Louise Slaughter

Ms. SLAUGHTER

Ms. SLAUGHTER. I am pleased to yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Carolyn B. Maloney).

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

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Frankel).

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

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Engel).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Colorado (Ms. DeGette), the ranking member of the Energy and Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, if we have heard anything this entire day, it is the misuse of public tax money for useless select committees overdoing investigations that everybody that has investigated before has already said that there is no ``there'' there. We don't need to take the word--although I am happy to do it--of Mr. Pallone last night saying that the Democratic staff on Energy and Commerce had found there was nothing wrong here. Let's take Mr. Chaffetz's word for it. He spent 5 hours delving into what Planned Parenthood does and does not do, and he said, no, they have not broken any law. But that is not good enough because everybody is doing so well here making political points and attacking a Presidential candidate. That is not our job. In fact, I am pretty sure that is against Federal law for us to use public money for that kind of action. We did it not once, we are going to do it twice, and who knows how many more times before the end of this year. The big disgrace that is going on is the misuse of tax money of the American people in a House and a Congress that has no budget, no highway bill, no way out, and people who sit at home trying to figure out how they are going to educate their children, put food on the table, keep their job, and even drive on roads that are unfit to get to work. I would really appreciate it if we would stop this select committee and stop trying to take health care away from American citizens and get to work on their behalf. I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Ms. SLAUGHTER

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume, and I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time. Mr. Speaker, when the House shut down in 2013, I happened to be on the floor at midnight. Why, at this moment, eludes me. But I remember when the clock struck midnight that I made the comment that the great government of the United States of America was closed. That 16-day exercise took $24 billion out of this economy at a time when we were struggling, really, to get our economy back on track. That money mostly came from mom-and-pop stores that were in Federal buildings or in the national parks. The inconvenience to Federal employees was enormous. They did get paid, but they were worried to death whether they would be able to meet their mortgage payments or to meet the college tuition payments. And yet so many people were dispossessed, practically. Veterans came to Washington to visit their memorials, only to find them closed. I certainly concur with Mr. Cole. We do not want to see that again. It was foolish then; it would be doubly foolish now. We are now on the edge of what we are going to do because we couldn't get anything done. I am obsessed today by what occurred last night on television. I want to explain it to you, because I have said on this floor so many times-- mostly during the 54 times we voted to defund health care--that what was going on here was a gigantic hoax. I said just this morning at the Rules Committee that what we do has only a passing resemblance to what we are supposed to do. And I want to read a quote from what was said last night on Fox News by Representative McCarthy, who is the presumptive new Speaker of the House. He said: What you are going to see is a conservative Speaker, that takes a conservative Congress, that puts a strategy in place to fight and win. And let me give you one example. Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping. No one would have known any of that happened had we not fought and made that happen. Sean Hannity responds: I agree. I'll give you credit for that. I tell you what that means, Mr. Speaker. It means that this was used as a hoax. We concerned ourselves with that, and now we are going to see another one of these special committees. The Benghazi Committee has already spent $4.5 million, on top of all the money that was spent in committees, to point out that there was nothing wrong in Benghazi. And, once again, I was on the floor of the House for the rule talking about setting up special committees for Benghazi, when I got a call from the mother of one of the former Navy SEALs who had died in that awful attack saying that her son had been a Navy SEAL, he knew his risks, and would we please stop bringing this up over and over again. We heard basically the same thing from the Ambassador's family, who said that he knew the language. He liked to be out with the people. He could not be confined behind a wall. So what are we doing here today? More hoax? More money wasted? Perhaps. I told the chairman of the Rules Committee this morning that we would be happy to give them the rule for the CR. We want a clean CR. We were pleased as all get out when the Senate sent us a clean CR. But no, we are not going to do that. We are going to pretend, as part of the CR rule, that we are going to defund Planned Parenthood, which Mr. Cole just pointed out has no money allocated to it directly in the Federal budget. So what we are going to defund is I don't know what. HHS? Who knows. Maybe we will find out, maybe we won't. But they are doing this hoax again simply to fool some of the people on their side who obviously know about it because it has been in every paper and on everybody's lips that I have talked to that we were going to have to probably do that. But putting that on the rule this morning meant that we cannot support it. Perhaps you have the votes to do it by hoaxing people, but I don't know. We do know that that most conservative wing has harangued its leadership enough to add that vote on the bill even though, as I point out, we were very willing to give the votes on our side. Now, the Senate had 78 majority votes to keep the Senate open and Congress moving, but we will not do that because we want to try to restrict a woman's access to health care. We do it all the time. We have already had 14 votes. We did two or three this week. What in the world is it that makes this majority want to take health care away from people--54 times to kill health care, 14 times to kill choice, which is constitutionally protected, I must add. So across the country, our constituents must be thoroughly surprised at what really is going on here. A lot of money is getting spent. It takes $24 million a week to run the House of Representatives. And think of the Benghazi Committees. If you recall, at both Armed Services and Intelligence, their Republican chairs--and bless them for it--said there is nothing there. But we find out last night that the whole purpose of all of it was never to do anything except to cause eternal grief to the families of the four people who lost their lives and to destroy a Presidential candidate. Could the Congress really stoop that low? I certainly hope not. The facts belie my hope. So we will be back here in December, December 11, actually, when I suspect we will go through the same thing: Are we going to shut down the government or are we going to try to do our job? We do the same thing. We will have to put some things in to fool some people all the time so that they will think they are voting for something entirely different. Frankly, I am not going to try to explain why this is happening, because the people that it is meant to appease obviously know we are appeasing them. And it won't last, but it sure is expensive. I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Speaker, we find ourselves in a precarious time. At midnight tonight, the Government of the United States will close yet once again. Mr. Cole and I certainly have strong agreement on that, and I am happy for that. He is a true gentleman and a scholar here in Congress. But I continue to say that it saddens me greatly, because all of us who were wanting to vote for a clean CR, because of this rule, we will not have an opportunity to do that. I call for a ``no'' vote on the rule. I yield back the balance of my time.

Ms. SLAUGHTER

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the 50th anniversary of the National Endowment for the Arts. Fifty years ago today, President Lyndon Baines Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts in Humanities Act as an umbrella for creating the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities. Since President Johnson signed National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) into law 50 years ago, the NEA has been supporting artists and arts organizations across this country. The NEA's grant programs have helped support the creation of new artwork in our communities, taught generations of children the power of creativity and problem solving, preserved our nations artistic heritage, and brought art forms to stages, movie theatres, televisions, and public spaces across the United States. The investment we make in the arts provides us not only with the enrichment of our communities across the country, but it is also a powerful economic driver. Each year, the nonprofit arts industry generates $135.2 billion in economic activity, providing 4.13 millions jobs, and returns billions to the federal government in income taxes. Additionally, for every one dollar of federal funds we invest in the arts, we return 9 nonfederal dollars back--an unprecedented return on investment. Through this federal investment, the non-profit arts industry generates $22.3 billion in government revenue. The NEA has been at the forefront of a national effort to support arts and health in the military through the NEA/Walter Reed Healing Arts Partnership. This program supports writing, visual and music arts therapy, and yoga for service men and women at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and the National Intrepid Center of Excellence (NICOE). These cost effective, non-invasive arts therapy programs rank consistently in the top five ``helpful'' and ``wish to continue programs'' on patient satisfaction surveys of men and women who have gone through the program. Through art therapy programs, our servicemen and women can transition away from large numbers of prescription medications to art therapy programs which allow for healing, psychosocial skill building, and self expression directly correlated to an increase in quality of life after leaving the treatment at NICOE. The NEA also supports life-long learning in the arts through education programs that have been proven to help close the education achievement gap and help increase better grade point averages in core academic subjects. As President Johson said: ``The arts and humanities belong to the people, for it is, after all, the people who create them.'' Please join me in recognizing the NEA on its 50th anniversary.

Ms. SLAUGHTER

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Thank you, Mr. Tonko. I am delighted to be here with you. Mr. Tonko has pointed out that he and I were elected to the New York State Assembly on the same day. We have worked diligently while we were there for the people of New York to try to better their lot, and it is so wonderful now that we are working for all 50 States and New York, again, in mind. The people who sent us here knew that we stood for things like the Ex-Im Bank, knew that we understood that if we did not have a strong economy, we couldn't do much of anything else in our district like provide a good education and health care, and that the economy was the backbone of what we are doing. I appreciate your yielding me this time to discuss the importance of the Export-Import Bank. Mr. Tonko, it is incredible to me, frankly, that we should have to come to the House floor to call for the Ex-Im Bank's reauthorization. It is an important agency that has worked to ensure a level playing field around the world for the United States exporters for more than 80 years. Last year alone, Ex-Im supported 164,000 United States jobs through $20.5 billion in export insurance, loans, and loan guarantees, and all while returning $675 million to taxpayers, because it is essentially a revolving fund which is paid for by the user fees. So here we have an agency sponsored by the government costing us basically nothing, putting money back into the Treasury, which makes companies eligible to be able to sell their goods throughout the world. Now, my district of Rochester, New York, is home to advanced manufacturers on the cutting edge of research and development, and we do need the Ex-Im Bank to help market our products worldwide. The Ex-Im has supported 685 jobs and $158 million in exports in Rochester since 2010. In June, I toured Lumetrics, which is a leading Rochester manufacturing firm that Ex-Im has helped support the sales of precision instrument gauges to customers in 14 countries. Now, unfortunately, since June 30, manufacturers like this in Rochester and across the country have lost a valuable tool and many nights' sleep because a handful of members of the House majority are blocking the Ex-Im's reauthorization for reasons we cannot divine. As Mr. Hoyer pointed out, we have Governors, the Chamber of Commerce, people all over this country, as well as corporations, telling us that this won't do. We are now starting to see the effects of this misguided policy. As stated before, General Electric announced that it was shipping 500 jobs abroad because other countries are willing to provide the financing help that we no longer will. Boeing has lost two major satellite contracts to foreign competitors because of the Ex-Im Bank. Those are two of our largest employers. I am even more concerned with the hundreds of small manufacturers and thousands of employees whose jobs are now at risk without the Ex-Im Bank's support, and for no reason that we can come up with. I call on the House leadership to bring a reauthorization bill to the floor. It would pass without question and would allow this Ex-Im Bank to get back to the important work of helping to create quality, American jobs. I thank you so much, Mr. Tonko, not only for putting this together, but for the extraordinary work that you have done here and in Albany to better the life of the people we serve.

Ms. SLAUGHTER

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I am very grateful to Mr. Bishop and to Mr. Messer and Mr. Pocan and all others who worked on this really important issue. Mr. Speaker, the Perkins Loan Program is 57 years old. It is the Nation's longest running Federal student loan program. It is unlike any other Federal student aid program because this critical program is specifically directed at helping low-income students afford the cost of higher education. It helps the deserving students who would not be able to afford a college education otherwise, students that save up and work hard for every credit that they earn. Without Perkins, 500,000 low-income students across the country, nearly 50,000 from the State of New York and over 6,000 in my district alone, would not have access to a critical safety net. The Perkins Loan fills the gaps in student aid, and acts as a lifeline when unforeseen disruptions jeopardize a student's ability to pay for college. They offer an affordable alternative to private student loans and, furthermore, they are self-sustaining, meaning that as graduated students pay back their loans, they fund the current students' loans. This summer, 94 bipartisan colleagues joined me in a letter urging Chairman Kline and Ranking Member Scott to ensure that the Perkins Loan Program was not allowed to expire, and I am grateful for their help here on this today. I stood with students and the presidents of colleges and universities in my district, two of whom have received Perkins loans themselves, to voice support for the continuation of the program. Among the people attending were three medical students from the University of Rochester. Heaven knows, we cannot afford to lose the services of three medical students. I was also privileged to stand with my good friend Congressman Pocan and to hear from advocates and students who see and experience the benefits of the Perkins loans every day. While I strongly prefer a long-term reauthorization and look forward to working with my colleagues in the coming months to secure one, I am pleased that the Higher Education Extension Act succeeds in keeping the program alive, ensures that next year's incoming class will be able to access Perkins loans, and buys us some time to secure a lasting extension. I urge passage of this bill for all those students whose education dreams depend on having the Perkins loans.

Ms. SLAUGHTER

Ms. SLAUGHTER. I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Speaker, I come before the House today to honor a great young man whom the Rochester, New York, community continues to mourn and seeks to memorialize. On September 3 of last year, Rochester Police Officer Daryl R. Pierson was killed in the line of duty. His job with the Rochester Police Department's tactical unit was important to all of us. He was recognized for working to remove illegal guns from the streets. While securing our neighborhoods and ensuring that our children were safe, Officer Pierson paid the ultimate price at the young age of 32. He was the first Rochester Police Department officer killed by gunfire in the line of duty since 1959, and our community will not forget him. He left behind a wife, Amy Pierson--a young widow now--and two young children, Christian and Charity. It brings me great sadness to know that he will not be able to see them grow up and that they will only know him now from memory. Officer Pierson's death traumatized the entire community, which came together in mourning. Over a thousand police officers and citizens of our area attended his funeral at the War Memorial Building. But he served far more than what he did in the police department. He served as a member of the National Guard. He was also an Army veteran of the war in Afghanistan. After all that, he came home to try to make his community safer. He died trying to do that. He was a devoted police officer who did his best every single day of his life. The bill before us would rename the United States Post Office in his hometown community of East Rochester, New York, after him. It would be a wonderful tribute to his service. The most important thing is that every citizen of East Rochester and anyone else who uses that post office will never go into that door without remembering Daryl Pierson and who he was and what he did. I think Daryl's mother summed it up better than anyone could. She said: ``Daryl lived as a hero; he didn't have to die to be a hero.''

Ms. SLAUGHTER

Ms. SLAUGHTER. I thank my colleague, Mr. McGovern, for yielding me the time. Madam Speaker, I rise today in defense of Planned Parenthood, an organization that for nearly 100 years has been the only accessible and affordable health care for millions of Americans, men and women. Yet again, we find ourselves debating a bill that has no chance of becoming law, that attacks women and their healthcare decisions, and that distracts from what we should be doing: a budget to keep the government funded, which the majority shows no interest in moving forward. Instead, we are rehashing old bills that we have seen many times before. These Republican broadsides fly in the face of the millions of women across the country and undermine the health and well-being of poor and rural women, who, in most cases, have no place else to turn except to Planned Parenthood for basic medical treatment. Need I remind the Chamber that one in five American women has relied on a Planned Parenthood health center for care in her lifetime, as my colleague said, more than 90 percent of which is for preventive care: cervical cancer screenings, breast cancer screenings, and even HIV counseling? There is no other medical procedure so furiously debated. Do we spend years here debating whether men can get vasectomies during their reproductive years? Maybe we should do that because, obviously, we have cloaked ourselves in the medical field so that we can make those priceless decisions that people should make for themselves. Do we threaten to shut down the government over access to Viagra? No, we don't. This week, I received an email from a local Planned Parenthood affiliate about a woman who, when she was 19 years old, went to Planned Parenthood to get a prescription for birth control. During a routine screening, the doctor found a cluster of abnormal cells that could have turned into life-threatening cancer. The woman wrote: ``Early detection and treatment . . . allowed me later in life to have a healthy baby who is the light of my life. Planned Parenthood is the provider I know and trust. Why should politicians tell anyone where they can and cannot go for care? Planned Parenthood was there for me when I needed affordable, quality health care, and I don't know what I'd have done without their services.'' That is what is at stake. In spite of these pleas, Republicans continue their obsession with attacking women's health--I would think, by now, they would know better--and co-opting the most personal decisions of a woman's lifetime. Legislatures across the country, including this one, waste valuable time in pretending to be doctors instead of doing their jobs. Legislators do not spontaneously become medical professionals upon their elections. These constitutionally protected decisions are for women with the advice of their doctors, their families, and anyone she wants to consult, be it her priest or rabbi or pastor.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. What terrible decisions there are to be made between medical personnel and the patient. I don't want anybody to have to say: I have to wait until Louise Slaughter gets here because Congress has the last word in whether we live or die.

Ms. SLAUGHTER

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to urge my colleagues to support reauthorization of the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF). This crucial program has traditionally enjoyed bipartisan support and over the course of its 50-year existence has conserved iconic landscapes in every state. Investing in public parks and recreational areas is one of the most direct and effective steps we can take to ensure that future generations are able to enjoy the natural beauty of our country. Indeed, my public service began with a fight to preserve the beautiful beech-maple trees of Hart's Woods outside of Rochester, New York. Developers had targeted this magnificent forest for commercial development, but my neighbors and I worked together to delay their plans. Every time I return home and pass by the trees we were able to save, I am reminded of the importance of preservation. And, Mr. Speaker, there are few better ways to conserve and protect our nation's wilderness and environment than by supporting the LWCF. Since its creation during the Johnson Administration, the LWCF has preserved national forests, recreation areas, parks, wildlife refuges, Civil War battlefields, and historic sites across our country. This program also provides matching funds to support countless state park and recreation projects. These investments not only directly preserve our nation's natural beauty, but also contribute to our economy. Access to open space drives economic development, boosts property values, and provides healthy outdoor recreational opportunities for residents and tourists alike. Ensuring recreational access to existing public lands for hunters, anglers, and other outdoors recreationists is one of the important successes of this program and all of these activities support local economies. In my home state of New York alone, outdoor recreation generates $33.8 billion in consumer spending and $12.4 billion in wages and salaries. Importantly, the LWCF accomplishes all this at little cost to the taxpayer as the program is funded through fees paid by companies drilling offshore for oil and gas. It is hard for me to believe that this body would fail to reauthorize such a valuable program that creates so many tangible benefits at such little cost. I strongly support the LWCF. I urge all of my colleagues to ensure that the LWCF is reauthorized so that we can continue to preserve open spaces not only for all those who rely on these natural resources for their livelihood, but also for the benefit of our children and grandchildren.

Ms. SLAUGHTER

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time, and I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, the vote on the Iran nuclear agreement has been touted by the majority as the most consequential of our careers, maybe even our lifetimes. We have had months of consideration, hearings, questions, open debate following rules and customs of the House, more or less, surrounding the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran, an agreement carefully negotiated by the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Russia, China, and Germany to curb Iran's nuclear activities. As you listen this morning, you would think this was a negotiation between Barack Obama and the Ayatollah. Apparently, that is all that they want to think. The other countries played major roles here, and they are the most important economies in the world. This agreement is the best available option for peacefully and verifiably cutting off Iran's pathways to a nuclear weapon. On Tuesday evening, the Committee on Rules had a hearing on the third floor of the Capitol that lasted over 3 hours, and there was testimony from chairs and the ranking members of the relevant committees. We had a robust discussion and a healthy back-and-forth. We prepared for the rule debate. We had our statements written, but 12 hours later, the dissident wing of the majority's party emerged from a neighborhood bar, the Tortilla Coast, with a different path in mind. They rendered all our work moot, and the House was forced into a holding pattern all day yesterday while Republican dissidents brought their party to its knees. Once again, instead of regular order, in a perversion of our legislative process, we are thrown into chaos by a majority chasing its tail in a last-minute ploy, throwing together three bills that might as well have been scribbled on the back of a cocktail napkin. These bills trivialize our institution. They have been whipped up in an afternoon to mollify the disgruntled wing of the majority's party that shows no interest in governing. Their only goal with this trio of bills--which are contradictory, let me add, and I will say more about that later--is to feed the monster seething within their own ranks. There has been no committee action on these bills. There has been no debate. There has been no time even to consider them. Now, why didn't we do them in our regularly scheduled Tuesday night meeting? It is because we didn't even know they existed. Instead of addressing an issue of international global importance, we are occupied with the Republican Conference's internal politics, and it is an embarrassment to this country. This dog-and-pony show has turned Congress into a stage to play out the internal drama that diminishes our constitutional role. If the majority cannot devise a process for a measure on which they agree, on which they have their vote unanimously, if they can't devise a process for a measure like that, I shudder to think what is coming with act two, which we are hurtling toward, because we are days away from a government shutdown. We have no budget; our troops would not get paid; flights would be canceled, and what is more, the last time we had a Republican-inflicted shutdown, $24 billion was lost to our economy at a time when we were struggling even more than now to regain it. Even so, here we are, forced to join in yet another pointless exercise, and the Senate has said they will not take up these bills, and so this nuclear agreement will be implemented, which leaves the Republican Party with the majority in both houses, which they control, with no consensus. What is more, keeping Iran from building a nuclear weapon is a once- in-a-lifetime opportunity to silence the drumbeats of war. There is no opportunity to renegotiate this. With all you have heard this morning about ``this won't do'' and ``we can't have it'' and ``it is awful,'' have you heard a single alternative? There is not one. The possibility of peace in a powder keg region of the world should be considered carefully. Mr. Speaker, in May of 1946, shortly after World War II ended, when the horrors of global violence were fresh in our collective memory, Albert Einstein asserted that: ``The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus, we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.'' Very rarely do we have an opportunity to stop that so-called drift toward catastrophe, but we do with this measure, and all of our allies have agreed to it. Only we are trying to hold it up. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action provides for unparalleled access to Iran's nuclear facilities. The agreement blocks all four possible pathways to a bomb. Contrary to falsehoods reported by the media, Iran will not be self-monitoring. The inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency have unprecedented and continuous daily monitoring authority, and it is so easy, they tell me, to detect the radioactive material if they were to break this agreement. Only certain sanctions will be lifted. Many will be kept in place, for example, what they do with terrorist organizations and supplying arms to other people. We are continuing those sanctions. If Iran fails to comply, all the nations involved in the negotiation have said they will be reinstituted by using a snapback provision which is in the bill. Let me repeat that. We have heard from ambassadors of almost all those nations yesterday saying that their countries would absolutely comply with reintroducing the sanctions. Now, let me remind people that should the Iranians attempt to conceal their work, even a nanogram--a billionth of a gram--of dust of nuclear work is detected. Retired American military leaders, former Secretaries of State from both parties, the Israeli security professionals, and even faith leaders have come out in full support of this accord. The former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and former Secretary of State under President George W. Bush, retired four-star General Colin Powell, called this agreement ``remarkable.'' The former head of Israel's intelligence and special operations agency, the Mossad, Efraim Halevy, supports the agreement as well. He said recently to PBS' Judy Woodruff: ``I believe this agreement closes the roads and blocks the road to Iranian nuclear military capabilities for at least a decade.'' That is not a trivial thing. Domestic faith leaders have implored this Congress to follow the Old Testament creed to ``seek peace and pursue it.'' The agreement was painstakingly negotiated by Secretary of State John Kerry, Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, and Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz representing the United States. When hailing this agreement, Brent Scowcroft, the national security adviser to both Presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush, said of this team: ``There is no more credible expert on nuclear weapons than Energy Secretary Moniz . . . when he asserts that the JCPOA blocks each of Iran's pathways to a fissile material . . . responsible people listen.'' It is now clear, based on the declared supporters in the Senate, that the effort to kill this agreement will end in the upper Chamber, and the accord will survive and be implemented. Regardless of that certainty, the House majority has nonetheless thrown us into disarray. We will vote today on two bills, another one tomorrow. It was decided that, first, there will be a bill to say that the President cannot lift the sanctions and a bill on side agreements that they think are out there that nobody else knows about, and then the most interesting one is the bill tomorrow will be to approve it. You have already had all this discussion on ``we won't have it, we can't have it, the bill will not survive.'' They are going to approve it; but just in case, because the Senate won't take up an approval message, they kept another rule last night. First, they did away with it, then they put it back so that, next week, we can come up with a disapproval rule; but by next Thursday, it is all over, the 60 days are up, and the President may go ahead with the agreement. I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this rule and support this agreement. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Welch).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Doggett).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro).