Rob Woodall

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, it is my great pleasure to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Byrne), a strong member of the Committee on Rules.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the time. At 1:00 today, back home in Georgia, we are going to lay to rest Reva Mae Jennings. Reva Jennings is an institution in my part of the world, Mr. Speaker. This photo here, you can see, is in the midst of a parade. She helped to found the Republican Party in Forsyth County back when it could meet in a telephone booth. She used to say that she never minded being the only one who was right in a room. From the moment I decided to pursue this position, Mr. Speaker, Reva has been a fixture by my side. She passed away a week ago in a traffic accident. She graduated from the University of North Carolina, Mr. Speaker. And even though she was passionate about Georgia, she was passionate about her Tar Heels. If I had a Tar Heel blue suit, I would have worn it down here to the floor today in tribute to her. She defined her life by passion, Mr. Speaker. She has had every leadership position you can imagine in the Republican Party in our part of the world; president of the Georgia Federation of Republican Women, Mr. Speaker. She earned the title of Republican Woman of the Year. She traveled as a delegate from Georgia to the Republican National Convention. She believed in our community. She believed in our party. She believed in America. Mr. Speaker, I came to know Reva through her political activities, but they did not define her. Passion defined her, and there is nothing that she was more passionate about than her family. The wife of Dr. Bruce Jennings, Mr. Speaker, who passed away far too soon, the mother of three, the grandmother of her beloved grand twins. Mr. Speaker, the entire community is gathering this afternoon to say goodbye. It seems so cliche to talk about folks who are irreplaceable, but Reva truly is. You can't put a marker on commitment, Mr. Speaker. There was never a responsibility, never a responsibility in the community that Reva didn't step up and say: Pick me. It characterized the community. As Forsyth County became one of the fastest growing counties in the Nation, Mr. Speaker, her commitment was contagious. When car accidents take our loved ones, Mr. Speaker, it happens when you least expect it. No one was prepared to say goodbye to Reva. No one had said all the things that they had to say to Reva. But she used to pull me aside and take a picture out of her wallet, show me that beloved dentist that she married back during the Vietnam War. It was a picture they had taken in Hawaii, as I recall. I never remember her dating. She never remarried. She said: ``Rob, I got it right the first time.'' As the entire community is struggling with Reva's loss, this is the image that I am left with, Mr. Speaker. She has waited decade upon decade to be united with her beloved husband, Bruce, and today, Mr. Speaker, we lay her to rest so that they can be together with their Maker once again. With that, Mr. Speaker, I offer my heartfelt condolences to the Jennings family. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. We have talked about how much work has gone into this bill--not days, not weeks, not months, but even years in trying to get here. I want to say what I said when I began, which is, when Democrats controlled every single lever of government, they could not get a bill like this done. When Republicans controlled every single lever of government, we failed to get a bill like this done. Today, with the leadership of Bill Shuster and Mr. DeFazio, we are getting that done. But it is not just at the Member level. And I want to associate all of the hard staff work that goes into making something like this happen, Mr. Speaker. Chris Bertram, our staff director over on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee; Matt Sturges, our deputy staff director over on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee; Collin, Geoff, Murphie on my own staff, Alex Poirot--folks who have put in hour after hour after hour, right through the Thanksgiving holiday, making sure that America's priorities get done. Folks back home don't care how much hard work it takes; they care that we put in the hard work. And this is an example of that success today. Mr. Speaker, so often, I hear my colleagues say, ``If I had written this bill myself, it would have been different.'' Generally, when I hear my colleagues on the other side of aisle say, ``If I had written this bill it would be different,'' I think, ``Thank goodness you didn't write this bill.'' I have no doubt that they think the same thing when I say that. We rarely get everything that we want, but we rarely have an opportunity to come together and be as successful as we are today. The only roadblock between us and a long-term transportation bill for the first time in more than a decade is my yielding back 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, I would ask my friend from Colorado if he has any other speakers remaining.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume to not just celebrate the successes that we are having today, but to associate myself with my colleagues who say the next round of hard work begins tomorrow. There is a reason that we have the funding pay-fors that we have in this bill. It is not a lack of political courage. I have colleagues on both sides of the aisle who have courage to spare. It is a lack of trust. When my constituents back home send me a dollar's worth of taxes and get 50 cents worth of road out of it, they say: Rob, what is the deal? The streamlining that goes on in this bill grows that trust. The elimination of duplication, the focus on national priorities instead of pet projects, on and on and on, builds that trust. The time to build that trust is before the next highway bill, not at the end of a highway bill cycle. There is a lot of work for each and every one of us to do in a bipartisan way to go out and build that trust. I think about what my friend from Oregon said: We are going to squeeze a lot of efficiency out of our transportation system. The innovation title in this bill is absolutely going to allow us to do more with less, which is precisely why constituents are worried about an indexed gas tax that puts transportation spending on autopilot, because all of our experience is, if you raise it, someone will spend it. Balancing efficiency with productivity is a challenge that we all face that begins with trust generated back home, Mr. Speaker. My great hope is that the reforms in this bill, combined with the reforms in MAP-21, combined by the leadership that States and localities are taking with their own revenue bases, are going to create that trust for a generation to come. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume to say I think my friend from Nevada missed one of those great successes that she had--I will call it the Rodney Davis-Dina Titus amendment--to make sure that localities have even more control over their spending decisions. It is one of those episodes, Mr. Speaker, where folks didn't get everything they wanted, but because folks were in there advocating for their constituents throughout the entire process, we ended up further down the road today than we would have been yesterday but for the Davis-Titus team pushing forward on that language. Mr. Speaker, that is what this bill is, and that is what regular order gets us. It is so frustrating. I feel like I am in a room full of racehorses here trying to wait for the doors to open. The gates have just come open, and we all want to get to the finish line. Our new Speaker has made some commitments about bringing more involvement and individual Member participation in the process. That is new to this institution in many ways, Mr. Speaker, but it is not new to the Transportation Committee. It is not new to the work that you and I have been doing on the committee for these past many months. That is why this bill is worthy of the support of so many of our colleagues. I can go through a similar list as my friend from Nevada of ideas that came from the folks who lead back home. Folks who are in the tourism industry know more about tourism than those of us who are not, as do folks who are in the visitor industry, folks who are in the construction industry, folks who are in the concrete industry, on and on and on. Mr. Speaker, when you open the process up, you end up with fewer folks with political agendas at the table. You end up with more folks with practical agendas at the table. When you open the process up, you don't end up with politicians looking for their own piece of the pie. You end up with the public sharing their expertise and their experience. That is how you end up with a bill like the FAST Act today. Mr. Speaker, it has been a great pleasure for me to serve on the Transportation Committee with folks like the gentlewoman from Nevada, like the gentleman from Illinois, to be able to have a common goal-- very different approaches on how you want to achieve that goal, very different constituencies pushing you towards that goal--but to know that, if you put in the time and if you put in the hours, you will get a result. So often in this Chamber, Mr. Speaker, it seems like we are tilting at windmills. When I joined the Transportation Committee, I knew that we were not going to be tilting at windmills. We were going to be slaying a dragon. This bill slays that dragon today. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Polis), 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 ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds to tell my friend how much I appreciate what he had to say about international tax reform and what our opportunities are to grow America rather than grow our competitors abroad and to say there are a lot of different provisions in this bill. The Transportation Committee was unanimous in its support of this bill, as were several of the other committees who were involved in the conference, but there were a few stragglers out there on some of the extraneous provisions that were placed in here. With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield 8 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Ribble), a member of the freshman class of 2010 and a member of the Transportation Committee.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 546 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. WOODALL. I thank my friend for yielding. It was a unanimous approval of this provision.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I confess to you, I usually use the time that the Reading Clerk is reading the rule to collect my thoughts and think about what the bill is before us today and how I am going to try to persuade my colleagues to vote ``yes.'' But we only got about 15 seconds of the Reading Clerk this morning because this rule is so straightforward and so simple. I am thinking, why is it--because I sit on the Rules Committee. I think we do good work up there. Good work is sometimes complicated work. Why is it that the rule is so short today? And the answer is because we are in conference report season, Mr. Speaker. We are in conference report season. We have already done the hard work in committee. We have already done the hard work on the floor. The Rules Committee has already done the hard work of sorting through dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of amendments. The Senate has done the same hard work. And we are now here on the conclusion of that work, on the first long-term transportation bill in more than a decade. Mr. Speaker, Democratic administrations, Democratic Presidents, Democratic Houses, Democratic Senates have failed to do what we are doing today. Republican administrations, Republican Presidents, Republican Houses, Republican Senates have failed to do what we are doing today. In divided government today, Mr. Speaker, I dare say my friend from Colorado didn't get everything he wanted in this bill, I certainly didn't get everything I wanted in this bill, but we are taking the first big step forward toward certainty for the American people on transportation that we have seen in more than a decade under both administrations. Mr. Speaker, House Resolution 546 is a standard rule for consideration of a conference report to accompany H.R. 22, the FAST Act, the Fixing America's Surface Transportation Act. I want to thank Chairman Bill Shuster for the way that he conducted this entire process. Mr. Speaker, I have the great pleasure of serving on his committee, and between his leadership, the ranking member's leadership, Mr. DeFazio, we have crafted a bipartisan, bicameral bill. I was privileged to serve on the conference committee, Mr. Speaker, that completed this work, and it worked the way conference committees are supposed to work, I guess, because, Mr. Speaker, it is the first conference committee I have been on. I have been here 4\1/2\ years. We don't see things get to conference that often. I was a staffer around here, chief of staff, for a decade, never saw a conference committee from that perspective. Mr. Speaker, these things don't happen that often. They should happen more. We considered a conference committee report on education yesterday. We are doing transportation today. I think we might be on to something. I think we might be on to something. It is called doing the long, hard work, Mr. Speaker. I don't know how many sound bites you have read about the transportation bill. I don't know how much press is being paid to this bill. It has taken not days, not weeks, not even months, but years to bring folks together around this solution, and folks have worked incredibly hard to make that happen. It is regular order, Mr. Speaker. It is regular order. This is the way it is supposed to happen. We are not supposed to have a bill airdropped into the House of Representatives, into the Senate under a take-it-or-leave-it circumstance. What you are supposed to have are those days, those weeks, those months, and, yes, even years of discussion and debate and moving people together, finding that common ground, finding those solutions, moving it to a conference report at the end. And that is exactly what we have done here today. Mr. Speaker, this is a report that contains views from across this conference--Members from rural districts, Members from urban districts, Members from districts that focus on mass transportation, Members from districts that have incredible road needs. It covers folks from the West in single-Member States, single- district States, and folks from the East, with some of the highest population densities in the country. It is an amazing accomplishment to bring all of those folks together. I would tell you, Mr. Speaker, historically, that has been the way transportation has been. Transportation is not one of those issues that divides us as Republicans and Democrats or even from the East and West. It is one of those issues that brings people together. It is one of those issues--and there aren't many--but it is one of those issues that we actually have a constitutional responsibility to perform. The Constitution does not ask much of this United States Congress when it comes to developing policy and practice domestically here in this country, but transportation is one of those issues. Mr. Speaker, I mentioned it was the first long-term bill in more than a decade. That is absolutely true. Length is important all by itself; certainty in transportation, important all by itself. We passed a 2-year transportation extension, Mr. Speaker. We put in the requirement to streamline some of the regulatory process. Here we are, more than 2 years later, and those regulations haven't even come out yet. Building is a long-term process. Rulemaking, so that people can build, is a long-term process. Having long-term certainty is valuable in and of itself, but that is not just what this bill does. It focuses on the national highway freight network, Mr. Speaker. Between Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, for example, there are three major Federal arteries. We have the Baltimore-Washington Parkway running those 35 miles north. We have U.S. Route 1 running that distance. We have U.S. Interstate 95 running that distance. Those roads are never separated by more than about 4 miles. Now, whether or not we need three major Federal arteries running between two cities over a course of 35 miles, that is a debate that we can have. What the scope of Federal transportation funding should be is a debate that we can have, And, in this bill, we did have it, Mr. Speaker. We are focusing on moving goods to market. This is a bill about getting to your child's soccer game on time. This is a bill about freeing up congestion on America's roads and improving America's mass transit in a way that you don't miss the first pitch. But this is also a bill about moving freight to market. It is a bill about making America's economy work. In a 21st century world, we cannot have a 20th century transportation system. We focus on those issues that have been left on the sidelines for far too long. We focus on bridges, Mr. Speaker. Bridges. It seems so simple. It is a transportation bill; there ought to be more that goes on than just roads and just buses. Bridges, Mr. Speaker, turn out to be that chokepoint that so many of us have in our district. It turns out it is expensive to build a bridge. It is environmentally difficult to get the permits. It is an engineering marvel to put together some of the bridges that we have here today. As dollars have gotten tight, many of our communities have not focused on the safety of existing infrastructure in ways that we all know our constituents demand. We make that investment in safety and security today. Mr. Speaker, we streamline a lot of Federal regulation in this bill. There is not a man or woman on this floor who doesn't believe that we have an obligation to protect this great Earth. There is not a man or woman on this floor who doesn't believe that constructing in an environmentally sensitive manner is a priority for us all. But there is also not a man or woman on this floor who believes it ought to take 10 years to get a yes-or-no answer. There is not a man or woman on this floor that thinks it ought to take 8 years to get a yes- or-no answer. If the answer is no, the answer is no. But we deserve, our constituents deserve some certainty in that construction process. We eliminate duplication. We speed up delivery. We allow States, through a pilot program, Mr. Speaker, to begin to enforce some of these Federal mandates. In many cases, it is not the mandate itself that is the problem. It is the Federal bureaucracy that is overburdened and can't come through on permitting. We allow States, under this bill, as long as they abide by the Federal standards, to go ahead and implement those standards on their own so that they can prioritize the projects that are most important to them. Mr. Speaker, an issue that I know is important to all of our colleagues: We take some steps to get veterans back to work. This isn't the first bill that has done that, of course. We have done bill after bill after bill after bill on this floor, Hire More Heroes most recently, to say, if the only thing standing between you and putting our veterans back to work is Federal regulation, we want to get Federal regulation out of the way. We build on that again in this bill, Mr. Speaker. I don't know if you have any truck-driving schools in your district, but I can't find a truck-driving school in my district that doesn't have job offers waiting today for folks who sign up today. The demand is so great, Mr. Speaker, for folks to move goods to market. But we have limitations on who is eligible to drive trucks, and for good reasons. For good safety concern reasons, we don't want folks 19, 20 years of age to be driving these heavy trucks. But, Mr. Speaker, we have, returning from Afghanistan, returning from Iraq, folks who have been trained by the finest training facility in all the world, the United States military, folks who have been trained in the skills required, the safety skills required, to move heavy equipment from one place to another. Those men and women are returning from serving us and are looking for work. If they were talented enough to serve us overseas, are they not talented enough to serve us here domestically? Of course they are. We take steps to recognize that here today. Mr. Speaker, I am still waiting on that opportunity when I can come to the floor and tell you I got absolutely everything I wanted in absolutely every line of the bill. It has only been 4\1/2\ years for me; I haven't had that opportunity yet. I am still hoping that opportunity comes. But what I can tell you, Mr. Speaker, is that I came here to make a difference. I came here to move the ball forward. I came here to do the hard things, not the easy things. The easy things have already been done. There is a reason we haven't passed a long-term bill in more than a decade. It is because it is hard to do. And I take great pleasure and great pride, as a member of the Rules Committee, the Transportation Committee, and the conference committee, in bringing this rule to the floor today. If we pass this rule, Mr. Speaker, we can move to that conference report, and we can deliver for America what has been undeliverable for more than a decade. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that when the House adjourns today on a motion offered pursuant to this order, it adjourn to meet at 3 p.m. on Monday, November 9, 2015, unless it sooner has received a message from the Senate transmitting its concurrence in House Concurrent Resolution 92, in which case the House shall stand adjourned pursuant to that concurrent resolution.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I send to the desk a privileged concurrent resolution and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that when the House adjourns today on a motion offered pursuant to this order, it adjourn to meet at 2 p.m. on Monday, November 9, 2015, unless it sooner has received a message from the Senate transmitting its concurrence in House Concurrent Resolution 91, in which case the House shall stand adjourned pursuant to that concurrent resolution, and, further, that the order of the House of January 6, 2015, regarding morning-hour debate not apply on Monday next.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, everyone has gone back to their offices but you and me, and I appreciate you sticking around to get this hour in. It is not going to be an exciting hour. Ordinarily, I bring down charts and graphs and try to share something in a visual way that folks might not have seen before. Today, it is just words, because words matter. Mr. Speaker, we have just finished in this Chamber this fantastic-- you have heard me say it--it was a festival of democracy. Every Member who had an amendment, they brought them to the Rules Committee. We made over a hundred of them in order. It has been 3 days, Mr. Speaker, and we passed in a very bipartisan way Federal transportation policy for the first time in more than a decade. Democrats had failed to get it done. Republicans had failed to get it done. We, as 435 individual Members representing diverse constituencies across the Nation, came together today and we got it done. They said it wouldn't be done. Chairman Bill Shuster said it could be done. Ranking Member Pete DeFazio of Oregon said it could be done, and we did it. Something has happened, Mr. Speaker, in this town that has people identifying as Democrats or Republicans first and as Members of this body, of the Article I legislature, second. It is bad. It is bad for the country, and it is bad for the people we represent. It is a bad process. Mr. Speaker, that is what I want to talk about today. You can't see the chart that I have here, but it is a quote from President Obama--you will remember it--back in August of 2013. You will remember we worked together with the President. Nine different times, we repealed portions of the President's healthcare bill. We repealed them. They were unworkable. He knew it. We knew it. We came together nine times. He signed legislation into law that repealed parts of the President's healthcare bill. It was the summer of 2013 and we were talking about how to come together on some of the bigger problems in the President's healthcare bill. You remember the mandates were getting ready to go into effect-- the business mandates, the individual mandates--and the country wasn't ready. The country was not ready. We all knew it. Every Member, from left to right, Mr. Speaker, knew it. The President held a press conference and he said this: In a normal, political environment, it would have been easier for me to simply call up the Speaker and say: You know what? This is a tweak that doesn't go to the essence of the law. It has to do with, for example, are we able to simplify the attestation of employers to whether they are already providing health insurance or not. It looks like there may be some better ways to do this. Let's make a technical change to the law. The President goes on to say, Mr. Speaker: That would have been the normal thing that I would prefer to do, but we are not in a normal atmosphere around here when it comes to ObamaCare. The President says: We did have the executive authority to do so, and we did so. Mr. Speaker, this was from that very contentious time trying to solve problems for the American people, again, problems the White House knew existed and problems the Congress knew existed. The President says: You know what? If it was ordinary times like any time in the past 225 years, I would have called the United States Congress and I would have said: ``Listen, the Constitution gives you Article I powers to legislate, and I need a legislative change made because the law is not working.'' He didn't, and he said he didn't, and he said he wasn't going to. He said he was going to go it alone. The disappointment in that decision, in this body, was very partisan, Mr. Speaker. It was very partisan. I don't know how we get past the allegiance to the President because he is from our party. Republicans did this when George Bush was in office. Democrats are doing this when President Obama is in office. It is not about who the President is. It is about what the President does. What the President does is implement the laws that we pass. He doesn't change the laws. And every time we fail on behalf of our constituents to stand together as 435 Representatives of the people and instead become Representatives of the Republican Party or the Democratic Party, we fail America. Mr. Speaker, what I have here is the chart of the Supreme Court decision in the NLRB v. Noel Canning case. You may remember that one. I had just gotten to Congress, Mr. Speaker. I had just gotten to Congress. The President was talking about making appointments. As you know, the Advice and Consent Clause of the Constitution says the President can make appointments, but he needs to get the consent of the Senate to do so. Well, the Senate wouldn't give him consent. So while the Senate was away for a day, the President went into the Recess Appointments Clause of the Constitution. In fact, we got a big letter from the legal department there at the White House that said he had the powers to pretend that the Senate had adjourned for the session and to go ahead and make appointments anyway. The protest, Mr. Speaker, of the President usurping congressional authority was partisan. Republicans said no. Democrats said: Ah, he probably has the right to do it anyway. We didn't stand up for the people we represent. We didn't stand up for the Constitution we swore to uphold, Mr. Speaker. We divided ourselves by party instead of uniting ourselves on principle. We had to go to the Supreme Court, Mr. Speaker. The Supreme Court can't decide on anything unanimously, Mr. Speaker. If the question is: What time are we going to meet today to talk about cases?, it is a 5-4 decision. You know this to be true. But the Supreme Court came together in Noel Canning and said: That's crazy. That's crazy. The President of the United States can't just pretend he is king. He is not the king. I am paraphrasing when I say that, Mr. Speaker, but to quote the Supreme Court decision, they said this: Regardless, the recess appointments clause is not designed to overcome serious institutional friction. It provides a subsidiary method for appointing officials when the Senate is away during a recess. Here, as in other contexts, friction between the branches is an inevitable consequence of our constitutional structure. Friction between the branches, Mr. Speaker, is an inevitable consequence of our constitutional structure. That makes me feel good. It makes me feel good because, Mr. Speaker, I go back home all the time and constituents say: Rob, why can't you get more done? Why can't you get more done? Well, it turns out it is because of this. It is because of this Constitution that says, listen, if Congress is at work, your liberties and your freedoms may be under attack. Right? What we do here isn't generally to give freedoms back to people. Generally what we do is to restrict freedoms a little bit here. We want it to be slow. Here in the House, we are a little faster. There in the Senate, they are supposed to be a little slower, Mr. Speaker. But it is supposed to be hard. It is supposed to be the inevitable consequence of our constitutional structure. But, Mr. Speaker, this body--not Republicans in this body, not Democrats in this body--collectively was silent as power flowed down Pennsylvania Avenue, away from the Article I legislature down to the Article II executive. It took the Article III courts, Mr. Speaker, to right our constitutional framework. Shame on us. Shame on us, collectively, for not standing up. Mr. Speaker, my constituents are frustrated by the pace of progress in this town. They are frustrated by what looks like the politics that are being played here, Mr. Speaker, when policy should be our focus. I think it is up to us to educate folks, to proudly say it is the inevitable consequence of our constitutional structure, but when we stand together--as we have this week on this transportation bill--there is still more that unites us as a country than that divides us. Environmental leadership, Mr. Speaker, is one of those areas of overreach that this particular White House is aggressively engaged in. Again, the pushback has been partisan pushback. It has not been Article I legislative pushback, as it should. I want to go back to some prior Presidents, Mr. Speaker. I will look at Republican Presidents. I am a Republican. I will look at what it looked like when Republicans were running the show in the White House. The EPA was signed into law by Richard Nixon, Mr. Speaker. On the creation of the EPA, President Nixon said this: The reorganizations which I am here proposing afford both the Congress and the executive branch an opportunity to reevaluate the adequacy of the existing program authorities involved in these consolidations. I look forward to working with the Congress in this task. The Congress, the administration, and the public all share a profound commitment to the rescue of our natural environment. Richard Nixon had a calling when it comes to the environment, Mr. Speaker. He had a calling. He didn't say: I am the President of the United States. I am just going to rewrite the entire environmental code and dictate that it is the law of the land. He came to Congress and said: Protecting our natural resources is a shared American value. It is a shared American value. I am going to go to Congress. I am going to win the votes. We are going to change the law, and we are going to make it so. The Clean Air Act, Mr. Speaker, was signed into law in 1990 by President George H.W. Bush. He said this: Today I am signing S. 1630, a bill to amend the Clean Air Act. I take great pleasure in signing it as a demonstration to the American people of my determination that each and every American shall breathe clean air. Passage of this bill is an indication that the Congress shares my commitment to a strong Clean Air Act. How do you know, Mr. Speaker, if Congress shares your commitment if you don't bring the language to Congress to have Congress ratify it? The President can propose all the legislation he wants to. We still have to pass it. If our frustration about results allows us to let folks shortcut the constitutional process, we will all--330 million of us--suffer. I remember when President Reagan was trying to raise the gas tax, Mr. Speaker. I talk about that because we were talking about the transportation bill this week and transportation funding this week. He stood on the lawn, Mr. Speaker, there beside the Rose Garden, and he says: We deserve a world class infrastructure in America, and I propose that we double the gas tax. Yes, this is conservative Ronald Reagan talking about doubling taxes in order to build America. America didn't agree with him; yet, he went out there and sold it. How did we get fundamental tax reform in this country, Mr. Speaker, in 1986? The country wasn't ready for fundamental tax reform. The Congress couldn't agree on fundamental tax reform. Ronald Reagan took it out there and sold it every single day until he got it done. That is what is supposed to happen. We work together to accomplish these priorities. Past Presidents have done exactly that. Mr. Speaker, it hasn't been 2 weeks ago we were in here talking about the President's overreach on the Department of Labor fiduciary rule. You remember that bill. We had it here on the floor of the House, Mr. Speaker, where the President just decided, through the Department of Labor, that longstanding investment law, as determined by the SEC, was no longer going to be the law of the land, that the Department of Labor was going to take on some new rulemaking authorities in this area. The President wanted to make some changes. Congress didn't want to make changes. The President said this: What I won't accept is the notion that there is nothing we can do. So we are going to keep pushing for this rule. Keep pushing, Mr. Speaker, didn't mean come to Congress to sell you and to sell me. Pushing didn't mean go to the United States Senate to build a coalition. Pushing meant ignoring the Congress and going straightaway. Now, I point this out as a success, Mr. Speaker. I point this out as a success because our opposition to this wasn't partisan. Our opposition to this, Mr. Speaker, was bipartisan. I have here a letter from September, Mr. Speaker, signed by 90 Democrats that said: Mr. President, don't do this. Don't do this. This is not the proper path forward. The plurality of the Democratic Caucus here said: Mr. President, don't go forward. The President drove forward anyway. Mr. Speaker, the times that I have seen the President change his mind in my 4\1/2\ years in Congress have not been because of my persuasive oratory or even by the strength of this institution. It has been because the American people have spoken. When the American people speak, the President is a good listener. What the President is hearing today is the ends justify the means. I need results. And so however you get those results, Mr. President, I will be behind you. We are starting to turn that corner, Mr. Speaker, because I promise you, whatever is good for Democrats today is going to be bad for Democrats tomorrow. Whatever is bad for Republicans today is going to be good for Republicans tomorrow. The parties will change. The political environment will change. But when you short-circuit the process, the short-circuiting lasts forever. We change expectations of the American people. We change expectations of what the Constitution means, Mr. Speaker. I applaud 90 of my Democratic colleagues standing with this Congress saying: Mr. President, don't go it alone. Mr. Speaker, this isn't something that I am just coming up with out of thin air. When the President wasn't President Obama, when he was Senator Obama, he had these same concerns. He spoke out time and time again about overreaches of President George Bush. Oftentimes he spoke out alone. Republicans weren't standing with him to speak out because it was a Republican President. Republicans said: You know what. I want to support my President. So even if he is coloring outside the lines a little bit, it is probably important to the country that he do so. That is a failure. That is a failure because our primary job here is not to be Republicans and Democrats. Our primary job here is to be Article I Representatives of the American people. The President said this on immigration. He's talking at a Univision townhall meeting in 2011, Mr. Speaker. He said: This does not mean, though, we can't make decisions, for example, to emphasize enforcement on those who have engaged in criminal activity. This was the beginning of his program. But he goes on to say: It also doesn't mean that we can't strongly advocate and propose legislation that would change the law. Time and time again, folks would ask him to do what he could as the executive to change immigration law, and he would say: Listen, I'm not the king. I am the President. The Congress has to change the laws. I can only enforce the laws. He was right. He was right each and every time that he said that. The administration can propose, but we have to implement. Fast-forward to about this time last year, Mr. Speaker, and the President says this: And to those Members of Congress who question my authority to make our immigration system work better or question the wisdom of my acting where Congress has failed, I have but one answer: Pass a bill. Pass a bill, he says. In the meantime, I am just going to do things the way I want to do things. That is the opposite of the ``I am just a bill sitting here on Capitol Hill'' song that we all learned as children, Mr. Speaker. The bill comes first. The law change comes last. After the President signs the bill, it becomes the law. We have to propose it first. How many meetings have you had with the President, Mr. Speaker, where he is pushing his immigration agenda, trying to get you to buy in to his bill? The answer is zero because he doesn't have a bill and he hasn't been knocking on any of our doors. And my Democratic friends would say the same. How many meetings with the President have you had, Mr. Speaker, where the President is trying to persuade you about his fiduciary rule and why that change is important for America and why we should move that bill forward? The answer is zero because he has never come to Capitol Hill to make that pitch. He is not making it to Democrats, and he is not making it to Republicans. He is going it alone. How many times has the President come and knocked on your door, Mr. Speaker, to try to sell you on his ozone regulations or his clean energy plan and on and on and on? And the answer is he hasn't. And we have been complicit in allowing that unilateral action. It is bad for America. It is not the process that our Framers envisioned. This is what the President said on immigration. It is that same Univision townhall meeting. The question was: Mr. President, my question will be as follows. With an executive order, could you be able to stop deportations of students? Mr. Speaker, I am not down here talking about immigration policy today. I am not. Our immigration system is broken. I represent constituents, Mr. Speaker, who have had family members on the list not for 5 years, not for 10 years, not for 15 years, but for 20 years, and more are standing in line waiting for their chance to come to America. Our system is broken. I have employers who want to build in our district. They can't get the people they need from their home countries to come and manage those operations. Our system is broken. We all know it. We have a chance to fix it. But when the President goes around the Congress, he doesn't fix it. He breaks it further. He says this: With respect to the notion that I can just suspend deportations through executive order, that is just not the case because there are laws on the books that Congress has passed. And I know that everybody here at Bell is studying hard. So you know that we have got three branches of government. Congress passes the law. The executive branch's job is to enforce and implement those laws. And then the judiciary has to interpret the laws. The President says: There are enough laws on the books by Congress, the President says, ``that are very clear in terms of how we have to enforce our immigration system that for me to simply through executive order ignore those congressional mandates would not conform with my appropriate role as President. Mr. Speaker, the words of President Obama: There are enough laws on the books by Congress that are very clear in terms of how we have to enforce our immigration system that for me to simply through executive order ignore those constitutional mandates would not conform with my appropriate role as President. That was March 2011. You wouldn't know that is what he believed in November of 2015. Mr. Speaker, what happened in those 4 years? I will tell you. What has happened is we have been silent as a body. We have been vocal as Republicans, we have been vocal as Democrats, but we have been silent as a representative body. Article I of the Constitution says it is our job to legislate and it is our job to rein in those Presidents who would legislate on our behalf. What our Framers feared, Mr. Speaker, was an all-powerful executive. That is what they had come from. That is what we should fear today, not a Republican President, not a Democratic President, but an all-powerful President. Congress passes the law. The President enforces them. Mr. Speaker, if you want to know the outcome of that overreach, if you want to know where Congress is, again, the President is not on Capitol Hill selling those priorities. He is simply down in the executive branch with a phone and a pen implementing those priorities. But if you want to know what the other two branches of government think, the judiciary said no and the Congress said no. There is no confusion about where the different branches of government are. We have one branch that is saying yes. That is the executive, who has no lawmaking authority whatsoever. We have two branches saying no, the branch that makes the law, which is the legislative branch, and the branch that interprets the law, which is the judiciary branch. We are united in the noes, but what we are not united on is the yeses. We talk about bipartisan in this Chamber, Mr. Speaker. It is always striking to me that what is bipartisan is the opposition to the Presidential overreach. That is what is bipartisan. Sometimes the support for it is partisan, with a minority of folks supporting the President on that. It is bipartisan in its--disdain is too strong of a word, Mr. Speaker, but in some ways, it is not strong enough. It is that we owe our constituents better. It is that we owe them better. My voting card has my name on it, Mr. Speaker, but it is not mine. It is borrowed from the Seventh District of Georgia. It doesn't belong to me. It belongs to 700,000 folks back home who didn't send me here to satisfy my priorities. They sent me here to satisfy their priorities. I don't believe that, as a Nation, Mr. Speaker, we believe the ends justify the means. I hope that we don't. I hope that we have not fallen so far, Mr. Speaker, that we now believe the Constitution, the rule book for America, is less important than what the results are. Anybody involved in manufacturing, Mr. Speaker, knows that, if you have a flawed process, you are going to produce a flawed product. Only with a good process can you produce a good product. The Constitution gives us a good process. When we ignore it, we have a flawed process and a flawed product. I will go to the President's environmental policies, Mr. Speaker. I want to make it clear: I represent a district that plays outside, I would argue, more than any other district in the country. If you want folks that love clean air and clean water, come down to my part of the world. If you want folks who are stewards of Mother Earth, come down to my part of the world. If want folks who love green space, who love parks, national trailways and bikeways, come down to my part of the world. We love being outside. We will ride a bike. We will push a stroller. We don't care. We just want to be outside. And so, if the President came to me and said: ``Rob, Mother Earth is in peril. I need you to work with me to solve that problem,'' I would be the best listener you could imagine. But that is not the way the process is working in the 4\1/2\ years I have been in Congress, Mr. Speaker. The President's Clean Power Plan is shutting down power plants in the great State of Georgia, Mr. Speaker. It is the position of the administration to protect Mother Earth. We are going to close down the power plants that we have just spent billions of dollars improving to meet the last round of environmental regulation. And then, with those power plants closed down, we are now going to spend billions more to build brand-new facilities to generate electricity. I promise you that is not going to result in fewer emissions in the atmosphere than if we let these plants run out their useful life with all of the improvements that have gone upon them. But we didn't get to vote on that, Mr. Speaker. We didn't get to vote on that. That was an executive decree. We have the Waters of the U.S., Mr. Speaker. Well, when it was a bill, we rejected it. It is the initiative from the White House that said the framework we have had in this country for 100 years of the Federal Government controlling navigable waterways and the State governments controlling the other waterways is gone. If a drop of water falls, it is now the Federal Government's responsibility to regulate. Why? Because, apparently, we can't be trusted back in Georgia to take good care of our natural resources. Nonsense. Mr. Speaker, my district sits on a continental divide. We have built a billion-dollar water treatment plant where we are putting the water back into our local lake cleaner than we took it out. While half the district's on the other side of the continental divide, we know that the Chattahoochee River Basin is in a water deficit. So we spend beaucoup money pumping the water back up from one side of the continental divide so that we can let it go in the basin that needs the water so badly. We are stewards, Mr. Speaker. We are not stewards with your money. We are not spending somebody else's money on these projects. We are spending our money on these projects because we believe in taking care of America's natural resources. The President, not through selling it to Congress, not through selling it to the American people, but with a pen and the phone federalized water across the board. Where was the bipartisan outcry? It was lacking. And, finally, the revised Ozone Air Quality Standards, Mr. Speaker. If you are confused, it is that we never got the last round of ozone standards implemented. Those still haven't gone into effect yet. The President has dropped a new round of ozone standards on America not because Congress worked on it--we didn't--not because Congress passed something--we didn't--but because the President thought it was important and he wrote the law for himself. How does Congress feel about this? Well, it turns out Members of this body said: If this is the direction the President wants it to go, let me make this pitch to Congress and see if the Congress agrees with the President. Carbon emissions, cap-and-trade, Clean Power Plan: Rejected. Waters of the U.S.: Rejected. Ozone standards: Rejected. It is not that Congress hasn't spoken on these issues. We have, Mr. Speaker. We have. It is not that the President doesn't know what the Article I Congress wants. He does. He just doesn't like what the Article I Congress decided. And so he has decided to do it himself. And we have been complicit in allowing that to happen. It is not even we, the 435 of us, Mr. Speaker. It is we, the 320 million of us. And there is going to be a price to pay for that. Mr. Speaker, Congress is active on these issues. It is not as if folks in this body don't care. They care deeply. We passed the REINS Act, Mr. Speaker, to say: Listen, if the President is going to start doing some rules on his own, we need to come back and review those after the fact in Congress. It passed 243-165. We had the Regulatory Integrity Protection Act for those jurisdictions like mine where the local governments are taking such good care of our natural resources, trying to protect their right to continue to protect our local natural resources. It passed 261-155. The Ratepayer Protection Act said: For Pete's sake, it hasn't been 5 years since you told us to spend billions to make these power plants workable for the next generation. Now you are telling us we have to close these power plants. That can't possibly be the right way for America to get clean energy. It can't possibly be the right way to be stewards of taxpayer dollars. We passed that bill 247-180. The EPA Science Advisory Board Act said: We have got to get together on the science. If we can't figure out what the facts are, we are never going to agree on what the solution is. So let's have a standard for what good science looks like that we can all rally together around. It passed here in the House. Mr. Speaker, folks aren't confused about where the Congress is on this issue. The President is not confused about where the Congress is on this issue. The President believes the ends justify the means. Article I: Congress passes the law. Article II: The White House enforces the law. Article II: The judiciary interprets the law. Well, the judiciary had a chance to do a little interpreting. It had a chance to look at the Waters of the U.S. and the clean water issue, and the court said this. This is the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals: What is of greater concern to us in balancing the harms is the burden potentially visited nationwide on governmental bodies, State and Federal, as well as on private parties, and the impact on the public in general implicated by the rule's redrawing of jurisdictional lines over certain of the Nation's waters. The court says: Wait a minute. We are worried about the impact on America. I don't want the court to be worried about the impact on America. I want the court to be worried about what the law of the land is. I want the Congress to be worried about the impact on America. I want the President to be listening to Congress and enforcing the laws that Congress passed. It has taken the courts to say: Mr. President, you have gone a bit to too far. The court goes on and says: The sheer breadth of the ripple effect caused by this rule's definitional changes counsel strongly in favor of maintaining the status quo for the time being. It is still being litigated. The court says the detrimental impact of this new rule that Congress has never seen, except in the form that we rejected it, the damage to America is so severe, we are going to issue an injunction to prevent the President from going forward. Mr. Speaker, it gives me no pride to have nine Justices in robes running the United States of America. Americans elected a President to implement the law and they elected a Congress to write the law. We should be doing that together. We found ourselves powerless in doing that, asking the courts to solve that issue instead. The courts go on: But neither is there any indication that the integrity of the Nation's waters will suffer imminent injury if a new scheme is not immediately implemented. They said: I don't know what it is the President is trying to solve here, but there is no harm coming. There is time to sort this out. Now, they mean time to sort it out in the courts. What about time to sort it out in the Congress, Mr. Speaker? Who is it who loves the Waters of the U.S. bill? If they do, they should come and make their pitch. The President should come and make his pitch. When was the last time you saw him on the TV selling the Waters of the U.S. bill, Mr. Speaker? The answer is that you haven't seen him on TV selling it. He is not selling it. He is just doing it. When have you seen him selling the ozone standards? The answer is that he is not selling it. He is just doing it. And the list goes on. Mr. Speaker, we have to ask him to get out there and sell it. Your job as President isn't just to do it. Your job as President is to get the Congress to allow you to do it, to sell the American people, who will sell the Congress, who will change the law of the land. Mr. Speaker, I don't know if you know Laurence Tribe. He is a Harvard law professor. In fact, he was President Obama's constitutional law professor. I would not call him a conservative by any stretch of the word, at least not in political terms, but perhaps constitutionally. Laurence Tribe says this about the President's Clean Power Plan. He says: To justify the Clean Power Plan, the EPA has brazenly rewritten the history of an obscure section of the 1970 Clean Air Act. Frustration with congressional inaction cannot justify throwing the Constitution overboard to rescue this lawless EPA proposal. Mr. Speaker, I want you to follow that rationale. This isn't something that has snuck up on us here in the past few weeks, here in the past few months, here in the past few years. The President dug deep into a 45-year-old law and said: It appears to me we have misunderstood this law for the past 45 years. We have misunderstood it. And apparently, 45 years ago, we absolutely made an effort, through Congress and the White House, to give the President the authority, in fact, the obligation, to rewrite America's energy laws in this fashion. Nonsense. Nonsense. The President is a constitutional law professor. Frustration with congressional inaction cannot justify throwing the Constitution overboard to rescue this lawless EPA proposal. I get the frustration with congressional inaction. Mr. Speaker, I get it. If we had frustration meters around here, mine would be ticking up near the top. But my experience is, the way to address that frustration isn't to take my toys and go home. The way to address that frustration is to find somebody on the other side of the aisle who I think I can trust, who I think I can talk to, who I think I can listen to, and to work together to find an answer, to work together to find a solution. What is absent in all of these proposals that I have listed, Mr. Speaker, is anyone working together to make this proposal the law of the land. The only working together that is happening, Mr. Speaker, are folks working together to prevent these proposals from being the law of the land. Process matters. Process matters. Mr. Speaker, I am going to finish close to where I began. I was a new Congressman, had just been elected, 700,000 people in the great State of Georgia counting on me to be their voice, counting on me to succeed on their priorities. Right out of the gate, the President says: You know what? I have been trying to get the people I want appointed to a board, and the Senate won't do what I want them to do; and because the Senate won't do what I want them to do, I am going to do it by myself. When did that become okay, Mr. Speaker? We suffer from a little of that here. The House won't do what I want it to do, so I am going to take my toys and go home. The House won't do what I want it to do, so I am going to gum up the works and shut down the process. The House won't do what I want it to. Well, guess what? In a representative democracy, nobody does what you want him to do, Mr. Speaker. You have got to go out and find 51 percent of America to agree with you, and that is when you get things done. I do not fault the President for his policies, though I disagree with him on them. I fault him for implementing those policies unilaterally, unconstitutionally, instead of going out and selling America on them. That is what is so great about this institution, Mr. Speaker. If you have the votes, you don't have to fuss about it. Folks come down to the House floor, gnashing of teeth, tearing of clothes, self-flagellation going on here on the floor on a regular basis. If you have the votes, you don't have to make a scene. You have just got to go out and win the votes. You just have to go out and win the argument. If you win the argument, the law will change. Mr. Speaker, America works. America works. The Constitution works. You just have to follow it. You just have to believe in it. You have to believe in the Constitution. You have to believe in the American people that it governs. So, 9-0, the Supreme Court told the White House and its entire legal team that crafted a too-cute-by-half explanation of why this was all going to be okay and roses and sunshine, hunky-dory, 9-0 the Court said no. No, that is not what the President does. That is not what the White House does. That is not what you are allowed to do in America. Regardless, the Supreme Court says the Recess Appointments Clause is not designed to overcome serious institutional friction. Mr. Speaker, we have serious institutional friction. I don't bemoan this. I celebrate it. I think friction was part of the process. It turns out the Court agrees with me. They go on to say it simply provides a subsidiary method for appointing officials when the Senate is away during a recess; hence, the term ``Recess Appointments Clause.'' Here, as in other contexts--in other contexts, Mr. Speaker--are all of these other issues the Court now has on their plate from executive overreach. Here, as in another contexts, friction between the branches is an inevitable consequence of our constitutional structure. Mr. Speaker, I am just one vote in a 435-Member institution, but my constituents would place that one vote on the side of being the Article I legislature rather than on the side of being the best Republican America has ever seen. My constituents would ask me to place that vote on the side of being the legislative branch, that institution from which the ideas percolate, that part of the U.S. House that is closest to the American people. They would ask me to pledge to be a part of this institution, not the Republican National Committee, not the National Republican Congressional Committee, not the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, not the Democratic National Committee. Mr. Speaker, we have an amazing opportunity and a solemn obligation in this institution. My commitment is to be a good listener to all the policy concerns my colleagues have on the other side of the aisle. Mr. Speaker, I will be a good listener. I may not agree with you, but I will give you a chance to sell me. But we have to be united on behalf of all of our constituents back home in saying that the Constitution gives only one branch the ability to write the law, and that is the Article I legislature. When we ignore the President, Mr. Speaker, we do so at our own peril, at our institutional peril. When the President ignores the Congress, he does so at his own peril, at executive branch institutional peril. I was on the elevator with one of the great leaders of this institution, Mr. Speaker, Mr. John Dingell out of Michigan, and he was on the elevator. A young Democrat climbed on the elevator with him. The young Democrat was complaining that he didn't have a personal relationship with the President. He said: I don't get to see enough of the President. The President is not on Capitol Hill enough. Mr. Dingell said: Well, son, be careful what you wish for. Remember LBJ. We had LBJ over at the Library of Congress, a book study just this week. Different Presidents handle their relationship with Congress in different ways. Some are involved too much, some are involved not enough, but everyone is involved. Mr. Speaker, this is supposed to be a battle of ideas, not a battle of ideologies. This is supposed to be a battle of policy, not a battle of partisans. This is supposed to be an opportunity to succeed on behalf of folks back home; and I will tell you, it is an opportunity that we are losing when we unite ourselves based on red and blue as opposed to uniting ourselves based on Article I and Article II. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 512 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. WOODALL. The gentleman is not talking about me. The gentleman is talking about my party.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire how much time remains on my side?