Steve Scalise

Mr. SCALISE

Mr. SCALISE. Madam Speaker, I would like to ask--I know there are a lot of good-faith negotiations that continue on the United States- Mexico-Canada trade agreement, USMCA. We have been having productive conversations, meetings, some potential changes that I know we are negotiating with the other countries involved, as well. Does the gentleman have any idea if we may be close to bringing USMCA to the floor for a vote? Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. SCALISE

Mr. SCALISE. Madam Speaker, I rise today to recognize Greg Watson, one of my Congressional staff members who will be departing my office soon for a great opportunity to work in the White House. As one of my Legislative Assistants, Greg has been a valuable member of Team Scalise, and I will miss his expertise and guidance on the issues he so capably handled while in my office. Not only has Greg been my lead technology and telecommunications staffer, and primary Energy and Commerce Committee advisor, he has also worked each and every day serving my constituents in Louisiana's First Congressional District. I am grateful to Greg for his years of service in my office, and I congratulate him on this exciting new chapter of his career.

Mr. SCALISE

Mr. SCALISE. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for walking through the schedule. As we have been hearing about the CR, I express similar disappointment that we have not been able to get the full-year appropriations bill agreed upon by both the House and the Senate, as we worked incredibly hard to get a 2-year budget deal, a very bipartisan agreement. The objective of getting a 2-year budget deal in last year's Congress was to ensure that we could agree on levels of funding for our troops, which we did to make sure that, instead of having CRs, we were actually able to have a full-year spending bill that is agreed to by both sides so that we can get certainty to our troops. They are not getting the tools they need. We already agreed on the levels of funding, and yet, there is still not an agreed negotiation. This is not a case where the House can just sit back and wait for the Senate to do something. We are in a CR now where there is a limited amount of time. I understand this CR will go through December 20, so for a few more weeks. It is not a matter of waiting for the Senate to come to an agreement between Republicans and Democrats there. It is a matter of getting the House and the Senate to get an agreement. At some point, somebody in the leadership of the House majority is going to have to go sit down with somebody in the leadership of the Senate majority. Everybody has their different parties and their different ideas, and they are going to have to stay in that room until they get an agreement. It has happened before. It has to happen this time. It hasn't happened yet. I don't know if those honest, earnest negotiations are going on between whoever in your House majority is going to be in the lead position to head that negotiation and whoever it is on the Senate side. It might be their appropriations chairs and your appropriations chairs, whoever has been designated by the House. There has to be a commitment that they are just going to go sit in a room until they figure out their differences. We agreed on a number. We passed a bipartisan 2-year budget deal for the purpose especially of making sure our military doesn't go in limbo, and these other Federal agencies that are important, too, that need to get the agreed numbers that they can come to an agreement on to spend. But, ultimately, we know the cost--we are hearing the cost from our military generals--of the CR. It is probably $1.5 billion a month that they lose, that they are not able to properly go and buy the equipment our troops need when we are operating under a CR. I hope we get to that agreement soon where whoever it is on your side that is going to be the point person that is authorized to get a deal can go sit down with the Senate and just stay until they get that deal. And I know there are a lot of other things going on over here. We are not going to get into the impeachment infatuation and what it has taken away from. I hope it has not taken away from the ability to get this agreement. This is something both sides are going to have to do: House, Senate, Republican, Democrat. Until both sides get that agreement, we are at an impasse. And the most disappointing thing is, we already agreed on the budget numbers. That is usually the big fight. We had that fight and we had an agreement. Bipartisan. This is how much we are going to spend on defense. This is how much we are going to spend on nondefense and, yet, even with that agreement, we can't get the final bills brought to the floor. Not partisan bills, but bipartisan bills that can ultimately get signed. And so I hope that gets done soon. It is both sides that are going to have to do it: House, Senate, Republican, Democrat. I would yield to the gentleman.

Mr. SCALISE. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), for the purpose of inquiring from the majority leader the House floor schedule next week.

Mr. SCALISE. Madam Speaker, let's be clear that we both know the Senate operates differently than the House. The Senate has a 60-vote requirement, which means for the Senate to move anything, it actually takes Republicans and Democrats to come to an agreement. The gentleman can talk about issues where Republicans are in disagreement. I could surely go through areas where Democrats are in disagreement; for example, funding over border security, which is a clear sticking point, one of the holdups in getting an agreement. We probably have a pretty good agreement on defense, even though while the gentleman says the House did its job, the House's job is to pass bills that can ultimately become law to advance all the things that we agree upon, and there is a President that is part of this process. So like in previous administrations, when we have these negotiations, oftentimes it is not just the House and Senate. Clearly, we need more serious agreements and negotiations between House and Senate leaders to come to an agreement. But, ultimately, you also have to produce a bill that the White House is in agreement with where they will sign. It doesn't mean you take what they want. In fact, the President is not getting many of the things he requested. But at some level, if the President is going to veto a bill, it is probably worth having negotiations to see if you can get beyond that. So this would not be the first administration where the House and Senate negotiated with the White House. The gentleman has been in meetings, as I have been in meetings, with many Presidents where we negotiate and try to come to an agreement. It doesn't mean they all end up being signed into law. It might be vetoed. The President has the power of veto, so it is worth all of our time to see if, not only the House and Senate can get an agreement, but also we can get an agreement with the White House, too. This is not the first time that has happened. Those negotiations are going on, but the wall is a big sticking point. We are building a wall. Probably about $8.5 billion this previous year was allocated, and we are going to negotiate what that is going to be next year. That is part of the negotiation. And, hopefully, we can come to an agreement over it. It shouldn't be that difficult to do it, but it is one of the sticking points. There are a number of sticking points, but as those sticking points happen, we all acknowledge it costs us. It costs our defense. Our Nation's defense suffers when we operate under CRs. The CR that is being talked about currently goes through December 20. My question to the gentleman is: Currently, the week of December 16, the House is scheduled not to be in session. And that would be the same week that the CR that is being contemplated would expire. Are we planning on coming back into session that week of December 16 if December 20 is going to be the expiration of this current CR that is being negotiated? I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. SCALISE. Because it had poison pills in it. The level of funding wasn't the issue. It was the limitations on the Defense Department to be able to do their job properly that were added in, when everyone knew those were partisan additions that had never been in previous bills. So we can get it done without partisan bills. If you want to do the partisan poison pills, it is your prerogative, but it is not going to get signed into law. Our job should be to make law and to put the differences on the side and work through and get it done. It has always been done before, by the way. NDAA has never been a partisan bill until this year. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. SCALISE. Madam Speaker, I appreciate that update from the gentleman on the schedule. Obviously, next week we will have a number of other items. I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. SCALISE. So the week of December 16, you are suggesting we should keep that open?

Mr. SCALISE. Every Republican.

Mr. SCALISE. Madam Speaker, again, we know the rules of the Senate. They operate differently. We might both agree that we would do things differently. We do things differently in the House than they do. Ultimately, both sides have to come to an agreement, and, hopefully, that happens in the next few weeks, not at the midnight hour by December 20. Madam Speaker, unless the gentleman from Maryland has anything further, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SCALISE. Madam Speaker, I was just working with Mr. Mulvaney yesterday on USMCA, something I would hope to see us bring to this House floor. Clearly, by the end of this year, it should have been done a long time ago, but something I know he and many others in the administration--Mr. Lighthizer has been taking the point on trying to get a negotiation concluded so that we can create more jobs in this country and create better trade opportunities for our families that we represent. Even if Mr. Mnuchin were to get an agreement, we all know that Mr. Mnuchin doesn't have a vote in the Senate. And even if every Republican in the Senate agreed with Mr. Mnuchin, you still can't pass a bill in the Senate because it takes Democrats working as well. The families that we represent are much less concerned about whose side thinks they are right, as they are about saying, just go in a room and work it out. It has been done before. It ought to be done this time. And I would just encourage that between now and December 20--we don't have to wait until December 16--I would hope that those leaders on your side in the majority would go get with the leaders in the Senate and come to an agreement. I am sure they will have conversations along the way with the White House, too, but at a minimum, to get the House and Senate to come to agreement, not complain about who passed bills and who didn't. The NDAA was passed here in partisan way. It never had happened before in the history of Congress. The gentleman's side chose to do a partisan bill where there was a bipartisan bill to be had, and, yet, that was put on the side. So there is a bipartisan way to do it or a partisan way to do it. Ultimately, you are in the majority; you get to decide that. The Senate has their own different set of rules, and we might want to change them, but that is how they operate. At the end of the day, both sides have to get in a room and work it out, and I would just encourage both sides to do that. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Maryland.

Mr. SCALISE

Mr. SCALISE. Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague, Mr. Cole, for yielding. Madam Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to this resolution. Unfortunately, we have seen, since the day that President Trump was inaugurated, some people who made it public that they wanted to impeach him--not because there are high crimes and misdemeanors, which is the constitutional standard, but just because they don't agree with the results of the 2016 election. That, Madam Speaker, is not why you impeach a president. There is precedent. This has only happened three times in the history of our country. Every time, it not only started with a full vote of the House, but it also started with actual fairness. We are not getting that fairness today. When you look through this resolution, in multiple places, it gives veto authority by the chair to literally reject any witness who is brought forward by the minority. So no rights for the minority unless the chair so designates. In fact, in this resolution, it allows the chair to veto even the ability for the President to have legal counsel in the room. If the chair chooses, at his whim, they can literally kick out the President's legal counsel. This is unprecedented. It is not only unprecedented, this is Soviet- style rules. Maybe in the Soviet Union you do things like this: where only you make the rules, where you reject the ability for the person you are accusing to even be in the room to question what is going on, for anybody else to call witnesses, when only one person has the right to call witnesses. And as we saw just the other day, the chairman was literally directing the witness to not answer certain questions by the Republicans. What kind of fairness is that? Maybe you think it is fairness if you can run roughshod over somebody because you have got the votes, but that is not how impeachment was supposed to go. In fact, Alexander Hamilton himself, during the debate on the Constitution, in the Federalist Papers, warned of days like this, that the greatest danger is that the decision on impeachment ``will be regulated more by the comparative strength of parties than by the real demonstrations of innocence or guilt.'' Alexander Hamilton warned about days like today. This is not what we should be doing, clearly, when you ask the American people, who know that they are paying higher drug prices and they see that there is legislation, bipartisan legislation, to lower drug prices that won't come to this floor because of the infatuation with impeachment. We don't even have a bill to formally pay our troops and make sure they have the tools they need to defend this country because there is such an infatuation with impeachment. Madam Speaker, when you look through this resolution, you see how one-sided, how Soviet-style this is running. This is the United States of America. Don't run a sham process, a tainted process like this resolution ensures. It ought to be rejected, and I think you will see bipartisan rejection of this resolution.

Mr. SCALISE

Mr. SCALISE. Madam Speaker, I rise today regarding my absence from the House on Monday, October 21, 2019. Had I been present for Roll Call No. 568, I would have voted ``nay'' on the motion to table consideration of H. Res. 647, a resolution to condemn and censure Congressman Adam Schiff for making false statements at the House Intelligence Committee hearing on September 26, 2019. As a co-sponsor of the censuring resolution, I strongly support efforts to bring it to a vote on the House floor. Unfortunately, as my colleagues across the aisle continue to conduct an impeachment inquiry in secret, this is yet another example of their refusal to be transparent with the American people. Just as they have refused to go on record and vote on impeachment, my colleagues across the aisle are refusing to hold one of our colleagues accountable for making false and disparaging representations of the President of the United States. Congress has a Constitutional responsibility to be fair and transparent, and refusing to do so has very grave consequences for the future of our country. We were all elected to the people's house to work on behalf of the American people. Refusing to have a fair and open debate, as well as a recorded vote on H. Res. 647, is a severe disservice to the American people, and an affront to the democracy upon which our country was founded.

Mr. SCALISE

Mr. SCALISE. You can only read it in the press because of selective leaking. And so that is how Members of Congress are supposed to make a determination on impeachment of the President, based on selected leaks to the press?

Mr. SCALISE. I would if it was true, but it is not.

Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, here is another headline: ``Democrats Writing More Subpoenas Than Laws.'' That is a headline. That is what angers people who want to see their prescription drug prices lowered, but they can't because of this infatuation with impeachment. That is what is holding this country back. That is what is holding this House back from doing the people's work. Mr. Speaker, I would ask if the gentleman has anything else. If not, I would be ready to yield back. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, Mr. Hoyer mocked that the process is tainted, that the process is being run like it might be run in the Soviet Union, not in the United States of America. It has never been done like that before. And you talk about Trey Gowdy, as if we were looking around for something to impeach a President on. We weren't. You had four Americans die. There are a lot of questions that still haven't been answered about why those Americans died. And all of us should be concerned about what happened at Benghazi. To ridicule the fact that there were eight hearings on something so alarming? Nobody was fishing around, looking-- By the way, we never tried to impeach the President over anything. All of the things that we disagreed with him on, none of those. Even times when he would sign executive orders that circumvented the law, and we would challenge him in the court, and we won a number of those court cases, but that doesn't mean it rose to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors. And so we never went down that road. But maybe some, in some part of a base, want to see impeachment, no matter what. And some have said that. Some in your own party have said they just want to impeach the President because if they don't, he will get reelected. That has been said by members of your party. That is not why you impeach a President, because you think he is going to get reelected. The American people make that determination next year. We have had investigation after investigation. Again, Mueller alone had 2,800 subpoenas. He had the full authority to bring charges against the President on collusion, on obstruction. Even the Attorney General said that he had the authority to bring charges, but even if he did have those, he wouldn't have brought charges on obstruction, because there wasn't obstruction and there wasn't collusion. But he had full authority to bring charges on both fronts, and he didn't. But, again, 222 months of that meandering witch hunt to try to find something. And it wasn't found because it wasn't there. And then you had the whistleblower, the so-called whistleblower. Who, if you are worried about who is talking to somebody to try to get their stories straight, interestingly, the whistleblower--who, again, was identified to be somebody with a political bias--went and met with Chairman Schiff's staff prior to filing the whistleblower complaint. Yes, somebody did collude. Real interesting how that happened. Before the whistleblower complaint was filed, they actually sat down with the staff of the majority leader, Chairman Schiff, and lo and behold, you get a political document that comes out with allegations, disproven in many cases, but that is where we are. That is the basis for starting an impeachment inquiry. That is not really an impeachment inquiry, because we are not following the same rules that have always been followed under an impeachment inquiry, but that is the genesis of this, and that is where we are. And if that is what the document is going to ultimately yield, it will be a tainted document. But I guess if you want to find an outcome--this isn't a grand jury. This is the United States House of Representatives, and there are 75 percent in this body who are going to be asked to vote on something that they cannot see, they cannot participate in, they have absolutely no access to. That is not what this country is all about. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. SCALISE. When?

Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, I don't know if the gentleman is asserting that we will have a vote on impeachment, that might be breaking news, but if these Members, all of us, are going to vote on impeachment, shouldn't we be able to see what goes on? Shouldn't we be able to have access to the hearings? Shouldn't we be able to have access to the transcripts? Can we now? I would ask the gentleman, would he release the transcripts now of these hearings so that Members can start preparing? So Members can know what they are going to vote on? Are you going to keep it in secret and then drop something on the floor after it has been baked and predetermined what the outcome should be before Members really have an idea of what is going on in those rooms that are being denied entrance to those rooms right now? It has never happened before in other impeachment inquiries. And you can say it is about process. It is about history.

Mr. SCALISE. Who can call the witnesses? Just your side. You think it is fair that only you can call the witnesses, and then you want to get the truth? Are you going to get the facts when you shut out the other side? When you don't let the President have his own legal counsel there, like has always been done.

Mr. SCALISE. This is not a grand jury. This is the United States House of Representatives.

Mr. SCALISE. If you want to run a grand jury, go get a jury. This is the United States Congress. Voting Members of Congress are being shut out of the room, Mr. Speaker. Voting Members of Congress are being shut out of this process. You want to call that fair? Good luck. But it is not fair. It is a one-sided process to create a document with a determined outcome. It is going to be a tainted document, because it only tells one side of the story. The old saying is, a grand jury can indict a ham sandwich, if they want to. There is a reason for that because only one side can call witnesses. When we have had impeachment inquiries in the past you don't have to reinvent the wheel. It has only happened three times. And in modern times they have used the exact same standard. The standard is: Both sides get to call witnesses. That is not going on right now. It was done in public. That is not being done right now. It is going on in secret. The press can't go in. You can't go in. I can't go in, unless they run out with the witness. That is not a fair process. Maybe that is the process that you want to conduct, but don't call it fair, because it is not. And, ultimately, it is not going to result in a fair document that is going to be determining whether or not a President of the United States is impeached. And Members of both sides, 75 percent of the Members of this body, Republican and Democrat, are going to be asked to cast a vote on something that they can't even go and determine and find out about. They can't sit in the hearings. They can't read the testimony. 230 million Americans are represented by those Members of Congress who cannot get access to what is going on in that room. Maybe you can get it from reading leaked press reports. Is that really how you determine whether or not to impeach a President of the United States? That is not fair. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Maryland.

Mr. SCALISE. Well, first of all, the gentleman is making an assertion that has been disputed--in fact, disputed by the President of Ukraine, this alleged quid pro quo that didn't happen. Zelensky himself said it didn't happen. In fact, he got the money. He got the money. Now, we had to check to make sure, like the law says, in two different places. We have two different sets of law that require the administration ensure that there is not corruption before they send the money. I can assure the gentleman from Maryland that, if he would have sent the money over and there was corruption involved, you would be going after him for breaking the law, for not following the law. You voted for the law. I voted for the law. Again, it is a good law. But then he ultimately released the money. You talk about the Javelin missiles. He sold that to them before the phone call even happened because it was a friend saying protect us against Russia. President Obama wouldn't stand up to Russia when Ukraine made that same phone call, yet President Trump did. President Trump said: I will sell you those missiles so you can protect yourself and can defend yourself against the Russians. And Zelensky, on that phone call, was thanking the President, again, for selling those missiles to them. It has allowed them to push back the Russian aggression and to root out--ultimately, they talked about rooting out and getting to the bottom of the corruption and the interference that happened with Russia in our 2016 election, which I hoped we would be more vigilant to root out together. It shouldn't just be President Trump wanting to stop it from happening again. All of us should want to make sure that that doesn't happen again. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, first of all, it is not a question. It is a false assertion that the gentleman is making. And so you can make claims about people, but ultimately, if it is not backed up in fact, you just continue on. This has been the pattern of this majority, really, since before you took the majority. It has been an assertion to impeach the President, finding something; if there is nothing there, just keep looking. You had the Mueller investigation; 2,800 subpoenas, 22 months meandering around, looking for something, hoping; and we saw the chairman of the Intelligence Committee said publicly, time and time again, for 2 years, that he, himself, had more than circumstantial evidence of criminal acts. It turned out there were none. The chairman never showed the evidence that he had. Maybe he went and had a meeting with Mueller and Mueller discarded it. But if he really did have more than circumstantial evidence, he would have brought it forward. He would have shown all of us, but he didn't. He made the assertion, but it was a false assertion. And if it wasn't false, by the way, I would challenge the gentleman to bring it forward. He ought to have that duty to bring it forward.

Mr. SCALISE. No, no. We are talking about the Mueller investigation, but it didn't happen. So the collusion argument that was supposedly going to yield some kind of ability to go and impeach the President didn't turn out to be true. So, instead of stopping and moving on to the business of the American people, instead of more subpoenas--not laws. No lower drug prices because it is an impeachment infatuation. Instead of moving on, they went to this because there was this whistleblower. And let's go back to the memo of the whistleblower, before the whistleblower complaint. The whistleblower actually wrote a memo. Admittedly, they never even listened to the phone conversation, but they talked to other people. And if it was so dangerous what those other people heard, they had a legal ability and authority to go and file their own whistleblower complaint, but they didn't. So someone with a political bias, by the inspector general's own admission, a person with a political bias who had access to information that was classified, in violation of law, hears what they want to hear, writes a memo saying it was crazy; it was disturbing. Those were the words that the whistleblower wrote about the phone conversation. Lo and behold, the phone conversation gets released by the President. It was unprecedented. He didn't have to do it. I might have preferred if he didn't do it because you don't want a pattern where every conversation between world leaders is going to be out in the public. But, okay, it is now. And all of those assertions that were made were false. It wasn't a crazy conversation. It wasn't a disturbing conversation. It was two people talking about--one congratulating the other on his election. One talking about how he got elected on a platform of rooting out corruption, which he is doing, and we are helping them with. That was the conversation. So now the whistleblower isn't even going to be brought forward, according to the chairman, because the chairman is the only person who gets to bring witnesses forward. Then the gentleman talked about Trey Gowdy's committee, the Benghazi Select Committee. He tries to use that as the reference point for holding an impeachment inquiry. Let's all be clear: Trey Gowdy's committee on Benghazi was a special select committee to find out what happened.