead, and Sutherland Springs, which left 26 people dead--are among the 10 worst massacres in American history by gun. The American people want to end this reign of terror. But what do our friends do on the other side? Do they bring us the universal criminal background check legislation favored by more than 90 percent of the American people of every political party to plug the gun show loophole, the internet loophole, and the 7-Eleven parking lot loophole? No. Do they bring to the floor the bill to criminalize bump stocks which they promised to us? No. No such luck. Instead, they bring forward a bill that would wipe out the vast majority of concealed carry laws in the United States of America, trampling States' rights and wrecking all of the painstaking work of legislatures all over the land dragging this down to the most lax and permissive State laws in the country. It is not a race to the bottom, it is a plunge to the bottom they have engineered here. This fraudulently named bill has nothing to do with reciprocity because States already have the power to negotiate reciprocity agreements, and 22 of them have it. Your bill destroys reciprocity. Your bill brings us down to the level of the lowest, most permissive laws in the country. My State doesn't give concealed carry permits to domestic abusers, to violent offenders, and to dangerously unstable people. Don't drag us down to the lowest level. Protect States' rights.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Reclaiming my time, I tremble to say here in front of the whole body, but I don't believe that it was. I stand to be corrected by my colleagues if there was a hearing.

Mr. RASKIN. Reclaiming my time, not to my knowledge. I am used to that coming out of the State legislature, where we have endless hearings that go on into 2 a.m. in the morning or they go on for several days. But there were no hearings, there was no evidence, there was no expert testimony. I couldn't figure out what was behind it. Then I realized that there is this effort to demoralize the Federal workforce and there was this effort to create a kind of political control over what is going on in the Federal workplace.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Chair, I thank Mr. Connolly for his invitation, and I am delighted to be here to speak out against H.R. 4182, the so-called Ensuring a Qualified Civil Service Act. The first complaint I have got to lodge about it is the process by which it is taking place. This is a radical change in the civil service hiring policy and in the workplace without a hearing. I know we have grown accustomed to that, but let's just focus on the fact that here we are in the Nation's Capital and we have got all of the employees, managers, and supervisors, and everybody here, and we didn't even have a hearing to discuss why this might be necessary. Then it is passed on a completely party-line vote in the Oversight Committee, which leads to the suspicion that this has nothing to do with the integrity of the civil service or the excellence of the civil service, the things that we should be thinking about, but it has to do, in fact, with a partisan mission.

Mr. RASKIN. I yield to the gentleman from Virginia.

Mr. RASKIN. I yield to the gentleman from Virginia.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Chair, I am baffled and puzzled by the way in which this measure came about. And I am really scared about what it means for all of our constituents who make the sacrifice of going to work for the Federal Government to serve the American people, because they are going into the workplace and I think most people are used to a probationary period of 3 months or 6 months. We had a year. Now we are doubling it to 2 years, which means that people are living in fear at a time when there is an administration that is intimidating people for doing their jobs; for example, for doing research about climate change and trying to deal with environmental problems. They are facing reprisals in the workplace. This is a bill that deserves to go down in defeat. Anybody who represents Federal workers, I think, should stand up strongly against it. It should be returned to sender and let's have some real hearings and some real analysis.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank Mr. Connolly, and I want to salute him as a really ardent champion for those of your constituents who work in the Federal Government. In Maryland, as in Virginia, we have lots of them, but it is not just there. Eighty-five percent of the Federal workforce lives outside of the Washington/Maryland/Virginia area: Kentucky and California and South Carolina and Texas. This would apply to all new employees. Millions of new people coming into the workforce would be added, doubling the probationary period. Imagine if you were trying to hire for your small business and you had to tell people that they were going to be on probation for 2 years basically, with none of the rights that you would have vested as if you had really gotten hired and been part of the workforce. I want to say, they are willing, apparently, in this bill, to give people a whole extra year on probation. They are not wanting to wait even 1 year or a half a year, maybe, for the GAO to do a proper study so we can use evidence-based policymaking, as the gentleman says. That is the very least that we can do. The good gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Comer) said that there was a study done 10 years ago.

Mr. RASKIN

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

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to be here this evening on behalf of the Progressive Caucus in Congress, which is in very strong opposition to both the House and Senate versions of the tax scam that is speeding through the United States Congress this week. We have several members who would like to participate in this. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Cicilline). He is a passionate representative of the people of Rhode Island and a real champion of the American middle class.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Cicilline for his strong leadership for the people of Rhode Island and his dedication to the middle class of America, which is besieged and under attack today in Washington, D.C. You know, the former Secretary of the Treasury, Robert Rubin, came and said that this is the worst piece of tax legislation he had seen ever in the history of the United States of America. Now, the good news is that the American people have taken a look, and they don't like it. By more than 2-1, the American people in public opinion polls are rejecting this plan. The Quinnipiac poll found that American voters are rejecting the plan by more than 2-1, with 52 percent disapproving and only 25 percent approving. Every day, the more people find out about it, the more that they hate the guts of this bill and what is inside of the tax plan. We are in a situation of ``beat the clock'' now. Can we get the information out to the people, Mr. Speaker, about what is in this bill before it is rammed through the United States Congress? So let's start with this: 82 million middle class households are going to see their taxes go up over the next decade. They are going to completely obliterate the State and local tax deduction, which States like mine, Maryland, New Jersey, Connecticut, California, Illinois, are going to be killed by, because if you make investments in your educational infrastructure, if you make investments in the transportation infrastructure, now they want to abolish the State and local tax deduction and make you pay twice for the same money that you have earned, while driving pressure down on the States to eliminate investment in the people who live in the States. Well, so they are going to raise taxes on millions of middle class families. Why? So they can slash taxes for the wealthiest corporations and the wealthiest people in the country. They want to slash the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent at a time of record corporate profits in America. They say that everybody is going to get wage increases by that. But we have already got record corporate profits, and we have seen wage growth be stagnant under the policies that are being propounded by the GOP in Congress. If you want to increase people's wages, increase the minimum wage. Have some courage. Have some honesty. Let's increase the minimum wage. Let's give America a raise. That will work, not just showering billions of dollars more on the richest people in the country. By the way, it is not just the richest people in the country. One- third of corporate ownership in America goes to foreign investors. That is right. So if we decide to give $1\1/2\ trillion to investors in America with a corporate tax break, one-third of that money is going to leave America immediately and go to China or Saudi Arabia or wherever the rich corporate investors are. The purpose of this bill isn't even just to enrich the wealthiest people in America. It is to enrich the wealthiest people on Earth because the money is going to be flying overseas as soon as we institute this corporate tax cut. Then they build up record deficits: $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion in deficits on the House and Senate plans--which are twiddle dumb and twiddle dumber--$1.5 trillion to $2 trillion that the children, the grandchildren, and the great-grandchildren of the middle class are going to be paying back for decades so there can be a party on Wall Street; so there can be a party among the 1 percent; so Donald Trump's family, according to The New York Times, can collect up to $1 billion in tax relief. How are they doing it? Well, for example, they want to abolish the estate tax, which right now applies only to two of the richest 1,000 families in America. You take 1,000 families, only two of them are even paying the estate tax because it applies only to the wealthiest people in the country. They want to abolish that; totally in contradiction to the design of the Founders of America who did not want to see the transmission of millions, much less hundreds of millions, much less billions of dollars from one generation to the next because they understood that the intergenerational transmission of that kind of wealth is a threat to democracy. At a certain point, people have enough houses, they have enough yachts, they have enough helicopters. And now what do they want to buy? They want to buy a governorship. They want to buy a Senate seat. They want to buy a whole institution like the House of Representatives or the U.S. Senate. That is not democracy, and the Founders knew it. That is plutocracy. So the radical economic inequality, which they want to cement into place with this tax bill, is a direct threat to the Democratic values of country, the Democratic values of the Founders of America. They want to eliminate the student loan interest deduction and lifetime learning credits, a direct assault on middle class upward mobility. They want to make it much more expensive for young people to go to college and then to pay their loans back. They want to eliminate the medical expense deduction, which millions of families have used in order to take care of a loved one who has a serious long-term illness or is in long-term care. They just want to get rid of the medical expense deduction. You should read the letters and the emails that I am getting from families that are saying: ``This will bankrupt us.'' Right now, under the medical expense deduction, if you are spending more than 10 percent of your income on medical expenses, you can start to deduct it. They want to get rid of that. Oh, guess who else that hits as collateral damage in the war against the middle class. Families with children with special needs. Right now, families with children with special needs can go to a private school and they can deduct the tuition and expenses of that education as part of the medical expense deduction. Well, the GOP wants to get rid of that, too, because I suppose life is just not hard enough on families in America who have kids with autism or kids with muscular dystrophy or kids who face any other manner of physical or neurological or mental or emotional problems. We should be on the side of the families who are struggling with special needs children. We should be on their side. We should be on the side of the State and local governments that are trying heroically to address it. Instead, this legislation will pull the rug out from beneath families with special needs. They want to impose dramatic new limits on the mortgage interest deduction, which, again, has been essential for the middle class to be able to partake of homeownership, which has been so much a part of building the middle class in our country. Now, because the public is rebelling against this terrible tax plan the way the public rebelled against their terrible ACA repeal plan, which would have stripped 30 million Americans of their healthcare--by the way, the Senate plan now has smuggled into it a provision which would go back to the discredited ACA repeal plan by trying to throw millions of people off of their healthcare by overturning the individual mandate. Well, the public has figured this out, and, here, in Washington, it is a race against the clock. Will the tidal wave of public opinion reach Washington in time to stop them from passing a special interest tax scam, which appeals only to the top 1 percent of the country? Or will they be able to get it through in time? But I appeal to my colleagues across the aisle, I beseech them, and I beg them to revisit the whole thing. This is not how we accomplish successful tax policy in the United States of America. We did it in 1986. The Democrats and Republicans came together to do it. You know how we did it? With more than 2\1/2\ years of hearings, discussions, policy debates, town hall meetings all over America. We invited the best ideas to come from all sides, and it passed overwhelmingly in the House of Representatives. It passed overwhelmingly in the U.S. Senate. The tax reform proposal, at the end, had been vetted and debated so much, everybody had contributed to it, it was so uncontroversial that it passed the House on a voice vote overwhelmingly, maybe unanimously. Nobody even asked for a rollcall vote. The Senate passed its version by a near unanimous vote of 97-3. You see, that is how you do real tax reform. You bring the parties together to do it. There were more than 250 witnesses who appeared in the House Ways and Means Committee, who appeared before the Senate Finance Committee. Sure, there were some knockdown, drag-out fights; sure, the Democrats and Republicans were fighting like cats and dogs, but we were committed to coming up with a consensus product that would work for America, and we did it. What we are seeing in Washington today is the exact opposite. The determination is to pass a completely partisan piece of legislation at all costs, with a very narrow majority running over the minority completely, and it is not going to work because America is a democracy. Taxation is the way that we support our government; the projects that we develop together. In taxation of all fields, we need to make sure that we are getting the best ideas from all sides. You can't ram it through and you can't crush the opposition. What we are going to end up with--if they do manage to power this through with every manner of a backroom deal and a sweetheart contract and special interest strings attached, if they do manage to get it through, what you are going to have is a plan that is going to bankrupt the middle class the way that Donald Trump bankrupted four or five businesses. The difference is that if you bankrupt a hotel, if you bankrupt a casino, if you bankrupt a corporation, well, there were laws that allow you to get back on your feet, and Donald Trump used them handsomely. He got back on his feet through the bankruptcy laws. But what happens if you bankrupt the middle class of America? What happens if you bankrupt the government of the United States? This is irresponsible. This is not responsible governance that is taking place, to be advancing a plan that a recent Secretary of the Treasury has called the worst tax plan ever ventured forth in the history of the United States of America. We asked the majority in the House and the Senate to pull the plug on this terrible assault on the middle class, pull the plug on the tax scam, and let's go back to the hearing rooms and let's have some real hearings, let's have experts come in and let's look at how to relieve the tax burden on hardworking middle class taxpayers, relieve the tax burden on families that have special needs children, relieve the tax burden on people struggling to go to college and graduate school. Why don't we try to bolster and strengthen the charitable sector and colleges and universities and schools across the land instead of trying to undermine them in order to occasion a dramatic shift of income in wealth up the ladder in the country? Let's get back to work together, because if you are able to muscle this plan through the House and the Senate using every trick in the book except for negotiation and compromise and cooperation, it will be a disaster for the American people. It will come back not only to haunt the political careers of people who assented to it and participated in it, but it will come back to haunt the entire country because the deficits and the debt will be out of control. We know that from every nonpartisan budget estimate and economist that has looked at it, every single one across the spectrum. Even the ones who are using the GOP's preferred method of dynamic scoring are saying it is going to be hell in terms of deficits and in terms of the debt. So we are going to end up having to cut Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. That is what they are going to target next. Whatever happened to the budget hawks? Are they an extinct species now? They are certainly an endangered species. Or have they just become budget ostriches? They are hiding their heads in the sand while this highway robbery takes place in the Halls of Congress. Then they will come back next year, and they will say: Oh, look at these terrible deficits; we have got to cut Social Security; we have got to cut Medicare; we have got to cut Medicaid. Now, suddenly, we are reborn as budget hawks again. We are born-again budget hawks. We can expect that to happen. In the meantime, economic inequality in the country will continue to deepen and spread, and economic desperation will spread. We don't need to do this, Mr. Speaker, we do not need to do this. We are at a time of record corporate profits; record corporate prosperity. Wall Street has never been riding higher than it is now. Why do we need to cut corporate taxes from 35 to 20 percent? Why do we need to start exporting more jobs abroad by instituting this new territoriality principle for taxes? A very fancy name that they assigned to it, do you know what it means? It means that if a business person is going to set up a factory on Main Street America with 1,000 jobs, they are going to pay full taxes on their business; but if they set it up in Hong Kong, or Singapore, or Mexico, or Switzerland, or the Cayman Islands, they are going to pay zero on it because it is not made in the United States. That is in this bill. Now, they say they are going to recapture some of the money if it gets really obscene, but why should we have that principle at all now? In fact, the law today is compromised enough. It says that if they relocate their businesses abroad, they don't pay taxes until the profits are repatriated--until the profits come back. Now, all of it is on paper. The companies haven't really moved anyplace. That is dubious enough as it is. They want to make the current system worse. They want to say that if you set up your business abroad, if you ship it overseas, either really or on paper--like to the Cayman Islands, or something like that--you escape taxation completely. Maybe we will be able to recapture a little bit of it later through some accounting tricks, but basically this is a massive invitation to corporate America to outsource jobs overseas--to ship our jobs overseas. Now, I know the President of the United States is not much of a policy wonk. I am not sure if they have apprised him of this provision yet. Mr. Speaker, I hope someone who is in touch with the President of the United States gets in touch with him and tells him that his campaign promise to put America first--promise to put American jobs first--and the tax plan that he is about to append his name to, if this actually happens, will be responsible for outsourcing and offshoring millions of American jobs, and profits, and taxes. That is built into this legislation, with a lot of other nasty surprises that surface every single day, as we try to figure out what is happening on this speeding train of the tax plan. This process has nothing to do with representative democracy; it has nothing to do with integrity in the work of the people's representatives. So, we ask our colleagues: Let's take a breather. The American people don't like what they see. They are rejecting it by more than 2 to 1 in all of the polls. I have spoken to my colleagues across the aisle, who are getting very nervous about their emails, and their letters, and their calls right now, just like they got very nervous about the ACA repeal--which seemed like a great idea, until they had a majority in Congress--and then they realized that they were going to throw millions of people to the streets. Now it is a question of whether or not you want to outsource and offshore millions of jobs, whether you want to drive a $1.5 trillion or $2 trillion hole in the American deficit and in our economy, and whether you want to, basically, loot the middle class for the purposes of a big payday on Wall Street, and among foreign investors from Hong Kong to Saudi Arabia? Well, that is the question. That is the choice that faces America this week, Mr. Speaker. That is what we are looking at. And who are we as a people? And do we have some sense--some semblance even--of community such that the GOP would want to try to get even 10 votes or 15 votes from the Democrats? No. All of the Democrats are opposing it. Fortunately, 13 Republicans have crossed the aisle to say that they cannot stomach what they are seeing in this bill. We understand that there may be more coming this week, who are saying that they simply cannot tolerate what is taking place with this legislation. But, as always, Mr. Speaker, this is a democracy that we are aspiring to be, not a plutocracy, not a theocracy, not a family government, not a royal government, but a democracy, which means that we place all of our faith and hope in the people to speak up, to talk to their representatives, to get in touch with them, and to ask them to read the fine print, so that we are not voting for a tax scam, instead of a tax bill. All of the American people have a responsibility to get in touch with their legislators, Mr. Speaker, to ask: What is in the bill, and how is it going to affect us and the more than 80 million middle class families, who are going to end up seeing a tax hike over the next decade? And how is it going to affect people who take the State and local tax deduction and people who use the medical expense deduction for their families? And how is it going to affect people who have graduated from college and now are struggling to buy a house, or to get an apartment, or to move out of their parents' basement? And how is it going to affect them when the deduction for college student loan interest is abolished? We need to slow down. We need to examine the priorities and the values that are built into this bill and see whether they actually square with the values, the beliefs, the priorities of the American people, and the needs of the American people. We think this legislation is way off, Mr. Speaker. We ask the GOP majority to consider the unanimous opposition of the democratic block in Congress; we ask them to consider the public opinion polls, which show the American people rejecting the details of this bill by more than 2 to 1; and we ask them to start over. Let's do it the way Congress did it back in 1986, when Tip O'Neill and Ronald Reagan got together, and the Democrats and Republicans talked about it, fought about it, and debated it. But they came up with a plan that, in the end, the vast majority of Congress and the vast majority of the people could support. Let's not walk the plank for the 1 percent here. We know that there are some tiny interests in America that want to see this pass. Let's not walk the plank in Congress for a bill that reflects the interests of only the tiniest group of people. Let's do the job imagined by that great Republican President, who served in this body, proudly, from Illinois, in the House of Representatives: Abraham Lincoln, who spoke of ``government of the people, by the people, for the people.'' That is the part of that great triad that we will be betraying if we pass this bill, because it is not for the people, it is for the 1 percent. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.