Rob Woodall

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I am so incensed by that presentation. I know my friend is passionate for his folks. I live in a majority minority county. And if you want to know, if any folks are watching this, and they want to know why we can't get things done together, they could use that presentation as the expose of why we are divided instead of united. How dare you suggest that folks don't care about your community. How dare you suggest that race is the basis of this. How dare you, when I sat in my committee working on this issue hour after hour and not one Member brought this up, not one Member brought this to the committee. I am incensed. Mr. Speaker, we owe each other better than that. You all are better than that. This institution is better than that. I know the gentleman is passionate, but that kind of vitriol is not going to get us to where I know you and I both want us to be. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 1 minute to the gentleman from South Carolina.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, it has to be said the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Hahn) is an amazing advocate for the harbor maintenance trust fund. She represents a critically important port infrastructure. It is critically important not just for her area, but to the entire United States of America. I do the same on the Eastern seaboard, the port in Savannah, Mr. Speaker, is the fastest growing container port in the country. It is not a catalyst for growth in Georgia; it is a catalyst for growth across the United States of America, particularly in the Southeastern portion. The gentlewoman was absolutely right, we made some great progress in 2014. We came to an agreement that we need to do more. We have the ability to do more, and we need to do more. That is not the question today, Mr. Speaker. You will not find any reference made by any member of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee suggesting that they don't want to do more. The question is: Will we do what we do so often, and that is to decide that Congress cannot be trusted with these decisions and let's just punt to the administration? Now, I will tell you what that means for Savannah since we saw a banner up here earlier on the floor talking about the Savannah port. What that means for Savannah is that while the Corps of Engineers says that we can get this port fully operational for Panamax ships within 6\1/2\ years, providing taxpayers the maximum bang for their buck--the administration funded it not over 6\1/2\ years. They didn't provide enough funding for it to get done in 10 years. They didn't provide enough funding for it to get done in 20 years--the funding that was recommended by the administration stretched the construction out over two decades. Who wins in that? Who wins in that? I will tell you that an advocate for the port system, as the gentlewoman from California is, would not spend taxpayers dollars that way. I would not spend taxpayer dollars that way and you would not spend taxpayer dollars that way. Is this institution at fault for not maximizing the utility of the harbor maintenance trust fund? Yes. Yes. Will this institution compound that fault by delegating the authority away to the administration? The answer is yes. I would say to my friends that the nature of a trust fund is that it is there when we need it most. What the gentlewoman from California described is the spend-up program that was going on over a decade recognized that. It recognized that there is going to be a rainy day here where we are going to need to dip in, where the revenues won't be what we expected. The nature of a trust fund is not to spend it to zero every year. The nature of a trust fund is to have it there when you need it. We are working together to do more here, Mr. Speaker. But when the objection is made--and I will read it in part. Section 108 is the provision that we are talking about being stripped, and it allows the Corps to use the funds available in the harbor maintenance trust fund without further appropriation by Congress. Mr. Speaker, in the 1960s, when you looked at the Federal budget, about one-third of that Federal budget was on autopilot, just going right out the door every year primarily for income support programs. Two-thirds of that budget was investing in the United States of America, growing the United States of America, focused on our kids, focused on our ports, focused on our schools, focused on our parks, focused on innovation and infrastructure. Today, that same chart has been flipped. Two-thirds of the Federal budget is on autopilot, and only one-third is left to the discretion of this institution. I say to my friends that I think more of us as a body than to say that we can't get this done. Fair enough if folks want to look back at history and say: But, Rob, we have been trying to get this done and we haven't gotten it done right yet. I can see that is true. We have come closer together than we have ever come before. More than 50 percent of this body has been here 6 years or less. More than 50 percent of this body does not know of the failures. They only know of their desire to succeed, and that is why we have come closer than we have ever come before. Let's not punt today. Let's not concede failure today. Let's not decide that the President, whoever he or she may be next cycle, is going to know better than us tomorrow, better than our constituents tomorrow. Let's just do the job that we were sent here to do, and we have never been closer to celebrating that success together. I hope we will get there. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. My friend from Florida is very earnest in his comments. One of the reasons I enjoy working with him so much on the Rules Committee is we get to work on issues that affect people's lives--that make a difference for folks back home. Even though we are here debating the WRDA bill, I would be remiss if I let the reference to the CO-OP bill, coming later on today, pass as being an attack on ObamaCare or even pass as being a waiver of the budget rules. Mr. Speaker, if you have had a chance to look at that, what you know is that, when U.S. citizens were forced out of the insurance policies that they liked and into the ObamaCare system and when those ObamaCare policies they were forced into failed midyear and they lost the insurance that they were forced into after having already lost the insurance that they had chosen for themselves, the law said we are now going to come and tax you--penalize you--once again because you have let your insurance policy lapse. This is the absurdity of having lost your insurance policy because the law took it from you, of having the law force you into a second insurance policy, which then collapses under its own weight because it cannot support itself, and then of you, the American taxpayer, having to be on the hook. So the budget point of order, which is absolutely waived, waives the absurd proposition that the Federal Government was entitled to tax American citizens who have been twice failed by ObamaCare because we were expecting them to pay a penalty for having lost their care midyear. This is something that unites us. This is not something that divides us. We have an opportunity in the next rule that comes up--in the next bill that comes up--to step in for those American families who, again, lost the insurance they wanted, who lost the insurance they were forced into, and who are now being faced with an IRS penalty for their troubles. I think this is something that our constituents have sent us here to do, and I am glad we are going to be taking action on that later today. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Sanford), who represents the Port of Charleston that we saw on the map earlier.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I say, in broad terms, that I support what the gentleman from Oregon has just said. I served with him on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. I was one of the folks who supported the bill that unanimously left committee. The great State of Georgia is dependent on the Port of Savannah, about which the gentleman from Oregon has just laid out the critical funding infrastructure needs. The question with the harbor maintenance trust fund, I want to be clear, is not one of the diversions of those resources. We often talk about trust funds as if someone is dipping his hand in and taking money out of the trust funds, and there is not a single person who works at a single port in the great State of Georgia who believes that is true-- because it is not. The trust fund still sits there. The gentleman's point is that we should be spending the money in the trust fund, and he is absolutely right about that. Correct any misunderstanding. No one is spending those resources elsewhere. Those resources are still in the trust fund, and they ought to be spent. The question then becomes for this Chamber: Are we going to delegate that authority, as we do time and time again, to the administration, and the administration will spend that money any way the administration sees fit; or will we, utilizing the constitutional powers not given to this body but required of this body, spend those dollars as our constituents see fit--in an accountable fashion, not by unelected bureaucrats, but by folks who are elected and who stand for election every 2 years? These dollars need to go out the door. The Port of Savannah is critical because it is so big. The Port of Brunswick, in Georgia, is even more challenged by dredging that hasn't happened but that should have happened. The project that my friend from Florida mentioned, the Everglades, is not a local port project in Florida; that is a project of national significance. We all stand for the restoration that needs to happen there in the Everglades, a national environmental and natural treasure. We have failed in making those decisions, and if we delegate this authority in its entirety to the administration, I tell you that we will have failed our constituents again. Mr. Speaker, you were with me and the chairman last night in the Rules Committee. Chairman Shuster wants to solve this problem. Chairman Shuster wants what I want, and I want what Mr. DeFazio wants; and what Mr. DeFazio wants is for us to live up to our obligation to maintain America's critical port and waterway infrastructure--we can and we should and we will--but delegating it to the administration does none of those things. That, we should not do. We have an opportunity to do it the right way. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I would say to my friend from Florida, I do not have any further speakers remaining, and I am prepared to close if he is. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I want to start by picking up where my friend from Florida left off, and that is that this was an amazing work product that came out of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. I love serving on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. We have got a lot of good men and women from all across the country on it; and, yes, we are able to come together and do things that perhaps other committees in this House could not come together and do. That doesn't happen on its own. I want to recognize all the folks-- not just the members on the committee--like Geoff Bowman, Matt Sturges, and Collin McCune, who serve in a staff role on that committee, bringing all of this paperwork together so that we can get about the people's business. Mr. Speaker, we have talked about a lot of different things in this rule to deal with the WRDA bill. Most of them don't have anything to do with the WRDA bill. Folks don't know back home. My friend from Florida is absolutely right. People are sick and tired of the games they see going on in Washington. As my friend knows, committee jurisdiction isn't a game. It is the rules that we play by in order to get work done, in order to make sure that subject matter experts are working on individual pieces of legislation. I sit on Transportation and Infrastructure. I am a subject matter expert on Transportation and Infrastructure. I have absolutely no jurisdiction over the EPA or clean drinking water at all, and I don't have any expertise over it. I don't have any expertise. When my friend from Michigan asked why more isn't being done, I don't know. I look at a CNN article about my hometown of Atlanta that says our drinking water infrastructure is being delivered with pipes constructed in the 1800s. I look at a report from CNN that says 4,500 drinking water facilities across this country are failing the EPA lead test today--that is 4,500. I don't know why the folks with jurisdiction over those issues are not at work on it. Do I think the EPA bears responsibility for letting folks, as the articles go on to say, cheat with impunity, that it just became a culture in local drinking waters that you could misreport and the EPA would just wink and nod and go along with it? Is there blame to go around, as my friend from Florida said? Of course, there is. One of the great surprises, Mr. Speaker, of coming to serve in this body is the caliber of the men and women that I have gotten to serve with. I get to read the reports on TV about Congress playing games, about partisanship, about folks who don't care about one another, and I know it is not true. I get to read about folks who care only about feathering their own nest or pursuing their own career, who don't care about serving men and women in their times of need, and I know that it is not true. I hear about folks who would rather put party above people, and I know that it is not true. That is because I know him, I know him, and I know him, and right on down the line. This bill, Mr. Speaker, is not going to solve all of the ills of this country. It is not even going to solve a large part of them. It is going to solve one little part as it deals with the critical water infrastructure of our ports and waterways on which so many millions of American jobs depend. I don't propose that we pass this rule and pass the underlying bill and absolve ourselves of any other responsibility. I propose that we pass this rule and we pass this underlying bill so that we can get about the rest of our responsibilities. One issue at a time, Mr. Speaker, working together, Member to Member, community to community, we would amaze the American people with what we could get done. I urge all my colleagues to support this rule; support the underlying bill.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I would like to believe that you requested this time today after having been with the Rules Committee last night debating this measure. The rule, House Resolution 892, provides for structured debate of H.R. 5303, the Water Resources Development Act of 2016. Now, for Members who have been here for more than one term, you are thinking: Didn't we just do a Water Resources Development Act of 2014? Well, we absolutely did. We were supposed to. This is getting us back on track to--Congress after Congress after Congress--focus on the water resources of our Nation. In this rule today, we are going to make in order the general debate on the WRDA bill, the Water Resources Development Act, as well as a number of amendments on both sides. But I want to make it clear that the Rules Committee is not done. When Congressman Hastings and I finish here on the floor, we will head back to the Rules Committee and we will make even more amendments in order for debate. There are 25 amendments, bipartisan amendments, made in order by the rule that we are debating today. And, again, we will return to committee to make additional amendments in order this afternoon. It would, no doubt, have been easier to make all the amendments available in one package. But as so often happens, Mr. Speaker, when you have a bill of this magnitude, of this importance, as the Water Resources Development Act is, you have an abundance of interest from across this Chamber. I believe the Rules Committee has received over 90 amendments to improve upon this legislation from Members who have important issues that they would like to see debated. That is why you see a two-rule process for this particular bill today. For folks who don't have the pleasure of serving on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, as you and I do, Mr. Speaker, I will tell you that the WRDA bill authorizes the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for all of their activities across the spectrum from construction to maintenance. It is the water infrastructure maintenance of harbors and locks and dams of flood control projects and of water supply projects across the Nation, coast to coast. The underlying bill continues the reforms that this Congress began and that the President signed in the WRRDA bill of 2014 by strongly asserting Congress' authority over Corps activities and, again, restoring the 2-year WRDA cycle that has been missing for far too long. This return to regular order, Mr. Speaker, I would argue, is going to take the politicking out of these projects and return the WRDA bill to being that bipartisan bill that focuses on Congress' priorities, as spoken by our constituents back home, rather than, as sometimes happens, the Corps taking direction from unelected bureaucrats downtown. I believe that we get a better work product when we collaborate together, again, manifesting the will of our constituency back home. If you need to see what this return to regular order has meant, Mr. Speaker, just look at the 30 Chief's Reports or the 29 feasibility studies included in this bill. Again, if you don't serve on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Chief's Reports and feasibility studies may not mean much to you. But if you are involved in water infrastructure anywhere in this country, you know that those reports are vital to moving your project forward and you know that the feasibility study is critical to moving your project forward. Each one of these has been reviewed by the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee in public hearings, just as we had done in the WRRDA bill of 2014. Mr. Speaker, this kind of open and transparent process, I would argue, has given us a better work product in the underlying bill and is going to give us a better rule here today. Mr. Speaker, when we talk about our waterways--I had to write the stats down here; I don't have them committed to memory--they are mind- boggling. Six hundred million tons of cargo are moving on our waterways, Mr. Speaker. That is $230 billion in economic value moving on our inland waterways each year--$1.4 trillion worth of goods moving in and out of our ports each year; $320 billion in Federal, State, and local revenue generated by those ports. Over one-quarter--over one- quarter, Mr. Speaker, of the gross domestic product of the entire United States of America comes from international trade and 99 percent of cargo moves through the ports controlled by this legislation. Mr. Speaker, we are talking about over 40 million American jobs tied to international trade and, again, supported by this bill brought out of committee in a bipartisan and unanimous fashion. I am very proud to support the underlying bill. This bill makes in order time for the chairman and ranking member of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee to debate this bill. I am very proud that the Rules Committee has seen fit to allow those Members who do not serve on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee to make their voice heard as well. Mr. Speaker, this is a definition of how we should be doing things in this institution. I am proud to bring this rule to the consideration of my colleagues today. I am proud of the underlying bill that this rule supports. I hope all of my colleagues will join me in supporting the rural and the underlying bill. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Hastings), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only. General Leave

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 892 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, as I was listening to the Reading Clerk read through the rule, it sounded a little restrictive. Today, I went back and referenced my notes just to make sure that I was right. Mr. Speaker, House Resolution 876 is a structured rule, but it provides for the consideration of absolutely every amendment submitted to the Rules Committee on H.R. 5461, the Iranian Leadership Asset Transparency Act. Every single amendment that was submitted by this body to the Rules Committee for approval was approved and will be made in order by this rule. The underlying bill requires the Secretary of the Treasury to submit a report to Congress and make that report available online in its nonclassified parts--obviously, the classified parts would be restricted to Members of Congress--that estimates the total assets under direct or indirect control of senior Iranian leaders, including those with ties to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. Mr. Speaker, as you know, it is well-documented that many of Iran's political and military leaders have amassed substantial personal wealth on the backs of the citizens of Iran. It gives them control over all sorts of sectors of the Iranian economy. In fact, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service estimates that one-third of the Iranian economy--that includes telecommunications; it includes construction; it includes airports; it includes seaports--is controlled by leaders personally in the government--these political and military elites-- through what they will call personal foundations. Mr. Speaker, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action--that is what most of America knows as the Iran deal, signed by President Obama--has allowed many Iranian entities that are tied to government corruption to be removed from the list of entities that American businesses are prohibited from doing business with--those businesses sanctioned by the U.S. Government. Given the large agreement that we have in this Chamber that the Iranian Government is embracing corruption at every level, it is clear that much of the foreign investment from U.S. companies should be limited but is not under the current regime. What is more, U.S. businesses today that are able to invest in Iran are doing so without any of the knowledge of whom they are supporting and what kinds of corruption may be involved. That is bad news for America. It is bad news for American national security, and it is bad news for the American economy. H.R. 5461 will shine a light on that internal Iranian corruption, and it will allow American businesses the information they need to determine whom and whom not to do business with. We may hear today in the underlying bill, Mr. Speaker, that these requirements are too burdensome. I tell you that that is nonsense. It is simply a request that the Department of the Treasury, using existing resources--public resources--as well as our classified resources, make this report to Congress. We are talking about only 80 folks. We are talking about the Supreme Leader of Iran; we are talking about the President of Iran; we are talking about members of the Council of Guardians in Iran; we are talking about the Expeditionary Council and about two dozen Revolutionary Guard Corps leaders. In the war on terror, in the quest for transparency, I am certain that the United States Government, through the Department of the Treasury, can provide this information. We may hear in the underlying debate that such information will expose our intelligence sources overseas--again, nonsense. There is not a single Member of this Chamber, from left to right, who wants to do that. No one wants to do that. Anything that is in a classified setting that needs to remain in a classified setting will, in fact, remain in a classified setting. Mr. Speaker, if you have any of those concerns--in fact, if any Member of this Chamber has any of those concerns--I invite him to support this rule. Again, with the passage of this rule, we will move to the underlying bill. We will have a full-fledged debate on that underlying bill, including a debate over every single amendment offered for consideration in this body. Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support the rule and to support the underlying bill. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I ask the gentleman from Massachusetts if he has any further speakers remaining.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only. general leave

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I appreciate you issuing that reminder. I don't particularly enjoy this time of year on the House floor because we do have important business that needs to occur here, and we often get off base. I don't think this is the right time to talk about the FBI investigation into Secretary Clinton. I don't think this is the right time to talk about the pay to play investigation going on with the Clinton Foundation. I don't think this is the right time to talk about all of her employees who have been questioned about her behavior and are pleading the Fifth, one right after the other, and are refusing to answer those questions. I don't think this is the right place for that. This is the right place to talk about something that brings us together, which is the defeat of a corrupt Iranian regime. Mr. Speaker, my friend from Massachusetts is absolutely right. There are many of us on this side of the aisle who do not like the agreement that the President made with the Iranians. In fact, there are many on that side of the aisle who do not like the agreement that the President made with the Iranians, and you need go no further than this debate today to understand why. I will read again from the President's own veto statement of this bill. It says: ``This bill's required public postings''--these are the public postings of the assets and the corrupt arrangements that are involved in these top high officials of the Iranian regime. ``This bill's required public postings . . . may be perceived by Iran and likely our Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) partners as an attempt to undermine the fulfillment of our commitments, in turn impacting the continued viability of this diplomatic arrangement that peacefully and verifiably prevents Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.'' I will say it again, Mr. Speaker, the President's concern is that, by making information public to the American people and the Iranian people--and this information would be published in four languages so that it would be available to the Iranian people as well--by making information public about the corrupt business dealings of Iranian leaders, we will be violating the agreement the President signed with Iran. How could this Nation possibly have signed an agreement, Mr. Speaker, that trades away our opportunity to shine sunlight on corrupt practices? I don't believe that we have. But my friend from Massachusetts said, Mr. Speaker: It undermines the letter and the intent of the agreement. To shine sunlight on corrupt practices. Mr. Speaker, this is why the American people were concerned about the Iranian agreement. This is why we continue to be concerned about the Iranian agreement; but more importantly, this bill is not about that agreement. The chairman of the Committee on Financial Services testified in front of the Committee on Rules last night, Mr. Speaker, and he said he just can't imagine why it is controversial for us to publish a list of officials and their holdings online. I agree. It is baffling to me that the disclosure of what is, in many cases, publicly known information but that has not been compiled in a particular place could be a threat to preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons. In fact, I would argue shining sunlight on the corrupt regime will empower the Iranian citizens to perhaps help us in this cause. Mr. Speaker, this is not a controversial piece of legislation. This is, in fact, a transparency piece of legislation. The motion to recommit that the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Thompson) discussed, candidly, most of what he said I agree with. I don't believe a motion to recommit is the right place to do it. He was not in front of the Committee on Rules last night. The bill he offers as a bipartisan, commonsense compromise has absolutely no Republicans on it whatsoever; but I do believe that pushing out our borders, pushing out our vetting process is exactly the right idea for this country. This happens to be a bill from the Committee on Financial Services. The gentleman from Mississippi happens to be the ranking member on the Committee on Homeland Security. I hope the Committee on Homeland Security will get about that business. I support it 100 percent. But what I ask of my colleagues here today, Mr. Speaker, is to support this rule so we can debate this bill. Folks on both sides of the aisle like it, don't like it. Debating the bill is the right place to expose it. Transparency is good for the Iranians, and it is good for us as well. If we support this rule, we will also consider every amendment that was offered in the Committee on Rules. Every alternative idea, every perfecting idea, every improvement that this body came up with and brought to the Committee on Rules last night, Mr. Speaker, we are going to make in order for debate here on the floor. This is a tough time of year. Politics don't often bring out the best of policy, but we have got a good shot at it today. We have got a good shot at it with this rule. We have a rule here that I think everybody can be proud to vote for; and, as my friend from Tennessee said earlier, then we will debate the merits of the underlying bill and have the House work its will.

Mr. WOODALL. I tell the gentleman I, too, have a rumored speaker who is on his way, so we are in the same boat in that space. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I read further from the Statement of Administration Policy, the veto threat that the gentleman from Massachusetts noted earlier. He did read the section that said: If the President were presented with H.R. 5461, his senior advisers would recommend that he veto the bill. There is more on this page, Mr. Speaker. He also says: `` . . . the Administration remains clear-eyed regarding Iran's support for terrorism, its ballistic missile program, human rights abuses, and destabilizing activity in the region.'' Now, Mr. Speaker, what he is referencing, no doubt, ties into the report that the State Department released over the summer, naming Iran the number one international sponsor of terrorism. Now, what this bill asks is: If you know you have a corrupt government--again, in the administration's words, Iran's support for terrorism, its ballistic program, its human rights abuses, and its destabilizing activity in the region--if you know that you have a dangerous government and if you know that corrupt leaders of that government are hiding their resources in foundations across the nation, if you know that those foundations are controlling a third of the Iranian economy, continuing to keep its foot on the voice of the Iranian people, if you know that this is true, why won't you stand up and be counted? My friend from Massachusetts says we shouldn't waste our time on this because it is going nowhere. Candidly, I believe leadership is taking those things that folks believe are going nowhere and making them a reality. That is what the President did with this Iran deal. When I go back and think about the polling that was going on across the Nation while the President was pushing this deal around the globe, there was no more unpopular agreement with the American people. The American people were livid that we would be making a deal to perpetuate the power and control structure in Iran, but the President led on that. He forced that through. I don't believe we ever got a majority of the American people behind it, but he got a majority of the Congress to support him in that effort. Mr. Speaker, this is about information. This is about information on a known sponsor of global terrorism. This is about providing information not just to American citizens, but to Iranian citizens. If you live in the nation of Iran, if you have that average annual income of $15,000, Mr. Speaker, you might be interested to know how the other half lives. You might be interested to know, when your leaders are talking about the Great Satan on national television, where it is they are stuffing their pockets. You might be interested to know, when folks are talking about you rising up to fight the Great Satan, where those folks have their relatives working, where their millions are growing, what parts of the economy they are controlling. That is all this bill is going to ask for. Again, Mr. Speaker, we are here to debate the rule today. The rule makes it in order to consider the underlying bill as well as every single amendment that has been offered by both sides of the aisle to perfect the underlying bill. Again, I urge my colleagues to be enthusiastic in their support of the underlying bill and of the rule. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 876 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from the great State of Tennessee (Mr. Duncan), one of the great leaders of this conference.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. I thank the gentleman from Michigan for yielding me the time, and I appreciate the leadership of the gentlewoman from California. Mr. Speaker, I stuck around tonight because we are doing two of my favorite things in this institution. We are taking ideas that came from constituents with problems who trusted us enough to bring us those problems. We are putting those things into action, and we are doing it not with a lot of shouting and not with a lot of pomp and circumstance. We are doing it just the way the process was supposed to work by which the gentlewoman from California crafts an idea, and she goes out and she solicits cosponsors, and the team on the Judiciary Committee works it through the process. Then it comes down here to the House floor, Mr. Speaker, where it is going to make real differences for real people. Imagine you have done everything the right way--you have stood in line; you have played by the rules. You have done everything the way citizen and American law has asked you to do it. Finally, your green card is ready to be delivered, and you are waiting at the post office for it to come--right there by the mailbox, waiting for it to come. You check online. Online, it says it was delivered yesterday, but you don't have it. You call your Congressman for help, and your Congressman says, ``There is nothing we can do,'' and there hasn't been until this Speier legislation today. For the first time, we give constituents who have played by the rules an opportunity to pay, at their expense, in order to guarantee that this document that will allow them to work, that will allow them to feed their families, that will allow them to pursue that American Dream is going to end up in their hands. Golly, it sounds small when you read the legislation, but if you are that family, Mr. Speaker, there is nothing bigger in your life. I am grateful for the partnership of all of my colleagues who made this possible tonight.