Rob Woodall

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume, and I thank the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Perlmutter), my friend, for yielding me the customary 30 minutes. We had to hustle over here today, Mr. Speaker. You were already here, and I appreciate your timely beginning of the House, but this is a different kind of day. Ordinarily, we have more 1 minutes, more folks celebrating high school teachers, local newspaper folks, and local philanthropic efforts, but as you might imagine, there are other things going on on the Hill today. That is unfortunate because I come down here today not with a heavy heart that I often come with, from a Rules Committee perspective. Mr. Speaker, the Rules Committee is in charge of deciding whether or not to allow amendments, what to schedule for the floor. As a member of the minority, there are four of us up there on the Rules Committee with nine members in the majority, so we lose a lot. The time for bipartisan partnership happens before a bill gets to the Rules Committee. Yesterday, what we saw transpire in the Rules Committee, Mr. Speaker, was not at all unprecedented. It is just not as common as I wish it were. That is that the committees of jurisdiction were working all the way up until the eleventh hour to come together on a bipartisan solution so that we wouldn't have to jam something through the Rules Committee. I see my friend from Connecticut has come down to the floor. Mr. Himes, representing the majority on the Financial Services Committee, and Mr. Huizenga, representing the minority, talked about the partnership that came together, not to create the perfect bill, not to create the bill that I would have written, and, candidly, not to create the bill that my friend from Colorado would have written, but to have crafted a bill with give-and-take so that instead of spending time on this floor making statements, we are going to spend time on this floor making legislation. We are going to have an actual opportunity, Mr. Speaker. I don't want to upset anybody's applecart here because so often we do spend more time trying to make a point than make a difference. This is a bill about making a difference today. Not at all common, there were no Democratic amendments made in order to this bill. The two Republican amendments that were made in order are the perfecting amendments to seal that bipartisan compromise. I think we are going to end up with a big bipartisan vote on the board. The only thing that gives me a heavy heart today, Mr. Speaker, is that I offered an amendment last night to add suspension authority for the Speaker of the House, Speaker Pelosi, to bring up a bill dealing with the widows and widowers of American servicemen and -women killed in action and the benefits that they are not receiving today. This is also a bipartisan bill. I offered an amendment to make that suspension authority in order. It was rejected on a party-line vote, so I am going to be opposing the rule today because I would like to be able to include those things. But we did get a motion to recommit that will be made in order today, so I will have an opportunity, if we defeat the previous question, to bring up the NDAA bill, the National Defense Authorization Act, which does contain the widow's tax repeal and gives us an opportunity to do even more things together. I see my friend from Georgia (Mr. David Scott) on the floor today. He serves on the Financial Services Committee with my friend Mr. Loudermilk from Georgia. We have two Georgians who serve on the committee of jurisdiction for this bill. I always enjoy the Financial Services Committee because, historically, in my 9 years here, it has not been led by shrinking violets on either side of the aisle. There are those milquetoast committees on Capitol Hill, Mr. Speaker, that never make the news. Nobody ever gets a one-liner. Not so with the committee that my friend from Colorado and my friend from Georgia serve on. But I like watching the vote tally because so often my friend Mr. Scott from Georgia and my friend Mr. Loudermilk from Georgia end up on the same side of the issue because, sadly, the only Financial Services Committee bills that make the headlines are those that highlight our strident differences here. But time and time again, the Financial Services Committee has had a record of producing bills that can go to the President's desk. They could go to President Obama's desk for his signature, and they can go to President Trump's desk for his signature. I hope this turns out to be one of those exercises today, again, not an exercise in making a point but an exercise in making a difference. Mr. Speaker, I would like to share with my friend from Colorado that his expertise on the Financial Services Committee is valued by all of us on the minority side of the aisle. It is a special kind of pain being in the minority on the Rules Committee, Mr. Speaker, because minority members have wonderful ideas, and friends on the other side of the aisle are constrained from how many of those ideas they can support, but we always get a word of encouragement from our friend from Colorado. I know if he were sitting on the minority side, I would be feeling his pain, and he feels ours. He is always a voice for encouragement on that committee. We see that come back from the witnesses who have a chance to serve with the gentleman from Colorado, talking about how much they enjoy that partnership. That is why I am particularly pleased I was assigned this rule today, because it exemplifies the kind of work that we want out of all of our committees, that we have gotten out of the Financial Services Committee this day and that my friend from Colorado works each and every day to bring forward, sometimes with more success than others, but nonetheless, it is appreciated. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I want to associate myself with my friend from Connecticut. It has been true that we have spent too much time making policy statements and not enough time making policy. That has been true under leadership of both parties here. Though, the truth is, Mr. Speaker--and because I take great pride in this institution, I want to say it--we do spend more time making policy than we get credit for. You can't see behind you, Mr. Speaker, but I am looking at the press gallery today, all the folks who are covering us reclaiming our Article I responsibilities today. We are not going to let the courts legislate in this area; we are going to legislate in this area. There is approximately one outlet there covering this today; others are elsewhere. Again, we worked until the eleventh hour to put something together, a bipartisan compromise between the chairman and ranking member on the Financial Services Committee. The collective national presence to highlight that partnership is, again, one. I don't know what we can do here to try to let success beget success. So often, these kinds of successes go right underneath the radar screen, and, thus, it makes it harder to accomplish these things. If I could make it clear to America that the tag team of Waters and McHenry can come together to get good things done, that certainly sends a message that there is hope for all of us in this space. I want to go back to what my friend from Colorado said, though. He is absolutely right about the widow's tax. We did incorporate that bill in the NDAA. It has been sitting in the Senate doing nothing. I wish we would have passed it as a stand-alone bill. That is a different conversation for a different day. But it is sitting in the Senate, and there is nothing I can do, Mr. Speaker, to move the Senate along any faster. I can't get their conferees to work any harder. But what I can do is I can get the House to take up the Senate-passed NDAA, and we can take back the authority in this institution to move the NDAA forward. It is important for the widow's tax, but, Mr. Speaker, it is important for so many other things absolutely essential to the defense of this country. It has been one of those bills that we have come together in a bipartisan way to be successful on decade after decade after decade, and it is a stain on the success of the House and the Senate this cycle that we have not been able to move that forward in a bipartisan way. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of my amendment in the Record, along with extraneous material, immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, in the same way that I can't speak to insider trading in that legislation any better than the gentleman from Connecticut does as a member of jurisdiction, I also cannot speak to the NDAA in any better words than my friend from Wyoming (Ms. Cheney), a former member of the Rules Committee, the Conference chairman for the House Republicans here, and an unabashed defender of providing the very best for our men and women in uniform. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from Wyoming (Ms. Cheney).

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I was walking down the hall one day between the Capitol and the Budget Committee room, and I was walking with the now-chairman of the Budget Committee, Mr. Yarmuth from Kentucky. We were arguing because he is a committed budgeteer and I am a committed budgeteer. We were arguing about process and how it was that we were going to deliver the results that our constituents are demanding and that the Nation expects. We were about halfway down that tunnel, past all that brilliant artwork that high schoolers send in, when we realized that we were saying exactly the same thing. I was just saying it in Republican terms; he was saying it in Democrat terms. We had been arguing then for about 5 minutes on what should have been bringing us together. We end up in that space a lot here. Because my friend from Colorado does work so hard to reach out and be collaborative, I want to make sure that he didn't misunderstand my friend from Wyoming. I could hear the frustration in her voice. My friend did not have the pleasure of serving with her on the Rules Committee, but when national security issues came up, she has been living this commitment as a member of the committee. When we do a continuing resolution, for my friend and me it is about an extra 2 weeks to solve disagreements. For her it is 2 weeks of lost ability to plan for national security. When we get things done by December 31 and a deadline, we think of this as a great success. For her, it is an entire quarter that we couldn't plan for new threats and new challenges that are confronting the U.S. intelligence and defense establishment. It is not just personal, it is truly life and death in a national security way. If we defeat the previous question, what the gentlewoman from Wyoming was proposing is that we take up the Senate bill and amend it with all of those ideas that our conferees have already gotten together on. Now, my friend is correct. The Senate has some challenges. I would argue it is a challenge that nobody has 60 votes over there, and so whether Republicans are leading the Senate or Democrats are leading the Senate, there is still no ability to move things past the filibuster threshold. But we can take up that bill, because I would say it is Democrats in the Senate holding it up. My friend from Colorado might say it is Republicans in the Senate holding it up. But we all agree that it is critically important that we get it done. So I don't want to slow down the insider trading bill, Mr. Speaker, and that is not what I am suggesting. What I am suggesting is: If we defeat the previous question, we have already got section 1 and section 2 of the rule that covers the insider trading bill. Let's add a section 3 to the rule. In the same way the insider trading bill reclaims Article I responsibility from Article III courts, section 3 is going to reclaim from the Senate the House prerogative to move forward on legislation. We will bring up the Senate bill, we will add in all of the amendments that the Democratic chairman of the Armed Services Committee and the Republican ranking member want to include, and then we will move that bill forward. Mr. Speaker, the insider trading bill is important, and we are going to get that done together. National security is even more important. Again, while it is not the subject of national news coverage, this is something we have gotten done in a bipartisan collaborative way no matter who runs the U.S. House, no matter who runs the U.S. Senate, and no matter who sits in the White House for almost 60 years. Every single year bills fail, bills succeed, Presidents come, and Presidents go. We have gotten this done because it is important to 330 million Americans. Keep section 1 of the rule and keep section 2 of the rule. Let's move forward on the bipartisan product of the Financial Services Committee. Let's add section 3. Let's defeat the previous question, let's reclaim from the Senate the NDAA papers, let's move forward with a House amendment, and let's send the Senate a bill that they can pass tomorrow. Mr. Speaker, I don't see any other speakers, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I have got my Mars 2033 bumper sticker here if we are prepared to talk about other collaborative things moving forward, but 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, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. I am enjoying listening to the partnership conversation. I want to come from a different perspective, though. I want to talk about the partisanship conversation. When I was 6 years old and Senator Isakson was elected as a Georgia House member, it was 23 out of 180 members of the house, as I recall. I don't know how many there were before he got there, but being a Republican in Georgia in 1976 was not a popular thing to do. I think about all the things that we want to do together in this body. I think about folks who say, ``Oh, we can't do that. It is too hard. It is going to take too long. Let's do something today, but let's not focus on those long-term goals.'' You might think that when Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980, that that was a big jump in Georgia. As I recall, there were still 23 members in the Georgia House in 1980, 23 out of 180. Somebody had to be the first one to stand up. We talk about partisanship in this institution, Madam Speaker, like it is a bad thing. What I have always loved about the Senator is that he has never been embarrassed to be a Republican. He knew what he believed, and he knew why he believed it. Now, the Senator might not like the way someone else expresses their Republican values, but he led with his heart. He can sit right beside a Democratic hero like John Lewis, and I can't tell the difference when it comes to Southern gentility, but he will never be embarrassed to share who he is as a Republican. That is what it takes to grow from 23 members in a 180-member body into the institution that Tom Graves had an opportunity to serve and into the institution that so many of our colleagues had a chance to serve. We talk about bipartisanship as that Holy Grail. It requires partisanship to get there, and but for the example that Senator Isakson set, we wouldn't have the Republican Party in Georgia, and we wouldn't have Isakson values in that party. I talked about partisanship, Madam Speaker. I want to talk about people as the second part of that. I have always imagined the roughest part about being a United States Senator is that one might lose that one-on-one contact that one has had. In a congressional district, we can get to know people. We can be with them in the community. Senator Isakson's entire career has been about people. I watch him when he walks into a room. Folks that I ought to know who they are because I have worked with them but I just can't remember, I see him go up and greet them by name. Folks that have come into the room from all different congressional districts, he has a relationship with them, maybe from back in 1976 when he was trying to grow the party across the State, maybe from back when he was leading the State Board of Education, maybe from back in the Sixth District, maybe from his time as a United States Senator. He has always put people first. I see that in every speech he has given in Gwinnett and Forsyth Counties. He will stand up and always thank the staffers who are working for him. It is his Academy Day that I enjoy the most. That is my favorite time that we spend together each year. If people don't know, Madam Speaker, the Isakson Academy Day is a statewide event that brings all the young men and women who love an opportunity--they could do anything they want to with their life, but they want to serve the United States of America. They want to be the future generation of leaders. Even as young as seventh, eighth, and ninth grade, they come to this event that Senator Isakson puts together. Talk about all the lives that he has changed here in this institution, don't even get started on the number of lives he has changed as it relates to leadership and opportunity to serve through his Academy Day. I think about him being a Republican's Republican. I think about Reva Jennings in Forsyth County. Senator Isakson knows Reva. She is hard core. For folks who don't know, Madam Speaker, Forsyth County is one of the most conservative counties in the State of Georgia--a conservative State, a conservative county. Reva Jennings has been building that Republican Party up there for as long as anyone can remember. We lost her in an untimely way. But while everybody loves us on our way out the door, Senator Isakson might remember a tough primary season or two where folks might come and say: Johnny, why aren't you more angry about this? Why aren't you doing this? As Republican primary seasons are, we tend to eat our own. Reva Jennings, the first time I met her, was fielding one of those questions. Somebody came up and said: We have to get somebody to challenge that Johnny Isakson in the next primary. He is soft, for a Republican. Now, we know Reva. She doesn't have any softness in her. She went right to Senator Isakson's steel backbone. She went right after it. She took it to that whole crowd of Republicans, saying: You can poor-mouth anybody you want to in this town, but you cannot poor-mouth Johnny Isakson because he has done more for the Republican Party than anybody else in this State has, and let me tell you how. It is not hard to find detractors out there these days. It is hard to build those lifelong friendships that create that gift of relationship that Senator Isakson has offered so many. He has offered it to me. I am grateful to him for it. I wouldn't be standing here today but for the work he has done over those years, and I thank Senator Isakson for that. Madam Speaker, I thank Mr. Scott for yielding.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume and thank my friend from California for yielding me the time. I want to tell a different story, Mr. Speaker. You and I haven't gotten a chance to work together down here when I have really gotten to come down here and really sell these rules, because back when I was in the majority on the Rules Committee, we didn't always get it right; but, as a rank-and-file member of the committee, I always had a chance to improve the bill, to make it better, to try to hear some voices. My friend from Florida is not down here with us today. My friend from California knows, the worst thing about having Alcee Hastings on your committee is that he gets all fired up and all geared up, and you almost get upset because so often he is right, and he is pointing out your flaws and he is making you do it better. We need more of that from one another, Mr. Speaker, where we get ourselves wound up, not about Republicans and Democrats, but about how to do the process better. I know that your week and my friend from California's week has been just like my week. It started out with Veterans Day events back home in your district. And you didn't find a man or a woman who said, ``Let's do better for Republican veterans but not so much for Democratic veterans,'' or vice versa. You found men and women who were proud of their service. You found men and women who wanted to support those men and women who had served us. You found folks grateful for our opportunities to be in community with one another and do better tomorrow than we did yesterday. Then we showed up here on Tuesday after Veterans Day break and we started with our suspension calendar. For the life of me, I don't understand why this institution hides all the good things that it does and accentuates all the controversial things it does. If we took a poll outside the Capitol today, Mr. Speaker, I just want to ask you, and I want to make sure I get it right: How many folks walking past the Capitol today know that, in a bipartisan way, you and I and the gentleman from California came together on Tuesday and passed General Bergman's GI Bill Planning Act to ease the burden on new servicemembers as they try to sort out accessing their education benefits? This is an important issue that has been plaguing our veterans. We have been talking about it here in this institution. We got together on Monday, and we did it together. Not one headline, not one 6 p.m. news story. Republicans and Democrats standing together in this House on behalf of veterans who were not being served as well as we knew we could serve them, we fixed it together, but that is not what we are talking about. How many folks, Mr. Speaker, if we go outside today, are going to know that we passed Ms. Brownley's Deborah Sampson Act, which recognizes the different needs that women veterans and newborn children have and established a department within the VA to make sure those needs are met? Yes, the VA was formed as a male-centric institution. Of course, in 2019, there are going to be needs that were unmet. We have known that. We have talked about that. We have pushed that down the road. But this House this week came together, Republicans and Democrats, to solve that issue once and for all, but I challenge you to find somebody standing outside who knows that is what their U.S. House of Representatives has been working on this week. What about Mr. Cunningham's VA Tele-Hearing Modernization Act? You have the same concerns in your veterans community that I do, Mr. Speaker: folks trying to file their appeals, trying to get in touch with those hearing boards, but because their mobility is limited, because they are distant from those population centers, they can't get that done. Mr. Cunningham's bill improves the ability to do that with the telecommunications that are available to us in 2019. Of course, we should have gotten that done. Of course, we should have. We have been working on it; we have been perfecting it. This week, this House, Republicans and Democrats, came together and did that for veterans, too. Mr. Harder's Protecting Families of Fallen Servicemembers Act, to ensure that family members of servicemen and -women and Active-Duty reservists who were killed or seriously injured on Active Duty are allowed to terminate their financial dealings back home in a way that is easy. My father passed away last summer, Mr. Speaker. It is incredibly difficult when you lose a family member to deal with all of those end- of-life issues, all of those financial issues. The last thing our service families need to be dealing with is sorting through all of that paperwork. We have now come together in a collaborative partnership way to solve that issue. I challenge you to find a man or woman outside the Capitol who knows that. Now, why do I tell you that story, Mr. Speaker? I tell you that story because that was just Monday and Tuesday, a little bit of Wednesday, and we are not talking about that on the floor of this House. Instead, I am down here today to talk about the Ex-Im Bank bill, which is an important bill, an important bill that we could have done in a bipartisan way but didn't. I don't know if you remember those headlines. I brought them down here with me, Mr. Speaker, if you don't recall them. This is when we produced the bipartisan Ex-Im Bank bill, the one that was going to committee, the one that Chairwoman Waters and Ranking Member McHenry worked out together in a bipartisan way back in June: ``Export-Import Bank Deal in Peril Amid Democratic Backlash.'' The bipartisan bill that had been worked out didn't meet the standards of some in the Democratic Caucus. The bill got pulled back. ``Democrats Defy Waters on Ex-Im Bank Restrictions''. Again, this is a bill to reform the Ex-Im Bank. It imposed some new restrictions. The Democratic Caucus pushed back. The bipartisan bill was pulled. What we have before us today, Mr. Speaker, is a bill that is completely partisan in its passage. The only thing that is bipartisan about the bill today is the folks that voted against it. Republicans and Democrats said: No, this is not the right bill. Only Democrats said: This is the right bill. All of these things we could be doing in partnership, things like Ex- Im Bank that started in partnership. It seems we go out of our way to focus on our divisions instead of our successes. So when we went to the Rules Committee in the midst of all of these great veterans bills passing the floor of the House, we advocated to make improvements to the Ex-Im Bank bill. Again, this was a bill that started out as a bipartisan bill, a collaborative bill, one that had been sorted out between Republicans and Democrats so that we could move forward, and it turned into a partisan bill. We went up to the Rules Committee to try to get some Republican amendments made in order to try to improve the bill in some way. I know it is popular, and the lore back home is if you are in a different party, you don't have anything productive to add to the debate. I hear that at some county meetings, and I am sure my friends on the other side of the aisle do, too. It is just nonsense. Having good ideas does not have a Republican or Democratic requirement to it. Folks on both sides of the aisle have something to offer. But when Republicans brought their ideas to the Rules Committee, Mr. Speaker, with the exception of two Republican amendments, every other idea was rejected. Every other idea was rejected. Now, that is the way it went in committee, too, Mr. Speaker. If you weren't following the committee hearings, the amendments in committee the Republicans offered were rejected on a party-line vote. They had their chance in the Rules Committee to improve upon it. Those amendments: rejected one by one. In fact, Mr. Speaker, and it gives me no pleasure to say this, because my chairman on the Rules Committee works very hard, the last two rules I have been down here to talk about, Republicans got the same number or even a few more amendments than Democrats got. It was the first time it had happened that I had been down here carrying such a rule, and it did bring some partnership back to the institution. But for this bill, the Ex-Im Bank, how do we finance trade in America, not a partisan issue, we have got individual Democratic Members who have been offered more amendments personally than the entire Republican Party has collectively. Let me say that again, Mr. Speaker, because this institution is divided roughly down the middle here. I have got individual Members of the Democratic Party who have been offered personally more opportunities to change and improve this bill than the entire Republican side of the aisle combined. Combined. It is as if we go out of our way to find division in what ought to be partnership issues. Eighty-one percent of the amendments that are offered are Democratic amendments; 17 Democratic amendments made in order, two Republican amendments, two bipartisan amendments. The funny thing about this institution, Mr. Speaker, and you see it better from your chair than any of us do from our chairs, is that if you are in the majority, you get to win. Two things are important to winning. Being in the majority means you have the votes. Now you have to bring a good idea to pair with those votes. You can carry the day. We have gotten into that habit, Mr. Speaker, of having all Republicans or all of Democrats carry the bills one direction or the other. Where are those opportunities, like we did on veteran bill after veteran bill after veteran bill on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, to come together and do things collaboratively? I will give you another example. I don't understand what the self- loathing is from time to time here, Mr. Speaker, that prevents us from celebrating what is the most democratic institution in the world today. This rule that we are talking about today hides deep within it an extension of the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress. The Select Committee on Modernization is a bipartisan committee, it is the only one we have right now, Mr. Speaker, equal number of Republicans and Democrats. Why? Because they are not working on partisan issues. They are trying to improve the institution. They are trying to improve the process. They are trying to make this institution work better for the American people. It is led by two great Members of this institution: Derek Kilmer out of Washington State, Tom Graves out of the great State of Georgia. Mr. Kilmer is a Democrat, Mr. Graves is a Republican. They have been leading this committee in partnership together, tackling thorny issue after thorny issue in a collaborative way. The House only authorized the committee for a year. This rule gives them a second year. It is a great idea, it is a great thing to do. Because this is a rule and because it contains all of these provisions that completely shut out Republican contributions on the Financial Services legislation that is before us today, it is going to pass on a party-line vote. All the Democrats are going to vote ``yes,'' many having not read it, as is the function of rules, all Republicans are going to vote ``no.'' We have a chance here to have taken that language out, to have done that together, to have talked about the successes we have had collaboratively on the Modernization Committee. We are missing that chance today. I am not enough of a failed student in mathematics, Mr. Speaker, to believe that I am going to prevail on the vote on the rule today. I have done the math again in my head. They still have more votes than we have. I am prepared to lose. What I am not prepared to do is give up on doing better. I challenge my friends on both sides of the aisle to find a partisan advantage in extending the Modernization Committee hidden inside the rule instead of having that debate on the floor of the House. You won't find it there. I challenge the body to find a partisan advantage to spending 10 minutes on Tuesday talking about serving veterans in a bipartisan way and spending 2 hours on Thursday and Friday talking about financial services in a way that could have been bipartisan, but instead has been converted to a strictly partisan issue, and to add insult to injury, has denied all but two Republican amendments and bipartisan voices to the debate. I know that habits are difficult things to break. Some of the bad habits that we are in in this institution started under Republican leadership, some of the bad habits that we are in in this institution started under Democratic leadership. If we want to have a day of debate on who is to blame, I have a pretty good idea how those lines would fall out. I am not interested in that day of debate. I am interested in a day of debate not talking about who is to blame, but talking about how we are working together to fix it. Because I don't know if your constituency is anything like mine, but my constituency is starting to think that we have given up working together to fix it. When my constituency turns on Fox News or MSNBC, that is not what the talking head of the day is talking about. The thing that keeps me up at night, Mr. Speaker, isn't all the things we are voting against, it is all the things we miss an opportunity to vote for, those things that, because we are here in community together today, we have an opportunity to fix. I have got one for you, if you are interested and if you haven't had a chance to take a look at it. It is the Adoptee Citizenship Act, Mr. Speaker. It is just crazy to me. The best part of this job, as my friend from California knows, is that really smart people spend time with us to make us smarter. The Adoptee Citizenship Act, it is H.R. 2731, is a bill that my Democratic colleague, Adam Smith, and I have offered together. When American families adopted children from overseas in the 1970s and 1980s, those children didn't automatically get citizenship. You would think an American family adopts a child, that child has American parents, they are going to become an American citizen. Not so, Mr. Speaker. It is an incredibly long process. Now, in the 1970s and 1980s, we didn't care that much about that, but fast forward to September 11, 2001, we started talking a lot about citizenship status, only to find out that thousands upon thousands of Americans didn't have their citizenship because their parents didn't know they had to file all of this additional paperwork. Now, who among us is opposed to letting American families that have been American families for 40 years, citizens who were adopted into American families, get that citizenship document and live the normal life that we all thought they were supposed to be living here? H.R. 2731. The list of things that we do collaboratively, cooperatively that make differences for the American people is as long as any statement anyone is going to read on the floor of the House today, and it is not going to be what we celebrate this week. The last vote today is at 2 o'clock. We are going to do amendment debate for the rest of the day. If we don't start spending more time on this floor celebrating those things that we are doing together, Mr. Speaker, we are going to lose the confidence of our constituency back home. I dare say, for many families, they have lost confidence in us already. I don't shy away from the serious fights we are going to have down here at all. This is supposed to be a place where serious people come together and disagree about some ideas and sort it all out. What I take issue with is when we stop trying to sort it all out and when we send the message back home that instead of succeeding on behalf of our bosses, we are actually just arguing amongst ourselves. It is not true. It is not true. We are missing another opportunity today, as our ranking member said in the Rules Committee debate last night, to do better. I know that we have men and women on this floor, in this institution who want to do better. Can we fix it this afternoon? Maybe not. Will we fix it if we stop focusing on it? Definitely not. My commitment to my colleagues, for better or for worse, is that I will spend my next 14 months focusing on it as long as my friend from California continues to yield me 30 minutes in the Rules Committee debate, for which I am grateful. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds to say that I agree with every good thing my friend from Texas said that the Ex-Im Bank is able to do, which is why, when this bill began, it was a bipartisan bill by the chairwoman of the committee and the ranking Republican on the committee. It devolved from that so that, as it passed out of committee, it is not a bipartisan bill. The only thing bipartisan about this bill is the opposition to it. Republicans and Democrats opposed it in committee. Only Democrats support it because of the partisan turn that it took. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Lucas), the gentleman from the Financial Services Committee who tried to make the bill better. He offered two amendments in the Rules Committee that would have brought bipartisan support to this bill.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 1 minute to the gentleman because we are hearing from a member of the committee who supports the Bank but who opposes this rule.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I do enjoy working with my friend from California. When I am critical of our work product, I am critical of all 13 of us on the Rules Committee. We are tasked with getting the job done, and when we don't get it done, it falls on all of us. I was critical earlier today of stuffing so many things into this rule because I like to do things one at a time. But if we are going to stuff all the things into this rule, Mr. Speaker, I would like to tell my colleagues that if we defeat the previous question, I will add one more into this rule. It will be a collaborative effort, not a Republican effort, a collaborative effort. If we defeat the previous question, Mr. Speaker, I will add an amendment that will bring to the floor H.R. 2207. That is the Protect Medical Innovation Act of 2019, which most of my colleagues know is the bill to prevent the medical device tax, eliminate that tax. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of my amendment and any extraneous materials in the Record immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I told you this was a bipartisan piece of legislation. It has 253 bipartisan cosponsors. It is authored by a Democrat from Wisconsin, a great Member, Mr. Kind, and it makes a real difference to so many Americans. I can't explain it as well as my friend from Indiana can. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Indiana (Mrs. Walorski), a Member who has worked tirelessly to correct this legislative flaw on behalf of the American people.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Speaker, I can't say it any better than my friend from Oklahoma said it. He supports the goal of the underlying bill. He is going to oppose this rule because his ideas were not even heard, not that his ideas weren't put into the language, but that he was not even allowed a chance to debate his ideas. I will say it again: Only two Republican ideas were made in order for consideration in this rule, and more amendments were given to individual members of the Democratic Party than the entire Republican Party combined. That is not the way we ought to be doing things. We ought to have a full airing of issues and concerns. You heard it from the gentleman from Oklahoma, vote ``no'' on the rule. But also vote ``no'' on the previous question. Mr. Speaker, you heard from my friend from Indiana. We have an opportunity in a bipartisan way to solve a nationwide problem by eliminating the medical device tax. Everybody from the far left to the far right knows it; from the east, to the west, to the north, to the south. We can do this together. If we have to do this closed rule that eliminates the diversity of ideas in this institution, then let's at least do it with the medical device tax language included. Vote ``no'' on the previous question. Add that language. If we can't defeat the previous question, I am going to have to ask my colleagues to defeat the rule and see if we can't come back with a process that opens up this bill to more voices; not just from across the parties, but from across the country. We can do better than this. My colleagues know it, as do I. 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. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate you making some time in the day today. It is not very often that one of us gets named the very best in our field. Such a recognition is very powerful. And today, Mr. Speaker, you can't see it from where you are standing, but I have a list of the three finalists in the National Association of Secondary School Principals Principal of the Year program. Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate each and every one of them. They are: Joey Jones from Robert Frost Middle School right around the corner in Rockville, Maryland; Lindsa McIntyre from Jeremiah E. Burke High School in Dorchester, Massachusetts; and Kerensa Wing from Collins Hill High School in Suwanee, Georgia. Mr. Speaker, we cannot succeed in our communities without dedicated public servants like these, and it will come as no surprise to you, since I am down here on the floor today congratulating these three finalists, that the national association named as the Principal of the Year from my very own district, from the Gwinnett County school system, Kerensa Wing at Collins Hill High School. Mr. Speaker, to meet Kerensa Wing, the first thing you will notice is that charisma that she has that connects her with her students and with her parents. That partnership that she develops with her administrators and with her teachers, that is the partnership that we strive for here and the one that is recognizing Kerensa Wing out of 90,000 principals across the country. Mr. Speaker, Ms. Wing has spent her entire career in service to my community back home. I only represent two counties. She lives in one, makes that her family's home. She works in the other, having spent 30 years in the Gwinnett County school system. These pictures reflect her work in her last 5 years as principal at Collins Hill High School. She has also served at Shiloh High School as a teacher. She helped to open our brand-new Lanier High School, and then returned to Collins Hill. Mr. Speaker, the passion that is at the center of her decisionmaking is that love of students, a teacher at heart. This work, as you know, is not a work done for a salary. It is not a work done for even national recognition. It is a work done out of a sense of opportunity to be transformative in the lives of the young people around us. Whether you sit on the far left or the far right, Mr. Speaker, whatever your politics of the day are, if there is one thing that is worth celebrating, it is those men and women back home who make differences for the young people in our lives. Principal Kerensa Wing is such a person, and it is with no small amount of pride that I congratulate her today. She was actually here in town, Mr. Speaker, with her family, and if only the House had been in session, I would have been here to congratulate her. We were back home working that week, so I missed that opportunity to be with her here in this Chamber. But I am not going to miss the opportunity today in this Chamber to tell her how much we appreciate her, how much her students appreciate her, and how much better both Forsyth County and Gwinnett County are that she, with her talents, could work anywhere and live anywhere in the great United States of America, Mr. Speaker, and she has chosen our community to serve. Mr. Speaker, I thank Principal Wing and congratulate her.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I thank my friend from Colorado (Mr. Perlmutter) for yielding me the time. I don't want to take up too much time, because I know we have the chairwoman here. And as the gentleman from Colorado pointed out, she is one of the most studied Members in this Chamber on this topic. We did meet in the Rules Committee last night. And for the second week in a row, Madam Speaker, we have brought rules out of the Rules Committee that gave the minority a voice that we have not seen throughout this Congress. Candidly, the record of open rules in the Chamber has been abysmal on both sides of the aisle. I don't believe while Paul Ryan was Speaker, Republicans on the Rules Committee made a single open rule in order, and that has certainly been the way that things have continued in the Pelosi majority. But I want to mention to my colleagues, as learned as the chairwoman is, I believe that Members in this Chamber have something to offer on these topics. And I just want to remind the Chamber that in 1970, when we passed the Bank Secrecy Act to begin with--that is the bill that this bill before us today amends, Madam Speaker, a very small portion of the Bank Secrecy Act that this bill amends--we brought the Bank Secrecy Act to the floor under an open rule, 2 hours of general debate, and then amended it under the 5-minute rule, ended up passing that bill unanimously out of this Chamber. As my friend from Colorado knows, Madam Speaker, we had witnesses in the Rules Committee last night who had ideas that they wanted to have considered on the floor of the House by all of their colleagues, ideas that I would tell you deserve consideration. The gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Davidson), my friend, brought an amendment that said, Listen--as you heard the gentleman from Colorado discuss earlier--this is the creation of a new government database for the purpose of law enforcement querying it for its enforcement activities. What my friend from Ohio said is, If this is going to be a law enforcement database, if we are creating new government databases, if we are creating them for the sole purpose of law enforcement to query them for the sole purpose of engaging in criminal prosecutions, shouldn't we ask for a warrant to query that database, just like we would ask law enforcement for a warrant in any other investigation? These are, after all, American citizens. Perhaps, because I don't serve on the Financial Services Committee, Madam Speaker, I don't fully understand the ramifications of that, but I am not afraid of this body considering it in its collective wisdom. And I am disappointed that even as broad as the rule was, even the amendments that were made in order, Mr. Davidson is not going to have a chance to talk about this question of fundamental civil liberties, which, again, I know is important, from the most liberal Democrat in this Chamber to the most conservative Republican. There was a time in this Chamber where we thought enough of ourselves as a body and had enough respect for one another as individuals that we were not afraid of the open rule process. There is enough blame to go around on both sides of that. I am not proud of the Republican record of the last several years, but I do believe, and I would say to my friend from Colorado, because he has outsized influence on the committee, this would be the kind of bill where we could begin that open-rule process, a very narrowly tailored bill designed to do very specific things. I will go one more: I offered an amendment last night, Madam Speaker, to allow consideration of an amendment from another Member of this body who thought that we should have a cost-benefit analysis done of this bill. I mean, undeniably, there is a paperwork burden associated with it. That is uncontested. So the idea was, because we are doing this on behalf of the American people, do the costs outweigh the benefits or do the benefits outweigh the cost. Candidly, my constituency back home would imagine that we have that conversation about every piece of legislation that we pass every day. Of course, the Members of this Chamber know that we don't. That amendment was offered for consideration. It was defeated on a party-line vote, not the nature of the amendment itself, Madam Speaker, but even the ability to discuss it. I don't think any of my colleagues would say that the legislative calendar of the last week has been so aggressive that they have no bandwidth to consider either civil liberties on the one hand or cost-benefit analysis on the other. I think we do have that bandwidth. And I recognize that in this culture of outrage that we are in, Madam Speaker, this culture of offense that we have gotten ourselves into, it is oftentimes true that in political discussions, folks will believe that they can never do good enough. However good a rule the gentleman from Colorado crafts, the other side is always going to say, Well, you could have done better. I recognize that. In fact, that was confessed from the witness table last night. The gentleman from Ohio said, Listen, I have been trying to defeat this bill because I disagree with it on its merits. Now, if we are going to pass this bill, I think we should protect civil liberties. And I am afraid my civil liberties concerns are being dismissed because I have developed a reputation for wanting to kill the bill altogether. We recognize that is a very real circumstance that we have before us. But when we pass the underlying legislation, the Bank Secrecy Act, I will remind my colleagues, again, we came together and did it unanimously, because it is important. The chairwoman of the subcommittee put together a big bipartisan majority to move this legislation out of her committee. She recognizes how important that is. There are so many opportunities for us to divide ourselves in this Chamber, in this day. It is my regret that we have not taken this opportunity where the bill was so narrow, where the topic was so tailored, and where the expertise that is so obvious, to those of us in the Chamber who don't have it as to which Members do have it, that we did not allow a more full-throated debate on this issue. For that reason, Madam Speaker, I will be opposing the rule, but I very much would like to get to consideration of the underlying bill. We offered an amendment last night to do this in an open rule. That amendment was rejected. Our ranking member offered it. It was rejected on a party-line vote. Let us recognize that we are including more voices today than this Congress has historically included. This is, again, for only the second time this year that I remember, there being as many voices included as there are. But that is a step in the right direction. It is not the goal. The goal is to allow every Member, each one of us representing 700,000 American citizens whose voice needs to be heard, to come to the floor and have that debate. Part of the reason you see the floor is empty, as you do today, Madam Speaker, is because folks know the word has already gone out. Folks have already seen the literature. They know their voices have already been shut out. Those Members who have offered improvements, they know they have already been rejected. They know there will not be a chance for their voice to be heard, and, thus, they are not on the floor today to pursue it. So, again, to my friend from Colorado, I would ask him to use his influence. I know we can do it. I know we can be better. And this, again, because of the chairwoman's expertise, because of the bipartisan way it moved through committee, this would have been the way, this would have been the time for us to begin trying to expect more of ourselves. And we have not taken advantage of that this time. I hope that we will not miss that opportunity next time. 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 am willing to stipulate that almost everything my two friends have just said is absolutely true. Law enforcement absolutely supports this provision. Law enforcement absolutely believes pursuing criminals will be easier under this provision. Now, it would also be easier if we allowed folks to kick in everybody's door, but we don't. Protecting civil liberties is about protecting American citizens. I am not even here today arguing that we have to include the amendment for the bill to go to the President's desk. I am here arguing that civil liberties deserve a conversation. Madam Speaker, we did not come in until noon today. We are not going to burn the midnight oil tonight. We did two small bills last week, in its entirety, coming out of the Rules Committee. We have the bandwidth to talk about civil liberties. It does not advantage us to pretend that folks who care about civil liberties are somehow a threat to democracy. People who care about civil liberties are the ones who have always protected democracy. Whenever bad things happen in this country, the pendulum automatically swings in favor of protection of the group against the protection of the civil liberties of the individual. It happened after 9/11. It happened after Pearl Harbor. It happens time and time again in this country. What was asked in the Rules Committee is that we take 5 minutes. That is not a figure of speech, Madam Speaker. It is actually 5 minutes that was requested to make the case on the floor that civil liberties were not being appropriately protected in this bill and that we could do better. The answer from the majority was, no, it is not worth 5 minutes. I stipulate that what my friends have said about the value of this legislation is absolutely true. So, when I offered the amendment that said let's do a cost-benefit analysis to document the truth of that, I expected the answer to be yes. The answer wasn't just no. The answer was, no, we don't even have the ability to do a cost-benefit analysis of this legislation. Madam Speaker, that is just nonsense. It is nonsense. I was asking for 5 minutes--literally, 300 seconds--to talk about whether or not American citizens were going to get the value out of this bill that was being suggested. The answer was, no, we don't have 300 seconds to spend talking about it. I would argue 300 seconds isn't enough. Three hundred seconds isn't enough to talk about civil liberties. Three hundred seconds isn't enough to talk about taxpayer responsibilities. But that was the ask, and that ask was declined. I can't come to the House floor with many of the rules that I am assigned to carry, Madam Speaker, and make this request because I don't have partners like the two partners that I have today. You may not have noticed it, Madam Speaker, and you are kind if you tell me that you didn't, but I am the least educated person on this House floor when it comes to this bill. I am the only one who doesn't sit on the committee. I am, today, down here discussing this with two Members who have dedicated their careers to the improvement of the financial services system in America, and I respect the time and effort they have committed to it. I respect their counsel. I don't believe these two individuals are threatened by 300 more seconds of debate on any issue. They know what they believe. They know why they believe it. They know why they believe what they believe is good for America, as do Members with opposing opinions. I can't ask, if we are down here talking about a tax bill, to have an open rule on a Ways and Means bill because that gets more complicated. I can't ask, if we are down here on a Judiciary bill, to have an open rule on a Judiciary bill because that gets more complicated. What I have today, Madam Speaker, are two Members who have worked in a collaborative, bipartisan way to produce the very best bill they could out of their committee. I am asking for an opportunity for the other several hundred Members of this institution to have a voice in the debate. Just so that we are clear on what my ask is, Madam Speaker, to make all the amendments in order--all the amendments--to allow for the free and open debate that I am asking for, it would have taken 1,200 more seconds, 20 minutes. If the majority could have found, in its wisdom, 20 more minutes, every Member of this body could have been heard on an issue that you have heard the subject matter experts testify to how important it is. We have gotten out of the habit of listening to one another. We have gotten out of the habit of trusting one another. I don't argue that either one of those things has happened without cause and effect. There is a reason we are in the box that we are in. We have to find narrowly tailored pieces of legislation to begin to reverse that cycle. This is one of those narrowly tailored provisions. It modifies one part--one part--of what the Bank Secrecy Act tried to achieve. The Bank Secrecy Act was brought to the floor under a completely open rule with all voices to be heard. Now, we can't find 20 minutes to have a full-throated debate on this. If we defeat the previous question, I am going to amend the rule. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to include the text of my amendment in the Record immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

Mr. WOODALL. It says: Upon adoption of this resolution, the Committees on the Judiciary, Ways and Means, Financial Services, Oversight and Reform, Foreign Affairs, and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence shall suspend pursuing matters referred to by the Speaker in her announcement of September 24, 2019, until such a time as a bill implementing the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement becomes law. That is a lot of text, Madam Speaker, and I am going to yield to one of my colleagues on the Rules Committee and a learned member of the Judiciary Committee to talk about it. But what it says, in effect, is that we have real legislative priorities that are not being met. We didn't find the 20 minutes for a full-throated debate here. We are not finding the bandwidth to work on a trade deal, the single best trade deal done in my lifetime, a trade deal supported by the leadership in this House, the leadership in the Senate, and by the White House, a trade deal that is going to make real differences to men and women across this country, in your district and in mine. It says let's stop the nonsense, let's stop the partisanship, and let's focus on some things that every single citizen in this country cares about. Let's prioritize that, and perhaps, in doing so, we will build some trust. Madam Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentlewoman from Arizona (Mrs. Lesko), my friend from the Rules Committee, to discuss this amendment in detail.

Mr. WOODALL. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Madam Speaker, you and I don't get to be down here on the rule together very often, and so I feel like I have got a fresh ear in you. My friend from Colorado, he and I discuss these matters all the time, so I understand his tone. It is as if I am saying this bill has no merit because, very often, we are down here and I am saying exactly that. This is a very different day that we are down here, and I want to say it again if I haven't said it loud enough. The chairwoman has worked incredibly hard to build a partnership on this issue. This bill came out of committee with broad bipartisan support. Madam Speaker, I don't believe I have handled a rule this year that has had the partisan divide erased and had folks collaborate to make a bill better. All I am asking for is, because we have such a wonderful work product, that we go ahead and let every voice be heard. In the same way that the gentleman from Colorado is used to me saying a bill has no merit whatsoever, he is used to defending silencing voices. It rolled off his tongue very easily: Oh, Mr. Davidson, he gets to offer another amendment. We don't need his other ideas. Well, for Pete's sake, he is a gentleman who serves on the Financial Services Committee. He has expertise that you and I do not have. He has a voice that needs to be heard on this floor. It was going to take 300 seconds for him to share it, and the answer was: No, no time for you. We are better than that. We don't always have the bills to demonstrate it; and what I am saying today is that we have a good, solid work product that addresses a concern that we all agree on. Why can't we make the time to make it better? They took that time in the Financial Services Committee, both in the two amendments they considered during the markup and in all the off- the-record discussions that have gone on behind closed doors, which are what really make bills better. I am just asking for the opportunity to get out of the habit of making excuses for why we don't want to hear from our friends and colleagues in this Chamber and getting back into the habit of recognizing not just the merit of their voice, but the responsibility we have to hear their voice. My friend from Colorado says, if you don't like this bill, just vote ``no.'' Well, there is some good stuff in this bill. My response would be: If you don't like the amendments I am going to offer, just vote ``no.'' But he used the power of the Rules Committee to silence those voices. We won't even have votes on those amendments. We have developed bad habits here as legislators. We don't always have the right leaders to lead us out of the corner in which we have strapped ourselves. We have the right leaders today on that side of the aisle, Madam Speaker, and that is why I am asking my colleagues--they wouldn't do it ordinarily, but I am asking my colleagues to defeat the previous question so that we can amend the rule. And, even better, defeat the rule so we can go back up, have every voice heard, come back to this Chamber, take a few extra minutes, perfect this bill, and then do exactly what the chairwoman wants done and exactly what my friend from Colorado wants done, and that is to send this bill out of this Chamber not with a perfunctory party-line bipartisan vote, but with a full-throated, hearty bipartisan endorsement that says we are speaking with one voice on an issue that is important from corner to corner of this institution. Madam Speaker, I had hoped that other learned voices would join me today. I find myself alone, and I would say to my friend from Colorado, I am prepared to close if he is.

Mr. WOODALL. Given that I did not hear either an ``amen'' or ``attaboy,'' I am thinking of saying it one more time in hopes that the response is different.

Mr. WOODALL. Madam Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. I want to say this as sincerely as I can. I know my colleagues believe me to be sincere. We bring a lot of bills to this floor where no effort was made whatsoever to include disparate voices, where the party line, and the party line alone, was the primary consideration. Madam Speaker, that has been a flawed habit when both Republican leaders have sat in that chair and when Democratic leaders have sat in that chair. That is not the bill we have before us today. The bill we have before us today, I have got a Republican from Georgia serving on the Financial Services Committee; I have got a Democrat from Georgia serving on the Financial Services Committee; and, truth be told, as often as not, they vote the same way on the Financial Services Committee. I can always tell when good legislation is coming out, because they are not voting with a Republican or Democratic agenda in mind; they are voting with the service of their constituents in Georgia in the forefront of their mind, and they vote side by side and move arm in arm. We don't always get that opportunity. And so, when we have it today, what a shame it is to waste it and not try to get back in the habit of doing a better job of hearing voices, defeating those that need to be defeated, supporting those that need to be supported, and letting the Chamber work its will. The National Federation of Independent Business, NFIB, as we all know it, represents mom-and-pop shops across this country. They don't represent mom-and-pop businesses because they think that big businesses are bad. They represent mom-and-pop businesses because they think mom- and-pop businesses are good. This bill creates a new burden on those small businesses. That is undisputed. The question is: Is the burden worth it or not? We won't get to hear amendments on civil liberties to decide if it is worth it or not; we won't get to hear amendments on cost-benefit analysis to decide if it is worth it or not. And that is a shame. That is a shame. But when we have respected Members in this institution, respected policy shops outside of this institution saying, ``Hey, I just want to have my concerns heard by the full House,'' I think it is incumbent upon us to try to find some time to get that done. I am not encouraging folks to defeat the underlying bill. I am encouraging folks to work with me to perfect the underlying bill so that we can move it forward collaboratively. Defeat the previous question. Defeat the rule. Take this opportunity to do what all good institutions do. Madam Speaker, we need good leaders, and we need good followers. We have got the good leaders on the other side of the aisle today to get back in the habit of making every voice heard. What we need are some good followers to defeat this rule and give them a chance to do exactly that. Madam Speaker, I thank my friend from Colorado for yielding. I thank the chairwoman for her leadership on the issue. I yield back the balance of my time.

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