Steve Scalise

Mr. SCALISE

Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, there were a number of items that my friend brought up. I will start with the government shutdown that the gentleman referred to last year. When we were in the majority last year, we passed bipartisan bills to fund over 70 percent of the government prior to October 1--no shutdown--more than 70 percent of the government that we worked with Democrats and President Trump to get an agreement on, including defense, so our men and women in uniform did not have that uncertainty and had that full year of funding. All of that was worked out. Clearly, we had a difference of agreement over the Homeland Security Department because of funding for border security. The government shutdown was clearly over whether or not we were going to have a secure border and all the things that were involved, including physical barriers. We resolved it, and the President was able to get over $4.5 billion of new money to continue putting that physical security in place to secure our Nation's border. That took a few more months, but we resolved it. Keep in mind, over 70 percent of the government was fully funded prior to the end of the fiscal year, working with Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate. As the gentleman brags about passing over 96 percent of the bills out of the House, it has to be noted that the majority didn't work with Republicans to do it. The easy thing is just to say that we will just talk amongst ourselves, knowing it will never get signed into law. Of course, a partisan bill is not going to get signed into law when you have a President of the different party or when you have a Senate controlled by a different party. The Senate works differently than us. We can have that debate for another day. We would probably both agree on a lot of the differences we have with how the Senate operates. But because of their 60-vote requirement, they know nothing is going to pass unless they have Republican and Democratic agreement in those negotiations. Let's be clear about what is bottling up those negotiations. There are Senate Democrats in Democratic leadership on the Democratic side who are offering up things that everybody knows are poison pills that would not get signed into law. They are at an impasse. They need to break that impasse. That is their issue. But, Mr. Speaker, you can talk to some of the Senate Democrats who are trying to offer up things that everybody knows will not happen or become law or pass over there, but both sides need to come together. Mr. Speaker, when you pass an NDAA bill--and the gentleman from Maryland knows this. The National Defense Authorization Act is a bill that a Republican-controlled House or a Democratic-controlled House, no matter who has been in charge, we have come together always. Every single year that we have moved an NDAA, it has been bipartisan. This is the first year that the majority broke from that. The majority passed a partisan bill on defense knowing it was never going to become law but not working with Democrats and breaking the tradition that every year we have followed, that Republicans and Democrats would come together and say that we have all of these other differences--and there are a lot of differences that we have that we need to work through. We might get some; we might not get others. But we put defense on the side and said that this is one where we will come together, Republicans and Democrats in every year we did it, including last year when we were in the majority. This year, the majority did not. They broke that tradition. It is unfortunate because, again, that will never become law. My friend can brag they got it done, but they got something done that will never get signed into law and broke a tradition that we have always had that that bill was bipartisan, making sure that we work together to take care of our men and women in uniform in a way that they deserve and in a timely way. I would hope that we would get those things done before October 1. But we all know what came out of this House is not what is going to be a final product. Let's work better to get these addressed, working with Members of both parties and the President, who, by the way, did agree with us on the numbers. We are in agreement. The House, the Senate, and the White House have finally agreed on the numbers. Now it is up to us in the Congress to come to an agreement. It is not just, hey, we passed our bill with just members of our party. It is going to have to mean people work together through those differences as we have done in the past. Sometimes we disagreed. Seventy percent of government was funded last year prior to October 1. Ultimately, we got agreement on the rest. Does the gentleman have anything else to say on that before I move on?

Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, I would hope those Senators on both sides of the aisle, as they are having negotiations--and, yeah, they don't have a bill, but they are negotiating. And there are Senators that know that some of the provisions they are insisting upon are things that will not become law because they undermine our Nation's security. And yet, they keep insisting. And so they are not at an agreement, but they need to keep working just like we need to work in a bipartisan way on those issues. And they will get resolved if we do that. And, again, I think if you go look at the example of what the House Committee on Energy and Commerce did on lowering drug prices, it is a great model to follow. That bill should have been brought to the floor. That bill should not have been changed by the Speaker at the last minute to become partisan, and now it is not law. I would like to move on to something that has been troubling that we have been seeing out of the Committee on the Judiciary, and that is this drumbeat towards impeachment. It seems like there is an infatuation by this majority to impeach the President of the United States, whether or not the facts are there. And so there was the Mueller report that went on for years. And all of these members--chairs of your own committees--saying there was evidence that they had, and it was going to show the President colluded here and there. And then it turned out to be false; there was no collusion. We know that. The report showed that. Russia tried to interfere with our elections when Barack Obama was President. Maybe they should be investigating why he didn't do more to stop the Russians from trying to interfere with our elections, but there was no collusion. So instead of saying, Okay, that is it, move on--as the American people would like to see us do--maybe that committee that has jurisdiction over the border, over immigration law, that has serious problems that should be worked out in a bipartisan way, and could be worked out in a bipartisan way, but it is not, because the committee of jurisdiction is infatuated with impeaching the President. In fact, the chairman of the committee just said today: This is formal impeachment proceedings. The chairman of the committee said that today, as they are having a hearing on impeaching the President without even evidence to impeach him. There is nothing to impeach him on. They have Articles of Impeachment drawn up with blanks that they are just looking around to fill in on this witch hunt, and they are just going to look and look and look. Imagine if somebody said, We are going to target a person and we are going to try to indict him. We don't have anything to indict him on, but we are going to write up an indictment and then look around and look around and hope to find something. And that is what is going on in the Committee on the Judiciary. So they had this hearing today. They changed the rules. They had this big drama. The media is all covering it. The chairman says: This is formal impeachment proceedings. And then you look at the rules that they brought forward. The rules that they brought forward allow the chairman to do things he can already do. It was a farce. It was a farce to try to appease the radical left base that wants to impeach the President, even though there is nothing to impeach him on. And instead of just giving it up and focusing on their job, the things they should be focused on, they are just going to keep meandering around on this witch hunt. And I know some in your majority--maybe even the majority leader himself--are trying to distance themselves from it because they know the American people think that it is lunacy to be wasting time trying to impeach the President, even though there is nothing to impeach him on and just driving around on a witch hunt. And so I guess the real question is, if the chairman of the committee--your chairman--today, said: This is formal impeachment proceedings. He talked about, hopefully, by the end of the year they will vote on Articles of Impeachment--``hopefully,'' by the end of the year. There is nothing to impeach him on, and yet they are going to actually go out on a witch hunt and say, We are going to look for something, and by the end of the year, we hope to impeach the President. So I would ask the gentleman: Are you all bringing Articles of Impeachment to the floor? Is the chairman rightly going down an impeachment road? And what exactly are those articles? What are the Articles of Impeachment, if the committee today--your chairman of your committee--said: This is formal impeachment proceedings? What exactly is the gentleman planning on impeaching the President of the United States on? And are you, if he brings those Articles of Impeachment out of committee--blanks that haven't even been filled in--if they bring them to the floor, or if they move them out of committee by the end of the year, as the chairman hopes, is the gentleman prepared to bring that to the floor of the United States House of Representatives? Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer).

Mr. SCALISE

Mr. SCALISE. Madam Speaker, I rise today to congratulate the Eastbank All-Stars from River Ridge, Louisiana, for winning the 73rd Little League World Series Championship. It is exciting any time that the United States competes against the world and wins and does so in such a classy fashion that represents the great values of this Nation. It is even more special that these young men from my district were the first in the State of Louisiana's history to win the Little League World Series. It was an exciting series for all of us. It captured the imagination of the people of Louisiana, especially to watch how these young men represented themselves and the rest of us in such a classy way as they competed against the nation of Curacao and ultimately delivered an 8-0 victory for the United States. I, along with all of my colleagues from Louisiana, introduced H. Res. 547 to formally congratulate these young men. They look forward to going to the White House to meet the President. He has extended the invitation. It is a great moment for Louisiana and a great moment for the United States, especially for River Ridge, Louisiana.

Mr. SCALISE

Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, I want to associate myself with the remarks made by my friend, the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Womack) who talked about the importance of what we need to do to get back into a position where we can get control over spending. There are people that are running around right now trying to pit our Nation's defense against balancing the Federal budget Mr. Speaker, in fact, it is a false choice because if you zeroed out the entire Department of Defense's budget, which I hope no one would embrace, if you zeroed it out, you would still have a deficit. So, clearly, it is not the Department of Defense that is the problem. We need a strong national defense. President Trump has been rebuilding our military. We need to keep rebuilding our military. Mr. Speaker, we had more men and women die in training exercises than dying in combat over the last 3 years, by a 5-to-1 margin. It was less safe to train to be in the military in the United States of America than it was to go into combat, because they didn't have the tools they needed. Planes were falling out of the sky because they didn't have spare parts. We have finally started to address that. The last thing we want to do is go backward on that success. And I don't think anybody in this building, voting ``yes'' or ``no,'' understands or would agree with the idea that if a ``no'' vote were to be successful, we would have a $71 billion cut to our Nation's defense, which is one of our prime constitutional responsibilities. So we have got to get back to solving the real problems with deficits; and we all know where that is coming from, the mandatory side. We had a bill just in the last Congress that would have cut over $800 billion, while improving the healthcare of the people of our country. And if there are better ways to go and fix these broken programs, then please put those on the table. But we need to go back to that. But in this bill, not only does it allow the President to keep rebuilding our military, it actually protects the pro-life gains that we have made. We have made incredible gains to protect innocent life. That is why groups like National Right to Life have said such strong things about why this is so important; why President Trump needs this bill so that he can rebuild our military, and keep building wall and border security, which is so important. We have to secure our border. This bill includes the ability for the President to do that as well.

Mr. SCALISE

Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate both of my colleagues from New York, the distinguished gentlemen, Mr. Zeldin and Mr. Engel, for their strong leadership in standing up against this BDS movement. I think we all know what it is designed to do. It is designed to delegitimize Israel as a Jewish state and to undermine their economy, which ultimately goes to the heart of trying to bring down Israel by people who have been against a Jewish state and expressed anti-Semitism for decades. We all need to stand up against that, and so this resolution is incredibly important. As my other colleague just mentioned, our nations had a rich history of using boycotts to promote freedom. There are other boycotts that have been displayed to undermine freedom, and that is really where the BDS movement is in a very different category. I think we all need to make that distinction. If a boycott is being used to advance freedom, that is one we should support; but if a boycott is being used to undermine the very freedoms that exist in the only real elected democracy in the Middle East, we all need to rise up against that as people who respect that great tradition, that great love between the United States and Israel, an unbreakable bond, one that brings Republicans and Democrats together. We need to continue that tradition. But I would also add, Mr. Speaker, that, as we are talking about why we need to oppose the BDS movement with this resolution, words are hollow if we don't follow it up with action. So, at the same time, Mr. Speaker, hopefully, we get an overwhelming, maybe unanimous, vote on this resolution. It is long past time that the Democrat leadership of this House bring up H.R. 336 by the gentleman from Texas (Mr. McCaul), the bill that actually puts teeth in the law to stand up against the BDS movement all around the world. Here, even, sometimes in Congress or in other states, but in other countries where they are trying to advance this movement, we need teeth--words and action. So these are words today. We need to follow it up with H.R. 336, real action. Mr. Speaker, I urge that we stand strong together.

Mr. SCALISE

Mr. SCALISE. If I could interject, we share that. That is not an us versus them issue. We agree with those. Obviously, there are some that we disagree with. The ones that the gentleman mentioned are things that we agree with. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, clearly, if there are issues that need to be worked out, differences that might exist between the chairman and the lead Republican on the committee, that work needs to be done. There have been no indications given to us of some counteroffer, some different way to do it, some better way to do it, than what is in H.R. 336. But again, the language in H.R. 336 is the same language that was in S. 1, which passed the Senate with a 77-23 vote. It doesn't mean that the Senate has the best idea, but it shows there was a way that Republicans and Democrats could come together to stand with Israel against this movement. If there is a better way to do it, we would be more than happy to work through those better ideas. None of those better ideas have been presented to us. They just shut down that bill. They shut down the ability to have a bill come to the floor to actually put teeth in law to give us more tools. I would urge that if there is a better alternative, that the chairman of the committee or the leadership on your side has, please present that and let's negotiate it, but none of that has been presented up until now. So, I would just encourage us to do better as we try to give more support to our friend Israel against this growing movement. Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask about the agenda as we have seen it so far in the decorum. The agenda we have seen this week alone, multiple pieces of legislation--whether it is targeted at the President, we had a resolution on the President's tweet. There was a resolution filed to impeach the President of the United States. There was a resolution to hold Trump officials in contempt of Congress with no basis for that contempt. There were multiple resolutions just this week to target and harass different policies of the administration-- there is so much legislation we ought to be on this floor debating to do things that would actually help real families. There is a crisis at our border, and there has been no bipartisan legislation. The bills that are going to be coming to the floor next week, that the gentleman mentioned, dealing with homeland security are known by many in the homeland security field as the open borders bill, not a bipartisan approach to solving our problem at the border. We need a secure border. We need to solve the crisis at the border. Fix our broken asylum laws. We want to encourage asylum to work. There ought to be a way to apply for asylum. But, in all honesty, if somebody goes through other countries and turns down asylum in those countries and comes here and just reads a script, because they know there is a loophole in our law, we ought to work together to fix those broken loopholes and the things that are causing an overwhelming crisis at our border. That has not been done. Bills to lower drug prices. We had a bipartisan agreement in the Committee on Energy and Commerce, to lower drug prices, and yet that was abandoned when that bill came to the floor and sent in a way that became a partisan bill. These shouldn't be partisan issues. I would hope that we would move away from the harassment agenda and get back to an agenda that is focused on Republicans and Democrats working together, not in a partisan way to say, hey, we passed some bill out of the House, that everybody knows is going nowhere because it was a partisan approach. Look at what the Senate has done to move bipartisan bills through their Chamber. We can do the same. We can do better than the Senate, but we are not. When the Speaker breaks the House rules, when you see this break down, it just raises the ire because there is not that attempt to work in a bipartisan way to solve these problems. And there are a lot of good ideas that are bipartisan to solve these problems. The disappointment is that we don't see those coming to the House floor. The bills that deal with real policy coming to the House floor are only brought, by and large, from a partisan perspective, and the bipartisan approaches are being discarded. BDS is one clear example where there is a way to solve the problem, where Republicans and Democrats came together. Even from the gentleman's acknowledgement, there is no indication that it is going to move out of committee any time soon. It ought to be out of committee and it ought to be on the House floor, so that we can not only debate it, but pass it, and get a bill to the President's desk to allow us to stand up more against the BDS movement in support of Israel. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. SCALISE. Madam Speaker, I would encourage that we go back and look. This committee can do better. If we are going to stand up against this movement and support our friend Israel against this attempt to undermine their economy, we need real tools. H.R. 336 is the only instrument out there. It is similar to S. 1. We would love to see S. 1 passed. There have been questions about whether or not it has an origination problem, so that is why H.R. 336 was filed. But, again, H.R. 336 has the same language that passed with 77 votes in the Senate, overwhelmingly, Republicans and Democrats coming together. I would encourage us to follow that lead of bipartisanship, standing with Israel. I am disappointed that it is not included in the package. It moved out of committee. I would hope we would go back and consider bringing that bill to the floor. Again, words are nice, but words without action don't give us the tools we need to stand with our friend Israel against this undermining attempt known as BDS. I yield to the gentleman from Maryland.

Mr. SCALISE. Madam Speaker, there is clearly a lot to cover there. Let's start with the big debate, and that is what the gentleman alluded to, and that is government control versus freedom, because that is going to be the debate over the next year where there is already a Presidential primary debate process going on. When you see every candidate for President on one side saying that they want to give free healthcare benefits to people who are here illegally, yet many of them embrace a plan that would literally end private insurance for families that enjoy the healthcare plans they have in the private marketplace, the Medicare for All proposal, there are so many different areas where we see this debate about government control versus freedom. And, yes, to the gentleman, there are some on his side who refer to themselves as socialist Democrats. And so if they want to call themselves that, then at least own the things that go with socialism and recognize the damage that is done by socialism. To think that any one party has some kind of ownership of capitalism in the free market system, I would be more than happy to see us engage in a debate about capitalism, because there are some on the other side that attack it on a regular basis. But if you look at how Republican policies have gotten us to where we are with the most booming economy in the world, our economy is the envy of the world. People's wages are rising. Low-income people, in fact, are benefiting the most. And we are seeing the increase in the rebuilding of our middle class that was evaporating. For 8 years in a row under the previous administration, every single quarter, our economy had less than 2 percent growth. The economy wasn't even that bad during the Great Depression that the gentleman cited. So when we came in with the Republican majority and the Republican President, we were able to pass actual policies like the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, like reversing so many of the radical regulations that we saw that had nothing to do with health and safety but had to do with carrying out an agenda to shut down industries in this country like the fossil fuel industry and so many others that are providing not only jobs, lower carbon emission, dominance in the world, helping our friends around the world, and lowering energy prices for families in America. Those policies have actually been increasing wages for lower income people, not government-controlled prices as passed today where the government is going to try to come in and set artificial rates for what people ought to make as opposed to letting this great market that is working incredibly well raise wages for families. We have seen the studies. We have seen the University of Washington study, which was cited today, where we can look at real examples of communities that have had artificially high minimum wages, like Seattle, where they put in place a $15 minimum wage. It sounds great. The government is going to set everybody's rates and tell everybody how much they are going to make, and what it resulted in is over 5 million hours lost for workers. In fact, the lower income families in Seattle were hurt the most by that policy by a margin of 3 to 1. It damages low-income families. Again, it might sound good that the government is going to tell everyone what they can make, but most of us who believe in the free market system reject that idea that we should set policies that are crushing jobs in America. There is a bar in New York that was closed because of the increase in the minimum wage that one of our colleagues used to work at. It was closed because of an artificially set price, minimum wage, in the city of New York. So when you look at jobs that are fleeing some communities and going to other communities, that ought to tell you how those policies are working. But we have a growing economy, not because we had a lot of government control out of Washington, but, in fact, because we allowed freedom. We allowed people to keep more of what they earned. We allowed people to make their own choices. And it is a successful formula. We want to see more of it. Now, if we can get into the issue of the harassment agenda, the subpoenas, the finding people in contempt, let's talk about Secretary Ross and the work that was done to comply with the committee's request. If you look, and this is reading from a document sent by Secretary Ross and Attorney General Barr to the committee, it says: The Department's engagement with the committee is a good faith accommodation process, rooted in the separation of powers. As part of that process, both Departments have made multiple witnesses available for voluntary, transcribed interviews and have produced more than 30,000 pages of documents to the committee. Before the committee abruptly and prematurely terminated the accommodation process last month, the Department of Justice intended to provide a significant number of additional documents identified as responsive to the committee's subpoena. They go on to talk about how they were complying with the committee, producing over 30,000 pages of documents just related to the Census. And then the committee abruptly decides they just want to hold him in contempt because there were some documents they wanted that the Attorney General would have actually broken the law if he turned them over. So you saw a Department complying and going overboard to ensure that the separation of powers and the oversight that existed would continue. Of course, when we were in the majority and the previous administration of the other party was there, we had a lot of oversight hearings, exercising our Article I powers as we all should, but we didn't go week after week. Just this week alone, there was a resolution condemning the President's tweets, an impeachment resolution, a resolution to hold two Cabinet Secretaries in contempt, and three resolutions of disapproval on policy. That was just this week. The American people don't want to see us fighting over power. They want to see us fighting for their needs, the needs of hardworking families. Again, I identified so many things. Just to finish up on the resolution that was discussed earlier, the gentleman said we need to respond to things that violate this country's principles. First of all, we reject racism wholeheartedly. We reject hate. We reject anti-Semitism. There have been comments made by Members of the gentleman's party that have not been addressed on this floor that violate those principles. We can all bring resolutions broadly stating things, but if the intention is to identify people by name, it is, to us, rather conspicuous that, when people of the other party say those things, they are not addressed on this floor by name. And so we know that happened. Again, the way that the Speaker violated the rules of the House, and then a vote was brought to this floor to basically say that those rules don't apply to the Speaker. If the rules don't apply to the Speaker, then who do they apply to? They ought to apply to all of us equally. If any of us break the rules of the House and are called out on it and are found by the Chair to be in violation of the rules, then we ought to accept that. We ought not have the vote on the House floor to say, well, the rules apply to some people, but not everybody. If the rules are in place, they ought to be in place to be enforced equally, not that some in power have an exemption and have a free pass to break those rules. So if we are going to talk about what we reject, let's be fair and equal about it. I yield to the gentleman from Maryland.

Mr. SCALISE. Madam Speaker, specifically, if I could ask my friend, H.R. 336 was not one of those bills that was marked up. The only bills that were marked up were resolutions. Again, while some of those resolutions might have some good language in them, there are no actual teeth. There is no policy. There is no change in law to give us more tools as a country to stand up to the BDS movement, to defend our friend Israel. As we know, the BDS movement really is rooted in anti-Semitism to undermine Israel's economy, which none of us should want to see. I know my friend doesn't want to see Israel's economy undermined, but there is a movement to do that. If we are going to truly stand up against it, words are not enough. We need action. H.R. 336, again, reflects similar legislation that passed the Senate with an overwhelming vote, Republicans and Democrats coming together to give real tools to stand up to this movement and support our friend Israel. Madam Speaker, I would inquire of the gentleman, would that bill be considered? It was not part of the package of bills that were brought up in committee this week. I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. SCALISE. Clearly, Madam Speaker, if we talk about what makes this country great, it is the freedoms and the economic success that we have seen for families, businesses, and everybody. It is the reason people come here from all around the world. What we have done to create this great free market system has unleashed potential for anybody to come here and be anything they want to be. I have been proud to help pass policies that have actually increased wages for families not through government price controls but through economic growth and through giving people more of their money back instead of their having to come to Washington to get an amount or come to a union boss to get the amount that they can earn. They can actually go do it on their own. It is playing out in reality, not in theory, but in reality, where we are seeing the lowest-income workers benefiting the most from our policies of cutting taxes, not by telling people how much they can make but by letting them go out and make even more on their own. They are doing it. It is the lower-income people who are benefiting the most from those policies. We ought to encourage more of that. The unemployment rate amongst African Americans and Hispanics is at the lowest rate in our country's history not through government controls but by cutting taxes and letting them have more of their money, by seeing businesses grow, and by hiring more people. We are seeing more job openings today than there are people looking for work. That is what is so exciting. We see that women-owned businesses are up 20 percent over the last few years because of these conservative policies that I have helped pass. Yes, when I support right-to-work laws, if a person wants to go work for a company that happens to be in a union-based industry or a union- based State, and they say they don't want dues forced out of their paychecks, to give dues to somebody who believes in things that they don't agree with, they shouldn't be forced to do that. In many places, they are. I want more individual freedom. I want more ability for people to go out and live that American Dream, to start up their own business in their garage and then one day maybe become a billionaire because there was that opportunity provided to them, not our telling them how much they can make, but our allowing them, in a safe way, the ability to go be the best they can be. I will use an example because I know the gentleman and I share the belief that people need to be safe in the workplace, and we need to do all we can to ensure that. Look at deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, which is based out of parts of my district. Port Fourchon in Louisiana is the hub of all that deepwater drilling that we saw. There was the horrible tragedy, the Deepwater Horizon. People died, and the environment was polluted. That was done not because there weren't enough laws in place but because a company broke the laws. A company went around those safety standards that we put in place. We went and hammered them. We fined them. I passed a bill out of this House in a very bipartisan way called the RESTORE Act that ensured that they pay billions of dollars back to fix the damage that they had done and to hold that company accountable for what they had done. Its purpose was not to shut the whole industry down, because every other company that was out there had done things the right way. What we saw from the previous administration was a rule that came out called the Well Control Rule that wasn't rooted in safety. After industry did an even better job to put well containment in place so that, if something like that ever happened again, they could quickly move to stop it, instead of government working to help expedite that process, government sat back and waited until industry came up with a better way to solve that problem on their own. Then, it came up with a rule that actually would have undermined the new safety standards they put in place. It would have made it difficult because Washington would have been able to tell them how to manage a well in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico instead of understanding that pressure changes instantly and that they have to be able to respond to it. Government was setting a standard that would have undermined safety. Luckily, we reversed that Obama-era rule that would have made things less safe. Let's not think that every regulation is about increasing safety. We ought to stand together to support safety standards and strengthen them where we can. There may be rules and regulations that undermine safety because some people just don't want drilling for oil, and some people support the Green New Deal kind of approaches that I and many don't. But don't try to undermine safety just to shut an industry down because people don't believe in it. After September 11, our government came together in many ways, politically and policy-wise, to address what had happened. We didn't shut down the entire airline industry. We made safety standards at airports better so that people who get on a plane feel more comfortable that somebody doesn't have box cutters, guns, or knives that can undermine the safety of those people and of our country. Then, we got planes back up and running very quickly. Safety standards are something we both share. But when government gets in the way just because they don't agree with what somebody is doing, that is a different story. That is the kind of government control versus freedom battle that we are seeing play out and will continue seeing play out, I am sure, over the next year and a half between now and next November. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. SCALISE. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for giving that update on the schedule. I know that we have been in talks on a budget caps agreement. I met with the Vice President earlier this morning, talking through some of the things that may be included. Obviously, there is no final agreement. We would hope that those talks go on, and we, hopefully, reach an agreement where we can give real certainty, especially to our Department of Defense, that we will look at what sequestration would do to defense. We have been able to rebuild our defense over the last 2 years. We would like to see that progress continue. A lot of other issues are at stake there, and we encourage those talks to move forward. We will be ready to move if there is an agreement reached between all the parties, including the White House. I did not hear mention of anything regarding the BDS legislation. We have heard that there might be some movement on standing up against the BDS movement. I know that when we looked at a number of bills, there are some resolutions that are out there, some good, some bad. As we know, there is time for talk, and then, there is time for action. The resolutions are only talk. The legislation, H.R. 336 by Mr. McCaul, is the only bill out there. S. 1 moved through the Senate with a large, overwhelming bipartisan vote. It is similar legislation that would actually have teeth, not just words, which are important, but words followed up with action, real teeth to help not only this country but our States that are also standing up against the BDS movement, to give them some muscle, some ability to stand up to the BDS movement. Madam Speaker, I would ask the gentleman, is there any indication that there might be movement on H.R. 336, to follow up the words with real action against the BDS movement? Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. SCALISE. Madam Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman's comments. I respect our ability to have these disagreements but, again, to disagree in a civil way where we can at least talk about the policy and keep it focused that way and, hopefully, one day address those areas of concern that we both share and that we can both solve working together. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. SCALISE

Mr. SCALISE. Madam Speaker, the last vote that we just saw on the House floor is beneath the dignity of the House. We have rules for a reason. Just because one party is in the majority, Madam Speaker, doesn't mean that the rules don't apply to them. The rules apply to all of us. Just as we are passing laws here, that ought to apply to all people fairly across this country. The reason we have these rules is so that we can rise above the fray. We have disagreements on this floor. What is great about this country is we have the ability to come and battle over the disagreements, but we shouldn't get into personality conflicts on this floor. We shouldn't be trying to accuse people of one thing or another, disparagingly, on this floor. That is why we have these rules, so that we can actually debate the issues that people care about rather than engaging in this constant barrage of personality attacks that we have seen week after week after week. The American people expect us to be spending our time up here fighting for the issues they care about. They want us to be spending time focusing on lowering their prescription drug prices, lowering healthcare prices, rather than this foolishness. They want us to be solving the crisis at the border, not ignoring it, not disparaging it, but actually focusing on solving it. These are easy issues for us to solve if we come together and spend real time in good faith working on them, rather than this foolishness. Look at all of the other problems that our country faces, that people call on us to address. They expect that we are spending our time up here focusing on those problems, getting our economy back on track like it is now. It took people working together, and it is working. We can do more. Fighting the evils across this world, when you look at what Russia is doing, when you look at what Iran is doing, when you look at what China is doing, us to be coming together, standing up and working on those problems for the people who sent us here, not worried about ourselves, not fighting amongst ourselves, but actually focusing on their problems, that is why we are supposed to be up here. That is why the rules of the House should apply to all people, not just selectively to some.

Mr. SCALISE

Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, let's be crystal clear about what happened. The chairman of the Armed Services Committee made this a political bill by putting poison pills in the bill that undermined our national security. That is not a partisan issue. And so if you go back to the funding levels--I yield to my friend.

Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, I would first like to point out it is not we who are paying those wages. It is small businesses, small and medium-sized businesses that are paying those wages to workers. What we have seen from the current economy, from cutting taxes, not from the government coming in and saying we are going to have some $15 minimum wage that has been proven in other places to eviscerate jobs, to kill jobs and hurt lower-income people, with our current economy, because of cutting taxes, lower income people are benefiting the most. They are seeing wages go up. They are actually seeing wages go up, and the data shows that. That is why you are seeing such strong economic numbers right now, because the tax cuts are benefiting people at every income level, especially at the lower income levels. When you talk about the jobs that would be lost, if we split it in the middle, if we go with the median of the study, that is 1.3 million jobs lost. Don't take my number. Don't take your number. Take the median number in the study, 1.3 million jobs. That is the entire State of Maine losing their jobs. What we have also seen is that small businesses, as minimum wages go to a higher level, look at automating jobs, which means those jobs go away. It is the low-income workers, the first job for many people, their first entry into opportunity where they can then become a homeowner, then become part of the American Dream, those are hit the hardest. In fact, the study shows that this bill would reduce family income by $9 billion. I know we can look at it from different sides, but, again, if you just took the median, split the difference between your numbers and mine, you end up with 1.3 million jobs lost and devastation for a lot of people at the lower incomes. The Seattle study shows not theory but what really did happen in a city like Seattle where they did this. By a 3-to-1 margin, low-income people were hit the hardest and hit very hard in a negative way. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, when we talk about the 27 million, let's keep in mind that, as you look at what they studied on the impacts, it is the lower income workers, as the wages might even go up. And, by the way, wages are already going up today. Without this bill, wages, real wages, are going up and especially benefiting the lower income, the entry-level jobs. What President Trump wanted to do to rebuild our middle class that was evaporating--it, literally, was going away. We were losing our middle class to foreign countries because we were not competitive as a nation. And now we are competitive--not only competitive, but the envy of the world, the economic leader of the world. Again, why would we want to bring a bill that would devastate? And so those 27 million people, if you look again at the Seattle study, what they showed was that the cost to low-wage workers in Seattle outweighed the benefits by a ratio of 3 to 1. So even for those people who were getting a higher wage because other costs went up and their hours went down, the amount of time they were able to work was reduced, it actually had a devastating impact to those low-income workers. So on one hand it might sound really good: Hey, you are going to get a higher wage; but, Oh, by the way, we are not going to be able to give you as many hours to work. And you saw that over and over again in the study, it showed millions of hours lost. So somebody that is working two jobs, struggling to get by because they want to become part of the middle class, today they are actually seeing a wage increase if that was evaporated because of this. Even for the people who would see a higher wage, the costs to them would be more devastating by a 3-to-1 margin if you go by what actually did happen in Seattle when they did it. So that is why I just say that study would be important to look at, because it doesn't show just in theory, which the CBO has a lot of good underlying data to back up with, but then Seattle is where it really did happen and it was devastating to lower income workers. If the gentleman had anything else on this, I would yield back. I did want to bring up another issue, though, but I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, maybe next week as this debate continues, we will see if I can be more persuasive with my friend, but likely not, but at least we ought to have that debate and at least get these sides out and aired. Now, I do want to talk about something where I do think we have agreement but maybe a lack of understanding of a timeline, and that is the United States-Mexico-Canada trade agreement. And we have had many meetings. I know we were in a meeting together with the Prime Minister, Prime Minister Trudeau of Canada. We know our friends in Mexico want this. Our friends in Canada really want this. We want this, too. With only 8 legislative days left before the August recess, could the gentleman give an indication if there is the ability to include USMCA on the calendar in these next 2 weeks that we have available? And I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, as we look at the calendar next week and, specifically, the bill dealing with the minimum wage, I would ask the gentleman if he has looked at some of the studies that have been done, as well as some of the other actions. If you look at the city of Baltimore, they had proposed and actually passed a $15 minimum wage, and the Democratic mayor of Baltimore vetoed that, specifically citing the job losses that would come with that kind of change. The CBO report that just came out a few days ago, as the majority leader knows, cited that you could have up to 3.7 million jobs lost in America if that bill were to pass. Mr. Speaker, we have a growing economy, a robust, growing economy. We are the envy of the world right now with our economy. People at every income level are receiving the benefits of that in terms of higher wages and more jobs--in fact, more job openings today than there are Americans looking for work. This is the kind of opportunity we want for all people. In fact, as we are seeing, people at even the lower income, entry-level job levels are the ones benefiting the most from the tax cuts and the growing economy we have as a result of it. So why, I would ask, would we want to reverse course and pass legislation that not only studies estimate would devastate low-income people--literally, the entire State of Oklahoma, 3.7 million people, eviscerated job losses. That many job losses would come from this bill passing. You don't need to just look at estimates. You can actually look at what happened in the city of Seattle. Mr. Speaker, in 2014, the city of Seattle instituted a similar $15 minimum wage. So now, we have a few years of actual data to look at what happened in a city like Seattle. Mr. Speaker, the University of Washington did a detailed study of that minimum wage increase. What they found were similarly devastating numbers for low-income workers, the same people who would be hurt by the bill that the majority is going to be bringing up next week. In fact, what the University of Washington study found was that you had roughly 3 million work hours lost, 5,000 jobs lost. They, in fact, found that the cost to low-wage workers in Seattle outweighed the benefits by a margin of 3-to-1, devastating low-income workers the most. If you look at not what might happen if we do this at the Federal level--where the estimates are we would lose 3.7 million jobs in America, mostly hurting lower income, entry-level jobs, those jobs where we want people to be able to get started to become part of the middle class, to become part of the American Dream, and taking that away from them--go look at what they did in Seattle when they actually did this, not when they talked about it, but when they did it, 3 years of data. The study showed it was devastating to low-income people. I would hope that the gentleman has looked at some of this, the concerns that we have expressed along the way, and the recent CBO score that has underlined how bad and devastating this would be to low-income workers. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, I will absolutely be happy to specify what those are, but first of all, let's talk about funding levels. It is not just about funding levels. If you have a funding level and then you put policy underneath it that limits our men and women in uniform's ability to train safely and to do their job safely and effectively, that is a poison pill approach. It is a partisan approach. It should have never happened. Mr. Speaker, it has been 58 years where Republicans and Democrats have worked alike together to pass a National Defense Authorization Act, not making it political, specifically in committee. There is no Member of our Congress who works better with people on both sides of the aisle to support our men and women in uniform than Mac Thornberry. Mr. Thornberry worked overtime to try to heal this divide, to make sure a bill could come out of committee that was bipartisan, reflecting those 58 years. In fact, the Senate did this, and I think the gentleman from Maryland knows this well. The Senate did not make it political. The Senate passed a bill with an 86-8 vote, with all the leadership of the Republican side and Democratic side voting together. That was the approach we wanted to take, Mr. Speaker. If there was a better way, we should have done it together. But the majority side went against even what Senate Democrats did and chose an approach, for example, that undermined our nuclear missile defense and that went against the AUMF agreement that, if your bill were to become law, would have made it harder for us to counter terrorism activities in the Middle East. Why would we want to do that in legislation and hamstring our men and women in uniform? In fact, the bill that the majority just passed would undermine the gains we have made in enabling our men and women in uniform to train more safely. Before we came up with the 2-year budget agreement that we got together, Republicans and Democrats, when we were in the majority, we were seeing our men and women in uniform die in training missions more than they were dying in combat. It was by a 5-to-1 margin that men and women in uniform were dying in training missions, planes falling out of the sky because they didn't have enough spare parts. We finally started to address that. This bill undermines that, making our men and women in uniform less safe. That is not the approach we should be taking. If the gentleman wants to call that bipartisan, then go look at the fact that no Republicans voted for that bill and eight Democrats voted against it. It was a partisan approach. It was a bill that undermines our national security. The Senate didn't do that. The Senate came together the right kind of way. It is the way we should have done it here. If the gentleman wants to talk about the pay raise, let's be very clear and upfront about it. If we didn't even have this bill, our men and women in uniform get that pay raise. It is current law. It is like they are putting a provision in their bill saying the Sun is going to come up tomorrow, and then if it does, they take credit for it. The pay raise was already going to happen, so they put it in the bill and say they gave the pay raise. It was already there. We got it into law when we were in the majority working with the Democrats. We didn't just say it was our way or the highway. The NDAA bill, every year we were in the majority, was a bill that was worked on with Republicans and Democrats, and they didn't send it out of committee until they had complete agreement. That was an area where we didn't have political differences. We are going to have political differences on minimum wage and some of these other issues, but we shouldn't have our men and women in uniform become part of the political divide in Washington. The Senate didn't do it. Our Members didn't do it and tried to work together. If the chairman wanted to go his own way, that is not the approach we should be taking. It is not the approach we have taken for 58 years. It is not the approach that Senate Democrats took when they worked with Republicans to come up with a bill that put our men and women in uniform as a priority. Mr. Speaker, the majority leader can look at the bill and talk about what is in it. I will tell the gentleman that is already current law anyway. I will also tell him what the Senate did to make sure that they didn't have those poison pill provisions. They shouldn't have been in the bill. Ultimately, they are not going to be in anything that becomes law. The gentleman knows it, and I know it. What happened today shouldn't have happened. Maybe it is a lesson that when we get beyond this and we see what the final product is going to be, it will be a bill where we come together. Ultimately, we will come together to make sure our men and women in uniform have the tools that they need to train safely and defend our Nation safely, but the bill that came out of the House today did not achieve that. It fell very short of where this House should have been in representing our men and women in uniform. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.

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

Mr. SCALISE. I thank the gentleman, and I share the same sentiment that Ambassador Lighthizer has done a great job of working with Members on both sides to address questions, concerns, find ways to make sure that those concerns are addressed, whether they are already inside the agreement or if there are other things that can be done to double underscore and highlight those concerns. But, in the meantime, hopefully, we can move beyond trying to get to yes and actually have a bill where we can whip that and get to yes. I know we have a whip team that I have put together on our side that is ready to go and, hopefully, your side will be able to get there. It would be ideal if we can do that before we recess. Clearly, that is not the only way to get this done, but we do have to respect, as well, that the other countries, our friends, Mexico and Canada, have an interest in this, as well. Canada has elections coming up. We don't want to have this jeopardized and become something that gets pushed behind their national elections. Ideally, we can get it done well in advance of their elections and respect the fact that they would like this done, as well, and the good will that is being created between our three countries. So I am hopeful that we can get through these final issues, get a bill that we can bring to the floor, work together to pass, and then see the benefits in our economy, see an improved NAFTA, a bill that is better for American workers and opening up more access to markets in Canada and Mexico that right now are closed. So I thank the gentleman for the encouragement, and I remain hopeful, as well, and would continue to encourage that we get this done as quickly as possible. Finally, on the NDAA bill that we just finished, we had, of course, disagreement on a number of fronts in terms of the priorities of our military, but I would want to bring up one point, and that was the piece of legislation, the Military Surviving Spouses Equity Act by our colleague, Joe Wilson. When you all took the majority, you created a new mechanism for Members to bring bills to the floor called the Consensus Calendar. This was the first bill that actually met that criteria, in fact, far exceeded the 290 signatures--he had 365 cosponsors, incredibly bipartisan--to address a real serious problem for spouses of men and women in uniform who died fighting for our country, to make sure that an inequity is corrected that we both agree needs to be fixed. Here is a bill that can quickly get to the President's desk, and maybe it gets included in other pieces of legislation that might come months away, but here is a bill where a Member worked in good faith, under the rules that were created, and it was unfortunate that the rule to bring the NDAA bill to the floor turned off the Consenus Calendar specifically for that bill, that one bill which happened to be the first bill that met that requirement. I would just ask if the gentleman could maybe look again at bringing that bill to the floor as a standalone bill in respect of the hard bipartisan work that Congressman Wilson made to address a serious problem for spouses, widows of our men and women who die in uniform.

Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, I truly appreciate the concern, support, and prayers that have been offered. Obviously, we are all praying for the people of south Louisiana as Tropical Storm Barry approaches. In the next 24 hours, we expect landfall. We are surely expecting heavy rain. I know, as I have talked to local officials, from the Governor to the mayor of New Orleans and other elected officials on the ground, they are prepared. They have asked for different things, including the Governor had asked for an emergency declaration. I spoke to President Trump yesterday, and he did, in fact, issue that emergency declaration. So, all of the Federal agencies, from FEMA to the Corps of Engineers, to other Federal agencies, are working well with State and local officials to make sure they have the tools they need. Our first priority, of course, is the safety of the people of south Louisiana. As they protect their homes and protect their property, we just encourage them to listen to their local officials, and, if evacuation orders are issued, we ask those folks to heed those warnings because it is a serious storm. And it is a storm that we are preparing for, but, as they say, you prepare for the worst but hope for the best, and we are doing all of that. I appreciate the gentleman's concerns. Mr. Speaker, I yield to my friend.