Louise Slaughter

Ms. SLAUGHTER

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts, a member of the Committee on Rules, Mr. McGovern.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the previous question and the martial law rule, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. I yield the gentleman from Massachusetts 1 additional minute.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds. Let me say all I was trying to do after last month was to say that if Mr. Dreier's 16 minutes were not adequate for him, I would be pleased to yield him one of my 13. That was my aim there. I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Washington, the ranking member of Appropriations, Mr. Dicks, who has worked so hard.

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

Ms. SLAUGHTER. I yield the gentleman 1 additional minute.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. I yield the gentleman 1 additional minute.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. We have no further speakers. May I inquire if my colleague has any.

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

Ms. SLAUGHTER

Ms. SLAUGHTER. I thank the gentleman for yielding to me. Mr. Speaker, there are no Democrats on this bill. I don't know what all this bipartisan talk is about. The gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Levin) didn't even see it. None of us knew.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. No. If you don't mind, I'd like to get through my speech. We've heard this all day. I understand that there is great hope for a number of Democrat votes--and I don't know how that will turn out--but, frankly, I don't think that this bill will ever see the light of day anyway. There is not much support for it in the Senate, and the President said he won't sign it. So what I am hopeful for is that, when we really get down to business here, we can have a bipartisan bill. It is possible to do that. Just invite the Democrats to take part in it. Let me make it clear that you cannot call anything ``bipartisan'' when there is not a single Democrat on it. Also, a motion to recommit is nowhere near a substitute bill, which we were not allowed to do. Instead of extending tax cuts to the middle class and giving assistance to the unemployed, this majority is holding the middle class hostage in order to extract concessions for their friends in Big Oil. Furthermore, instead of asking those with the most to help those with the least, which is what we are supposed to do, today's bill asks millions of seniors to pay more for health care. In exchange, the majority will graciously continue the Federal unemployment insurance programs, although they are grievously cut; and 10 States will get waivers not to have to pay unemployment insurance at all. So that's a sort of Russian roulette idea. They cut the maximum number of weeks as Christmas approaches, which is the time of goodwill toward men, women, and children who are out of work through no fault of their own. In a country where there are four persons applying for each and every available job, that gives us some idea of how dire it is to face this Christmas and the rest of this year without jobs. Why can't the Grand Old Party help the middle class without demanding a quid pro quo?

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Why can't they serve the middle class without playing Secret Santa for special interests like the Keystone XL? In addition to the misguided brinksmanship of the majority, today's bill flies in the face of regular order and makes a mockery of the majority's CutGo rules for all bills. We've seen in the Rules Committee the fact that it has been waived many times today. It is waived yet again. And it says to the Office of Management and Budget and the Congressional Budget Office that they count the savings in this bill but not the cost. If only middle class families could use that kind of accounting. This is hardly the deliberate and thoughtful legislative process that the majority promised us when they assumed office almost 12 months ago. So because of the rushed process and the legislative acrobatics used to mask the true cost of the bill, I strongly oppose today's rule and the underlying legislation and urge my colleagues to vote ``no.''

Ms. SLAUGHTER

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I am going to make an offer that no one can refuse or no one should refuse. I'm pleased that the STOCK Act is something we can finally vote on today in this Congress. The STOCK Act has bipartisan support from 231 Members of Congress, a majority of the House, ranging from freshman Members to senior Members from both sides of the aisle. The bill has been around since 2006, and we do not need to study it another day. A critical part of the bill is the registration of the political intelligence industry. The burgeoning K Street industry gathers information from Members and staff in order to enrich their Wall Street clients, and it has been completely unregulated. We will finally regulate, through the STOCK Act, this lucrative industry, and ensure that Members of Congress and their staffs come to Washington to serve their constituents and not fatten their own bank accounts. There are 535 of us privileged enough to serve in this Congress, and we must hold ourselves accountable to the highest standards. The American people have shown an incredible interest in the STOCK Act. If you fail to vote for this motion today, you're going to tell them that you're not interested in their concerns. None of us on either side of the aisle want to do that. So I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of today's motion to recommit to pass this bill that has been around for years and needs passing very badly, and to hold ourselves accountable to the American people and to the letter of the law.

Ms. SLAUGHTER

Ms. SLAUGHTER. I thank the gentleman for yielding. And, Madam Speaker, good afternoon. Sexual assault in the military continues to be a serious problem. It impacts thousands of service women and men each year. While I'm pleased with the recent improvements made by the Department of Defense, there remains much more to be done. It is vital that we do all we can to protect the men and women in the military who protect us. I am very pleased that both the House and the Senate passed language improving the military's response to sexual assault in their respective versions of the National Defense Authorization Act. Earlier this week, I, along with Representative Turner and 45 colleagues, sent a letter to the House and Senate Armed Services Committees asking them to strongly consider the House-passed provisions dealing with military sexual assault. The language contained in the House version makes necessary improvements to protect our service women and men. Specifically, the House-passed language strengthens the rights of sexual assault victims by clarifying victim access to legal counsel, and record maintenance and confidentiality, which are critically important. It also ensures expedited unit or station transfer when a servicemember has been victimized. Imagine being a victim of rape, which one young soldier told me about at a hearing, while serving in the military, and every morning she had to salute her rapist. That's what the members of our Armed Forces have experienced and will continue to experience if we don't do something to change that situation. The House-passed language also stresses the need for the NDAA to include comprehensive training and education programs for sexual assault prevention within the Department of Defense. The Senate version does not include this protection, which is part of H.R. 1709, the Force Protection and Readiness Act, which I introduced earlier this year. I am pleased this motion to instruct conferees on the NDAA recognizes the importance of this issue, and I ask the conferees to seriously consider including the strongest possible language to prevent and appropriately respond to incidents of sexual assault in the military.

Ms. SLAUGHTER

Ms. SLAUGHTER. I thank my friend for yielding me the customary 30 minutes, and I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, there's a very dangerous and cynical game being played in the House. Americans need jobs now; and instead of spending our time on job creation, the majority continues to waste time focusing on bills like this one that make it easier for polluters to spoil our air and water; make it easier for big banks to take the kind of risk that brought on our recession; and make it easier for unsafe products from China to poison our children. The majority seems to think if they repeat their message that Big Government is destroying jobs enough times, it will become true. But economic surveys and economists from the left, right, and center say it's all a made-up argument. Bruce Bartlett, an economist who worked in the Reagan and first Bush administrations, writes that ``regulatory uncertainty is a canard invented by Republicans that allows them to use current economic problems to pursue an agenda supported by the business community year in and year out. In other words, it is a simple case of political opportunism, not a serious effort to deal with high unemployment.'' My friends on the other side of the aisle know this bill won't create jobs. And here's how we know. When the bill is considered for amendment, they will block an amendment that simply says if the independent experts conclude a rule will create jobs, it can go into effect without all these time-consuming extra steps. Why would we want to slow down a rule that could create tens of thousands of jobs? If this bill will create jobs, like the majority claims, what's the harm in saying the bill does not apply when it conflicts with the important goal of creating more jobs for Americans who are out of work? The majority cannot have it both ways, Mr. Speaker. It has now been a full 336 days since Republicans took control of the House, and they have yet to put a real jobs bill on the floor. But as of today, they've made time for 23 bills that would roll back protections for public health and safety. They provided ample floor time to de-fund public radio; to make it easier for felons to carry concealed weapons; and to reaffirm our national motto, which did not need reaffirming; and, of course, did we want to micromanage light bulbs. Why? Does the majority really think these are pressing national issues that demand our attention when we should focus on jobs? There's no doubt in my mind that in addition to making our workplace, food, water, and airplanes less safe, H.R. 10 would endanger our fragile economic recovery, impeding job creation. Having the right amount of safeguards against bad behavior is part of what has made this country so economically successful. We all know it was only after the financial sector was deregulated so much that we had a catastrophic housing crisis and the recession. Indeed, what regulation there was basically looked the other way. Indeed, in 2008 the Bush administration itself estimated that benefits to the economy for major rules outweighed the cost by at least 2\1/2\ to 1. Possibly as much as 12 to 1, they said. Mr. Speaker, I would be remiss if I did not explain the violence this bill does to the process of passing the laws, the process executing the laws, and the important constitutional principle of separation of powers. The practical result of this bill's new, additional steps in the regulatory process would be to grind the wheels of government to a halt. Our system of government already has checks and balances built in to make sure that the regulations do what Congress says they should. That is why we have oversight committees. After Congress writes the laws, there are numerous statutes and executive orders that ensure an open process as an agency writes the regulations, requiring them to listen to the stakeholders and the public, to conduct cost-benefit analyses, and justify every aspect of the proposed rule. Congress also continuously keeps an eye on the executive branch by exercising its authorization, appropriation, and oversight functions. Furthermore, entities whose activities are regulated have access to the courts. When Congress last considered a nearly identical bill in the 1980s, now-Chief Justice John Roberts, who was then an associate White House counsel in the Reagan administration, criticized the legislation for ``hobbling agency rulemaking by requiring affirmative congressional assent to all major rules.'' He said that such a requirement ``would seem to impose excessive burdens on regulatory agencies.'' Justice Roberts was right then, and he's right today. Congress writes the laws. We rely on professionals and experts--doctors, engineers, microbiologists, statisticians, and so forth--to spell out the details of those policies so the law can be implemented and enforced in a way that makes sense. If this bill is enacted, those decisions will instead be made by Members of Congress with no or little expertise in what they're talking about. In addition, with the staffs we now have, it would be an impossibility for us to able to do it. Americans are sick of Congress's political gamesmanship. The last thing they want to do is extend its reach into vast new areas of our government. But the Rules Committee's primary responsibility in relation to H.R. 10 is to ensure the integrity of the legislative process in the House. In sending H.R. 10 to the House floor, the committee failed its responsibility. The sheer volume of additional measures the House and Senate would be required to consider should H.R. 10 become law is enough to force Congress to come back into the Capitol and work in shifts. Otherwise, we would never get it all done. Even though President Obama's administration has promulgated new rules at a slower rate than the Bush administration did in his last 2 years, the 100 or so new major bills on our schedule would mean we would have to take up seven of them a day on every other Thursday just to try to get it done. Inevitably, we could not finish it all; and under this ridiculous bill, it means we would vote on the rest without debate. If the Rules Committee had bothered to hold any hearings on the bill, maybe the majority would realize how drastically H.R. 10 undermines the deliberative process in this House. Finally, I want my colleagues to know that this rule deems passage of a nongermane amendment that was written by Mr. Ryan, the chairman of the Budget Committee. The Republicans made an embarrassing discovery at the Rules Committee last week. They realized that the hundreds of new measures the House will consider under this bill would actually violate both their new CutGo rule and the pay-as-you-go statute that Democrats put in place. So the Republicans had a choice: they could either violate the budget rules a hundred times every year or just pass an amendment to make these embarrassing violations vanish. Which one do you guess they chose? This rule includes a magic amendment that makes all the budget violations go away in a big ``poof.'' But here's the best part: They're using the famous deem-and-pass procedure, which means the mystery amendment will be automatically adopted and the House will never vote on the Ryan amendment. I guess after all we've seen this year, it should not surprise me that last Tuesday the majority blocked our amendment to strip the special tax breaks from big oil companies supposedly because it was nongermane. That was Tuesday. On Thursday, they just ignored the germaneness rule for this budget amendment. But, most importantly, Mr. Speaker, we've had 336 days of Republican control of the House with no jobs agenda. It is imperative that we extend the payroll tax cut and the unemployment benefits before Congress leaves Washington for the holidays. That is why I will amend this rule to require those votes if we defeat the previous question. So I'm urging my colleagues on the other side, please stop worrying about your campaign message and start getting the message: America's top priority is job creation. Let's defeat this restrictive rule and get back to work on jobs. I reserve the balance of my time.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts, a member of the Rules Committee, Mr. McGovern.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews). (Mr. ANDREWS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

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

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. I reserve the balance of my time.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. I would be happy to yield my colleague an additional minute.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire of my colleague if he has further speakers?

Ms. SLAUGHTER. I am prepared to close as well.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, the majority's prioritization of special interests over the economy goes beyond their crusade against government protections for our clean air and water, and safe food and workplaces. Not only has the majority refused so far to pass an extension of the payroll tax holiday, meaning even though we're still struggling to recover from a recession, the average American family will see a $1,000 increase in their taxes come January. They have also refused so far to extend unemployment benefits for the 2.1 million Americans whose benefits will run out in the coming months if Congress does not act. Congress has never allowed emergency extended benefits to expire when a jobless rate has been anywhere close to its current level of 8.6 percent. Some Republicans like to argue that unemployment benefits give people a disincentive to work. But how are people supposed to take jobs that don't exist? Believe me, most of the people who are unemployed in our country right now would much rather get a job, but they can't find one. There are still roughly 6.5 million fewer jobs in the economy today than when the Great Recession started in 2007. So we're supposed to let them and their children starve or face possible eviction or foreclosure? All of the money that the unemployed receive in benefits goes right back into the economy when they buy groceries, clothes, and health care. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that allowing these Federal unemployment benefits to expire would hurt consumer demand and, thereby, cost the U.S. economy 528,000 jobs. And the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has indicated that providing extended unemployment benefits is one of the most effective job creation strategies available during a period of high joblessness, stating, ``Households receiving unemployment benefits tend to spend the additional benefits quickly, making this option both timely and cost- effective in spurring economic activity and employment.'' The choices facing us today couldn't be any clearer. That's why, Mr. Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to require that we vote on an unemployment benefit extension and that we vote on a payroll tax holiday extension for next year before we leave for the holidays. Mr. Speaker, 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. Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' and defeat the previous question so that we can do the right thing for working families and the millions of Americans looking for jobs. I urge a ``no'' vote on the rule, and I yield back the balance of my time.