Rob Woodall

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker. I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I will amend the rule to bring H.R. 3056 immediately to the floor under an open rule. I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of my amendment in the Record immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, we spent a great deal of time today talking about the humanitarian crisis on the border, and that is because, despite all of the very positive things that are in this bill that my friend from California has mentioned, what is not in this bill is one single penny to go to the border today. There is not a Member of this institution who does not know that we need that money going to the border today. I am not talking about contentious issues like border security, though that shouldn't be a contentious issue. That should be an issue of agreement, as well. I am talking about an issue on which we are unanimous, which is taking care of those people who are in the custody of the United States of America. Mr. Speaker, H.R. 3056 would provide $4.5 billion. Mr. Speaker, as a fiscal conservative, I don't say that lightly--$4.5 billion. That is not $4.5 billion to get us through another year, Mr. Speaker. That is not $4.5 billion to start in October and run us through the next fiscal year. That is $4.5 billion today to address needs that exist today, to fill shortfalls that are happening today, to solve problems that demand solutions today. There is not one word in this bill to provide a single solution anywhere in America today. But if we defeat the previous question and amend the rule as I have suggested, we can provide those solutions today, and we can do it in a partnership way that will make America proud. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. I would advise my friend that I do not see any speakers remaining, and when the gentlewoman has exhausted her speakers, I will be prepared to close.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Speaker, we are talking about two kinds of issues down here today. When I listen to my friend from California talk about all the wonderful things that are in the underlying bill, I can't tell you how much I wanted to stand up and celebrate with her that appropriations season is often that way. Mr. Speaker, you haven't seen it in your time, but there was a time in this institution where the way we spent America's money reflected America's priorities, and it turned out--you wouldn't know it by reading the newspaper, Mr. Speaker, but it turned out those priorities didn't hinge on whether you had an R or a D behind your name. It didn't hinge on whether you came from the Deep South or the Northwest. It turned out, when we started voting on issues one dollar at a time, we began to find that we had agreements with one another that had not yet been explored. We began to find, Mr. Speaker, that we could celebrate achievements together in ways that had not yet been explored. Mr. Speaker, the year I came to Congress, and many of my other colleagues here came that very same year, you may remember the appropriations process hadn't been finished by the Democrats. When Republicans took over, the young freshman class of which I was a part said we need to get down there, and we need to finish that job. It was a Tuesday, Mr. Speaker. We brought up the entire Federal discretionary budget. Now, that is a lousy way to do business. It is a lousy way to do business. We used to bring up bills one appropriations bill at a time. There are 12 bills, Mr. Speaker. We have gotten in a bad habit of omnibus bills. As you know, what we switched to last year and what the Democratic majority is continuing this year is bringing up groups of four or five bills together. But at that time, in the spring of 2011, Mr. Speaker, we brought them all up. We brought them all up together. And do you know what we said, Mr. Speaker, the brand-new Republican majority? You know how it is when majorities change, Mr. Speaker. Folks have gotten their feelings hurt. They feel like they were a little wronged by the previous majority. My friend from California knows what I am talking about. You might have expected the Republican majority to say, ``We are going to jam our priorities through, diversity of ideas be damned,'' but we didn't. It was Speaker John Boehner at that time, Mr. Speaker, and he said we are bringing up the entire Federal discretionary budget, and any Member, Mr. Speaker, any Member from either side of the aisle who has an idea about how to make it better, their ideas are welcome here on the floor of the House. Oh, you want to talk about a festival of democracy, Mr. Speaker? We started on a Tuesday. We thought we were going to be done by a Thursday. We ended up going 24 hours a day, finishing in the early hours of Saturday morning. And by ``finishing,'' Mr. Speaker, I mean we allowed every single Member's voice in this body be heard on every single issue that their constituents sent them here to address. Every Member of this institution left tired, Mr. Speaker, but every Member of this institution left feeling like they had had a chance to represent their constituents the way the United States Constitution intended. It doesn't always work that way, Mr. Speaker. I sit on the Rules Committee. We decide what amendments are made in order and what amendments aren't. In the last Congress, when the Republicans controlled this institution, we didn't make every amendment in order. We did not make every amendment in order, Mr. Speaker. But what we did do is we made more Democratic amendments in order than Republican amendments. We did. But because, for obvious reasons, when you are in the leadership, it is easier to push your agenda. When you have opportunity not to be in the leadership, it is harder to push your agenda. We made more Democratic amendments in order last Congress, Mr. Speaker, than Republican amendments in an effort to bring a diversity of ideas. This Congress, Mr. Speaker, when Republicans are in the minority and the Democratic majority is writing the rules, 70 percent of all amendments that have been made in order have been Democratic amendments. Eighteen percent of the amendments have come to Republicans. Five times more amendments were given to the majority than to the minority. Again, we gave more to the minority than the majority. I see my friends from Minnesota down here saying, ``I had an amendment. It was a good idea. My constituents asked me to offer it. It is germane to the underlying bill. I just want my day on the floor to vote.'' That day has been denied, Mr. Speaker, for amendment after amendment after amendment after amendment. Hundreds of amendments. Good ideas, bipartisan ideas. My friend from Illinois, Mr. Shimkus, had an amendment, Mr. Speaker, that required that we fund nuclear waste disposal licensing. Nuclear waste is spread out all across this country. I don't know if it is in your district, Mr. Speaker, but I have got it right next door to me. It is stored as best we can across the Nation. We are trying to license a national repository. We have spent billions as a nation preparing for that. All he wanted was a vote on an amendment that has wide and deep bipartisan support. I think it would have won, but we will never know because the powers that be denied him even the chance to discuss it. The question isn't, is there something good in this underlying bill? The question is, do you believe any of the rest of us have anything to add to make it better? My friends made in order some Republican amendments. I told you that so far this year there have been five times more Democratic amendments made in order than Republican amendments. This bill today is better. It is only twice as many Democratic amendments than Republican amendments. It is still nowhere close to fair, it is still not representative, but this is where we are. There is not one dollar, Mr. Speaker, for the humanitarian crisis on the border. The New York Times in an editorial on Sunday said, ``The financial reality is that this agency is overwhelmed.'' Talking about the Office of Refugee Resettlement. ``So far this fiscal year, it has taken charge of nearly 41,000 unaccompanied children, a 57 percent increase over last year. The entire program could run out of funding by the end of June.'' There is not one dollar in this bill for that. That is what my colleagues came to ask unanimous consent to do. That is what defeating the previous question would do. We all agree there is a crisis at the border. The editorial goes on for the New York Times, Mr. Speaker. ``There should be no ambivalence about the urgency of addressing the humanitarian needs. While lawmakers wring their hands and drag their feet, tens of thousands of migrant children are suffering. ``Congress needs to get serious about dealing with that suffering.'' There is no bill on its way to the floor, Mr. Speaker, except for the one you heard my colleague ask Member after Member after Member for unanimous consent to bring. And you heard my colleagues on the other side of the aisle deny that. I understand. We don't usually get unanimous consent requests to prove during Rules Committee debate. I don't fault my colleague for objecting. But if we defeat the previous question as I am proposing, Mr. Speaker, and we add an amendment to the rule, we will continue to consider the bill that my friend from California is so proud of. But we will also consider the bill that provides immediate funding to the men and women serving us on the border as they seek to address this humanitarian crisis. It gives me no pleasure to bring it up during Rules Committee debate, Mr. Speaker, because I don't think we disagree on this. I think we are together on this. I cannot, for the life of me, understand why the leadership on the Democratic side of the aisle is saying no and no and no and no to doing something that they know needs to be done. I do not understand it. But I know this. Here, on Wednesday, we have got one shot to fix it: one. Not two, not three. There aren't a dozen different options. We have got one shot to fix it. Defeat this previous question, add an amendment to the rule, and bring up this emergency funding supplemental. Do what we all know needs to be done. If it stretches from the editorial page of the New York Times to a conservative Republican from the deep south, Mr. Speaker, you know it has broad bipartisan appeal. We get so used to saying no in this Chamber. We get so used to running each other out in politics. Let's take yes for an answer. Let's do something we all know needs to be done. Let's take a shot at doing better today than we did yesterday. Maybe we will come back and do better still tomorrow. Defeat the previous question. Add this amendment to the bill. In the absence of that, I will have to ask that we oppose that rule, Mr. Speaker, and give us a chance to go back to the drawing board one more time. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak on a topic that I think is important to everyone in this institution. As most of my colleagues know, June is National Alzheimer's and Brain Awareness Month. Mr. Speaker, if Members have been fortunate enough that they have not had a family member affected, then I hope they remain fortunate in that way because statistics suggest that each and every one of us is going to have a family member who is affected by Alzheimer's or brain health in one way or another. The bill we are voting on today is our opportunity to fund that research. If Members have been following Alzheimer's research over the past 12 months, then they know it has been a disappointing 12 months not because we haven't been funding it properly--we have--and not because the research has not been going on--it has--but because things we thought were so promising have turned out not to be so. We are starting over again in a lot of different ways. Mr. Speaker, if there is one thing I believe the American people can count on amidst all the partisan strife is the way that we come together to fund that fundamental health research that only the Federal Government can stand behind and succeed in. I thank my colleagues on both sides of the aisle for their support of those accounts thus far. I hope that as we continue this appropriations season, that will continue as well.

Mr. WOODALL

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

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend on the Rules Committee for yielding. Mr. Speaker, I have been listening to the debate intently. I don't disagree with much of what my friend from Tennessee had to say. It is a bad habit that both parties have gotten into over the decades of my lifetime putting party above Article in terms of judicial oversight, executive branch oversight, and even our responsibilities here, such as declaring war. But what you have not heard here today, Mr. Speaker, and what you will not hear is why the passage of this resolution advantages us in any way. There is not one piece of information that the Speaker of our House--our Speaker--just came and asked for that we are not empowered to request today. The difference, Mr. Speaker, is if we pass this resolution, rather than the House requesting this information--as has historically been true--we would begin to request information one committee chairman at a time. Does that advantage us in Article I, going to court one committee chairman at a time, or are we advantaged when the Speaker speaks on behalf of us all? I don't know the answer, Mr. Speaker. I am not a legal scholar, and in the Rules Committee where we had original jurisdiction on this, we did not call any legal scholars to help us answer that question. In the Judiciary Committee they did not call any legal scholars to help to answer this question. Mr. Speaker, I tell you there is not a Member of this institution on either side of the aisle who cares more about Article I and our exerting the responsibilities the Constitution gives to us and our constituents expect us to do than I do. Perhaps there is someone in here who cares as much, but there is no one who cares more. Are we disadvantaging the institution for life by taking what has traditionally been the responsibility of our Speaker to do on behalf of all of us and putting it in the hands of committee chairmen? We don't know, and anyone who tells you that they do isn't telling you the truth. We are going to continue to argue about the White House and what they have turned over and what they didn't turn over and what they ought to turn over, Mr. Speaker. That is not what this bill does today. There is not one piece of information that is requested that we do not have the authority to request today. Let's not move in ways that disadvantage us for generations to come.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Arizona (Mrs. Lesko), my colleague on the Rules Committee, for yielding. Madam Speaker, you heard my colleague's passion from this microphone just seconds ago. Lest anyone thinks this is about money, this rule today combines two bills: one, CBO estimates to cost $8 billion, not a penny for border security; another, the CBO estimates to cost $26 billion, not a penny for border security. Lest anyone thinks this conversation today is about helping those young people here under DACA protections, remember, the Republican majority brought two bills to the floor last year that would do exactly that, got not one Democratic vote on either one of them. If anyone thinks this bill is about protecting folks who are trying to strive for the American Dream, Madam Speaker, I would encourage you to read from page 3 of the bill. It says: This bill applies to an alien who is inadmissible or deportable from the United States, and those aliens only. I tell you that, Madam Speaker, because I represent a constituency that is 25 percent first-generation Americans. I represent a constituency that has played by the rules, done everything right, come to this country legally. Their children are unprotected today, and this bill does not one thing to protect those children. In order to qualify for the protections in this bill, Madam Speaker, people had to have come to America the wrong way. If people came to America the right way and have been waiting in line for 5 years or 10 years or, in the case of my constituents--and you know this well, Madam Speaker--15 years, 20 years for a green card while their children are aging out of the system, this bill does not one thing to protect them. Only if people came the wrong way are there protections in this system. To be in the DACA program, people had to get here before 2007. President Obama's crisis on the border came in 2014. This bill today not only grandfathers all the DACA kids, it grandfathers all of those kids. In the meantime, we have spent not one penny on border security.

Mr. WOODALL. Madam Speaker, I am grateful to my colleague for yielding the time. Madam Speaker, we could be doing something together today. My friend, the chairwoman of the Immigration and Citizenship Subcommittee of the Committee on the Judiciary, has a bill that has been cosponsored by more than half of the Democrats and by more than half of the Republicans that would go directly to this issue of folks who have been standing in line for decades and cannot get a green card. We could be bringing that bill today. It has not even gotten a hearing in the committee or the subcommittee so far. This is not beyond our control. The rabbi who prayed for us this morning, Madam Speaker, said we can achieve the unachievable. We absolutely can come together and do that. This is not a serious effort to do that today, Madam Speaker, but it doesn't have to be the last word. If we defeat this rule, we can come back together with bills that have been cosponsored by a majority of the Republicans, a majority of the Democrats, and move forward on this issue together. I know that is what the Speaker wants to do. I know that is what the chairwoman of the Immigration and Citizenship Subcommittee wants to do. I know that is what most of us in this Chamber want to do, and we can.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume, and I want to thank my friend from Colorado for yielding me the customary 30 minutes. It is a close-knit bunch of folks up there on the Rules Committee, Madam Speaker. If you have not been by recently, you ought to come by. There are only 13 of us there. It is easy to remember everybody's name, but you don't go to the Rules Committee when you have important bipartisan legislation to bring to the House floor. You go to the suspension calendar for that. You go to the Rules Committee when you have contentious pieces of legislation to bring to the floor. I regret that we are here today on things that are absolutely contentious that could have been absolutely partnership bills. I want to reference first H.R. 1500. That is the bill my friend from Colorado spoke about as it relates to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. He is absolutely right. The way this Congress set up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau when Democrats were running this institution and President Obama was in the White House was to make it a completely administration-driven agency with no accountability to Congress whatsoever. That was a mistake. But the folks who set it up liked the team that was running it at the time, and so our efforts in the minority to stop that from happening were rebuffed. Now we are here today, Madam Speaker, and you might think that we have a list of legislative fixes to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Not so. I encourage you to pick up a copy of H.R. 1500 just to see what those fixes might be. It is a 40-page bill. You have to get to page 21 before accusations and assertions against former Director Mick Mulvaney end, and the important work, like changing the way we reference the agency by name, begins. I don't have any language today. No amendments were offered in the Rules Committee last night, Madam Speaker, to talk about all of the things that former Director Cordray did while he was there. The list of things that he did that I don't like are long. The list of things that he did that I thought violated the actual text of the law is pretty long. But he is gone, and we have the ability to fix anything we want to fix that he did. So no amendments were offered to impugn the integrity of the former director. Well, not the former director, Mr. Cordray; but the former director, Mick Mulvaney, yes, acting director. There are 21 pages of a 40-page bill dedicated to personal attacks on the former director. Madam Speaker, if we wanted to do something about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that brought its authority out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and right back here to where it belongs in Article I, we would make this agency subject to congressional appropriations. This is a bipartisan issue. If you want to find something that we agree on as an institution, let's talk about making Article I the lawmaker in this country, rather than Article II. Let's talk about taking it out of the White House's hands and putting it back into the people's hands on Capitol Hill. You will not find that idea in these pages. It is a disappointment because we could be doing something in partnership. Standing for consumers is a shared value, not a divisive one. I go now to the bill coming out of the Ways and Means Committee, H.R. 1994. Madam Speaker, as my friend from Colorado referenced, this bill passed unanimously out of the Ways and Means Committee. Unanimously. Take a look at the men and women on the Ways and Means Committee. I think there are 42 of them. These are not shrinking violets on the Ways and Means Committee. I see a couple of them out here. I won't call anybody out by name--Mr. Panetta--but they are not shrinking violets on this committee. These are serious public policy advocates who represent very diverse parts of the country and who fight hard for the values that their constituents represent. Unanimously, they came together as a committee, Madam Speaker, to change the rules for retirement, to make it easier for families to save; to change the rules around college savings plans so that families who ran into challenges in secondary years, families whose kids develop special needs and might not be going on to college, but who have very real needs today, to allow those dollars to be tapped by those families to serve the educational needs of their children. Unanimously it passed the committee. In fact, I will read from the committee report. This is not something that was done lightly in committee, Madam Speaker. We are talking about hundreds of pages of legislation, hundreds of pages of a committee report. This was a thoughtfully designed and crafted piece of legislation. The committee said this: The committee believes that expanding 529 plans will help families save for education expenses that meet each family's unique needs. We run into that problem often, Madam Speaker. We try to do something that is good for America, and it turns out that 330 million Americans have different needs and priorities. So the Ways and Means avoided a one-size-fits-all solution, recognizing those unique needs. I will read on. The committee says: By allowing tax-free distributions for apprenticeship expenses, homeschooling expenses, student loan repayments, elementary and secondary expenses, in addition to tuition, families can customize the use of their education savings to make education more affordable. We didn't read that on the headline of any major newspaper when the Ways and Means passed that unanimously. I am sure there was something in the headlines of that major newspaper about wars in foreign lands. I am sure there was something in the newspaper that day about partisan politics and how folks were poking each other with sharp rhetorical sticks. There was not a word about how the men and women of the people's House on the Ways and Means Committee came together unanimously, not because it wasn't hard to craft solutions. It is hard to craft solutions, but they came together unanimously on consensus language to move out of committee. It sounds like I am going to tell a story with a happy ending, Madam Speaker, and I should be. This should be a story about how we get things done, but what happened last night that you also won't see on the front page of the paper is, we took this consensus product that was passed unanimously by Republicans and Democrats, and we took it up there to the Rules Committee. On a straight party-line vote, we ripped out all of the language protecting families who were trying to help their children at home; children who may not be getting everything they need through the public schools and so they get additional education at home; families that may have opted out of the public school system because they couldn't get what their children need, and they are homeschooling their children. This language that was agreed upon unanimously in a bipartisan way, was ripped out in a party-line vote in the Rules Committee last night. We will never vote on it in this Chamber, Madam Speaker. The Ways and Means Committee in a long committee report, long committee language, they deliberated over this language and concluded that the right thing to do was to help all American families. But somewhere between that unanimous vote in committee and late last night in the Rules Committee, the decision came down from on high--and by on high I do mean your side of the aisle, Madam Speaker, because when you sit in the Speaker's chair, you have that kind of authority. The Rules Committee is, in fact, the Speaker's committee--that said we are going to rip this language out. We offered an amendment last night. And I think it is only right that folks come to sit here to watch the people's business. They think that we are going to operate a transparent building here, and we work very hard to do that. We offered an amendment last night in the Rules Committee to allow a simple vote of the people's House on this provision. If you don't like parents supplementing their students' education at home, so be it. I don't understand it, but so be it. But let's have a vote on it here just like they did in the Ways and Means Committee. On a party-line basis, the amendment to allow the people's House to have a vote on this provision was defeated. You might not have noticed it when the Reading Clerk was reading, Madam Speaker. I don't want to tell you how long that took to read. We have a lot of things packaged in this bill. You will have to go all the way down to the 12th section of the rule, and the important words are: modified by the amendment printed in part B of the Rules Committee report, modified by part B of the amendment printed in the Rules Committee report. I will translate that for you, Madam Speaker. That means with no vote of this institution whatsoever and with no consultation or input from the Ways and Means Committee that crafted this legislation, we are going to revoke all benefits that would have gone to families who cannot find the services they need outside the home and, thus, are paying for those services inside the home. Representative Mitchell came to the Rules Committee to testify on this amendment last night, Madam Speaker. He said that his family is blessed enough to have the financial resources to take care of their special needs family member. But he talked about all the American families who he has met in his district--the Speaker has them in her district; the gentleman from Colorado has them in his district; and I have them in my district--who don't have the financial means and who don't have that sense of security. The Ways and Means Committee in its wisdom unanimously said let's provide that security to American families. The Rules Committee in an error in judgment repealed it because six Members voted ``yes'' last night. That is all it took. All it took to silence an institution of 435, Madam Speaker, was six Members voting to include this one seemingly innocuous line that disadvantages families and children all across this Nation. It is another missed opportunity, Madam Speaker. We could have been here today celebrating the things that we do here together. We could have been here celebrating shared values. We could have been here today making a difference that your constituents have asked of you and my constituents have asked of me. From the start of this process, for the weeks in committee, and for the weeks since the committee has passed it, we were doing exactly that. In about 6 minutes of voting last night, we erased it all. It took weeks to build bipartisan consensus, Madam Speaker. It took moments to erase it all. We have choices in this institution, Madam Speaker. We made the wrong one in the Rules Committee last night. Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to defeat this rule and give us a chance to make a right one. But we only get so many bites at this apple. The trust of the American people in us as an institution and in us as individuals is not infinite. If we betray that trust often enough, it will disappear forever. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Madam Speaker, you heard the earnestness with which Mr. Panetta just described the committee's work. You can go through every line of the committee's work, and you are going to find a story similar to the one that Mr. Panetta has told about his family that applies to hundreds of thousands of families across the country. That is what this work product was. That is what the committee spent weeks and weeks putting together. That is, candidly, what my constituents think we do up here every day: find problems, find partners, craft solutions, and bring them to the floor. My friend from Colorado said that we shouldn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good, and I think he is exactly right. I haven't voted on the perfect bill since I have been here, Madam Speaker. You may have had that opportunity; I have not. I vote on bills that move the ball in the right direction. Even had I been king for a day, I couldn't have done it better. But the flip side of ``don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good'' is that this bill passed out of the Ways and Means Committee unanimously. It was perfect if bipartisanship was your goal. It is now good legislation. But with this change, it is perfectly partisan. I would advise my colleagues that we spent a lot of time when we were in control--and I had the pleasure of leading the rule, as my friend from Colorado does today--protecting our Members from tough votes. You may not know, Madam Speaker, but the way the Rules Committee works, we could have offered waivers. If you wanted to strike protections for homeschooling families, if you wanted to strike protections from families who need to buy more than what they can find in their public school system for their special needs child, you could have brought an amendment to the floor of this House and said: I don't like those protections for those families. I want to strike them. But then you would have had to have stood up and said that whatever your ax was that you were grinding that day took priority over those families. No Member in this institution wants to do that, which is why it comes to the Rules Committee as a seemingly innocuous line in a committee report and why it only takes six members to vote ``yes'' on it up there to make it a part of the underlying bill. It pretends that the committee voted on it when, in fact, they did not. If we want to vote on these issues, then let's vote on these issues. But I will just tell my friends here in their fifth month of leadership that they will begin to rue the day that they told their new Members they could come to Capitol Hill, be a United States Congressperson, and not have to take tough votes. We began to rue that day when we started down that road, and you only get one chance to start again. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Madam Speaker, I want to associate myself with everything my friend from Massachusetts just said. Every line of this bill, as crafted by the Ways and Means Committee, was designed to make a difference in a family's life, a difference that every single one of us can be proud of, and no one has a single bit of concern about that language. The concern is that, instead of being down here celebrating this bipartisan product, in the dark of night it was converted. My friend from Colorado is absolutely right. Not only was the home- schooling provision stripped out; a provision for Gold Star families was put in. Now, I will just tell you, if you have any concerns, Madam Speaker, let me speak on behalf of the Republican Conference. If you want to stand up for Gold Star families, I have got Members who want to stand with you. I don't have some; I have them all. To be fair, that has nothing to do with being a Republican. If I go to the Democratic side of the aisle and look for folks to stand with Gold Star families, I won't find one; I will find them all. That is yet another thing that unites us, and kudos to Richard Neal, as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, for taking an opportunity to make the bill better in that way. I happen to have his manager's amendment here, Madam Speaker. This is the language that was taken up by the Rules Committee last night and, again, stuck in because only six people voted ``yes.'' And page after page is dealing with those Gold Star families and trying to right that clerical error in drafting. It is in the middle of page 3, with looks like seven words: ``In section 302, strike subsections (b) and (d).'' You might not know what section 302 is and what sections (b) and (d) are, Madam Speaker. I will read some of that to you, again, from the Democratic chairman's committee report, from the unanimous legislation that was passed. The provision allows tax-free treatment to apply to distributions made for certain additional qualifying expenses on behalf of designated beneficiaries attending elementary and secondary schools. This is the offensive language that my friend referenced that some Members of his caucus had problems with that needed to be taken out. Here it comes. And I don't mean to offend you by reading these words, Madam Speaker, but I am just going to read them directly because I feel the burden to do it. In addition to tuition, tax-free treatment would apply to a distribution made for expenses for fees, tutoring, special-needs services, books, supplies, and other equipment incurred in connection with the attendance of elementary school. I am aghast. I am aghast that that is what the Ways and Means Committee decided to do. I am just going to tell you again, Madam Speaker. The committee, in its wisdom, unanimously decided that we should speak up for families who have problems with expenses for fees, academic tutoring, special-needs services, books, supplies, and other equipment incurred in connection with their child's attendance in elementary school. That is what this big to-do was about today. If you want to have a vote on the floor of the House that says, ``I don't want children in elementary school to have any help,'' we can have that vote. I think it would lose, and so do my friends on the other side of the aisle. That is why we are not going to have that vote. We are going to sneak it in, in the rule, and never be able to speak on it. I appreciate my friend raising the Gold Star issue because that is yet another area of agreement, like the issue my friend from Massachusetts spoke about, like the issue my friend from California spoke about. Madam Speaker, when you are in the majority in this Chamber, it is easy to get legislation passed. You control the Rules Committee. You control the votes on the board. You get to jam everything through. I know. I spent 8 years in the majority, and that is the way every day is when you are in the majority. But you don't have to jam everything through. Occasionally--just occasionally--there are bills, like this bill from the Ways and Means Committee, where every single line is dedicated to solving problems, problems that affect your district and problems that affect my district. Occasionally--just occasionally--we find Members on both sides of the aisle sitting down, rolling up their sleeves, looking for solutions instead of talking points. And, when that happens, you produce good legislation like the bill Chairman Neal brought before us today. We could have been down here celebrating that legislation, Madam Speaker. Instead, we are talking about the efforts to unwind it. And, for the life of me, I just don't understand why that is the path we have chosen. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. Madam Speaker, I don't have any speakers remaining. I have a powerful previous question vote that I would like to describe, and I am prepared to do that at this time.

Mr. WOODALL. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. We can't always get exercised about every single line in every single bill. We would never get anything done. We have an amendment process so that, if you get exercised about a particular line in a particular bill, you can bring your amendment to the floor and we vote on it. We are going to get into the appropriations process soon. When we spend money, it turns out to be one of those issues that people feel strongly about. We are going to entertain hundreds of amendments-- Republican amendments, Democratic amendments. Some Republican amendments are going to pass; some are going to fail. Some Democrat amendments are going to pass; some are going to fail. But we are going to work the will of the body, and we are going to do the best we can to get to a final package that we move across the street to the Senate. My frustration in this moment, Madam Speaker, isn't that we have the inability of moving things forward and discussing ideas. We do have the ability to do that, and we did that well in the Ways and Means Committee. My frustration is that, when people don't like the way the committee unanimously, in a bipartisan way, did something because they have bipartisan concerns--and, to be clear, the concerns about this language are not Republican concerns. This language was not stricken because Republicans objected. This language was not stricken to satisfy any bipartisan concern of any kind. This was purely a partisan exercise. And if you want to have a partisan exercise, I know 435 Members who are here all day, who will come down here to the House floor and vote on it, and we can do that. So I want to offer that opportunity, Madam Speaker. For folks who think this is about public policy, as it was when the committee considered it in a bipartisan way, I want to offer an amendment to this bill. If we defeat the previous question, Madam Speaker, I will offer an amendment that strikes this offending section. What that means in layman's terms is the bill would contain the Gold Star family language that is very important to every Member of this Chamber. It would contain the pension language that is very important to every Member of this Chamber. It would contain every line designed in a bipartisan fashion by the Ways and Means Committee to make a difference in families' lives, but it would strike the majority's effort, with only six votes on the Rules Committee, to eliminate protections for home-schooling families altogether. Vote against the previous question, defeat the previous question, and we can restore the bipartisan consensus language the Ways and Means Committee crafted, and we will add the Gold Star family language that my friend from Colorado and I agree on. I don't serve in the Ways and Means Committee, Madam Speaker. They have got big ideas they have to work on over there. I don't serve on the Financial Services Committee. They have got big ideas they have to work on over there. I serve in the Rules Committee. My job is to get bills to the House floor and to make sure that voices are heard on perfecting that language. If we defeat the previous question, we can achieve exactly the partisan goal that the majority wants, but we can achieve it by actually having a vote of the House on that goal. I think the American people are tired of things being done in secret. I think they are tired of things being done without the full story being told. I talk to my friends on the other side of the aisle regularly, daily, hourly, Madam Speaker. I know the hunger from your side of the aisle to deliver on behalf of the American people. I know that hunger. I know the hunger on your side of the aisle to roll up sleeves and do the hard things. Because the easy things somebody else has already taken care of. All that is left for you and me are the hard things. Going to the well of partisanship, pulling your sharp stick out of your quiver and poking the other team, those aren't the hard things. Those are the easy things. And, candidly, those aren't the surprising things. They have become all too commonplace. I don't get to run this institution, but I do get a vote in it. I see opportunities for partnership, not because everybody wants it, but because it has to happen. Republican President, Republican Senate, Democratic House: The only way we succeed, Madam Speaker, is to succeed together. That is the only pathway forward. If anybody in this Chamber ran for their seat because they wanted to stand up here and talk about it for 2 years, we have got a great pathway for you. But if you ran for this seat because you actually wanted to get it done, these bills today aren't doing it. The Senate won't consider them. The President is not going to sign them. But there are ideas in these bills, Madam Speaker, as expressed unanimously by the Ways and Means Committee, that America is hungry for and you and I can deliver. Let's exceed expectations today. Defeat the previous question, and let's restore this bill to the bipartisan compromise that the Ways and Means Committee created. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. WOODALL. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the amendment be printed in the Record immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

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

Mr. WOODALL

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

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Madam Speaker, I hope what I am getting ready to say, it turns out to be redundant, that we are going to hear it in the closings of both the gentlewoman from Florida and the gentleman from Texas. We talk about this preexisting conditions' bill today as if it is going to help with preexisting conditions. As we have discussed already, it is not. But the preexisting conditions issue is a very real issue. It is a very real issue for families all across the country, and it has been for a long time. And undeniably, elections were won and lost this past cycle over a preexisting conditions issue based on the misinformation around it. I don't know how we are advantaged as a community by continuing to perpetuate the misinformation. When we first tackled preexisting conditions in a serious way, we did it together in this institution. I know, because it was a gentleman from my State, Madam Speaker, Speaker Newt Gingrich, who was sitting in that chair at the time. It was 1996. Bill Clinton was sitting in the White House. Newt Gingrich was sitting here leading the United States House, and we came together, Republicans and Democrats, we passed the Health Insurance Affordability and Accountability Act that abolished preexisting condition worries for every single family with an ERISA-based plan. Those are the plans that the Federal Government controls. So what I mean, Madam Speaker, is that for every single plan the Federal Government had dominion over, we eliminated preexisting conditions. Medicare, no preexisting conditions. Medicaid, no preexisting conditions. ERISA plans, no preexisting conditions. Collectively, that is about 250 million Americans. What we didn't do was go into the area where the Federal Government had no dominion, which were State-regulated plans, and we said States should have the ability to regulate their own plans. Now President Obama said, no, States had been moving too slow to help their constituency. He ran on the platform of taking those plans away from State control; he won that debate. The Affordable Care Act implemented those conditions. And the bill today says, if states have an idea about how to protect families from preexisting conditions that is better than the one in the Affordable Care Act, we don't want to hear it. There is one solution for preexisting conditions and it is the one that President Obama has implemented, no other. I think that is wrong. Dr. Burgess knows more about medicine than I will ever hope to know. He knows more about serving patients than I will ever hope to know. Ms. Shalala, as Secretary of Health and Human Services, knows more about healthcare than I will ever hope to know. I trust these folks to find solutions differently in Florida, and differently in Texas than we do in Georgia. This bill does one thing and one thing only. It continues the debate from 1996, not about whether to help people with preexisting conditions, but about whether States have anything to add to the discussion. I am certain the State of Georgia does. I believe the State of Florida does. I know the State of Texas does. If we defeat this rule and defeat this bill, it will allow those very best ideas to come out and not ideas about how to keep people down, Madam Speaker, but ideas about how to lift families up. We have come together on those issues before, Madam Speaker, and we can do it again.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, you have heard in the last round of 60- second comments a sense of urgency around healthcare. I share that sense of urgency, as I know everybody on my side of the aisle does. But for the next 1 hour, Mr. Speaker, we are going to be talking about what purports to be the House budget, the budget that would tell us what our Medicaid priorities are, the budget that would tell us how we are going to save Medicare, the budget that would tell us how we are going to protect Social Security, and the budget that would tell us what our values are as a nation. That is what the law requires: that we bring such a document to the floor and that we do it by April 15. But for the next hour, Mr. Speaker, what you are going to hear is that the House is producing no such budget, that the House is silent on protecting Medicaid, silent on protecting Medicare, and silent on protecting Social Security. We can do better, as my colleagues have challenged us to do. It is going to take a partnership, though, not empty accusations.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I thank my friend from New York for yielding me the customary 30 minutes. And, at the risk of opening this debate like I opened so many others in 2019: Mr. Speaker, we have taken an opportunity to do something very productive and very bipartisan and we have turned it into something that is going to be very partisan and wholly unproductive. Neither of the bills we are considering in this rule today are going to be moving through the Senate. Neither of the bills we are considering today are going to be signed by the President. But the good foundation in both of those bills could have been, and we have missed yet another opportunity. Let me start with H.R. 1644, Mr. Speaker, the so-called Save the Internet Act. I can't speak for everyone else's internet, but my internet is still thriving. I haven't seen any nefarious internet shortages or blockages in recent days. For the millions and millions of Americans trying to livestream C- SPAN right now, they are having no problems whatsoever. It is going right through the pipes the way it always has, Mr. Speaker. And, if it is in need of saving, it is certainly not in need of saving from this institution. I understand, Mr. Speaker, that my friends on the other side of the aisle are upset with the Trump administration's FCC. You will recall that the Obama administration and its FCC took the regulations that had governed the internet from its inception through its explosion of productivity and innovation, all the way through 2015, and threw all those rules out entirely, replacing it with a command- and-control government structure. In its wisdom and with my great support, the Trump administration and the FCC threw those new rules out, taking us back to those rules that provided the foundation for the internet and all of the productivity that it has provided. It is unfortunate, Mr. Speaker, that so many folks are afraid of internet freedom that we need to try to find a way to clamp down on internet freedom and bend the internet to the will of the government. I would argue that the Wild West innovation style that has driven the internet and tech companies from day one shouldn't be boxed in by the government and certainly shouldn't be replaced with a 1930s-era, Ma Bell telephone regulatory scheme. That is what we are talking about here today with this bill, Mr. Speaker, is turning over regulation of the internet to title II of the Communications Act. If you have not looked at title II recently, Mr. Speaker, it is almost 100 years old. It was created to govern that wonderful emerging technology called the landline telephone and the monopolistic telephone companies that existed at that time. I don't know how many of your staffers still have landline telephones, Mr. Speaker. I know your grandchildren probably don't even know how to operate one these days. We certainly should not be relying on those regulations to bring us forward with innovation. The heavy hand of government regulation always takes us backwards. The good news, Mr. Speaker, is that, if you see legitimate challenges out there, we do have some bipartisan solutions to help address those: Former Chairman Walden's H.R. 1101, one such bill that could have been on the floor today; Mr. Latta's H.R. 1006, another bill that could have been on the floor today; Mrs. McMorris Rodgers' H.R. 1096 could have been on the floor today, just to name a few. But none of those bipartisan options were seriously considered. Instead, we are left with a single option, in true government, monopolistic fashion, and that option is to support the Obama administration's failed government takeover of the internet. Mr. Speaker, I oppose that. I oppose the legislation. I hope my other colleagues will as well. It did not have to be this way. This could have been a productive partnership discussion about how to take what is obviously a productive and innovative tool fueling, not just urban America, not just suburban America, but rural America, and we could have talked about how to grow it together. But we chose a different path, digging partisan ditches even deeper early in 2019. If that is not disappointing enough, Mr. Speaker, there is a second bill that this rule makes in order. That is H.R. 2021. That bill comes out of another committee that Mr. Morelle and I serve on, the House Budget Committee. I love serving on the House Budget Committee, I have to tell you, Mr. Speaker. It is a wonderful committee on which to serve. Mr. Morelle and I are both lucky to be on it, and we have two fabulous leaders on that committee: Mr. Yarmuth of Kentucky leading the Democratic side of the aisle and Mr. Womack of Arkansas leading the Republican side of the aisle. If you were going to task two leaders in this institution with crafting the kind of budget that I talked about from the well earlier, Mr. Speaker, a budget that would protect Social Security, protect Medicare, protect Medicaid, a budget that would lay out priorities for America, talk about where it is that we want to see our children and our grandchildren go in the 21st century, those are the two leaders who could have brought us together for the first time in a long time around a unified vision. But, instead, the order came down from on high, Mr. Speaker. There was to be no budget. I assume that is true. We have considered absolutely no budget in the so-called Budget Committee. We have had no budget markup in the Budget Committee. We have had no discussions of budget in the Budget Committee. Instead, what we have before us today is a bill that is sometimes referred to as a caps deal. You have heard ``caps deal'' before, Mr. Speaker. It is those times in years past where we have taken what are those discretionary caps, those limits on how much Federal money we can spend, and we have adjusted those so that we can invest in some shared priorities on the one hand while reducing spending in some other, lower priority places. We have done that in a bipartisan way not once, not twice, but three times. We could have been here today, Mr. Speaker, for a fourth time. If we are not going to actually do a budget, we still could have been here on a caps deal. But this is not a caps deal. This is not a caps bill that had input from Republicans in the House. This is not a caps deal that had consultation with the Senate. This is not a caps deal that has been done in bipartisanship with the White House. This is a caps deal that is just a deal among warring factions of a divided Democratic Caucus, and that bill has come to the floor today-- again, a bill that will not be considered in the Senate and a bill that will not be signed by the President. We can normalize partisan failure in this institution, Mr. Speaker. We can. We can also normalize bipartisan cooperation. I don't fault the other side for the struggles that are, inevitably, going to happen when a new majority takes over in the U.S. House of Representatives. Leading is a very difficult, difficult thing to do. But, at the end of the day, the majority is tasked with doing exactly that--leading. The Budget Committee should produce a budget. The United States of America should have a budget. It is not easy to do. It is not easy to pass this House floor. It is not easy to pass through a committee. But it is what the law requires us to do; it is what we have the right leaders on the Budget Committee to do; and it is what every single Member in this institution knows in their heart that we should do. Mr. Speaker, I urge defeat of this rule, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I would like to respond to my friend from New York, but I just have too many speakers who have come down to the House floor today to speak about this. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Cole), a member of the Rules Committee, our ranking member on the Rules Committee, a member of the Appropriations Committee, and one of the most thoughtful Members of the Republican Conference.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds just to say that my friend's criticisms of the Trump budget are perfectly legitimate. What he failed to mention, though, is the reason he can make those criticisms is because the law required the administration to offer a budget, and it did. The law also requires this House to offer a budget, and we have not. We are better than that. This is not an Article II responsibility. This is an Article I responsibility, and we will rue the day that we decided that we would rather talk about what Article II was doing instead of doing the work ourselves here at Article I. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Meuser), a new Member of this institution and a member of the Budget Committee.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Burgess), a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee and the Rules Committee.