Louise Slaughter

Ms. SLAUGHTER

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Butterfield).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I'm pleased to yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from the State of Washington (Ms. DelBene).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I'm pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Castor).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Holt).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee). (Ms. JACKSON LEE asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Ms. SLAUGHTER. I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentlewoman.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I'm pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews), a member of the Committee on Education and the Workforce. (Mr. ANDREWS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

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

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I'm delighted to yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I'm pleased to yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Polis), a member of the Committee on Rules.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I hope my friend's comments mean that the Republicans are ready to appoint conferees. I am pleased to yield 1 minute to my colleague, the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Clarke).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule that will allow the House to vote on the Veterans Backlog Reduction Act. To discuss our proposal, I am pleased to yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Enyart).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to close, if my colleague has no further requests for time.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I wish we were debating legislation that I thought might actually have a possibility of becoming law, but we are not. I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of the amendment in the Record, along with extraneous material, immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' and defeat the previous question and to think about Memorial Day and our proposal to take care of the veterans' backlog. I hope that we are successful in getting that done. I urge a ``no'' vote on the rule, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

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

Ms. SLAUGHTER

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time. With today's legislation, the majority is putting the interests of Wall Street, once again, before the welfare of the American people. Unfortunately, the majority's desire to give a helping hand to Wall Street is nothing new. In addition to today's legislation, the majority has repeatedly provided favors to a shadowy arm of Wall Street known as the political intelligence industry. Over the last few weeks, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal have all reported on a suspicious surge in stock prices caused by operatives in the political intelligence industry. On April 1, a political intelligence consultant sent an email to selected investors announcing a pending change in government policy that would benefit health insurance companies. Shortly after that email was sent--actually 18 minutes before the stock market closed that day--stocks in three major health insurance companies skyrocketed by--hold the phone--$660 million. In 18 minutes before the close of trading that day, three health industries got investments of $660 million; and that occurred 30 minutes before the government announced its decision. Now, earlier this week, we learned that the political intelligence consultant sent a subsequent email boasting to his lobbyist friend: ``Did you see what I did to the stock market in the final 30 minutes of trading? I still want to buy you a drink.'' Now, this is exactly the kind of questionable case that I have been fighting for 7 years, and we finally got the STOCK Act; but my point this morning is that the SEC has launched an investigation into this matter. There would be no cost-benefit whatever to having the SEC stop looking into this bill and what happened to the stock markets that day because of political intelligence so they can look back over ancient laws. There would be no cost-benefit having the SEC so tied up with that that they cannot regulate that which they are supposed to regulate had they done a better job. The recent financial disaster that cost us an awful lot and would have been a great benefit to stop was not caught in time. The political intelligence industry walks the Halls of Congress every day looking to privately profit from the public trust. However, unlike lobbyists, there are no regulations to ensure they adhere to any ethical standard of behavior. Months before I introduced the STOCK Act in 2006 there were suspicious Wall Street trades occurring immediately prior to the Senate Majority Leader announcing an important vote on asbestos liability legislation. It soon became apparent that nonpublic information regarding the legislation had been used to enrich stockholders, and the political intelligence industry was at the heart of the case. We had a lonely battle, those of us--there were seven of us for three terms that cosponsored the bill. But in 2011, a television program called ``60 Minutes'' did an expose on insider trading by Congress. And overnight, just about--well, maybe by the end of the week, I'd say--we had 286 cosponsors in the House, including 99 Republican cosponsors. As the bill gained popularity, I was promised a markup in the Financial Services Committee, but it was canceled, pulled out from under the chair. In the Senate, Senator Grassley joined our cause. And when Senator Lieberman took it out of the Senate bill, Senator Grassley had an amendment that passed the Senate, putting political intelligence back into the STOCK Act. However, it still had to come back to the House. And miraculously, political intelligence was removed once more to benefit Wall Street. It was put on the suspension calendar, completely unamendable. I could do nothing about it. It is very painful for me. At least I've been paying attention here to what I have seen happening since. So I promise you that we will come back again with it, but as I said, I'm pleased that the SEC is investigating this most recent case. Two days ago, I tried to do an amendment on this particular bill to see if we could bring political intelligence back. It would have helped the SEC build the insider trading investigations, but the majority in the Rules Committee rejected my amendment and we go on today, as usual, without it. We also go on today with a bill that's never going to go to the Senate. As I pointed out yesterday on our 38th try to repeal the health care bill, that cost us $54 million on that particular bill alone, and every time that we have tried to repeal it--$54 million has been spent to try to repeal Medicare.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. CBS has said it costs about $25 million to run the House. I really would like to find out how much House time we've paid and how many millions of dollars we've spent since this term started with bills like this, one House bill--one House bill that we know the Senate will never take up, will never become law. And if by some fluke they should, the President tells us that he will veto it--over and over and over again. I could be mistaken with one or two things, but to the best of my recollection the only thing we've done here this term that got some action in both Houses was when we changed the FAA policy under sequestration. And I join my friend, Mr. McGovern, to say what we should have done is do away with sequestration. Maybe the freshmen who wanted to vote again to repeal the health care bill might have gotten some joy out of lifting sequestration and letting cancer patients again get their treatment and children go to Head Start. I'd like to try to do it that way. Talk about cost benefit--that's a benefit. If we really want to worry about how much it cost and what we get from it, nothing could prove that better than to lift sequestration.

Ms. SLAUGHTER

Ms. SLAUGHTER. I thank the gentleman for yielding me the customary 30 minutes, and I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, before I discuss the value of the Affordable Care Act, commonly referred to as ObamaCare, I must acknowledge the sad fact that this will be the 37th time in 29 months that the majority has voted to repeal or defund the law, and they know it will not happen. Recent estimates are that each vote to repeal or to defund the Affordable Care Act has cost $1.45 million in taxpayer money. So today's debate will bring the total cost of repeal votes to--wake up there--$53 million and counting. Now, while the majority wastes our tax dollars, think what we could do with $53 million. The agriculture bill we were all talking about this morning is ready to take $20 billion out of food stamps, feeding poor people, while we waste that kind of money here doing a bill month after month after month that we know is not going anywhere. Yet we don't have any positive agenda to put forward here. For the last 2 or 3 months, all we've done are one-House bills that everybody knows are not going to get passed, and it really is a tragedy because a CBS study says it costs $25 million a week just to run the Congress--and how deplorable that kind of waste is with all the problems we have in the country. We are told that the freshman Republicans would like, once again, to have an opportunity to vote to kill health care. I wonder if the freshman Republicans, as I know the freshman Democrats do, wouldn't like to vote to repeal the sequester or to maybe do a jobs bill, which we haven't had in 2\1/2\ years. We are not going to do anything about the budget either when we've heard all the time, Why doesn't the Senate do a budget? The Senate has done a budget. The Senate has asked over and over again for the House to appoint conferees so that we can get the budget put together and pass it into law. No action there either. Then, because of the sequester cuts, at least 70,000 children have been denied access to early education, and thousands of cancer patients have been denied their regular cancer treatments. The majority says it is holding today's vote, as I said, so that the freshmen can repeal the Affordable Care Act. I wish to goodness that they would give them something that would really pass and something good to vote on. Instead of voting to repeal the sequester, the majority is voting for the 37th time to repeal a law--and this is very important--that has already done so much already. It has given 100 million Americans access to free preventative health care, procedures such as mammograms and colonoscopies. That's 100 million already. They are voting for the 37th time to repeal a law that saves seniors $6.1 billion in prescription drug costs already. They are voting for the 37th time to repeal a law that has provided 3.1 million young adults with health insurance already that they otherwise could not afford. The Affordable Care Act has been particularly beneficial for America's women. Did you know that prior to the passage of this law in eight States and in the District of Columbia, domestic violence was classified as a preexisting condition and you could be denied insurance? They were denied insurance because they had been abused and because, perhaps, they would be again. Did you know that thanks to a practice called ``gender rating,'' women were charged as much as 46 percent more in premiums for the same level of insurance as a man? Maybe you didn't know that. But lots of women in the country are getting rebates for that very reason. Because of the Affordable Care Act, both of these discriminatory practices have been outlawed. In addition, the Affordable Care Act has already returned money to the pockets of millions of women thanks to the rebates required by insurance companies under the health care law. Finally, the Affordable Care Act outlawed lifetime and yearly limits, insidious insurance practices that capped the amount of health care an insurance company would provide. But because of health care reform, Americans no longer have to worry that they will be denied health care that they need simply because insurance companies refuse to pay for their continued care. And did you know that 85 percent of your premium dollar will go to health care and not to other things that the insurance company wants to spend it on? The majority has claimed that the Affordable Care Act is bad for America's small businesses. The truth is that for any small business that has less than 50 employees, it requires them to do nothing different, nothing at all from what they're doing today. But small businesses with less than 25 employees are eligible for a tax credit of 35 percent right now. And on January 1, that tax credit will increase to 50 percent. You will get a tax credit on half of the health insurance you pay when you have under 25 employees. The majority has also claimed and will continue to claim that the Affordable Care Act was passed in the dark of night through a closed- door process that denied their side of the aisle the opportunity to participate in the legislative process. This charge is categorically untrue. The Affordable Care Act was the product of nearly 100 hearings and 83 hours of committee markups, including both Republicans and Democrats making amendments. The House heard from 181 witnesses, both Democrat and Republican. There were 239 amendments considered in House committees and 121 that were adopted. And while some on the other side of the aisle charge that the final version of the law was rushed through the House, the final bill was available for 72 hours before any Members were asked to vote on it. In contrast, the Patients' Rights Repeal Act, which we're doing again today as I said for the 37th time, is being considered after no committee hearings, no committee markups, and under a closed rule. That means there will be no amendments on this bill. Even if one were sympathetic toward the majority's goal, the complete abuse of the legislative process should give every Member of this Chamber pause. Mr. Speaker, today's vote is just the latest in the majority's all- out effort to undermine the process of implementing the health care law. Their efforts have taken many forms, but central to it all is their refusal to provide the necessary funding to fully implement the law and a gleeful willingness to criticize an implementation process that is underfunded and undermined at every single turn. Despite their best efforts, I believe that in the years to come, the majority will find that they stood on the wrong side of history, just as they stood on the wrong side of history when Social Security was passed and when Medicare came into being. Indeed, the opponents of the Affordable Care Act have already had their day in court. Last summer, the Supreme Court affirmed the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, putting to rest any false legal concerns that opponents had. With the constitutionality of the law no longer in question, one might expect opponents to criticize the law's impact on our Nation's finances. But here again, the facts will stand in the way. Over the last 3 years, U.S. health care spending grew at 3.9 percent. That, Mr. Speaker, is the lowest growth rate in 50 years. And according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, repealing the Affordable Care Act would actually increase our Nation's deficit by more than $100 billion over the next 10 years. Please think of that and understand what they are trying to do away with today--the things that help you. Mr. Speaker, providing safe, secure, and affordable health care for our citizens has been the goal of both Republican and Democrat lawmakers for generations. As far back as Theodore Roosevelt, we have acknowledged the need to provide our citizens with a health care system that puts their health before industry profits, that has as good outcomes as other parts of the world provide for their citizens. We need to treat health care as a right for all, not a privilege for the lucky few. Under the leadership of a Democratic Congress, we managed to realize at long last this long-awaited goal by passing the Affordable Care Act through an open, deliberative, and thorough legislative process. And from reducing our Nation's health care spending to expanding health care to millions of Americans who could not afford it, the Affordable Care Act is succeeding. It is in this light that the majority's 37th vote in 29 months to repeal health care should be judged. And it's hard to judge their politically driven vote as anything other than a disservice to the American people, a waste of taxpayer money and a way to spread misinformation. I urge my colleagues to reject today's rule and the underlying legislation. And I reaffirm my pride in supporting the law that is already helping to save lives and already providing American people with secure and affordable health care. And after it is fully implemented next year, all Americans will benefit. I reserve the balance of my time

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Matsui).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I'm pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentlelady from New York (Mrs. Maloney).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I'm pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Cicilline).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I'm pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Wasserman Schultz).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Swalwell).