Rob Woodall

Mr. WOODALL

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

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I thank the gentleman from California (Mr. DeSaulnier), my friend, for yielding me the time today. Ordinarily, Mr. Speaker, what folks decide they are going to highlight on the House floor are all of our disagreements. In fact, the 1 minutes today highlighted that. My friend from California and I were talking before debate began--and I certainly include you in this partnership, Mr. Speaker. You lock a couple of us in the room together, we can solve about 90 percent of what ails this country. But the media wins--often distracts--from what is going on, and that is my frustration today, Mr. Speaker. I don't really have any objection with the rule as it sits before us. We heard testimony last night from the ranking member of the Committee on Financial Services. To paraphrase his words, he said these bills were so flawed that he didn't even offer any amendments in committee to try to make them better because there was no hope for these bills, no hope in two senses, Mr. Speaker: no hope for these bills in that they were so poorly drafted and poorly directed that they would not benefit the American people in the ways that they were intended; and no hope for these bills in that the Senate will never take them up and the President will never put his signature on them because they are so flawed. I can't take responsibility for what the Committee on Financial Services did, Mr. Speaker, because I don't sit on that committee. I can take responsibility for what the Rules Committee did last night, Mr. Speaker. I will tell you that it is the first time I have had the privilege of coming to the House floor and speaking on a rule where Republicans got as many amendments as Democrats did. It is a big day. I feel a partnership breaking out. I say to the gentleman from California (Mr. DeSaulnier), if we can keep this going, we might really be able to make a difference. It has been a frustration of ours, as you well know, Mr. Speaker, that, when you are in a majority-driven institution like this one, being in the majority has privileges; and a privilege is that you get to draft the legislation and then you get to draft the rule to bring the legislation to the floor, and you can jam anything through this institution if you want to. Generally, our best work isn't the work we jam through the institution. Generally, our best work is the work that we spend, not hours, not days, but weeks and months crafting together in partnership. Most of that work doesn't happen here on the House floor. That work happens in committees. It actually happens, oftentimes, behind closed doors, where earnest members can talk about what their constituents need. We can pass this rule this afternoon, and I will offer, later on, an amendment, if we defeat the previous question. I think it will make the rule better. But I do believe we have a missed opportunity, Mr. Speaker. There is a lot of work that needs to be done. I have one of my bosses in town today, Mr. Speaker. Colonel Dennis Brown is a county commissioner in Forsyth County. I was telling him the story that one of my former bosses said: If you ever wanted a real job, he was going to run for county commissioner, because when you are county commissioner, everything you do impacts somebody's life. And nobody shows up at the county commission and says, ``I have a problem, and if you are a Republican, I would like for you to fix it, but if you are a Democrat, it doesn't matter to me,'' or vice versa. Folks show up and say, ``I have a problem. I need you all to work together to fix it.'' We have real problems here, Mr. Speaker. We all know, as we heard during the 1-minute time this morning, that drug pricing is a challenge in this country, and there are lot of different solutions. There are some more liberal solutions; there are some more conservative solutions; and there are some middle-of-the-road solutions that bring people together. I wish we had those on the floor this week. We all know that we have immigration challenges in this country. Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased that about 27 percent of my bosses are first-generation Americans back home, folks who so believed in America that they traded away their entire family's life back in their home country to come and try to make a new life here in America. I love that we have those stories to tell. But we all know the immigration system is broken. Men and women who are trying desperately to get here the right way can't; men and women who are coming here the wrong way can. We all know that there are opportunities to do better there. We should have those provisions on the floor. We all know that Social Security is underfunded, and in just a few short years men and women who are dependent on that program are going to run into that shortfall. We can't do those hard things in unified government, Mr. Speaker. When Republicans win back the House next year and win the Presidency back and continue control of the Senate, that is going to be the wrong time to do fundamental reforms to Medicare and Social Security and Medicaid. It is going to be the wrong time to do the big things that need to be done to get our fiscal house in order. The right time is in divided government, where we have an opportunity to put everybody's fingerprints on a solution, not that yanks the pendulum left or right, but that moves the country deliberately in a direction that we can all agree on. But, sadly, that is not why we are here today, Mr. Speaker. I listened to the Reading Clerk read the bill, as is always done, read the rule, and I think back to some of those days where the Reading Clerk is reading the appropriations bills or actually going through meaningful legislation line by line, opening it up so that every Member, no matter whom he or she represents, has an opportunity to come and offer amendments and make the bill better. The ranking member's testimony is the bills are so flawed, the committee didn't even bother considering amendments to make them better. I am pleased that the Rules Committee is going to offer an opportunity to make them a little bit better with the amendments that are made in order today, Mr. Speaker. But it is my great hope that we will be able to move past these messaging bills. Consumer protection isn't just a political message. Consumer protection is a shared goal, from the coast of California to the coast of Georgia. It is something that unites us in this institution, not divides us. I regret that the apparent legislative agenda for the week is going to be to consider bills that get approved or defeated on straight party-line votes. We can do better. In this current political environment, the American people may not expect better, but I know that my bosses do, and I will continue to press for that. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. If the gentleman from California is going to start quoting Lincoln, I am going to have to bring out some Franklin. I remember in the summer of 1787, as folks were taking a break, it had been hard and they were worried they weren't going to be able to reach a conclusion on language for our Constitution, Franklin admonished the members there: Don't go home and find folks who agree with you, who are going to tell you how right you are; go and find folks who disagree with you and listen closely to what it is they are saying and what their concerns are that we may come back together and bridge a divide. Mr. Speaker, if we defeat the previous question today, I am going to offer an amendment to the rule, and that amendment is going to try to do exactly what I believe Members in this institution want, and that is to get back to some of the real problem-solving that goes on. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert in the Record the text of my amendment and any other extraneous material immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, the amendment is going to prioritize the work that we all know America wants us to do. I went through some of those items earlier: work for the chronically ill, for our seniors; folks struggling with prescription medications; folks who were concerned about congestion; folks--go right on down the list of all the priorities that we all hear from our constituents on a regular basis. If we defeat the previous question, it will amend the rule to allow an opportunity to move forward on these priority issues. I don't mean priority from a Republican perspective; I don't mean priority from a Democrat perspective. I mean priority from an American perspective. I serve on the House Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress here, Mr. Speaker. In fact, we just had a hearing upstairs in the Rules Committee, and it is a different dynamic. Mr. DeSaulnier and I serve on a committee of 13 people. There are no time limits on discussion in our committee. That committee has a majoritarian tilt--nine members in the majority, four in the minority-- so you know where the vote is going to go. But because it is a small committee, because it allows for open debate, it creates a relationship among the members that isn't possible, say, for the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, on which I sit, that has more than 70 members on it. I have a chance to listen every day to the opinions and the concerns of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, as well as on my side of the aisle. What we concluded, as we were working on scheduling issues in the Modernization Committee--because we have so many young families here, folks who are trying to balance their obligations as a mother or a father with their obligations as a Member of Congress, and we all know how taxing that can be. And one of our witnesses, who has vast experience trying to work on House schedules, cautioned us against believing that you could wave a scheduling wand and suddenly create a more productive institution, that productivity comes from those relationships, productivity comes from that sincere effort to do better. We are here on financial services today. I cannot tell you that, in my time on Capitol Hill, the Committee on Financial Services is the committee I would pick out as the single most collegial committee on Capitol Hill. I think back to some of the discussions that have happened over the years there. It is a committee that takes on difficult issues and often divides along partisan lines. We have two Members from Georgia on the Financial Services Committee, Mr. Speaker: a gentleman from the metro Atlanta area (Mr. Scott) and a gentleman from farther west in Georgia (Mr. Loudermilk). One is a Republican. One is a Democrat. And, odds are, when we get into the real issues that are really going to make a difference for families across the district, they vote the same way. Whenever I go and try to get into the meat of a financial services issue, I can go to what my friends, Mr. Scott and Mr. Loudermilk, are saying. Again, opposite sides of the political spectrum, but a shared goal of trying to serve the men and women of Georgia as best they can. I confess, I don't have high hopes we are going to defeat the previous question and amend the rule and get back to focusing on what I would think are those common goals that we share. But I have been surprised before. And I have been surprised in ways that disappoint me, and I have been surprised in ways that make me proud. I will just say to my colleagues: If you are thinking about busting out of the box a little bit, if you are thinking about should we do things the same way we have always done them or should we try something new, if you are thinking about it is working great the way it has been going or thinking maybe we can improve on it a little bit, just consider the Woodall amendment to the rule today. Let's defeat the previous question; let's amend the rule; and then let's see if, perhaps, we can break out a new day of productivity, not based on Republicans and Democrats, but based on Americans who are facing real problems back home and the real solutions that we are very honored to be able to work to provide. Mr. Speaker, with that, I say to my friend from California, I don't have any speakers here. I want to encourage my friends to defeat that previous question. In the absence of defeating the previous question, Mr. Speaker, I would ask folks to defeat the rule, give us a chance to go back up to the Rules Committee room with these 13 members and try to craft something even better than what we have here today. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. WOODALL

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

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from New York for yielding me the customary 30 minutes. Mr. Speaker, I am usually pretty excited to be down here on the House floor talking about the rule. It is always an opportunity to set the stage for what the House is getting ready to do, and this is a body that is filled with men and women who want to get something done. The honor that Mr. Morelle and I have to come down and always begin that conversation is a special one. Today, unfortunately, we are not coming down here to get new business done. We are coming down here on the exact same language that we have already considered this year, the exact same language that the House has already passed this year, the exact same language that the President has already vetoed this year, and absolutely no expectation that anything different is going to happen this time. Mr. Speaker, when we talk about emergencies, the irony is not lost on me that I do consider it to be an emergency when thousands upon thousands of unaccompanied children are crossing the southern border in need of housing, in need of healthcare, and in need of food, clothing, and care. I do consider it an emergency when we have a southern border that is porous, that is the transit point for drugs, for human trafficking, and for weapons trafficking. I do consider that an emergency. My friends on the other side of the aisle take issue with the President and his declaration of that emergency. Again, the irony is that we had an emergency meeting in the Rules Committee last night so that we could come down here and declare this a nonemergency. It is a bipartisan, bicameral goal to provide safety and security on every border of the United States of America. I would encourage my colleagues to take a look at what happened in this body yesterday. Again, I thank my friend from New York for his role in it on the Rules Committee. We brought a resolution to the floor with the rule that was going to demand the production of documents from the White House. When we considered that resolution in the Rules Committee, it was full of partisan accusation after partisan accusation after partisan accusation before it got down to a request for a document. That was going to come to the floor, and it was going to pass, but it was going to pass in a strictly partisan vote. I would argue that diminishes the institution and diminishes the cause that the majority was seeking. To the majority's credit, during consideration of the rule, they rescinded all of those whereases, took all the partisan material out of that resolution, brought the very same document request to the floor, and it passed unanimously. There is so much that we have in common, Mr. Speaker, that gets overshadowed by the partisan nonsense that occurs here day in and day out. I want to ask my friends--and I regret that I didn't do it last night in the Rules Committee; I should have--to take a look at H.R. 1410. H.R. 1410 is a bipartisan bill that does what I know we both want to do as Article I Members, and that has changed the language of the National Emergencies Act so that Congress does reclaim the power from the administration. Today, as you know, Mr. Speaker, the President gets to decide what is an emergency. We delegated that authority to him. Right or wrong, the Congress--not this Congress, but a previous Congress--delegated that opportunity. Mr. Reed from New York, again, in a bipartisan way, introduced language in February of this year, as this was unfolding the first time, to say let's fix this language once and for all. Let's not have ourselves in a partisan debate on the House floor about whether we like what one President or another did. Let's reclaim Article I's power and decide that no President is going to be able to disburse funds as he or she seats fit, that Congress is going to reclaim that responsibility. To the best of my knowledge, Mr. Speaker, H.R. 1410 has not moved through committee. It certainly has not been considered by the Rules Committee, and it certainly is not headed to this floor. We have a choice, Mr. Speaker. We can continue to find things to argue about, or we can unite around those things that we all know to be right. I don't disagree with my friends on the other side of the aisle who want to reclaim Article I's authority. I share that goal, support that goal, and would gladly apply my vote to that goal. What I do disagree with is a Congress that has failed to create a functioning budget process--that is functioning by continuing resolution now through November--and, instead of responding to what I think are very legitimate requests from this White House for additional resources on the southern border, has chosen again to bring a bill that may well pass this House but will not be signed by the President and will not impact the future goings on in this government, as I know we all want to do. 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 am not certain that I disagree with my friend from New York about the language being used as it was intended; what I am certain about is the language is being used as it is written. It is incumbent upon this Congress, if we don't like the way the laws were drafted--that we drafted--that we go back and we change those laws. As the Speaker well knows, yesterday, we dealt with marijuana on the floor of the House. We didn't decide we were going to repeal the schedule I classification of marijuana. We just decided that, for those States that were ignoring Federal law, we were going to let them ignore more Federal law, too, and go ahead and get involved in the banking system as well. It is lost upon me why it is that this body has concluded that, rather than changing things we don't like, we should just ignore those things or complain about those things. It is the United States Congress, and we have an opportunity to do things. We weren't elected to talk about it. We were elected to get it done, and I know my friend from New York shares that same passion. Mr. Speaker, if we defeat the previous question today, we will have an opportunity to get something done together. If we defeat the previous question, I will bring up an amendment to the rule to make in order debate on S. 820, the Debbie Smith Act of 2019. Mr. Speaker, as you know, this authorization language is set to expire at the end of this month, and it provides Federal grants to States to reduce the DNA backlog in criminal investigations. You don't have to turn on two news stations in your district, Mr. Speaker, just turn on one. You will see the impact of what going back and testing that DNA using technologies that are available today that were not available years ago has meant, particularly in rape and sexual assault cases. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of my amendment in the Record, along with extraneous materials, immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, we have subject matter experts and almost everything in this institution, Mr. Speaker, and I would like to yield to one of our passionate advocates and experts on this issue. I yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from Missouri (Mrs. Wagner).

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, again, I enjoy working with the gentleman from New York. When I think about folks who are able to work across the aisle to get things done around here, the gentleman from New York is up at the top of that list. If you have not tuned into the Rules Committee, Mr. Speaker, number one, shame on you. It is a vibrant discussion. It happens every Monday at 5 o'clock, at least once, if not twice, at least for an hour, if not for 5 or 6. It is rare that Mr. Morelle is questioning witnesses up there that I don't learn something new, that I don't gain from his perspective. He is absolutely right when he talks about the resolution that the Rules Committee is trying to send to the floor being a bipartisan resolution. When it passed the United States Senate, there were 11 Republicans who supported it along with all of the Democrats. What Mrs. Wagner is proposing that we replace it with isn't something that was passed by just 11 bipartisan votes; it is something that was passed unanimously, Mr. Speaker. It is true what my friend from New York says; we included this language in the VAWA bill that passed the House earlier. That was a partisan exercise, too. That bill hasn't moved through the United States Senate. In contrast to decades of reauthorizations here, Mr. Speaker, where this DNA testing authorization passes as a standalone bill with broad, bipartisan support, this Congress, this year, for reasons unbeknownst to me, decided to play a political game with it. What Mrs. Wagner is offering us the opportunity to do is to bring a bill that passed unanimously in the United States Senate to the House floor, where it can pass unanimously here, too. Again, my friend from New York is right. What this Congress has done is provide funding for this bill all the way through the month of November--not the entire month of November, but 3 weeks in November. That is absolutely true that Congress has done this important work for at least a month and a half. What Mrs. Wagner is offering us the opportunity to do is do this important work for another 5 years, which I know my friends on the other side want to do. To speak on this issue, I told my friend from New York that I didn't have any speakers on the underlying bill. It is true. I expect that to be another partisan exercise. But on this language, Mr. Speaker, I do have another speaker. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from North Dakota (Mr. Armstrong), one of our new Members, if he is willing.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I know my friend from Maine to be an eloquent speaker. I thought that was classic Morelle there. It sounded exactly like what I would have expected my friend to say. As you would imagine, Mr. Speaker, I don't disagree with Senator Collins, and I don't disagree with Mr. Morelle. That is just not what this resolution does. Whenever anybody starts talking about constitutional law--that is why I thought it was classic Morelle, Mr. Speaker, because he knows how much the law gets me going. He is not a lawyer and makes that point regularly in the Rules Committee, but I am, and when we start talking about the foundation of self-governance in this country I get excited. But this isn't a resolution about a constitutional question, Mr. Speaker. Read this resolution: Pursuant to section 202 of the National Emergencies Act--that is the act that this Congress passed in a previous Congress and a previous President signed--the national emergency declared by the finding of the President on February 15 is hereby terminated. That is exactly one of the procedures that can be used--one of three--to end a Presidential declaration of emergency. What we are doing here today has nothing to do with reclaiming powers of Article I. We are just following the law that folks already wrote. We are just following the law that folks already have said is insufficient. If you believe this law is insufficient, as I do, Mr. Speaker, and as I know the majority does, H.R. 1410 is the bill to bring to the floor to reclaim our power that we delegated away. If you believe it is unconstitutional, the Court is the place to go and reclaim that power. This resolution simply says we disagree. It is the same one we passed earlier this year. It is the same one the President vetoed earlier this year. And we are going to have that same conversation again. I pledge to my friend on the other side of the aisle, when we get ready to reclaim constitutional power, count me in. I told my friend that in the Rules Committee 2 days ago that I wanted to support Article 1 over Article 2. I cast that vote yesterday. I will cast that vote again tomorrow. But, Mr. Speaker, what my amendment will do if we defeat the previous question is in no way a partisan exercise. It is in no way a divisive exercise. It is not even the subject of disagreement passing unanimously out of the United States Senate and historically passing unanimously out of this House. As my good friend from North Dakota described, it has been passed by Republican Congresses and signed by Democratic Presidents; it has been passed by Democratic Congresses and signed by Republican Presidents. We do not disagree on the need to provide these dollars to those communities to reduce that DNA backlog. I don't understand why since May of this year when the Senate passed it unanimously this House has failed to take it up at all. Instead of spending our time taking up a bill that was unanimously passed by the Senate and never considered here in the House, we are using our time to take up a bill that has already been passed by the House once and vetoed by the President once, so that we can pass it by the House again and have it vetoed by the President again. I get the headlines. I understand what the press releases look like. I watch the Twitter feeds. I see the Facebook posts. I get the communications narrative of ``look at us and look what we are doing.'' I just grow weary of it, as I know my friends on other side of the aisle do, too. I am ready to be out of the business of ``look at what I am saying.'' I am ready to get out of the business of ``look at what I am passing.'' I am ready to get into the business of ``look at what we are doing together that is getting signed into law and actually making a difference.'' S.J. Res. 54 won't fall into that category. It didn't in the spring, and it doesn't today. But DNA testing does, Mr. Speaker. I urge my colleagues to think about what our choices are today: go down the same road we have been down already and do nothing. Or go down a road that we have traveled in a bipartisan way in every single authorization going back decades, and let's repeat that success together today. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to close, and I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Speaker, it pleases me to see you in the chair. It has been a Northwestern day so far, but the State of Washington has a proud tradition on the Rules Committee. A lot of folks don't understand what the Rules Committee does up there. If you look over here on this side of the aisle, Mr. Speaker, it looks like a representative sample of most of the Congress, but, really, it is a lot of folks with some Rules Committee passion. You can't get to the House floor without going through the Rules Committee. As I think back on folks who have served, I certainly think about Doc Hastings as being in that category that labored on the Rules Committee year after year. Mr. Newhouse labored on the Rules Committee, and I appreciate him being down here to bring us to a close. It is important what we do on the Rules Committee. We bring two kinds of bills to this floor, Mr. Speaker. We bring things that are worked through the process. They are collaborative; they are agreeable. We get everybody on board, and we bring those under the suspension calendar. That is that calendar for things that we have already sorted out. Then there are those bills that we hadn't quite sorted out, those things that might be a little controversial. In fact, when we bring a rule to the floor, almost every rule vote is an entirely partisan vote because of disagreements about the way the underlying process was structured. I have an amendment and a motion in a defeating of the previous question and amending the rule that has passed this House through that suspension process, through that collaborative process, that is undisputed in the way that it is going to help families and communities across this community--again, passed the Senate unanimously in May of this year. In the alternative, we are going to bring a resolution that has already passed this institution, only to be vetoed. It will pass this institution again, only to be vetoed. We often talk about how many legislative days we have left on the calendar. We often talk about what it is that we can get done together. In fact, I just came from a hearing on civility in the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress with folks bemoaning how partisanship gets in the way of productivity. Candidly, I don't see that in most of my day. The men and women on both sides of the aisle that I have the honor of working with day in and day out, Mr. Speaker, prioritize productivity over partisanship across the board. But as the gentleman from New York (Mr. Morelle), my friend, observed in his football analogy, there is a quarterback who calls the plays in this institution. That quarterback calls the plays, and one team runs with the quarterback, and the other team runs against them. This happened for decade upon decade upon decade. Occasionally, Mr. Speaker, we have an opportunity to get outside of that ``who is going to score, who is going to win, who is going to lose.'' We have an opportunity for us all to win, for us all to win. Support the previous question today, and we are going to have another opportunity for one side to claim victory, one side to claim defeat, and nothing to get done for the American people. But defeat the previous question, have my amendment added to the rule, and then pass that rule, and we have an opportunity to do something that I say with no doubt every single Member of this institution believes needs to be done. The choice is with the Members as they vote here in just a few minutes. Defeat this previous question, and then let's pass the rule. In the absence of that, Mr. Speaker, if the previous question is not defeated, then we are going to have to defeat this rule, lest we go through the same partisan exercise that this House has already gone through time and time again this year. Mr. Speaker, I again thank the gentleman from New York (Mr. Morelle), my friend, both for his friendship and for his mentorship. He says he never gets tired of visiting with me on the House floor, Mr. Speaker, but inevitably, he only yields me 30 minutes and keeps the rest of the time for himself. I don't fault him for that. I am actually grateful for that. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Wenstrup) for yielding the time. I listened to what my friend just came to the well to say, and it sounds as if we are not working on a nonbinding House Resolution today. It sounds as if we are working on Articles of Impeachment today. If folks want to get on to Articles of Impeachment, get on with it. I want to associate myself with my friend from Vermont who said this is an Article I, Article II question. And I want to ask my colleagues, again, if you are ready to get going with impeachment articles, bring them, and let's have that debate on the floor. This is a nonbinding resolution that says to our coequal branch of government, we have an oversight responsibility, and we want to see some paperwork. Now, the Senate already passed the same nonbinding resolution yesterday. We are not breaking any new ground here. But, yes, if the Intelligence Committee wants to review documents in a closed session, they ought to have access to those documents. That is not a complicated question. I want to ask my colleagues how we are advantaged as an institution by turning this into an us against them. Again, when you get ready to go down the Articles of Impeachment, it is going to be an us against them. I have seen no crimes and lots of hearings. I have heard lots of promises and absolutely no there, there. But we have an opportunity, I dare say, an obligation, to conduct ourselves in a way that, forbid the thought, should one day our Nation have to go down that path, we have the credibility to lead that discussion. You have an hour of debate here that we can absolutely use, and the Speaker can continue to admonish Members not to engage in personalities with the President. We can absolutely conduct ourselves in that way if that is what we would like. Or we could follow the pathway of the United States; do this in a bipartisan way to say we have got a coequal branch of government that has a right to see these documents and be done with it. I will remind my colleagues who are raising their constitutional ire today that this institution held President Obama's Attorney General in both civil and criminal contempt, and we got no support, save 17 Members, to make that happen.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Madam Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to a fantastic member of the metro Atlanta community, Mr. John Wieland, who founded John Wieland Homes and Neighborhoods in 1970. In his first year as a home builder, working out of his Volkswagen, he built 20 homes! Fast forward nearly 50 years and more than 30,000 satisfied homeowners later, he has established himself as one of the Southeast's leading builders of semi-custom homes. Mr. Wieland is a past president of both the Greater Atlanta Home Builders Association and the Home Builders Association of Georgia, and he is a Senior Life Director of the National Association of Home Builders. In 1991, Mr. Wieland was awarded the Greater Atlanta Home Builders Association's Lewis Cenker Award for lifetime achievement and is a member of the Home Builders Association of Georgia's Hall of Fame. And the accolades don't stop there. Mr. Wieland has been named National Builder of the Year by Professional Builder Magazine, America's Best Builder in 2005 by Builder Magazine, and his company won J.D. Power and Associates award for Highest Ranked Quality Among New Home Builders in Atlanta for three years running. In addition to his success in the home building industry, Mr. Wieland has proven time and again his success as a member of our community through his stewardship of others. He served as the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta and is a past Chair of the Advisory Council for Emory University's Center for Ethics. He also served as the Director of the High Museum of Art for three years beginning in 1998. Mr. Wieland is a graduate of both Amherst College and the Harvard Business School, and he received an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Amherst College. Additionally, he is an elder in the Presbyterian Church U.S.A., where he ministers to our community every day. On behalf of all those touched by John's dedication and service, I want to say thank you, and I wish him the best of luck in the future.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I don't want to put any pressure on you, Mr. Speaker, but it comforts me to see you as the Chair up there today. There are those days where you need particular leaders to be there at a particular time, and I will tell you that I am not telling anybody in this Chamber anything they don't already know: You have made an entire career in this institution reaching out, building unlikely alliances, making it work where other folks said it could not work. And when my friend from Maryland, whom I thank for yielding me the customary 30 minutes, talks about what it is our constituents expect, what it is our citizenry expects, I think they expect that, Mr. Speaker, and we have one of those bills before us today in the intelligence reauthorization act. There is more in this rule, Mr. Speaker, than I believe I have seen in any rule in my 9 years in Congress and years serving on staff here. We packed it all in there last night, and I don't want to miss the lead on this rule, which is an intelligence bill that is named after two congressional staffers who passed away last year. They spent their lives in service to this institution and to the intelligence community, and we are grateful for that service. If you have not looked at the intelligence community recently, Mr. Speaker, you will see Devin Nunes on the Republican side of the aisle and Adam Schiff leading it on the Democratic side of the aisle. I can picture those two faces because I usually see them on split screens on FOX or MSNBC, and I can't think of many things they have had to say where they agreed with one another over the past 4, 5 years, and yet we have a bill today in sharp contrast to the partisan nonsense that was the NDAA operation last week. We have a bill that has come out of the Intelligence Committee with two strident, passionate Republican and Democratic leaders there on the Intelligence Committee, that came out unanimously, that they presented unanimously in front of the Rules Committee last night and we have a chance to pass here on the floor of the House. You also find in this rule, Mr. Speaker, 31 amendments that have been made in order to that intelligence reauthorization bill. Even though we found bipartisanship in the committee, even though we found unanimity in the committee, the Rules Committee, in its wisdom, last night, decided to make 31 more ideas available to be considered here on the floor of the House. You see in this rule, Mr. Speaker, the ability for the House to take up Arms Export Control Act measures. These are also measures you are going to find bipartisan support for, also measures that you will find, again, as my friend from Maryland referenced, the House doing what you would expect the House to do, what our bosses back home sent us here to do. I know, Mr. Speaker, that there are times when folks feel their deeply held beliefs cannot be compromised for the sake of bipartisanship. I find that trying to find a way to get to yes is better than trying to find a way to get to no. There is always a reason to get to no. Instead of looking for ways to oppose our political rivals, we have to act as the Intelligence Committee did, in a manner where we can find issues on which we agree. It is the only way to move this process forward. Mr. Speaker, America's national security and that of our allies, which is what the intelligence community helps to protect and support every day, is about more than scoring political points. I mentioned those split screens on the TV where you do see folks lobbing accusations back and forth. Sometimes it seems to be political sport instead of serious legislating. The measure we have before us today is not political sport; it is serious legislating. And we are going to have a chance to come together as a House not just to discuss it, not just to improve it, but to implement it. Mr. Speaker, among the things that you will find in this bill, the foreign influences around the globe, and we have talked about them in all of their various incarnations here on the floor of the House over the last 2 weeks. This bill requires a report on China's influence over Taiwanese elections. Chinese influence around the globe is at an unparalleled high. We are now rivaled by the Chinese in every single aspect of international influence and policy, but they have outsized influence in Taiwan, and we require that report. We require a report not just on Russian interference in our elections, Mr. Speaker, but in elections across the globe. It would be naive to suggest that the Russians would limit their influence in elections to trying to manipulate the greatest and freest country in the world. They are working across the globe to influence elections wherever free people live. Combating Chinese and Russian aggression in elections, Mr. Speaker, is not something, as is so often told in the media, that divides us; it is something that unites us. We saw that in the Intelligence Committee, and we are going to see that here on the floor of the House, and I am very proud of that. I wish we could have continued that effort, Mr. Speaker. I agree with every word my friend from Maryland said about standing up for Article I. Of all of my frustrations of 9 years in this institution, the deference of the United States Congress to the executive branch has been my greatest frustration. It exists for one reason and one reason only, and that is that men and women, colleagues like my friend from Maryland and I, have been unable to find a way to speak with one voice on issues that are Article I versus Article II issues. Go down the list in your time in Congress, Mr. Speaker, whether it is the contempt resolution this institution passed for former Attorney General Eric Holder, that contempt resolution that passed on party-line votes in committee and party-line votes here on the floor of the House and went down to the executive branch where absolutely no action was taken on it whatsoever; take production of papers, whether on Fast and Furious or whether on the Census, production of papers, whether from the President's counsel or from the President's press secretary, we have these discussions and we cannot--no, we have not found a way to come together to speak with one voice. We have an opportunity, a model. You will remember some number of weeks ago--now, months ago, Mr. Speaker--where we were very concerned in this Chamber about anti-Semitic remarks that were broadcast in the public domain. We came together as an institution to speak out against anti-Semitism. It didn't happen overnight. In fact, my friend from Maryland authored that resolution, to his credit. But he didn't sit down with a pen and put some words on a page and bring it here to the floor for consideration. He had to work it. And I don't mean work it a little bit; I mean work it hard: it was coming; it was not coming; it was coming again; it was not coming. To find a pathway forward so that this House speaks with one voice instead of divided voices was an effort that was put in. Now, granted, at the end of the day, it was a little more milquetoast than the resolution that I would have drafted, but sometimes that is the trade you make to be able to expand the acceptance of a resolution, Mr. Speaker. Every single time in this Chamber, as it comes to reining in Article II or reining in the judicial branch, every single time we speak with a divided voice, we weaken this institution. I have never seen a resolution that tried to hold two Cabinet Secretaries in contempt at the same time. Maybe that has happened historically; I don't know that answer. I have not seen it in my time. I heard last night from the chairman of the House Oversight Committee and the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, and the ranking member was unwavering in his commitment to Article I and our preeminence in the constitutional model. But he was also unwavering in his commitment to there is more that we could do to work with the administration as opposed to begin to poke that sharp stick, and so this resolution does not have his support. Well, if we begin our effort to do oversight over the administration and we are already divided before that bill even leaves committee, I tell you, Mr. Speaker, we are not going to have the outcome that we want here on the floor of the House. And then, of course, this rule in those contempt efforts is targeting a United States citizenship question that would have gone on the Census. We talk about that as if that is an outrageous thing. I appreciate the kind words my friend from Maryland had to say about President Lincoln. I am going to have to get the Clerk to read them back to me because I am going to use that over and over again about a wonderful Republican President, but I want to use the words that Mr. Raskin used. But when President Lincoln was presiding over this land, it was common practice to have a citizenship question on the United States Census. In fact, every single Census from 1820 to 1950 had a citizenship question on it. It was noncontroversial. In 1950, we took it off of the short form; it moved to the long form. And so from 1970 to 2000, that question was on the long form every single Census. And then in 2000, we took it off the long form and we put it onto the American Community Survey, that half-decade measure that goes out to create the data that Mr. Raskin rightly noted is so important to all of our communities back home. If, for the first time in American history, in the history of the Census, we decide that citizenship is somehow now a forbidden topic, that we can't find a way to discuss it, that it is not important to who we are as a Nation and how it is that we look at ourselves, fair enough. That is not what the Supreme Court case was about, Mr. Speaker. As we well know, the Supreme Court case simply said: You can put a question about citizenship on the Census if you want to. You just didn't do it the right way, and so we are going to ask you not to do it that way. There are those ways and means of getting that done. You just didn't do it the right way. I raise that, Mr. Speaker, not because I am a Census guru. I am not. I don't serve on any of those relevant committees. But in this era of outrage, where folks have begun to confuse civility with weakness--and that is a confusion that I think is to all of our detriments--the desire to have a question about citizenship on the Census has nothing to do with this President, this administration, Republicans, Democrats. It has been that way since 1820. Thoughtful men and women, concerned men and women, serious legislators have been interested in this information for over 100 years. If we want to have the conversation that somehow citizenship can't be discussed anymore and we should ban it from all Census documentation forever, I don't think that would succeed, but it is certainly a legitimate topic of debate. But what is not legitimate is to suggest that the only reason that anyone would ask about citizenship is to pursue some sort of nefarious, xenophobic purpose. It is simply not true. I represent a majority minority constituency, Mr. Speaker. Twenty-six percent of my bosses are first-generation Americans. You want to find folks who love America, come down to where I live, find folks who have waited in line, folks who have paid their money, folks who pinned all their hopes and dreams to, ``If and only if I can get there, my children and my grandchildren will have a better life.'' That is what brought us all here at one generation or another. Whether you came in 1650 or whether you came in 1950 or whether you came yesterday, those are the dreams that bring us here. There is a lot to be outraged about in today's culture, but I haven't seen any of it get fixed by being more outraged. I have seen it get fixed by men and women like yourself, Mr. Speaker, who value trust, who value candor, who value honesty, and who value real relationships. Anything that is hard, I can't solve with someone I don't trust. If one side is good and one side is evil, where do you go from there? What does that negotiation look like? That is not a conversation; that is you have got to now destroy one another. That seems to be the path that folks too often opt for in politics today. There is more that unites us than divides us in this constitution and in this country, Mr. Speaker. You might not know that by the parts of this rule that are going to get the most attention today. Adam Schiff, Devin Nunes, there are not two Members in this institution who feel more strongly and differently about the direction of public policy than those two men, and they came together, not to advance themselves, but to advance the Nation. They came together, not because it was easy, but precisely because it was hard and necessary, and brought us this bipartisan package we have today. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Massachusetts, the chairman of the Rules Committee, for bringing that resolution to the floor, and I hope we will have ample time to celebrate those successes. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I might consume. Mr. Speaker, I think I misunderstood my friend from Massachusetts. I think what my friend said is he does not care whether his words coarsen this institution, he does not care whether or not his positions diminish us as an institution, he does not care about the rules of this institution, which prohibit exactly the kind of words that he knows they prohibit and yet he uses anyway. Mr. Speaker, I just want to ask my friend if he believes that his cause of admonishing this President is going to be advantaged by diminishing this institution? Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern).

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time. If the President believes every word that he said, does that excuse his behavior, in the gentleman's mind? Does it excuse his behavior to believe it?

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time. It is a perfectly legitimate assertion and attestation my friend from Massachusetts makes, and of course we all share that belief. Mr. Speaker, when I was down here for the rule last week with my friend from Massachusetts, the other side was admonished, not once, but twice for violating the House rules for coarsening our debate, for diminishing our civility, for violating our rules; not a social contract about how we ought to treat each other, but rules where we have committed about how we will treat each other. Today during 1 minute speeches, Mr. Speaker, not once, but twice the Chair admonished the other side to say: You are breaking our rules of civility. You are violating our standards of decorum. Our children are watching, and your behavior doesn't pass muster. And now my friend--and he is my friend and I admire his work--he is passionate in the causes for which he advocates, and I believe that it is his passion, not his contempt for this institution, that leads him to say those things that he says. I believe he loves this institution, but he is misguided, when the Chair admonishes him again today now, and he has no apologies for his colleagues, no apologies for this institution. We do have serious issues. I am not meaning serious like Russia and China, which those are serious, I don't mean serious like the hate that is fomenting in this country, which is serious. I mean all of it that is serious that nobody in this institution can solve unless we solve it together, and I want to find that pathway forward. This isn't it. Mr. Speaker, I yield to my friend, the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern).

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time. Mr. Speaker, does the gentleman remember when Joe Wilson apologized, which is more than what my friend from Massachusetts has done when the House has condemned him from the Chair today? I remember when my friend Mr. Wilson lost his temper. I do remember it. And I remember him apologizing for it because he didn't want to bring shame on this institution. I would welcome any time the Chair admonishes either side of the aisle for violating our rules, coarsening our debate, doing those things that we all agree we don't want our children to see on TV, I welcome folks to correct that behavior. Mr. Speaker, I fear my comments are falling on deaf ears, but I hope I am mistaken. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time. Parliamentary Inquiry

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. While my friend from Texas is sometimes known for running over the gavel at the end of her comments, it is only because it comes from the heart. When I think about Members in this institution who are unhampered by a lack of passion, I think of my friend from Texas. But when I look for an honest broker, who will be true to her word and partner when partnership is required, my friend from Texas embodies that, as well. I appreciate both her words and her restraint here this morning.

Mr. WOODALL. I yield to the gentlewoman from Texas.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I thank my friend from Texas. I think that is a welcome invitation. Mr. Speaker, thinking about the policies before us today, if we defeat the previous question, I will amend the rule to bring H.R. 3965 to the floor. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of my amendment in the Record immediately preceding the vote on the previous question.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, you have heard a lot about the controversial citizenship question in the Census. Whether or not it should be controversial is a different issue altogether.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Comer).