Louise Slaughter

Ms. SLAUGHTER

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

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Lewis).

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

Ms. SLAUGHTER

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. We spent a good time here yesterday debating and voting on a resolution to sue the President for doing his job, and we are up to about the same kind of tricks today. But if that show yesterday of the Republican obstinance wasn't enough, last night at 10:30, the majority changed the rules in the House to block efforts to achieve a long-term solution to our infrastructure problem. Can you believe that? I want my colleagues and everyone else to know what the majority is up to. Mr. Speaker, we know and everybody knows that we need a long-term highway bill that would create more jobs and strengthen our infrastructure and provide more certainty for highway construction. And under the rules of the House--always--any Member of the House would have had the right to bring up real solutions to this problem, but not any more. In the middle of the night, the Republicans at the Rules Committee took that right away and gave it to one person, only one person out of 435: the Republican leader. It seems that Republicans are so fixated with my way or the highway that they are even willing to change the rules of the House to block a vote. This parliamentary trick has only been used once before in the history of the House--only once--and it was during the government shutdown that we recently experienced. While they were obsessing over how to deny people health care, they changed the rules to ensure that no one could open the government back up. None of us could bring that up except one person, just one: the Republican leader. And the last time they pulled this stunt with the government shutdown, it cost the economy of the United States $24 billion. That is with a B. Now, we don't know what will happen this time, but what we do know is that it is a dangerous ploy that will undermine economic recovery and job creation. The interest here today is not with the people of the United States; it is purely, absolutely a political stunt after the stunts yesterday. And the whole bill, what we are doing on the border issue, again, is simply a diversionary tactic that signifies not much.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I enter into the Record the story of a 12-year-old girl who was trafficked for sex and labor and escaped slavery with her baby and received a T visa in the United States. Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service: Voices of Central American Youth--Why They Are Fleeing Their Countries Background on the Humanitarian Crisis in Central America Since the Fall of 2011, prior to the President's announcement of DACA, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) started apprehending significantly more unaccompanied minors from Central America. ORR promptly started to open more shelters and detention sites for these children. Updated data from the UNHCR, has shown a 712% increase in asylum requests in Mexico, Panama, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Belize by nationals from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. ORR has reported a significant increase in both younger children and girls coming. Maria, a 12 year old girl from Central America, was trafficked for labor and sex, she fled with her baby to escape slavery. Maria was 12 years old, when she was kidnapped at gunpoint and taken to a home where she was held captive. She was beaten and raped on an almost daily basis and eventually forced into prostitution. Because of this she became pregnant and gave birth to a girl while captive. Maria fled with her child, riding on top of trains so that they might escape the sexual bondage. Maria ended up qualifying for a T-visa and is currently doing well She has now graduated high school.

Ms. SLAUGHTER

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, a recent poll from the Commonwealth Fund found 77 percent of people were pleased with their new coverage. Republicans themselves have a 74 percent satisfaction rate with the new plan that they have bought. The House majority is going to spend unknown millions of dollars coming from somewhere to stymie a law their own party Members support. Mr. Speaker, I would like to insert this article from Talking Points Memo, citing a survey from July 10, 2014, entitled: ``Survey: Most Republicans Who Bought ObamaCare Coverage Like Their Plans,'' into the Record. [From Talking Points Memo Livewire, July 10, 2014] Survey: Most Republicans Who Bought Obamacare Coverage Like Their Plans (By Dylan Scott) About three-quarters of Republicans who obtained health insurance under Obamacare are satisfied with their coverage, according to a survey published Thursday by the Commonwealth Fund. The survey found that 74 percent of Republicans said they were very or somewhat satisfied with their new coverage. Overall, 78 percent of Americans said they were satisfied: 73 percent of those enrolled in a private plan and 84 percent of those enrolled in Medicaid. There was a minimal difference between the previously uninsured and the previously insured: 79 percent of the former were satisfied and 77 percent of the latter were, according to the survey by the group, which is generally supportive of Obamacare. Those surveyed also reported being better off: 58 percent said that they were better off now than they were before, while 9 percent said they were worse off. And 81 percent said that they were optimistic that their new coverage would help them get the health care they need. Some of the survey's broader findings, on the overall drop in the number of uninsured and the percentage of Obamacare enrollees who were previously uninsured, generally fell within other findings. It found that the uninsured rate for adults under 65 fell from 20 percent to 15 percent since Obamacare enrollment began. It also found that 63 percent of Obamacare enrollees had been previously uninsured. The survey, conducted from April 9 to June 2, covered 4,425 U.S. adults.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, it is also obvious to the American people that this is a political stunt. A recent poll, commissioned by CNN, shows 57 percent of us oppose this lawsuit. That is right: the majority of this country recognizes it for what it is: a political scheme. They recognize that there is no basis for this lawsuit. And our third concern is the legitimacy of standing, in the legal sense, as well as the constitutional principles that the Supreme Court has said limit the kind of disputes that a court can consider. Perhaps the best authority for the inadequacy of the majority's claim to standing is one of the majority's own witnesses at our Rules hearing, the Florida International University College of Law professor, Elizabeth Price Foley. Professor Foley wrote in a February article: When a President delays or exempts people from a law--so- called benevolent suspensions--who has standing to sue him? Generally, no one. Benevolent suspensions of law don't, by definition, create a sufficiently concrete injury for standing. That's why, when President Obama delayed various provisions of ObamaCare, his actions cannot be challenged in court. Congress probably can't sue the President, either. If the majority's own witness doesn't think that Congress has standing, what judge will? Finally, one of the most dangerous possible consequences of this lawsuit would be an unprecedented transfer of powers from the legislative to the judicial branch. This concern for maintaining the separation of powers as it was written into the Constitution by the Founding Fathers is exactly why courts have established what is called the ``political question doctrine.'' It says that courts should stay out of fights between the other two branches of the Federal Government and should defer to the other branches when the Constitution says the matter to be resolved is the responsibility of the President or the Congress. That couldn't be clearer, Mr. Speaker. The mismanagement of our Nation's funds is deplorable, the partisan nature of the stunt is a abundantly clear, and our constitutional balance of powers is in jeopardy. I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the closed rule which, yet again, distorts the legislative process and stifles debate even on the most important issues. Mr. Speaker, we will ask the House to defeat the previous question. If we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to bring up four bills: first, the Bring Jobs Home Act; second, the Paycheck Fairness Act, which pays women equal to men for the same job; third, a bill to increase the minimum wage to $10.10; and finally, the Students Emergency Loan Refinancing Act, which makes it easier for young people to pay their college loans. These are the priorities of the American people, and I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the previous question and align themselves with those priorities instead of this lawsuit, which is surely a waste of time, money, and resources. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of my amendment in the Record, along with extraneous material, immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern), my colleague on the Committee on Rules.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume, and I thank my good friend from Florida for yielding me the customary 30 minutes. Today, we are taking up the very serious issue of the constitutionality of separation of powers, but the rule also covers the deregulation of pesticides. I think that should be noted here as well, because one is as ridiculous as the other. This is a ridiculous lawsuit of one House of Congress seeking to sue the President for not implementing a law they have tried everything to kill. The majority has wasted time, money, and energy on legislative proposals designed to distract us from the real problems of the United States. Instead of tackling climate change, ensuring that college is affordable, and modernizing our crumbling infrastructure, the majority wants to sue the President for doing his job. The record is clear. This has been judged the most recalcitrant and useless Congress in history. This lawsuit will be a monumental waste of time, energy, and funds. This is a political maneuver timed to peak as Americans go to the polls in November for the midterm elections. This lawsuit is a drumbeat pushing Members of the Republican Party to impeachment. Last week in the Rules Committee, Democrats attempted to amend this resolution. In the pursuit of transparency and accountability, we offered several amendments that addressed the cost of this lawsuit. The majority in the Rules Committee voted down every amendment that the minority offered. With this closed rule, we have set a new record, by the way, for the most closed rules in a single Congress. On the committee level, on the House floor, and in the minds of our citizens, this is a closed process, a partisan maneuver, and nothing but a political messaging opportunity. This lawsuit is a gimmick, which even legal scholars of the majority's own party say will fail, including the conservative writer and former Justice Department official Andrew C. McCarthy. He wrote about this lawsuit and said it is: A classic case of assuming the pose of meaningful action while in reality doing nothing. Democrats in the House and the American people could not agree more. The House minority has three main concerns about this lawsuit: first, the cost; second, the partisan nature; and third, the lack of legal standing and the implications for our constitutional separation of powers. First, the cost. Since the passage of the Affordable Care Act, which not a single Republican voted for, the majority has mounted a Herculean effort trying to repeal, dismantle, and discredit it. It seems that they will spare no expense attempting to take health care away from millions of Americans. Not only did they shut down the government to deny Americans health care, it took from this economy $24 billion to pay for that shutdown. In addition, with over 50 votes on the House floor to undermine the Affordable Care Act, the majority has spent more than $79 million on that voting effort. When the minority of the Rules Committee requested from the majority the proximate costs of this lawsuit, we got a response that read: ``A lawsuit is a small price to pay.'' Cost is not a hypothetical question, because there are real consequences for our country. The minority and the American people still would like to know how much will this cost and where will the money come from. We asked directly through letters and by offering amendments to the resolution, and we have gotten no clear answers. What cuts will come from what programs that Americans depend on to pay for this ridiculous lawsuit? The majority will spend money on more than 13 hearings, 50 briefings, 25,000 pages of documents produced, and allocated $3.3 million for a Select Committee on Benghazi. All that money for Benghazi, but they won't give us a concrete answer on where the funds will originate to pay for the lawsuit. In a similar lawsuit, when Republicans defended the discriminatory Defense of Marriage Act, they paid their lawyers $520 an hour. I choke over that figure. At that rate, we would have paid over $1 million a year for a 40-hour workweek. If we are spending that kind of money, we ought to do it out in the open, and that amendment was defeated on party lines. The majority does not intend to make this lawsuit anything but another opportunity to attack the President, which leads me to our second concern: its partisan nature. As I said, no Republican voted for the Affordable Care Act. After strenuous efforts to take health care away from millions of Americans, the majority plans to file a lawsuit that, if successful, would result in the faster implementation of the Affordable Care Act. The inconsistency is breathtaking. Let me reiterate that. After not a single vote for health care, with over 50 votes to kill it, they are suing the President of the United States because he did not implement it faster. I don't know if anybody can make sense out of that, but all this effort to derail a law that is working. Just 2 days ago, The Washington Post reported in an article, titled ``Medicare finances improve partly due to ACA, hospital expenses, trustee report says,'' that the Affordable Care Act has extended the life of Medicare by 4 years because of the savings, and that will only get better. I would like to insert this article from The Washington Post dated July 28, 2014, into the Record. [From the Washington Post, July 28, 2014] Medicare Finances Improve Partly Due to ACA, Hospital Expenses, Trustee Report Says--Outlook for Social Security, However, Remains the Same (By Amy Goldstein) Medicare's financial stability has been strengthened by the Affordable Care Act and other forces that have been subduing health-care spending, according to a new official forecast that says the fund covering the program's hospital costs will remain solvent until 2030--four years later than expected a year ago. The annual report, issued Monday by trustees overseeing the government's two largest entitlement programs, found little change overall in the finances of Social Security. The trustees warned, however, that the part of Social Security that pays monthly benefits to people with disabilities is especially fragile and, without changes, will start to run short of money for benefit checks in 2016. Taken together, the findings provide a nuanced portrait of the fiscal future of these two programs, which act as cornerstones of social insurance--and a buffer against poverty--for older people and other vulnerable Americans. The trustees welcomed the improved financial prospects for Medicare but acknowledged that the underlying reasons are not yet entirely understood. At the same time, they exhorted Congress to take steps to prevent both programs from collapsing in the long term. ``Neither Medicare nor Social Security can sustain projected long-run program costs,'' the trustees said in a message accompanying their reports. For the past few decades, Democrats and Republicans have fretted about the unsustainability of the Medicare and Social Security programs. They have appointed high-level commissions, proposed legislation and tried to stoke public fears that benefits might not be available for their parents--or themselves. But Congress has not restructured either program to withstand long-term fiscal pressures, and the issue has been absent lately from the agendas of both parties. At a news briefing Monday, Cabinet secretaries and two public trustees reiterated the call for Congress to act. ``[We] must make manageable changes now, so we do not have to make drastic changes later,'' Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said. ``It is getting very late in the game'' to find a bipartisan consensus, said the trustees' only Republican, Charles P. Blahous III, who worked on Social Security and other economic issues as an aide to President George W. Bush. ``A solution much further delayed is a solution much less likely to occur.'' Both programs are being strained by the nation's demographics. As more baby boomers reach retirement age, people 65 and older are making up an increasing percentage of the country's population, with proportionally fewer working- age Americans chipping in payroll taxes. Medicare's finances are facing other pressures, too, including from scientific advances that lead to new treatment and therapies, the report said. The trustees' forecast said that the trust fund that pays for hospital care--Medicare Part A--has been strengthened significantly, with the date when it is predicted to start running short of money extended by 14 years since the Affordable Care Act was enacted in 2010. The report also predicted that the insurance premiums that older Americans pay for the portion of Medicare that covers doctors' visits and other outpatient care would probably remain the same for a third year in a row. Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell said that it is impossible so far to gauge how much of that trust fund's improved fiscal health was due to the health- care law as opposed to other changes in the health-care system that are slowing cost increases. She said both had a role. The ACA, for instance, is slowing payments to Medicare Advantage, the part of the program in which older Americans join private health plans, while other provisions focus on curbing hospital readmissions. The report said that spending on hospital stays last year was less than expected, although trustees noted that analysts have not determined whether this trend reflected broad economic trends or stemmed from specific changes in the practice of medical care. If Medicare is unchanged by 2030, the year it is projected to become insolvent, it would then be able to pay 85 percent of its beneficiaries' hospital bills, a proportion that would slip to 75 percent by 2047, the forecast said. For Social Security, the trustees predicted that the program's two separate trust funds will, combined, have enough money to pay all the retirement and disability benefits it owes until 2033, the same time horizon as in the last two annual forecasts. They forecast that Social Security will be able to afford checks for retirees and workers' survivors until 2034--nearly two decades longer than the part of the program that pays disability benefits. Social Security's expenditures last year exceeded its income from payroll taxes, as it has each year since 2010, the report says, although interest so far is making up the difference. This year, President Obama backed away from an idea he broached in his budget last year to save money for Social Security by changing the basis on which inflation is calculated for the program. But his 2015 budget proposal reprises the idea of charging more for care under Medicare to older Americans who are relatively well-off--an idea that Congress has not touched this year. In calculating Medicare's future finances, the trustees for the first time acknowledged that Congress has each year overridden scheduled reductions in Medicare doctors' fees-- cuts that, if adopted, would lower payments for doctors' services by 21 percent in 2015. In the latest report, the trustees assumed that such cuts would continue to be waived. The trustees noted that their new forecast was released 49 years to the week that President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the law that enacted Medicare, a major component of the Great Society programs of the mid-1960s. Social Security was a response to the Great Depression of the 1930s. Last year, Medicare insured 52 million Americans, including 43.5 million age 65 and older and nearly 9 million younger people with disabilities. Social Security last year provided benefits to 41 million retired workers and their families, 6 million survivors of workers who died, and 11 million working-age people with disabilities.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request, I yield to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Butterfield).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request, I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request, I yield to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Hahn).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request, I yield to the gentleman from West Virginia (Mr. Rahall).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request, I yield to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Matsui).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request, I yield to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Chu).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request, I yield to the gentlewoman from Massachusetts (Ms. Clark).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request, I yield to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Deutch).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request, I yield to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Eshoo).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request, I yield to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Nolan).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request, I yield to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lofgren).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request, I yield to the gentlewoman from Maryland (Ms. Edwards).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request, I yield to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Roybal- Allard).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request, I yield to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Crowley).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of a unanimous consent request, I yield to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).