Rob Woodall

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Madam Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Madam Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. WOODALL. Madam Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Madam Speaker, I think folks are going to have a tough time containing their emotions today. We met in the House Rules Committee at 8 a.m. this morning, and folks already had fuses that were running short. I agree with my friend from Massachusetts, enough is enough. We had an amendment offered in the Rules Committee this morning. I don't think most folks in this body know because folks weren't at the Rules Committee this morning. We had an amendment offered in the Rules Committee this morning that said, if the gentleman wants to do this new bill that has been crafted by the Democratic majority, bring that new bill to the floor, but let's at least consider the bipartisan bill that passed the Senate, resoundingly, 84-8 yesterday. I agree with my friend from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern), enough is enough, Madam Speaker. We could send a bill to the White House today to start the money going today. My friend from Massachusetts said: Let the Republicans talk if they want to. We want to talk about the children. I am tired of talking about the children. Let's serve the children. Let's do it. Let's do it. Let's stop talking about it. It has been almost 60 days that we have been talking about it, with one tragic picture after another rolling across the national headlines. Let's stop talking about it. If folks have an alternative view, they can share alternative view as they have, but allow us to vote on what the Senate agreed, 84-8, after roundly rejecting the previously passed House language, was an opportunity to serve the children today. Madam Speaker, I don't believe the Members of this institution know what happened in the Rules Committee this morning. I don't believe the Members of this institution know we rejected that bipartisan opportunity this morning. With this, under a point of order, we will bring the Members of this institution down here to the House floor where they will hear it themselves. We have an opportunity to act now, as my friend from Oklahoma (Mr. Cole) has offered. The question is: Are we going to take ``yes'' for an answer or are we just going to continue to talk about the children? Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. WOODALL. Madam Speaker, the gentleman has mischaracterized my statement. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I have the honor of hosting the guest chaplain today, and I believe you were feeling his words that we are all going to be held to account at the end, as you recall, in that vote series there. Those are powerful words, and it is not just something he shares in Congress today; it is something he shares with our entire community. If you recognized his voice in that prayer, Mr. Speaker, it is because he is the host of the Touching Lives Ministry. It can be seen in all 50 States and around the world. He has his lovely bride of more than four decades, Teresa, with him here in the gallery, and he leads back in my home State, Mr. Speaker, Cross Pointe Church in Duluth. He left First Baptist Church Snellville and was called to plant a new congregation. It is a powerful ministry, not just with the Word, but with what the Word tells us we should do in deed, and it is lived out there every day. From 2000 to 2002, Mr. Speaker, he was the president of the Southern Baptist Convention. I told the gentleman earlier that, if he can handle church politics, he can certainly handle the politics that we are involved in here. But the honor for me, because I have such deep respect for all of my colleagues here, is to share a little bit of back home with each one of you. Dr. Merritt embodies the Seventh Congressional District values of faith and family and duty, and I am grateful to him, not just for his prayers in ministry to me, not just for his prayers in ministry to our community, but to the entire Nation and to the world.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend on the Rules Committee for yielding. I love coming down to the House floor during Rules Committee time, Mr. Speaker. It is kind of a one-on-one relationship we have with the gentleman in that chair. It is a one-on-one relationship with our colleagues on the other side of the aisle. Candidly, I like the members of the Rules Committee. We have men and women up there who fight hard on absolutely everything every day, not because they are trying to be obstinate, but because they really believe in what they are doing. When my friend from Massachusetts said earlier he takes a backseat to no one when it comes to standing up for children, I believe that is absolutely true. But the ranking member, the gentleman from Oklahoma, also takes a backseat to no one. I have seen him and his leadership as chair of the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Subcommittee last year. He was taking slings and arrows from all sides, fighting the Republicans, fighting the Democrats, fighting Northerners, Southerners, all folks of all stripes, trying to do the right thing for the right reasons. My friend from Massachusetts says that the administration is using children for political theater. This isn't a Republican or Democrat problem. This is a House problem we are having. The Senate, Republicans and Democrats, came together nearly unanimously to move a bill that we could send to the White House today that would fund the problems that the gentleman from Massachusetts referenced immediately, the funding shortfalls immediately, the problems in staffing immediately, and the problems in counseling immediately. Instead, as the gentleman from Oklahoma pointed out, we tried to move a bill last night at midnight. It fell apart because the Democratic Caucus didn't have enough votes to move it, and in the last 12 hours, instead of coming to Republicans to try to find a bipartisan pathway forward, the Democratic Caucus has been largely insular looking for a pathway to follow alone. My friend from Massachusetts is 100 percent right. This is an issue that should not be used to score partisan points. It should not be used for political theater. It is an opportunity, one among many, but perhaps the most important for us to come together and unite around things that every man and woman in this Chamber believes in, and that is serving our fellow man. As the gentleman from Oklahoma said, we can start that road towards conference with the passage of this bill tonight. But if we reject this bill and bring up the Senate bill, we don't have to start the pathway towards conference. We can start the pathway towards progress, towards solution. We can end the talk and begin the action. I think that is what every Member of this Chamber wants to do, and I hope they will take yes for an answer.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Chairman, if you had granted me more than 5 minutes, I would have spent much more of that time talking about how good it was to see you there in the chair, but you will just have to know I am feeling it here, even though I can't belabor that point. I serve on the Transportation Committee, Mr. Chairman, and my amendment proposes to strike jurisdiction that belongs to the Transportation Committee from the appropriations bill. Now, as you know, clause 2 of the House Rules prohibits legislating on an appropriations bill, but the House Rules Committee waived those rules as this bill came to the floor, so the only alternative I have is to come and try to strike that provision. The truth is that we have not had a single hearing on this provision in the Transportation Committee, Mr. Chairman. We have not had a single witness testify in the Transportation Committee. We have had bills sitting in the Transportation Committee that purport to deal with this topic since January and have not called a single bit of activity directed in this direction, despite having moved a whole host of bills to the House floor already this year. I see that my friends, the chairman of the Transportation Committee and the chair of the subcommittee, have put out a Dear Colleague encouraging the defeat of this amendment, surrendering this jurisdiction of the Transportation Committee to the Appropriations Committee. Mr. Chairman, there are times that we do have to legislate on appropriations bills, those times that we can't have a functioning authorizing process. That is not the case with Chairman DeFazio. It is not the case with Chairwoman Holmes Norton, and I cannot imagine, for the life of me, why this House would choose to tuck into the back of an appropriations bill language that should be heard by the full authorizing committee. If we strike this language today, my commitment is to work with all my friends in the House to try to move language forward through the regular authorizing process and have that back on the House floor this year. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Chairman, I would have said in the realm of common sense that the authorizing committee should be allowed to authorize. I would have said the realm of common sense would have been that, if we have a committee that is functioning, we should allow that committee to function. I would have said in the realm of common sense, if the committee chairman supports it and the subcommittee chairman supports it, that perhaps we should have had a hearing where we at least talked about it. I ask, Mr. Chairman, when 80 percent of the TIFIA money goes to only 10 States, what impact does this have on smaller States? I would yield to anyone who knows, but we don't know because this isn't the authorizing committee. The cardinal is absolutely right: He provided additional money in CIG dollars this year. But when there are projects on the horizon that would, by themselves, as a single project, Mr. Chair, consume not 1- year's worth of funding, not 2-years' worth of funding, but 3-years' worth of funding, leaving nothing for any other projects in the Nation, what is the impact of having a mandatory authorization? I see my friend, the chairman, at the desk. I love working with my friend, the chairman, in the committee. In his Dear Colleague that he and Eleanor Holmes Norton sent last year, he pointed out exactly what I am concerned about today, Mr. Chair. He said: ``As you know, the CIG program's statutory language is not like a typical discretionary grant program. . . . It is a pipeline program where eligible projects that meet the statutory criteria . . . are funded subject only to continuing appropriations.'' The ``may'' language my friend from North Carolina cited, rather than ``shall'' language, is included specifically because there is no discretion to prevent the large projects from sucking all the money out of the funding stream. I have that concern, and I would love to be able to share that concern and talk about that concern in the committee of jurisdiction. Again, I commit to working with any Member who wants to move such language forward. Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Chair, how much time do I have remaining?

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Chair, I know my friend from Oregon, when he talked about rotten politics and those motivations, wasn't talking about me. I know that he was not. If he had been, we would have taken that conversation a different direction. I know that he was not because my concern is sincere. The fact that so much of that conversation centered on the White House does make me wonder whether or not politics is at play here. To have the authorizing chairman say on the floor of the House that there is no statutory difference between the Secretary ``may'' and the Secretary ``shall'' is the most shocking thing I have heard in 2019. It is the definition of a categorical difference. We put ``may'' in there for a reason, and that is to prevent a perversion of the process, the perversion that I am concerned about, the perversion that my friend from Oregon could dismiss if only we would hold a hearing in the committee and allow me to hear from some experts about it. My concern is sincere, and the concern of communities in my State is sincere. There is a reason the House rules prohibit doing this on the House floor because our shared concerns are sincere. Mr. Chair, I urge support of the amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Madam Speaker, reserving the right to object, my friend on the Rules Committee has made a commitment this year, which he has been following through on, to try to bring order to an otherwise fairly chaotic process up there. This is clearly just a clerical error, and it is one that we all worked through together last night, so I have no objection to the gentleman's amendment request.

Mr. WOODALL. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Madam Speaker, I thank my friend from Massachusetts for yielding me the customary 30 minutes. We just came out of a long night in the Rules Committee. I say ``we'' from the Member side. We were out of there by midnight. I have not yet asked the Rules Committee staff when they got out of there last night because I really didn't want to know the answer to that. When we meet in the Rules Committee on appropriations bills, we are in for long nights. My first year in Congress, Madam Speaker--the gentlewoman may have been following it at the time--it was when the big Republican majority came in as the new Democratic majority has come in now. The appropriations season hadn't been finished, so the first order of business when we came in as a new majority was to take on the appropriations challenge. It seemed crazy at the time--this is a minibus, a group of four bills together--what we decided to do was to take the entire discretionary account of the entire United States of America, bring it down here to the House floor, and consider it under an open rule. I brought a copy of that rule down with me, Madam Speaker. It was House Resolution 92. We heard the Reading Clerk read this morning. It took Joseph a while to get through that. We are only considering a small fraction of the budget today. Back then, we were considering the entire Federal budget, and it was right here in three pages. The truth is, the part that dealt with the appropriations bill is only one of these sections. The other two were housekeeping business. We allowed the entire body to bring their ideas to the table to see what might stick. I say it was a radical idea because I had just gotten to Congress. I went back and looked at the numbers, historically. It turned out, it didn't use to be a radical idea. We have made it a radical idea to let all the amendments come to the floor. Again, my friend from Massachusetts has a very hard job as chairman of the Rules Committee. I introduced an amendment last night, Madam Speaker, barely before the committee ended, after I had had a chance to question the cardinals who were responsible for that language, and my friend from Massachusetts made it in order. He is doing everything he can to try to make the process more open than it has been in the most recent past. But if we go back a little bit further, if we think about how to change the culture in this institution, it hasn't always been this divided. Do you remember the first year that Speaker Pelosi sat in the chair that you are sitting in right now, Madam Speaker? She was the first, as you recall, Democratic Speaker since 1994 and the first woman to ever lead this institution. When she sat in that chair for the very first time, we had an open appropriations process. There were about 110 Democratic amendments that were offered and about 300 Republican amendments because, when you are in the minority, it is harder to get your agenda in the underlying bill. When you run the show, as Mr. McGovern does, you are able to get all your good ideas in the bill. I have no doubt that every one of Mr. McGovern's good ideas is contained in the underlying bill. That is the privilege of leadership. When you sit on the outside, as I do and as Mr. Stauber does, it is harder to get your ideas in. So, historically, as Speaker Pelosi did in 2007, more amendments are made in order for the minority party than are made in order for the majority party because the minority party hasn't gotten a chance to influence the process. I am proud, over the 8 years that I was a part of the majority party here and had the privilege of sitting on the Rules Committee, more than half of the amendments, on average, across all the bills, were given to the minority party. But in this bill, Madam Speaker, again, despite the chairman's best efforts, the minority party received less than one- quarter of the amendments that are available. What I am saying is, when Republicans were doing this from their leadership spot and we were giving more amendments to the other side, now the majority party is giving not 100 percent more amendments to their side, not 200 percent more but, more than 200 percent more. By my statistics, since last time around, we have moved in the right direction. It used to be 300 percent more amendments given to the majority party. Madam Speaker, I don't say that to grouse about sour grapes. Again, I say it with sincerity when I tell you that what Chairman McGovern is doing on the Rules Committee he is doing out of a real love of this institution, trying to reopen the process, but we have got to find a way to trust ourselves. Most of what you heard the Reading Clerk read had nothing to do with the amendments of the bill we are talking about. It had to do with closing down the process, in many ways for the very first time in my congressional career, because the minority party, Republicans, are frustrated that we haven't been able to fund humanitarian needs on the border. Now, I know talking about the border is a dog whistle to many folks in this institution. They think, as you heard the gentleman from Massachusetts mention, that it is about the wall and it is about immigration and it is about all sorts of things that it is not. What we are talking about are children who are in the custody of the United States of America. Rightly or wrongly, like it or not, that is where we are today. And we can either fund the needs of those children, we can either fund the healthcare of those children, we can either fund the education of those children, or we cannot. What we have heard from this administration is the same thing we have heard from the Obama administration when we had this very same crisis in 2014, and that is that we don't have enough resources to provide for the flood of folks who have been taken into U.S. custody. The White House made this request 6 weeks ago, knowing that we were going to run out of money this month, and the House has taken no action on that request. When we had the very same Rules Committee hearing last week, Madam Speaker, that we had this week, my friend, the chairman, talked about his sincere desire to move this kind of legislation, but it hasn't moved. My friend from California who sits on the majority side of the Rules Committee and serves on the Appropriations Committee talked about the meeting they had in the Appropriations Committee that day to move this in an expedited way, and yet it has not yet moved. The reason the rule considers these measures to close down the parliamentary process here is because folks are rightfully frustrated with the flow of the floor. We have serious work that we need to do, and when you are in procedural nonsense, you don't get any of that work done. But that procedural nonsense comes from a very sincere frustration that we have very real needs that are shared needs, very real passions that are shared passions, and that the consequences of failure affect us all. It affects who we are in our individual districts; it affects who we are as a nation; and for the life of me, I cannot understand why it is that this issue is receiving the neglect that it is from the leadership party. We are going to talk about that in our previous question amendment. If we defeat the previous question, we will bring up an amendment to add to the rule language that will allow us to have this important debate and provide these important funds. I will reserve the time to talk about that, Madam Speaker. But I do want to say we had ample opportunity in the Rules Committee to make the process wide open, and that decision, candidly, is above the chairman's pay grade, and the process was not allowed to be an open process. So then we also had ample opportunity to close the process down completely. That is completely within the chairman's pay grade. He rejected that idea and made the effort to take some very important steps forward to returning us to regular order, and for that I am grateful. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Stauber), who is one of our young leaders.

Mr. WOODALL. Madam Speaker, I yield the gentleman an additional 1 minute.

Mr. WOODALL. Madam Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute. I find my friend from Virginia is almost always right about everything, so the fact that he is so wrong on this makes it worthy of commenting. We are not here night after night voting because the Rules Committee opened up the process. We are here night after night voting because what we would ordinarily have done by voice vote, through the comity that this institution, sadly, is losing some of every day, we are demanding recorded votes, because we can't get a vote on funding the humanitarian crisis that is at the border, a crisis that my friend from Virginia cares about, my friend from Massachusetts cares about, my friends from Tennessee and Iowa care about. You go right across this institution. It does not matter your ideological position; you care about this issue. We are voting night after night to draw attention to the fact that we cannot get our voices heard, not because our voices are heard in volumes never before seen. In fact, an interesting sidebar, Madam Speaker: If you go back to the days of open rules, you will actually find the committee made more amendments in order on almost every division than we would have ordinarily had if we just had an open rule. When we clamp down on the process, that steam drives the amendments up. These conversations should be had in committee, not on the floor of the House. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Kustoff), my neighbor to the north, a leader on these issues.

Mr. WOODALL. Madam Speaker, I yield myself 15 seconds to say to my friend from New York that he is one of the bright spots on the Rules Committee. We are doing a lot of things differently this cycle than we have done them in years past, and he has been a real partner and a leader on that, Madam Speaker. If you ever think that it is nothing but partisan nonsense--which you could imagine in a 9-to-4 committee, that that kind of thing could break out--I encourage you to come see Mr. McGovern and Mr. Morelle in action. You might be surprised with what you find. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King), a good friend and a leader.

Mr. WOODALL. Madam Speaker, I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. WOODALL. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Stivers), a classmate of mine and a perennial leader in this institution.

Mr. WOODALL. Madam Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds to remind folks that we can defeat the previous question today and get on with the business of providing for the families and children along the border. This is something that everyone in this institution cares about. For whatever reason, we can't move legislation forward. Everybody is talking about it. Nobody is doing anything about it. There is no Member of this institution who is more frustrated with that than the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Roy). If we defeat the previous question, we will bring up H.R. 3056, the bill to fund that crisis management at the border. Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Roy) to discuss that underlying bill.

Mr. WOODALL. Madam Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. I want to begin where my friend from Massachusetts left off. I have not enjoyed coming down to vote on things we could have voice-voted either. I have not enjoyed being here until midnight on votes when I knew how they were going to come out, when we could have been working together on issues where I didn't know how they were going to come out and where we were trying to be agents of change. But when we are in the minority, it is the only tool that we have to draw attention. The reason we have been here night after night is not because Mr. Roy is trying to inconvenience anyone. It is because he went to the Rules Committee and offered an amendment to do something that everybody in this Chamber knows ought to be done, and he didn't even get a vote. Folks wouldn't even let him bring his idea. Here we are, in the people's House, on an issue that is a bipartisan issue, and he did not even get a vote. He is not here to say it is his way or the highway. He is here to say that he thought this was a place where ideas were debated and agreed to or defeated. On that, I think he is absolutely right. He is absolutely right. My friend from Massachusetts is right, Madam Speaker, when he says that he has opened up this process more than it was the last cycle under Republicans. It is true. But we have heard Member after Member who said: ``I have a good bipartisan idea. I have a good bipartisan idea, but the Rules Committee didn't allow it to be heard.'' Madam Speaker, House Resolution 92 from 2011, conveniently offered by Mr. Woodall, me, that was the festival of democracy in February to March 2011, where we didn't just have an open rule on one appropriations bill, or two, three, or four. We opened up the entire Federal budget and allowed every Member's voice to be heard. From the most liberal Republican to the most conservative, from the most conservative Democrat to the most liberal, everybody had a say. Madam Speaker, the problem we are having, I tell the gentleman from Massachusetts, is not that we are opening up the process and so that is why we are having all of these delays. The problem is that the process is still too closed. That is why we are having delays. I can understand it if you beat me when I am trying to represent the views of my constituents. But when you shut me down, I think it offends each and every one of us. Appropriations bills have been that loan vestige of openness in this institution. Democrats shut them down before I got here. Republicans didn't improve much on that model, save this resolution from 2011. There is still much room for improvement on both sides. Madam Speaker, let's start that improvement, start that improvement by defeating the previous question. Let's go back to where this whole disagreement started. Let's give the gentleman from Texas an opportunity to be heard on the bill from the gentleman from Alabama. Let's fund this crisis that we all agree needs to be funded. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the text of my amendment be inserted in the Record immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

Mr. WOODALL. Madam Speaker, I will close with the words from the chairman of the Rules Committee last week: I take a back seat to no one on this issue. We will deal with this issue. We will come up with something quick, and I look forward to working with you. We need to move this bill expeditiously. I believe every word that he said. But it has been 7 days and the sole result of those meaningful words is nothing. We might have the luxury of another day. We might have the luxury of another 2. But that luxury is fast eroding, Madam Speaker. My friend from Massachusetts does take a back seat to no one when it comes to caring for children, which is why we are all counting on his leadership to move this issue forward with the seriousness that every Member of this institution believes it deserves. Madam Speaker, I urge my friends: Defeat the previous question. Let's have this conversation today, not tomorrow, not the next day. Let's fix today what we can fix today. Madam Speaker, success has an amazing way of making people feel better about themselves. Doing things that matter has an amazing way of making people feel better. It turns out, in this institution, Madam Speaker, success is incremental. We do something well together today, we do something even bigger together tomorrow. Defeat this previous question. Take up this issue of families and their care, and then we will move on with the rest of the appropriations business exactly, flawed or not, as my friend from Massachusetts has crafted. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. Madam Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.