Jamie Raskin

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Speaker, when I was a kid in high school, they built the Metro system here. It was a great feat of bipartisan leadership when they built the Metro, and it changed my life. It was the jewel of our region, and it opened up, to at least one kid, the Capitol, the White House, the museums, the National Gallery, the Hirshhorn, the Lincoln Memorial, the Jefferson Memorial, and it was really a spectacular and resplendent addition and feature to the Virginia, D.C., Maryland region. In the intervening years, there has been inadequate investment in safety, efficiency, and reliability in the Metro system, and we need to bring the Metro back to its original glory and we must make sure that, above all, it is safe for the people who ride it. The safety and security of the passengers is essential. So passage of this resolution will ensure the establishment of the safety commission to assume effective oversight of this system and to allow for the disbursal of Federal transit funds to Maryland, Virginia, and D.C. for essential transit services. I urge all of our colleagues to support this bipartisan measure. Again, I want to salute all of the Members who have been involved in this legislation, and I thank House Judiciary Chairman Goodlatte for facilitating consideration of the resolution by both the Judiciary Committee and by the House. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, may I just inquire how much time I have remaining?

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.J. Res. 76. This very important legislation grants congressional consent and approval to Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia to enter into a compact under Article I, section 10 of the Constitution, establishing the Metrorail Safety Commission. Importantly, Federal transit funds have been suspended by the Federal Transit Authority until Congress grants its assent to these amendments to the WMATA compact, as H.J. Res. 76 would do. I want to thank my friend, the distinguished minority whip, Steny Hoyer, for taking the lead on this measure, and all of our colleagues in the Virginia and Maryland delegations and District of Columbia delegation for supporting it in such a strong, bipartisan, and cross- Potomac River fashion. I am proud to join them. Mr. Speaker, I did want to take a moment to say a word about the Metro system. WMATA is not just the Metro that serves the Washington area. It is truly America's Metro system. It is the second largest system in the Nation, behind only New York City. It is 117 miles long. It has 91 stations, and it includes more than 12,000 employees. It is critical to the functioning of the Federal Government because it moves more than 40 percent of the Federal workforce every day to and from work and also during the day for various missions that people go on during the normal workday. It is essential to national security. If we didn't have the Metro system, what is already one of the most traffic-plagued and congested regions in the country would be absolutely paralyzed. It is also the mechanism that moves millions of Americans who come from all over the United States, all of our constituents here in Congress, to visit us. That is how people get to the White House and the Capitol and go to the Pentagon and go to see NIH and visit the museums and the battlefields and so on. So the Metro is critical not just to the people who live and work here every day and make the Federal Government go, but also to all American citizens who rely on the efficiency of the Federal Government and come to Washington to petition for redress of grievances and to partake in the processes of government. I am thrilled that this legislation, responding to the safety needs of the system, is moving forward with speed now. It is essential that we continue to invest in the Metro, to upgrade its safety, to upgrade its efficiency and its reliability. The Federal Government was instrumental in the creation of Metro at the beginning, along with Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia. We all send representatives to the board of Metro. The Federal Government has representatives on the board of Metro. We are equal partners in it, and I want to make sure that everyone here in Congress feels deeply invested in the success of Metro, which, after all, gets a lot of our staffers to work every day. With passage of H.J. Res. 76, Congress reaffirms its fundamental commitment to America's Metro system. Accordingly, I urge my colleagues to support the swift passage of this resolution. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I simply want to, again, commend Mrs. Comstock for her leadership on this legislation. I thank all of our fellow members in the regional delegation in Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia for their collaborative work on this issue, and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Goodlatte for facilitating the resolution's consideration by both the committee and the House. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton)

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Chairman, I rise to oppose the amendment, which selectively requires the military to identify Islamic religious doctrines, concepts, or schools of thought used by various extremist groups and how they have been incorporated into terrorist messaging. The problem, of course, is that terrorist killers have used religious doctrines and concepts from every major religion on earth, including not just Islam, but Christianity, Judaism, Mormonism, Hinduism, Buddhism, for homicidal purposes. Because religion is based on faith and not reason, and because religious texts are not self-explanatory, good people will invoke scripture for good causes and evil people will invoke scripture for evil causes. We don't need a big government study to teach us something so commonsensical, which the Founders taught us a long time ago. If we want to study the exploitation of religion for terrorism, let's study it universally. Focusing on one religion not only vastly understates the problem, but exacerbates the problem by fomenting the myth that religious fanaticism and terrorism are unique to the charlatans and predators of Islam when they are common to the charlatans and predators of nearly every religious faith and identification. Constitutionally, we do not single out particular religions for governmental inspection and suspicion under the First Amendment.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Chairman, the floor leader has invited us to stick to the facts, so I want to stick to the facts in order to clear up some of the propaganda I have heard today for this terrible bill. First of all, it has nothing to do with ``groundless cases or frivolous claims,'' because the draconian new limits proposed in their legislation applied only to valid claims in serious cases. It has nothing to do with groundless cases and frivolous claims. That is an irrelevant distraction from their own legislation, which is an attempt to reduce what you can recover with a perfectly valid claim when a jury has awarded you damages. Number two, the floor leader says that it would not apply in the case of someone being raped in a nursing home. Perhaps he thinks it wouldn't apply to my constituent, a 15-year-old girl who got raped by her dentist. But as I read the bill, it says, ``healthcare lawsuit means any action against a healthcare provider,'' and that includes anyone who is providing healthcare. So if a nursing home is providing healthcare or a dentist is providing healthcare, they would be covered by the law. But I would invite the floor leader to clear this up, because if he is representing now that rapes of patients in a nursing home or in a dentist's office don't count, that should be definitive legislative history that we establish today because we tried to amend the bill to that effect in committee and the majority voted it down. But he has just represented that a rape would not count, and I want him to definitively commit whether or not a rape by a healthcare provider would count. Finally, the gentleman from Iowa says it won't preempt the States, it will not impose Federal laws because it is still in the State courts. It is still in the State courts, but Federal law now applies. There are 28 States which have said that you cannot limit people's access to noneconomic damages when a jury wants to award them those damages for pain and suffering. They have either said in their Constitution there can be no limits at all, or the legislatures have said it, or the State supreme courts have struck it down. And their legislation is a bulldozer that will run over the laws of 28 States. And they claim, Mr. Chairman, that somehow they are acting in the guise of federalism. They are destroying federalism. That is why I was so happy that Mr. Duncan, a former State Judge from Tennessee, and a member of the GOP majority, got up to say this is antithetical to everything they stand for.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Chairman, I thank Mr. Conyers very much for yielding. The good gentleman from Iowa invites us to believe that the laws of the States are not being overridden because some of these States don't have laws. That's right, because their State supreme courts have said that their constitutions forbid the imposition of a cap on what juries would award people who are injured in medical cases. So, in Arizona, Arkansas, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and Wyoming, there are State constitutional prohibitions explicitly on damage caps. In New York and Oklahoma, there are explicit caps on damages in wrongful death cases. And in 11 States, State supreme courts have struck down statutorily enacted medical malpractice damage caps: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Missouri, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, Washington, and Wisconsin. Now, what is interesting in my State, the 15-year-old girl who was raped by her dentist could recover up to $785,000 because we had a whole special session of our general assembly to arrive at that figure. But there are other States where they said you can't have any limits at all, and those are the States that are being attacked by this legislation because now they are reducing them from potentially $20 million or $10 million to $200,000, an outrageous invasion in states' rights and the rights of juries to decide how people need to be compensated.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Chairman, first of all, there are only three States in the Union that set the limit where they want Congress to set it for every State, which is $250,000. They are overriding the laws of 28 States which allow for unlimited damages. Number two, the gentleman from Iowa says: Well, a rape is criminal, so it is not related. But you can bring civil actions against the same conduct that constitutes a crime. So if you look at your own bill, it says any theory of liability, so that would include intentional acts. Now, again, Mr. Chairman, is the majority representing that this will not apply to intentional torts? Because they were very definitive in committee that it would apply to intentional torts, including rapes and assaults. So I would like to know: Does it apply or does it not? Because this is a critical matter, because people have been--we are not talking about the good doctors. Everybody loves the good doctors. We are talking about doctors or nursing home providers or dentists who rape their patients and assault their patients. They would be limited--juries could try to give millions of dollars, but their legislation would limit you to $250,000 in noneconomic damages. We have got to clear this up, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, it is with great respect that I take the time to draw your attention to the important work of the Rachel Carson Council (RCC). Founded in 1965 and based in Bethesda, Maryland, the RCC honors the legacy and environmental ethic of Rachel Carson by linking environmental, health, and social policy solutions ``with the goal of building a more just, sustainable, and peaceful future.'' The RCC recently released a comprehensive report, ``Fowl Matters,'' examining poultry production and its impact on public health and clean air and water. The report details the dramatic changes in the chicken industry over the past half-century, whereby the traditional practice of families raising chickens on small farms in open spaces for personal use has given way to modern-day Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs). As the RCC documents in its report, this new model has sweeping negative implications for the health and safety of people, animals, and the environment. The report raises serious concerns regarding the enforcement of existing regulations under the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act related to CAFOs. For instance, it notes that industrial agriculture is one of the largest contributors of nutrient and sediment pollution to the Chesapeake Bay watershed, resulting in algal blooms that block sunlight from underwater grasses and suck up oxygen that fish populations need to survive. On Maryland's Eastern shore alone, CAFOs produce as much sewage as do 9.8 million humans, most of which goes untreated, threatening human health, fishing, and the public's ability to enjoy this indispensable natural resource. Additionally, the large fans used by CAFOs to aerate confined waste can cause nearby residents to be exposed to air polluted by ammonia and other dangerous particles. Breathing in this polluted air can cause respiratory diseases, asthma, and lung cancer. The RCC report underlines these pollution concerns by highlighting that CAFOs are often located near vulnerable communities of lower socioeconomic status which tend to have fewer resources to engage in litigation asserting their environmental rights. The report also argues that conditions in CAFO facilities can endanger the health of workers. Over the course of 12-hour shifts standing in production lines with temperatures up to 120 degrees Fahrenheit, workers breathe air contaminated by dust, ammonia, and feathers. These workers are vulnerable to all manner of health problems, including coughs, asthma, bronchitis, carpal tunnel syndrome, chemical burns, staph infections, and loss of limbs in dulled machinery. Mr. Speaker, I urge you and my colleagues to review the well- researched and documented Fowl Matters report by visiting the RCC website, at www.rachelcarsoncouncil.org. We must keep these profound concerns in mind as we craft policies affecting the poultry industry and work to ensure strong enforcement of our environmental laws to protect the health and safety of communities nationwide.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members participating in this Special Order hour with the Progressive Caucus have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include any extraneous material on the subject of this Special Order, which is healthcare.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to be here tonight on behalf of the Progressive Caucus to manage this Special Order hour along with my colleagues, who I will be introducing. Several of them will be joining me tonight to discuss what is going on in the Senate today with the GOP finally unveiling their closely guarded secret plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act, a plan they are unveiling that has had the legislative benefit of no hearings, no witnesses, no expert testimony, no testimony by the public, and, again, no Congressional Budget Office score so far, which is the same way that the legislation passed out of the House side. So does all of this sound familiar? It should, because this is the same clandestine, in-the-dark process that led to the plan which emerged here in the House of Representatives on the barest of margins with every manner of power play and power ploy engaged by leadership to produce the final result. That bill, by the way, now stands at a whopping 9 percent in the polls, which means it is even more unpopular than Congress itself. And even though my friends across the aisle rented buses and vans to take them over to the White House to go and celebrate and exult in their dubious victory and uncork the champagne and drink beer with the President and his staff after they pushed the bill through the House, today, President Trump now calls the bill that he celebrated and he campaigned for mean. He says it is a mean bill today. And there is no question he is right about that. We said that at the time, mean as a rattlesnake, that bill, which would have thrown 24 million people off their health insurance plans and destroyed preexisting health insurance coverage for people with preexisting health conditions. The Senate version, though, is just as mean. It is downright mean. It may even be meaner than the House version. It not only strips health insurance coverage from tens of millions of our fellow American citizens; it not only forces American families to pay higher premiums and deductibles, increasing out-of-pocket costs, all to pay for a tax cut for the wealthiest of our citizens; it forces Americans, ages 50 to 64, to pay premiums five times higher than everyone else, no matter how healthy you are. That is right. If you are in the age bracket of 50 to 64, your premiums, under their bill, will be five times higher than everybody else in the population, no matter how healthy you are. It reduces the life of the Medicare trust fund and robs funds that seniors depend on to get the long-term care that they need. It blocked grants, Medicaid to the States, and then, astonishingly, for the first time ever, places a per capita cap on Medicaid payments for all recipients, including disabled Americans and senior citizens. That is just unconscionable. Think about it. For the first time ever, under Medicaid, the Federal Government would not commit to pay for all of enrollees' health bills. So if your illness or your injuries are too severe or too complicated, your treatment too long, tough luck for you, buddy; you are on your own, Jack. That is the new proposal that is coming out from the Senate today. The people that railed about death panels before passage of the Affordable Care Act, panels that never materialized and were proven to be an absolute fiction and fantasy, now seek to throw millions of people off of their health insurance, roll back the Medicaid expansion in the Affordable Care Act, which benefitted millions of our countrymen and -women, and then cut the heart out of the Medicaid guarantee by placing a per capita cap on payments to beneficiaries. And this particular assault on the health and well-being of the American people doesn't even claim to be a response to any alleged problems with the Affordable Care Act, or with ObamaCare as they call it. It is, instead, a sweeping change to Medicaid that so-called free market conservatives have been trying to make for years. This Senate legislation, cooked up in secret and seasoned with slashing cuts to Medicaid, is one fine mess. It does nothing but make our healthcare system more expensive, dangerously throws tens of millions of people off of their insurance, and eviscerates the core protections of Medicaid. And why? What is the public policy being advanced here? All for a tax cut for the wealthiest Americans. It takes a special kind of single- minded focus to turn a healthcare bill into a massive tax cut for the people who need it the least in America. Now, I heard some of my friends, my distinguished colleagues on the other side, say that other colleagues should not have been talking about how the bill was ``mean,'' or ``mean spirited,'' or ``mean'' because we have a renewed spirit of civility in this Chamber, which we do; and I praise it, and I celebrate it. Ever since the terrible attack on our colleague Steve Scalise and other colleagues and the Capitol Police officers who rose valiantly to defend them, we have really tried to put aside a lot of the partisan rancor. But my friends, we have got to talk honestly about legislation which is threatening the well-being of our own citizens. The word ``mean'' comes not from my colleagues who were speaking before. The word ``mean'' comes from the President of the United States himself, who said that the legislation that passed out of the House, looking back on it, was ``mean.'' Now, all of that was in order to say he likes the Senate version instead, but we think that the Senate version is even meaner than the bill that the President has already described as ``mean'' that came of the House. So to describe more of the specific terms of this legislation and why it is a threat to our public health, why it is a threat to the basic values of solidarity and justice and community that defines us as Americans, we have invited a number of our colleagues to come up and participate, beginning with the Congresswoman from Seattle, Washington, Pramila Jayapal, who used to co-chair the Progressive Caucus hour with me. She has now been replaced by someone because she is moving on to an even bigger assignment right now, but please welcome a great Congresswoman, Pramila Jayapal, from Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Washington (Ms. Jayapal).

Mr. RASKIN. I thank the gentlewoman, Ms. Jayapal. We have next with us Congressman Ro Khanna who is from California. He is an economist, and he is a lawyer. He has taught economics at Stanford, and he has taught law at Santa Clara. He was a Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Commerce Department under President Obama. He is a well-known author who has written a very good book about manufacturing and economic competitiveness in the United States. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Khanna) who is going to be taking over for Congresswoman Jayapal as my co- convenor of this Special Order hour from here on in.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I thank Congressman Khanna for his very wise and insightful words. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the distinguished gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky).

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I want to pause from our analysis of the specific terms of the bill that was unveiled today to ask the question: What is the value that is really at stake in healthcare policy in the United States? When we were debating on the House side, I heard a colleague get up on the floor and say something to the effect of: Under ObamaCare, under the Affordable Care Act, healthy people are having to pay insurance to take care of sick people. It took a second for that to register with me. Then I turned to the person I was sitting next to and said: Yes, that is what insurance is. The whole point of insurance is that all of us pay money in, knowing that people get sick in the course of life. We hope that we are not going to be one of them. We hope we won't get injured. We hope we won't get sick or ill or come down with a terrible disease, God forbid, but we know it can happen, so we all pay in. When it does happen to some people, that is what insurance is for. So the value there is one of solidarity among everybody together. In the richest country on Earth, at its richest moment in our history, there is another value at stake here, which is the value of justice. Forgive me, but I want to speak personally for a moment here, because I have what we call a preexisting condition. So this issue of preexisting condition coverage is important to me and my family. I understand it is important for tens of millions of families across the country. If you are having a great day, and you have got not one, but two jobs you love--I have been a professor of constitutional law at American University for 27 years now, and I was serving in the Maryland Senate. But if you wake up and it is a beautiful day and you have got two jobs you love, a family you love, great kids, and constituents you are committed to, and a doctor tells you that you have got stage III colon cancer, that is what I immediately took to be a misfortune. It is a terrible misfortune, but we have to remember that it happens to people across the country, all over the world, every single day, where people get a diagnosis of colon cancer, lung cancer, Alzheimer's disease, autism, bipolar disorder, depression, multiple sclerosis, cystic fibrosis, you name it. It is a misfortune because it can happen to anybody. But if you are told that you have colon cancer, for example, and if you can't get health insurance because, for example, before marriage equality, if you loved the wrong person and you couldn't get health insurance through your spouse, or if you can't get health insurance because you lost your job and you are without health insurance, or if you are too poor to afford it, that is not just a misfortune. That is an injustice. We can do something about that. Life is hard enough with all of the illness, sickness, accidents, and injuries that people receive without government compounding all of the misfortune with injustice. Life is hard enough without government doing the wrong thing. So the Affordable Care Act added more than 20 million Americans to the rolls of people who have health insurance. The bill that came out of the Senate today wants to strip health insurance from tens of millions of Americans and jack up everybody's premiums and make healthcare more inaccessible for people. They want to compound the normal difficulties and misfortunes of life with the injustice of distributing healthcare in a radically unequal and unjust way. We can't go back. It is too late for that. The great Tom Payne once said that it is impossible to make people un-think their thoughts or un-know their knowledge. We have come too far as a country to turn the clock back. I know there are people on the Senate side, like Rand Paul, who I saw on TV speaking about this, who think we should get rid of all forms of public attempts to get people health insurance. Rand Paul takes a perfectly principled position. He says the government shouldn't be involved at all. I don't know how he feels about Medicare or Medicaid. He certainly hates the Affordable Care Act. He just wants to outright repeal it, which is what the GOP said they would do. So he is going to vote against that bill because it keeps the remnants of the system that we voted in with the Affordable Care Act. I understand that. I understand his position. I disagree with it completely because I think, as Americans, we have got to have solidarity with each other and we have got to take care of each other through insurance because the misfortunes of life can happen to anybody. So we have got to stand together. He says that is not part of the social contract. Okay. That is fine. I get it. But what I don't understand is people are saying: Well, we said we would just get rid of it, but we will get rid of some parts of it. We will throw millions of people off their health insurance. We will make insurance more expensive for everybody. We will cut the heart out of Medicaid. Why? What is the public policy that is being advanced here? It doesn't make any sense. Countries all over the world have arrived at the point of universal single-payer plans, like in France, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Canada. The countries that can afford it overwhelmingly have said: healthcare for everyone. That is why I am a proud cosponsor of a bill, which is proudly cosponsored by a majority of the people in the Democratic Caucus. It is Congressman Conyers' Medicare for All bill. I think that is where we need to go. I am convinced we are going to get there sooner rather than later. Winston Churchill once said: You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing, once they have tried everything else first. We have tried some other stuff in between, but we are on the way to taking public responsibility for the healthcare of our people. My healthcare is connected to your healthcare because my health is connected to your health. We want the families whose kids go to school with our kids to be in a relationship with a primary care doctor. We want them to get their shots. We don't want them coming to school sick. Public health dictates that everybody be in the system. A lot of young men, for example, think that they are too tough to go see doctors. That becomes a danger for everybody else. We need everybody to be in a relationship with a doctor. We owe that not just to ourselves and our families, but we owe it to everybody. Everybody in the system, everybody covered. That is where America needs to go. But understand that what is coming out of the Senate has nothing to do with that. The Senate plan is all about rolling back the progress that we made under the Affordable Care Act, like the ban on throwing people off of healthcare because they have a preexisting condition or denying people insurance in the first place because they have a preexisting condition. The fact that someone has got a preexisting health condition is the reason that they need health insurance. It is not a reason to deny them health insurance. What they are doing is perfectly backwards. The Affordable Care Act also said that young people could stay on their family's plan until age 26. Thank God we have had that provision. Even the GOP doesn't want to mess with that, at this point. We got millions of people into relationships with doctors. We could show you dozens of emails and letters and calls that we are getting from people who say: The Affordable Care Act saved my life. I would have had no access to healthcare without it. The whole idea of turning the clock back and moving in the opposite direction is completely antithetical to the direction of American history. We are moving forward. We want universal coverage for everybody. By the way, we spend more on healthcare than most of those countries that have single-payer healthcare. I think we may spend more than anybody else on Earth on healthcare, but we don't get the best results because we leave so many people out and we are spending lots of money on insurance. The last I looked, it was around 30 or 31 cents on the dollar we are spending on the insurance companies, on bureaucracy and red tape, instead of getting people healthcare. That is the direction we need to be moving in, not dismantling and savaging the healthcare protections that we have in place right now. I want to close with some thoughts just about the process that is going on. Back when the Affordable Care Act was being debated, my dear friends across the aisle complained about how fast things were going and how they thought the legislation was being rushed. I don't want to embarrass anybody by calling out specific statements made, but we have got voluminous statements made by people on the other side of the aisle saying: This is too fast. You're trying to sneak it through. You're trying to ram it down the throats of the American people. All of this is happening too fast. Well, Mr. Speaker, the debate over the Affordable Care Act spanned more than 12 months. It took more than a year. The Senate bill was unveiled today with no hearings, no witnesses, no professional testimony, no opportunity for the public to testify for nurses or doctors or patient advocates or any of the groups that are interested; none of them. In the Affordable Care Act, there were 79 hearings that I was able to find in Congress. That is 79 hearings. Not zero hearings, which is what they are proposing to do now. There were 79 hearings. There were 181 witnesses, both expert witnesses and ordinary citizens, who came to testify before Congress, in public. So far, there has been zero testimony on what the ramifications and consequences are of the bill that was unveiled in the Senate today. We had multiple Congressional Budget Office scores that analyzed the costs and the impact of different proposals that were part of the ACA. By contrast, the House was forced to vote on the GOP healthcare repeal plan in this body with no CBO score at all, no estimate on how much the bill would cost the taxpayers, no estimate on how many Americans precisely would lose their health insurance. We have learned later the CBO estimate of $23 million, but that was after we voted on it. So the people who were saying that the debate moved too fast back then--a year of debate, with dozens of hearings and witnesses, and so on--now seem perfectly content with a process where a bill comes out on Thursday, and then they are going to vote on it next Thursday with no hearings, very little public debate, no opportunity for people to come and testify, and no real opportunity for the public to process what is going on. What is the urgency? If it is such a great bill, then we should be out trumpeting it and advertising it. And everybody should have at least one townhall meeting back in their congressional districts to explain how they feel about it so that everybody's constituents can ask us about the bill. Is it going to improve America's healthcare? Is it going to improve the health and well-being of the people, or reduce the health and well- being of the American people? Is it going to drive our premiums, copays, and deductibles even more? Those are questions we should have to face with our constituents. Regardless of what your political party or ideology is, everybody should tell their Member of Congress: At the very least, let's have some public discussion about it. Let's have the opportunity for townhall meetings across the country before we completely rewrite the healthcare plan for the American people. I urge my colleagues to slow down, take a step back, and work across the aisle for the best possible results. There are things we can do together to help. For example, I heard the President of the United States come to our body and make a speech in which he said that prescription drug prices were out of control and we needed to give government the authority to negotiate lower drug prices. I agree 100 percent with the President of the United States about that. There has been no action on that by my friends across the aisle in the House or in the Senate, and I beseech the President of the United States, before you advance 1 centimeter further on this extremely controversial bill, which I understand four Republican Senators have already announced their opposition to today, before you go any further on this, let's get to something we can agree on for once. Let's find the common ground. And the common ground has got to be prescription drug prices are out of control for Americans. Let us give the government the authority to negotiate for lower drug prices in Medicare the way that we have got it for VA benefits or for Medicaid prescription drugs. We have got that authority, but there was a special interest provision slipped into Medicare part D, and the government doesn't have that authority. That is authority we should have. Mr. President, we agree with you about that. Why don't you put a pause on trying to demolish the ACA and Medicaid, and let's see if we can get some prescription drug legislation that will bring prices down for all Americans. We are ready to work with you on that. There are reports that there is some effort to come up with a phony plan on prescription drug prices that wouldn't actually give the government the authority to negotiate lower prices. I hope that is not true, but let's have a real plan to bring people's prescription drug prices down. There are things we can do together across the aisle. In fact, the President of the United States said repeatedly during the campaign that his plan would be a magnificent plan that would cover everybody. He said everybody would be part of it. And a lot of people, including me, took him to be invoking the single-payer universal health plans that work all over the world, that work in Canada and that work throughout Europe and so on. Mr. Speaker, let me ask, would it be possible for us to get together with the President in order to come up with a single-payer plan, the kind that he invoked over the course of the campaign? Let's seize upon the new spirit of civility and community in this body and in Congress to come up with plans that bring us together, that don't drive us apart. The plan that passed out of the House of Representatives is standing at 9 percent in the public opinion polls. I can't imagine that the Senate plan is going to be any more popular. If this was a mean plan, as the President said, the Senate plan looks meaner, or at least as mean as the House plan is. But even if you doubled it and said 18 percent of the people would support it, that is still a tiny fraction of the American people. The overwhelming majority of Americans are not sold on this idea of turning the clock back and throwing millions of people off their health insurance plans. Let us work together, and we can do it. In the societies that have universal health coverage, it is accepted now by people across the political spectrum. If you go to France or the United Kingdom or Canada, the conservatives are not agitating to throw people off of healthcare. The conservatives support a universal payer plan. And there are lots of conservative arguments for it. For example, let's liberate our businesses, especially our small businesses, from the burden of having to figure out people's healthcare. Let's take that completely off of the business sector, and let's make that a public responsibility the way they have done in so many countries around the world. Wouldn't that be good for business? And doesn't it enhance feelings of community, solidarity, and patriotism for everybody to be covered by the healthcare system of the country that they live in? We can do this as Americans. We are the wealthiest country that has ever existed. This is the wealthiest moment in our history. Let's come up with a real plan for health coverage that eliminates as much insurance bureaucracy and waste as possible and gets people the healthcare coverage that they need. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank you for the opportunity to have this Special Order hour on behalf of the Progressive Caucus, which has advanced the Medicare for All plan, and I encourage everybody to check it out. But in any event, we are not retreating 1 inch from defending the Affordable Care Act and the progress that has been made under it, and I hope that we will have maximum transparency and scrutiny of what came out of the Senate today, because we think that the only possible outcome is that bill will go down; then we can come together, find the commonsense solutions, find the common ground, and make progress for the American people. Mr. Speaker, thank you very much. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. RASKIN

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

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, since its founding in June 1992, FairVote has fought creatively all over America to advance significant voting and electoral reforms that make American democracy more responsive, more accountable, and more representative. I rise to celebrate this visionary non-partisan and non-profit organization which, I am proud to say, is headquartered in the 8th District of Maryland. Under the exemplary leadership of its Executive Director Rob Richie and board chairs, former Congressman John B. Anderson and musician Krist Novoselic and with the energy of its youthful, talented staff, FairVote has worked with purpose and imagination to implement ranked- choice voting, proportional representation, redistricting reform, the National Popular Vote agreement and voter preregistration for teenagers nationwide. FairVote's sophisticated educational campaigns have been teaching Americans across the country that these changes are all effective tools of democracy and can help us make certain that all Americans have their voices heard and views represented. Mr. Richie's distinguished career in public life has been devoted to democratic ideals, voting rights, and the realization of responsive and representative government. He has played a key role in implementing ranked-choice voting in over a dozen cities; in advocating the National Popular Vote plan across the country as states equal to 165 electoral votes have joined the agreement; and in promoting voter registration, voter access and voter participation. On behalf of FairVote, Mr. Richie has appeared regularly in the media, written for leading national publications, published nine books, and addressed important groups such as the American Political Science Association and National Conference of State Legislatures. Through FairVote, Richie's luminous work has changed America's conception of how we vote, what democracy means and how we can make strong progress this century. Standing with him throughout as a colleague and inspirational reform leader in her own right has been his wife Cynthia Terrell. As FairVote celebrates 25 years of thoughtful advocacy, I want to commend the group, its leaders and all affiliated with it for their hard work and passionate commitment not only to the principles of democratic inclusion and governance but to the difficult and urgently necessary process of electoral reform across the country. As a champion of electoral reform and the proud Representative from Maryland's 8th Congressional District, I look forward to watching the many important accomplishments still yet to come from Rob Richie and FairVote, American idealists and democratic patriots all.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time. I rise only to express my real disappointment in the way that this bill has been brought to the floor. Had the majority not insisted on a closed rule, preventing the House from voting on any and all amendments to repair and improve S. 1094, I would have offered an amendment to ensure that it applies in a way that respects the due process rights of Federal workers, and that it would apply only to collective bargaining agreements ratified on or after enactment. I support the goal of improving accountability at the VA, but I want to make sure it is not done in a way that prejudices and undermines the collective bargaining rights and the due process rights of the workforce. There are real problems at the VA now, we know. There are 45- to 49,000 vacancies there. There is bureaucratic dysfunction in a lot of places, and all that this bill would do is to change the evidentiary standard of proof from the preponderance of the evidence to substantial evidence in leveling sanctions and discipline against employees. That is a tiny detail. It is an irrelevant distraction from the massive problems that actually are facing the VA today. So we should be filling these vacancies. We should be improving the function of the VA, but we should not use this or that problem as an excuse to undermine the due process rights of the workforce. That sets a terrible example for the Federal workforce, generally, and it does nothing to repair the underlying problems and inadequacies that are taking place at the VA.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to share an excellent Letter to the Editor, urging the Trump administration to respect the political autonomy of American citizens living in Washington, D.C., written by David Jonas Bardin to the Washington Post. In ``Hey, White House: Leave D.C. Alone,'' David writes: ``The May 28 editorial `More meddling' said that the White House has joined Congress ``in trying to block the District's Death with Dignity law.'' President Trump's proposed budget would unconstitutionally forbid implementation of that law in the 2018 fiscal year, which starts Oct. 1. The Constitution established federal legislative power over a future federal district as well as future federal installations outside the District of Columbia, such as Fort Bragg, N.C., to safeguard legitimate federal government interests there. The Bill of Rights immediately limited those powers in order to block tyranny. ``Even before statehood and even without D.C. voting rights in Congress, it is high time to recognize that Americans living in the District count as `the people' under the 10th Amendment, which says: `The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.' Power to allow, forbid or regulate physician-assisted suicide was never delegated to the federal government. ``Mr. Trump should heed President William Henry Harrison's wise words: `The people of the District of Columbia are not the subjects of the people of the States, but free American citizens.' ''

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the subject of my Special Order.

Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, I am delighted to be here on behalf of the Progressive Caucus. This is our Special Order hour. We have decided to devote our remarks this evening to the testimony of former FBI Director Comey, who testified in the U.S. Senate today. General Leave

Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, today, America watched former FBI Director Comey offer his testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. It was a dramatic and serious moment in the history of our country and in the unfolding of the crisis related to the investigation of Russia's involvement in the U.S. election and then the firing of General Flynn by President Trump. This was the first time that Director Comey spoke publicly about his firing by President Trump and the investigation since he left the FBI, and his testimony confirmed much of what has been reported about the matter. Now, what any reasonable-minded observer would have to conclude after watching the testimony today, after reading Mr. Comey's testimony, is that President Trump was trying mightily to use his office and his influence to get Director Comey to drop the investigation of General Flynn, his former National Security Advisor. Indeed, President Trump as much as said so when he said that he had fired Director Comey because he was unhappy about the Russian investigation and, presumably, the Russian investigation into General Flynn. Now, Madam Speaker, distinguished colleagues, look how far we have come over the last several months. The President of the United States hired a National Security Advisor after being warned not to by the former President of the United States, by then-President Obama. That National Security Advisor lasted a total of 24 days in office, when it was determined that he had lied to Vice President Pence about his dealings with Russia. And then later we learned that he was a registered foreign agent, or he registered retroactively as a foreign agent, an agent for a foreign government. Now, think how dramatic this sequence of events is. Imagine, if you will, if President Barack Obama had met with Attorney General Eric Holder and Vice President Joe Biden and FBI Director Comey in his office and then asked Vice President Biden and Attorney General Holder to leave his office, saying that he wanted to speak alone to the FBI Director, and then proceeded, essentially, to tell FBI Director Comey that he wanted him to drop the investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails, saying, you know, ``Hillary Clinton's a good woman. She's a good person, and I hope you can just let the investigation into her emails go. Just let it go,'' and to demand repeatedly for absolute personal loyalty. Now, as it happened, Director Comey refused to take a vow of absolute loyalty to the President. After all, he takes an oath of office to the Constitution of the United States and the people of the country, so he couldn't say that he would give absolute loyalty to the President of the United States. That is not consistent with our constitutional form of government. But imagine that this had happened under the Obama administration. Obama had made a similar demand of FBI Director Comey who was investigating, after all, Hillary Clinton's emails, had dismissed the Vice President and the Attorney General to have a one-on-one conversation, and then said, ``I really hope that you let this go,'' using the full trappings of his office and his influence to try to get the FBI Director to drop the investigation. If that happened, I dare say that every Member of this body, every Member would have recognized that as an attempt to obstruct justice by the President of the United States, and lots of Members certainly would have been calling for impeachment of President Obama for interfering with an ongoing investigation by the FBI. Well, what is happening now in Congress? Well, lots of our colleagues are murmuring a defense of President Trump saying: Well, it doesn't look good and maybe he shouldn't have done it, but he is new to government. Trump is new to Washington. He is not schooled in the ways of Washington, it is being said. He is actually a breath of fresh air that he doesn't know how Washington operates. I think that that completely confuses the question. Dear colleagues, Madam Speaker, the law against obstruction of justice in the United States, which is a felony criminal offense, 18 U.S.C. 1503, applies against experienced government officials and inexperienced government officials. It applies to all citizens of the United States. It applies to people who have worked in Washington their whole life and people who have worked in Washington for several months. In fact, it applies to people across the country. It is not a law that applies just in the District of Columbia. It applies in New York. It applies in Mar-a-Lago. It applies in California. It applies everywhere. No American citizen can interfere with the due administration of justice, whether it is trying to persuade a juror to do a certain thing, whether it is trying to influence a judge in a particular case, or whether it is trying to get a prosecutor to drop an investigation into a particular person or into an entire subject matter. No one has the right to interfere with the due administration of justice in America. That is both a criminal statutory principle in 18 U.S. Code. It is also a constitutional principle, which is well recognized because democracy, our constitutional democracy, depends upon the rule of law; and there is no rule of law if there is no evenhandedness and no impartiality in the administration of justice. No one has the right to interfere with justice. Now what should be done about this? Nobody quite knows what to do at this point. We do have a special counsel, Mr. Mueller, who has been appointed, and that is good, but what he is looking for is counterintelligence information, and he is looking for possible criminal activity. But if we take a step back, what is all of this really about? I was very pleased that former Director Comey talked about this in his testimony today. What this is about was a concerted, deliberate, comprehensive effort, orchestrated from the very top of the Russian Government, to interfere with the U.S. election. That is something now that former FBI Director Comey has spoken about publicly, and it is something that 18 of our intelligence agencies have reported to Congress and the American people in a public report with a high degree of certainty that there was an orchestrated campaign to undermine and subvert our campaign, starting at the highest levels of the Russian Government. That took place, okay? So the criminal or counterintelligence investigation doesn't go to the question that has got to concern us in Congress, which is the threat to our democratic form of government. As FBI Director Comey restated today, 2016 could just be a dress rehearsal for what is coming at us in 2018 and 2020. The intelligence agencies said that they would try to do it again. Russia is no match for the military might of the United States of America. Russia is no match for the economic might of the United States of America. Russia's autocratic, kleptocratic, dictatorial-style government is no match for the constitutional democracy that we have built up in the United States of America. But the Russians have figured out a way to use the internet to try to penetrate the democracies of the world on the cheap. It is not that expensive to have paid trolls to orchestrate fake news and propaganda and to try to distort the electoral process in the United States of America--or in the Netherlands, or in France, or in other countries around the world. Now, we don't have all of the facts. That is why what we need is an independent, outside investigation by a commission that we set up outside of Congress--no Democratic Members of Congress, no Republican Members of Congress, no elected officials. What we will put on there are statesmen and stateswomen who are experienced in questions of democracy and foreign policy, who are trusted, and we will ask them to give us the kind of report that the 9/11 Commission gave to us but about what happened in the 2016 election and how do we prepare to stop it from happening again to us in the future. Now, notice that you can support this, and I think you should support this, whether or not there was any collusion by anybody within the Trump administration. You can be completely convinced that there was collusion between particular members of the Trump administration or Trump campaign and Russia or you could be completely convinced that there was no collusion at all, that they knew nothing about those efforts. It doesn't make any difference. There was still a massive assault on American democracy, and we have got to respond to it. That is why I think the pathway forward for us now is for both sides in Congress, both parties, to come together and to act in a patriotic way, not in a partisan way, to say let's create an objective, disinterested, outside commission to get to the bottom of what happened to us in this election. And we will let, for the time being, the Department of Justice and Special Counselor Mueller deal with the question of criminal culpability and criminal deeds, but that is of less importance, in truth, than the integrity of our political institution and the future of American democracy. There is the question which remains unresolved and, at this point, still relatively untouched, about what is so special about Michael Flynn. We have a President who is unafraid to offend anybody. He told our best allies in the world in NATO that NATO is obsolete. I think he has changed course on that, but he was very willing to basically wave off the importance of NATO. He was willing to tell one of our biggest trade partners in the world, Mexico, that he was going to force them to build a wall on the border, force them to pay for it. And again, I think he seems to have backtracked from that. I don't know where he stands on that now. He was willing to insult and affront the Government of Australia, which has been a great ally of America. He had a TV show called ``You're Fired,'' so he is not afraid of offending people, and we see him offend people all of the time and pick fights with people all of the time. He picked a fight with Meryl Streep. He is willing to tweet at anybody. But suddenly, with Michael Flynn, this disgraced National Security Advisor whom he fired, President Trump goes to great lengths to try to interfere in an ongoing investigation which I think everybody can recognize is obstruction or attempted an obstruction of justice. He interferes with the FBI Director in a really astonishing and unprecedented way to try to get Flynn carved out of the investigation. Why? What does Flynn know? What is the nature of their relationship such that the President goes to such extraordinary lengths to carve him out from the investigation? That is something that we are going to need to get to the bottom of because democracies operate on the truth. Truth is built into our system. That is why we have judges and we have juries. That is why we have due process. That is why we have congressional oversight over the President of the United States. That is why all of us in public service swear an oath to the Constitution. The truth means something in a democracy, so we are going to have to get to the bottom of that. But, in the meantime, Congress can act effectively and in a unified way. And I was encouraged by what both Republican and Democratic Senators on the Senate committee today were saying, which is that everybody agreed, or at least a lot of them agreed, that there had been this unacceptable assault on the electoral institution of our political democracy in 2016, and we have got to prevent it from happening again. We need to have a bipartisan, or nonpartisan, independent commission outside of Congress to study exactly what happened and to report back to us about what we need to do to build up our defenses so our democracy is as strong as our economy and as our military. So our democratic institutions need to be fortified against subversion, against hacking, against cyber propaganda and fake news and so on. Madam Speaker, I am going to call up and invite the very distinguished Congresswoman from Seattle, Washington, Pramila Jayapal, who has been a terrific leader for human rights and for democracy in the U.S. House of Representatives since her arrival in January. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I rise because the majority is expected to vote today to repeal Dodd-Frank, the legislation that we passed after Wall Street predators in the mortgage meltdown crisis cost the American people 8.7 million jobs and $19 trillion, including $2.7 trillion in retirement savings. Ten million Americans lost their homes and entire communities were devastated. But, amazingly, the majority wants to destroy the most important piece of financial safety legislation passed for the American people in 75 years. They call it the Financial CHOICE Act, but what kind of choice does it give you? It destroys the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which has saved 26 million people nearly $12 billion from scams and rip-offs. It destroys the Volcker rule, which keeps banks from making speculative bets with your money. The Financial CHOICE Act is the wrong choice for America and a very bad choice for Congress.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to be here this evening, and I am delighted to be hosting the Progressive Caucus Special Order hour. We have a number of Members who are going to join us to discuss the President's budget proposal, which appears to have been written at Trump Tower, primarily for the benefit of people spending the weekend at the Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Pocan), to kick off our analysis of the Trump budget.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I thank Congressman Khanna for that excellent discussion. You would think, with all of the domestic budget of the country being dismantled and slashed and reduced by the Trump administration that we would end up saving money, but they don't in any way at all because the money is just being shifted over to the Pentagon. So the proposal is to slash $56 billion from things like Meals on Wheels, NIH research into eating disorders and asthma and Alzheimer's disease and heart and lung disorders and breast cancer and colon cancer, and environmental cleanup like the Chesapeake Bay cleanup, which they want to zero out, and then to shift the money over to the Pentagon at a time when the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform received a report and had a hearing on a McKinsey report which showed that there was $125 billion in immediate savings available at the Pentagon in waste, fraud, abuse, and contractor overruns. So, at a moment when the Pentagon is drowning in money that they don't know what to do with and all of the beltway bandits are buzzing around in order to get their slice of the pie, President Trump decides it is a good moment to try to dismantle services for the elderly and to stop job training for young people, to stop job training in location for retired citizens, wipe out funding for the Chesapeake Bay cleanup, and roll back or abolish preschool development grants to the States. The litany of attacks on the American people is really quite astounding, and I invite everybody just to go and read the specifics of this budget, which can be read as nothing more than an assault on the health and the well-being and the security of the American people. For example, the Department of Education budget proposes to cut $578 billion in title I, part A to support services for disadvantaged students. It reduces IDEA funding by $113 million, seriously jeopardizing special education services for students with disabilities all across the country. It eliminates title II, part A, which provides Federal funding for teacher support and class size reduction. It eliminates or reduces more than 20 additional programs promoting literacy in our communities. It cuts Perkins Career and Technical Education funding by 15 percent. That is just on the education side. Department of Health and Human Services, it eliminates the Community Services Block Grant. It eliminates the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program. It cuts the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health by 40 percent. It reduces funding for Child Care and Development Block Grant programs by tens of millions of dollars. It reduces support for Federal job training for adults by 40 percent, job training for dislocated workers and youth. It ends the Senior Community Service Employment Program, an excellent program that has located work, meaningful work, for tens of thousands of older Americans. It closes Job Corps centers. It eliminates funding to counter the worst forms of child labor through the Bureau of International Labor Affairs. It eliminates $11 million in OSHA safety training grants for high hazard industries. You have got to read it to believe it, but the amazing thing is, despite pulling the plug on all of these essential domestic programs that have been proven to work, it doesn't save us any money because the money is just thrown at the Pentagon and is being saved to throw up the wealth ladder in the country, send it up the wealth ladder through tax cuts to the largest corporations and the wealthiest Americans. That is the name of the game. Everybody understands it, which is why this is the good news. At least we are hearing from both sides of the aisle that the President's budget written in gold at Trump tower for the people at Mar-a-Lago is DOA, dead on arrival. Everybody is saying it, that there is no way that America could absorb the shock of letting this budget come anywhere near to reality. But the message that we get from President Trump and his administration is very simple: Let them eat emoluments. Let them eat emoluments. Now, of course, we don't get them; he gets them. But the American people are left empty-handed at the end of this. We don't get any meaningful investment in the infrastructure of the country. There is no jobs program that is in here. There is no attempt to guarantee the solvency and the strength and the resilience of the Social Security program. We have got that as part of our plan in The People's Budget for the Progressive Caucus. It is far from trying to stabilize and strengthen Medicare and Medicaid, those two great victories of the Great Society. There is an attempt to undermine and ravage Medicaid and Medicare, again, to send all of the wealth up the income ladder, all of the wealth to the people who need it the least in the country, pulling the plug on everybody else. Well, our hope is that we are going to be able to organize people to stop it, but the tragedy here is that there are so many needs in America that need to be addressed. Working people have seen a major erosion in their living standards over the last several decades. Working people have lost pension security. Working people need to have retirement sources stabilized. We have got to use Social Security as a way to make sure that everybody can experience a decent and dignified retirement. Social Security is a great accomplishment, maybe the greatest antipoverty program ever created in the history of the Earth. It lifted millions of senior Americans out of poverty; and despite the opposition of the GOP at the time, now everybody concedes that Social Security was a brilliant idea with administrative bureaucratic overhead less than 1 percent, and it lifts millions of seniors to a state of at least a modicum of dignity in retirement. And there are millions of children who are on Social Security because of survivors benefits and disability benefits. So we need to strengthen the Social Security system. We need to reinvest in it, and we need to expand it, because it used to be that there were supposed to be three pillars for people's old age: one was Social Security, another was a defined pension, and another was personal savings. But the pensions from private employment are increasingly gone. They have been scattered to the winds. And people's personal savings have been eroded by the dramatic increase of economic inequality in the country and the erosion of the living standards of working people. Tens of millions of Americans are relying exclusively on Social Security now, so we have got to reinvest in Social Security and make sure it works, and we have got plans for doing that, too. But the point is that the real problems of the country have been ignored. There is no vision. There is no program. There is no policy for reinvesting in America coming from the Mar-a-Lago set, from this Cabinet of billionaires. We are not getting any of it. Instead, we get an almost laughable, comical, cartoon version of rightwing GOP economics, which proposes to slash everything and to uproot the basic programs that the American people rely on for a civilized society. We can do better than this. I see I have been joined by my very distinguished colleague who will pursue the discussion. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Ellison).