Chris Van Hollen

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to H.R. 2217, the FY14 Homeland Security Appropriations bill. I appreciate the bipartisan effort put into crafting H.R. 2217 and commend the members of the Appropriations Committee for encouraging a collaborative and open process. It's unfortunate that at the last minute an anti-immigration amendment offered by Representative Steve King of Iowa upset the delicate bipartisan balance established in the bill. Recent events emphasize the importance of ensuring the availability of the resources our country needs to address national emergencies. The tornadoes in Oklahoma, the bombings at the Boston Marathon, forest fires in California and Colorado are just a few examples of why funding for homeland security should always be considered a national priority. This bill provides resources to address these and other critical needs by directing funding to protect the country's transportation infrastructure and cybernetworks, and equally important, to our first responders who help to protect our communities and who play a vital role in helping keep the nation safe and secure. In total, the bill appropriates $38.9 billion for the Department in FY 2014 for these and other critical national priorities. While I support the level of funding set for Homeland Security in this bill, I strongly oppose the funding levels set in the Republican budget plan for other key priorities. For example, the Republican budget recklessly cuts the category of funding for our kids' education and medical research by 20 percent below the sequester level. Consequently, I strongly support the President's position that the funding levels for Homeland Security must ultimately be considered in the context of an overall agreement on the budget. Unfortunately, our Republican colleagues in the House and Senate continue to refuse to convene a conference to negotiate a budget agreement. Additionally, I share the President's concern about the bill's failure to fund the request for the Department of Homeland Security headquarters consolidation project, which will only delay the project further; the bill's failure to fully fund the request for new Customs and Borders Protection officers; and the bill's continued funding of the unnecessary 287 (g) program when the Secure Communities program is a more efficient and cost-effective alternative. In that same vein, this year I again opposed the anti-immigration amendment offered by Representative King that prohibits the use of funds in the bill from being used to implement the so called ``Morton Memos.'' These memos were written by ICE Director Morton and provide a plan to deploy ICE resources to the most cost effective priorities and provide guidance to ensure that limited resources are focused on criminals and other individuals who pose a genuine threat to national security or public safety. I am disappointed that the House chose to again include this provision and it is for that reason that I will oppose this bill.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute. I'm very pleased to offer this bipartisan amendment along with my colleagues, Mr. Mulvaney, Mr. Moran, and Mr. Woodall. I'm very pleased that it has the support of the ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, Mr. Smith. This amendment is about truth in budgeting and making sure our military has the resources it needs to prosecute the war in Afghanistan and overseas contingency operations. The Defense Department budget is split into two parts: the base budget for ongoing operations and the part of the budget for the war and overseas contingency operations. What this budget does is provide the military with exactly the resources they say they need in fiscal year 2014 for the overseas contingency account. In fact, on Wednesday, Secretary of Defense Hagel and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dempsey, General Dempsey, said that what they needed was what would be provided as a result of this amendment. The problem is the underlying bill added another $5 billion, and this is becoming a slush fund, Madam Chairman. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam Chairman, I find it interesting that the gentlelady would suggest that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dempsey, would ask for an amount of money for our warfighters that is immoral. What is cynical is to use the Afghan and overseas contingency account as a slush fund to fund operations that are part of the base budget. This is about truth in budgeting. I urge my colleagues to support this bipartisan amendment. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam Chairman, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam Chairman, I find it interesting that the gentleman would suggest that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Secretary of Defense are not asking for the resources needed to protect our men and women in battle. I now yield 1\1/2\ minutes to Mr. Mulvaney.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam Chairman, I would just urge all Members to read the amendment itself. There is nothing in here that says we will reduce one penny from the National Guard and Reserve. This is an across-the- board provision and it will be disproportionate. At this time, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran).

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Thank you, Madam Chairman. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Thank you, Madam Chairman. At this time, I yield 1 minute to my friend, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Woodall).

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam Chairman, I rise to offer the amendment.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Speaker, I have substantial sympathy with those seeking regulatory clarity and with U.S. companies wishing to avoid being competitively disadvantaged when operating abroad. At the same time, one of the hard-learned lessons from the recent financial crisis is that outsized risk readily crosses national boundaries, which is why prudential regulation of cross-border derivatives transactions that can impact our economy was embedded in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform law. The problem with today's legislation is that it seeks to achieve regulatory certainty for these kinds of transactions by effectively substituting foreign derivatives rules for our own safeguards unless the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) both agree that the foreign rules in question are not ``broadly equivalent'' to our own. Like the Administration, I would prefer for Americans to rely on U.S. law for protection in this area, and for our regulators to finish their work on these important safeguards in coordination with their foreign counterparts--rather than presume that foreign regulation, and in some cases foreign regulation that hasn't even been written yet, will be sufficient to do the job.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam Chair, I rise today to express my support for H.R. 2216, the FY14 Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Appropriations bill. I commend Chairmen Rogers and Culberson and Ranking Members Lowey and Bishop for crafting a bipartisan bill that addresses the needs of current and former service members and their families. This MilCon-VA bill provides critical funding for the DoD to build hospitals, clinics, schools, family housing and other facilities in order to deliver timely and vital medical care to our nation's veterans, active military members and their families. In addition, it provides funding for disability care, educational benefits and other resources to help advance U.S. missions abroad. I specifically applaud the committee for addressing the inexcusable backlog problem that continues to plague our Veteran's Affairs Regional Offices, including the VA's Baltimore Regional Office. This bill provides $155 million for the paperless claims process system, $136 million for the digital scanning of health records, and $252 million to establish a single, integrated Department of Defense (DOD) and VA electronic health record system. I am hopeful that these measures will be an important step in ensuring that backlogged claims are expedited as quickly as possible. In addition, this bill fully funds the FY2014 budget request for Family Housing construction at $1.542 billion, providing these necessary resources for service members, veterans, and their families. I am also pleased that this bill provides for much needed improvements at the Arlington National Cemetery. While I support the military construction/veterans spending bill, I strongly oppose the procedure Congressional Republicans used to bring it to the House floor. The Rule governing this bill affects not just the MilCon-Va budget, but other parts of our budget. I find it especially cynical that our Republican colleagues would use the spending bills on veterans and military construction as the vehicle to pass their overall budget levels, which will result in dramatic cuts to the parts of the budget that fund our kids' education and that finance investments in scientific research to find cures and treatments to cancer and other diseases. The House Appropriations Committee has already set the funding levels for those categories of the budget. And you know what they are? A $30 billion cut below the sequester level to the parts of the budget that fund our kids' education and that fund scientific research. We're supposed to have a budget process. The House passed a budget. I don't like the House Republican budget, but it passed. The Senate passed a budget. Under the rules of the Congress--in fact, as a matter of law--the House and the Senate are supposed to have completed a budget conference by April 15th. That was quite a while ago. In fact, it's been over 70 days since the Senate passed a budget and the House passed a budget. We still don't have a House-Senate conference committee report. Why might that be? Well, it turns out that the Speaker of the House has refused to appoint conferees to work with the Senate to come up with a budget. The Rule for the military construction/veterans spending bill says ``let's pretend.'' Let's make believe that the House and Senate went to conference, and let's pretend that they agreed on the House budget numbers--the numbers that would cut the part of the budget that deals with our kids' education--by over 20 percent. Let's pretend that, because we don't want to go through the normal process. That's what this Rule does. It's a total fake, and it's a fake because of the refusal to work these issues out in a transparent manner for the American people. Let's at least start the process of complying with the law. Speaker Boehner and House Republicans should follow regular House procedure and immediately request a conference and appoint conferees to negotiate a Fiscal Year 2014 budget resolution--so we can have a real federal budget, not a fake budget. For these reasons, I support President Obama's threat to veto final passage of this legislation unless it ``passes the Congress in the context of an overall budget framework that supports our recovery and enables sufficient investments in education, infrastructure, innovation and national security for our economy to compete in the future.'' It is also troubling that this bill rejects the President's proposed 1.0 percent pay raise for federal workers. These individuals have already contributed more than their fair share to reducing the deficit, sacrificing more than $100 billion in pay and benefits. It is unreasonable to ask federal employees, who have already disproportionately sacrificed for deficit reduction, to bear the burden again. This year's MilCon-Va bill continues to ensure our veterans and active servicemen and women have the resources they need to succeed when they come home. However, Congress must also come together to follow regular order and appoint budget conferees so we can pass a final budget and have a normal appropriations process. It's time to replace the sequester, invest in our economy, and reduce our long-term deficit.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I thank my friend, Mr. Hastings. I've been listening to Mr. Webster. And if I were Mr. Webster, I'd be doing exactly what he's doing, which is focusing on the underlying bills: the spending bill to support our veterans, to support military construction, and homeland security. But as others have pointed out, the vote before us is not on those underlying bills. It's on the rule. And everybody needs to understand that what's at play here is a scheme to use the rules to affect not just the veterans budget, but to affect other parts of our budget. In fact, Mr. Speaker, I find it especially cynical that our colleagues would use the spending bills on veterans and military construction as the vehicle to pass their budget levels which will result in dramatic cuts to the parts of the budget that fund our kids' education and that fund the investments in science and research to find cures and treatments to things like cancer, because we know the Appropriations Committee has already set out what the levels for those categories to the budget will be. And do you know what they are? A $30 billion cut below the sequester level to the parts of the budget that fund our kids' education and that fund that scientific research. So, yes, this is the rule for two particular bills. They are good bills. The veterans bill is a good bill. But the rule, ladies and gentlemen, has embedded in it the Republican budget levels for the overall budget process. And that's going to hurt education for the kids of those veterans and the family members of those veterans who have diseases whose funding for research is going to be dramatically cut. A 20 percent cut below the sequester level, that's what you're adopting in this rule, a 20 percent cut for the category of the budget on education. Now, why are we here? We're supposed to have a budget process. The House passed a budget. I don't like the budget, but it passed a budget. The Senate passed a budget. Under the rules of the Congress, in fact, as a matter of law, the House and Senate are supposed to have completed a conference committee by April 15. That was quite a while ago. In fact, it's been over 70 days since the Senate passed a budget and the House passed a budget. Now, we don't have a House-Senate conference committee report. Why might that be? Well, it turns out that the Speaker of the House has refused to appoint conferrees to work with the Senate to come up with a budget. Now, our Republican colleagues beat up for years on the Senate for not having a budget. I can understand that complaint. But the Senate has a budget now, and yet our Republican colleagues refuse to go to conference. You made a big deal about ``no budget, no pay.'' Guess what? We don't have a budget. We have a House budget and we have a Senate budget, but we don't have a Federal budget, and yet everybody is getting paid. What happened to that? Now, why would we not want to go to conference? Mr. Speaker, just today in the United States Senate, Patty Murray, the chairwoman for the Budget Committee, for the 11th time tried to get consent to go to conference to work these differences out in a transparent way, blocked by a Republican Senator. Here is what Senator McCain has had to say about the whole process, because I would urge our colleagues to listen to him. This is a quote from Senator McCain: I think it's insane for Republicans who complained for 4 years about Harry Reid not having a budget and now we're not going to agree to conference? That is beyond comprehension for me. And I think it's beyond comprehension for the American people. Why are you sitting on the budget? So what are we doing in this rule? This rule says let's pretend. Let's make believe that the House and Senate went to conference, and let's pretend that they agree, except let's pretend that they agreed on the House budget numbers, the numbers that would cut the part of the budget that deals with our kids' education by over 20 percent. Let's pretend that because we don't want to go through the normal process. That's what this rule does. It's a total fake. And it's a fake because of the refusal to work these issues out in a transparent manner for the American people. So, the previous question is a very simple statement. It just says let's comply with the law which says a conference committee was supposed to have met and completed action by April 15; let's at least start down the process of complying with the law. It says that it is the sense of the House of Representatives that the Speaker should follow regular House procedure and immediately request a conference and appoint conferees to negotiate a fiscal year 2014 budget resolution so we can have a real Federal budget, not a fake budget, which is what you're calling for in this rule under the guise of saying let's just fund our veterans.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. As I said, Mr. Speaker, I find it especially cynical that we would use a good bill to provide spending and support to our veterans as the vehicle to impose this scheme on the Congress which will have terrible, negative effects on other parts of the budget. Do you know that while this Congress was away, I don't know if people saw it, but down in Fort Bragg, the home of the 82nd Airborne, they just said that teachers who were going to teach the kids of our servicemen and -women are going to be furloughed for 5 days this fall-- for 5 days this fall. So we want to replace the sequester. Let's go to conference and get it done. I urge my colleagues who said they want a transparent process to vote for our measure.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. My colleague, what I know are the facts, which is just today, as I said on the floor, the chairwoman of the Senate Budget Committee, for the 11th time, said to Mr. Ryan, Let's go to conference so we can work out these differences in a public way. And she was blocked over here just like we've been blocked over here.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I'm not questioning the integrity of the chairman of the Budget Committee. This is not just about process. As I indicated, you adopt this rule and you're essentially applying a 20 percent cut below sequester to the part of the budget that deals with our kids' education and science and research. So this is way beyond process. So this is way beyond process.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. That is the case. The gentleman should go read the Appropriations Committee 302(b) allocations.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Will the gentleman yield? Why are those levels at the levels they are? Would the gentleman answer that question?

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Will the gentleman yield, because we don't agree on cutting the kids' education budget?

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I just want to know why you're afraid to go to conference. Why is that? That's what this is about.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Will the gentleman yield on that point?

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I just have a simple question, which is: How is it that we are going to get agreement from the House and the Senate in a conference committee if the Speaker of the House continues to refuse to go to conference? How are we going to get that agreement? The reason we don't have a conference committee budget report and you have to use this device is that there is no conference, and the reason there is no conference is that our Republican colleagues in the House refuse to appoint conferees, which is why we want to pass this amendment and let the Members vote on whether or not we go to conference.