here today to talk about a rule t..... on pages H6925-H6927 covering the 1st Session of the 117th Congress published on Dec. 7, 2021 in the Congressional Record.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
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Ms. SCANLON. Mr. Speaker, I would just remind our colleagues we are here today to talk about a rule to bring the Protecting Our Democracy Act to the floor. That is a bill that would prevent criminal behavior by Presidents, not by illegal aliens, so I would just kind of redirect the conversation there.
We are also here to engage in the extremely important business of passing the National Defense Authorization Act and to help the Senate, since they are having difficulty on their own, to raise the debt limit. That is what we are here to discuss.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from Missouri (Mrs. Hartzler), my good friend and one of the recognized experts on defense in the Congress.
Mrs. HARTZLER. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022.
I want to thank my colleagues on both sides of the aisle for their work in developing this comprehensive bill that will ensure our men and women in uniform have the resources they need to keep our country safe.
The bill before us today does not include a provision requiring women to register for the Selective Service. This bill does not include any red-flag gun provisions that would infringe on the Second Amendment rights of our servicemembers. And this bill does not establish an office of extremism.
I want to thank Ranking Member Rogers for his advocacy in removing these provisions from the final bill.
This bill does protect servicemembers who choose not to receive the COVID-19 vaccine by prohibiting the DOD from issuing dishonorable discharges. It also requires the DOD to establish uniform standards for COVID-19 vaccine exemptions and requires the Pentagon to consider the effects of natural immunity.
As ranking member of the Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee, I am pleased with the continued investments this bill makes for our air and land capabilities.
Under the Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee's jurisdiction, this bill continues critical oversight of the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps' strike fighter force structure and inventory management, setting better conditions for ensuring the right mix of fourth- and fifth-generation fighters and managing operational risk.
Specifically, this legislation authorizes funding for 12 F/A-18 Super Hornets, 85 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, and 17 F-15EX aircraft.
The legislation also provides much-needed funding increases within the Army's small and medium caliber ammunition accounts as well as to support operational and safety improvements to the Nation's ammunition industrial base. I am proud of this legislation, and I urge all of my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on the final passage of the NDAA.
Ms. SCANLON. Mr. Speaker, I would inquire how many speakers Mr. Cole has remaining.
Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, we have at least one, I think perhaps two, if the gentleman can make it back in time.
Ms. SCANLON. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, As long as I have a few minutes left, I did just want to raise an amendment I have to the Protecting Our Democracy Act, which has been made in order. This amendment would effectuate the findings of the Senate Judiciary Committee report titled ``Subverting Justice: How the Former President and His Allies Pressured DOJ to Overturn the 2020 Election.''
That report made numerous recommendations, but one of them is directly related to the Protecting Our Democracy Act. It would increase the frequency with which reports are made of contact between the White House and the Department of Justice in order to make sure that protections occur against politicization of our law enforcement arm at the behest of bad actors in the White House.
I am very, very pleased that that amendment was made in order and, as always, very grateful to the Committee on Rules for its continuing efforts to make amendments in order, which it has been doing at a much higher rate this term than last.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Texas
(Mr. Burgess), my good friend, a fellow member of the Rules Committee and distinguished member of the Committee on Energy and Commerce.
Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, you just have to ask yourself what in the heck is going on here. Doctors across this country, our heroes in the healthcare fight that we have been in the last 2 years, are facing significant cuts in their Medicare reimbursements.
Instead of getting a commitment from Congress that we are going to work on solving this problem, what do they get? A gimmicky bill tying a reprieve on the Medicare cuts to the debt limit. That is a dead duck over in the other body. It is not going to pass, and the majority knows it is not going to pass.
Why don't we face the facts and get things done correctly from the start?
Unfortunately, our authorizing committees, the Committee on Energy and Commerce and the Committee on Ways and Means, have not seen fit to hold the hearings that would be necessary to provide a solution to this problem. Our providers need and deserve that certainty.
Mr. Speaker, I don't know what it is like in your part of the State, but in my part of the State, we are experiencing a shortage of healthcare workers. We are also seeing hospital consolidation becoming more and more prevalent. The coming Medicare cuts will only worsen these issues.
Furthermore, we have not even considered the cuts due to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services clinical labor pricing updates. Some studies are now indicating that these cuts could be as significant as 20 percent for some providers.
Many of these same providers serve our seniors. They serve patients in critical care populations, including cancer patients and patients receiving critical surgeries or procedures. Overall, the clinical labor pricing updates will have an extreme impact on health quality, as they will affect our most vulnerable populations.
I appreciate the fact that the rebate rule is not included as an offset in this bill. That truly was budgetary smoke and mirrors that had no place in a rational discussion of this. But I do have to ask why we are reluctant to reuse the dollars in the Provider Relief Fund as an offset instead of creating a new Medicare sequester that, oh, yeah, won't start until 10 years from now.
Mr. Speaker, we are all familiar here with kicking the can down the road and robbing Peter to pay Paul. We are basically now robbing Peter's grandchildren to pay Paul. The Provider Relief Fund is sitting there waiting to be used. It would provide targeted relief to providers consistent with the original intent of the fund that we all voted for on March 27, 2020.
Unfortunately, this bill includes a one-time procedural change to allow the Senate to originate and pass a debt limit increase with only 51 votes. The Medicare issue and the debt limit do not belong in the same room, let alone in the same bill.
Protecting patients' access to care and helping healthcare providers during a public health emergency is a bipartisan issue. It deserves sincere congressional action, and it is time we work on meaningful payment reform.
Ms. SCANLON. Mr. Speaker, I completely agree that protecting Medicare from cuts is a bipartisan issue, and we are happy to engage on that. Unfortunately, if there is a complaint about how this bill is coming up at this time, that is something that was pushed by Republican leadership here in the House. That is not how our leadership proposed to do it.
If my colleagues want to have a serious conversation about the Nation's fiscal policies, we encourage them to do the work with us to pass a funding bill for the current fiscal year. We are now 2 months into this fiscal year, and we still don't have a funding bill because Senate Republicans are refusing to work with the rest of Congress to negotiate a bipartisan appropriations bill.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, we are still waiting for a speaker, but I would inquire of the gentlewoman if she is prepared to close, we will go ahead and close.
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, before I get into my prepared remarks and close, just in response to my good friend's last remark, I want her to be aware, we don't have an appropriations bill or budget because my friends, frankly, have riddled what happened in the Appropriations Committee with poison pills, taking out the Hyde protections. We have been waiting to negotiate that. Our friends have refused to do that.
It has been extended now to February 18. I hope that we meet that deadline and that we actually do get an agreed-upon appropriations bill. If we do, I would be happy to support it, as I have so many years in the past.
Mr. Speaker, in passing a final, bipartisan, bicameral version of the NDAA, we are fulfilling our responsibility to provide for the common defense. This would mark the 61st year in a row that Congress has passed a final NDAA, and I celebrate that fact.
This year's bill increases defense spending to a level commensurate with our needs, unlike the President's budget. It ensures a needed pay raise for our troops and ensures that the warfighters of tomorrow will have the weapons and capabilities they need. It will also provide needed oversight over the President's debacle in Afghanistan and will ensure that the American people receive the answers they deserve.
I want to publicly commend Chairman Smith and Ranking Member Rogers for working so well together in a bipartisan fashion and also commend their negotiating counterparts in the United States Senate, Chairman Reed and Ranking Member Inhofe, for cooperating and bringing this important measure before us. I certainly hope we can pass it and move forward from there.
Today's rule, unfortunately, also advances a measure to address Medicaid sequestration. This is a bill that could and should have been bipartisan but instead must be used to address the Democratic leadership's failure to resolve the debt ceiling vote. That is sad. Democratic leaders have chosen to divide us when they could have chosen a different course that would have united us in a bipartisan agreement. Hopefully, they will learn from that lesson.
Finally, this rule also advances a highly partisan and unnecessary collection of purported government reforms, many of which are duplicative of measures that have previously passed the House. I urge the majority to rethink these measures.
Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the previous question and ``no'' on the rule, and I yield back the balance of my time.
Ms. SCANLON. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. The Protecting Our Democracy Act is a necessary package of policies to address abuses of our constitutional processes that have developed over time but accelerated under the most recent administration. It has become clear that our government will not survive solely on the good behavior of good people. We need statutory guardrails to ensure compliance with norms of good behavior.
The Protecting Our Democracy Act will impose reasonable and constitutionally sound limits on Presidential power and then create enforceable penalties for Presidents who abuse the powers of their office.
I am proud of my colleagues who contributed legislation to the final bill, especially Representative Adam Schiff, who spearheaded this important effort.
The Protecting Our Democracy Act is an important continuation of the House's work for the people to protect our democratic institutions at this critical moment in time. It builds off bills like H.R. 1, H.R. 4, and the Inspector General Independence and Empowerment Act to protect our elections and make good government reforms to ensure that our government works for everyone and that the rule of law applies to everyone.
As with many of these bills and others passed by the House, I strongly urge my Senate colleagues to join us and do some legislating. Our country is facing multiple problems, and we frankly cannot afford continued inaction from the Senate on voting rights, the NDAA, the debt limit, or any of the hundreds of bills passed by the House over the past year.
Mr. Speaker, I urge all of my colleagues to vote for the rule today and to support the underlying legislation.
The material previously referred to by Mr. Cole is as follows:
Amendment to House Resolution 838
At the end of the resolution, add the following:
Sec. 9. Immediately upon adoption of this resolution, the House shall proceed to the consideration in the House of the bill (H.R. 1995) to amend the Immigration and Nationality Act with respect to aliens associated with criminal gangs, and for other purposes. All points of order against consideration of the bill are waived. The bill shall be considered as read. All points of order against provisions in the bill are waived. The previous question shall be considered as ordered on the bill and on any amendment thereto to final passage without intervening motion except: (1) one hour of debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on the Judiciary; and (2) one motion to recommit.
Sec. 10. Clause 1(c) of rule XIX shall not apply to the consideration of H.R. 1995.
Ms. SCANLON. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on ordering the previous question.
The question was taken; and the Speaker pro tempore announced that the ayes appeared to have it.
Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to section 3(s) of House Resolution 8, the yeas and nays are ordered.
Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX, further proceedings are postponed.
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SOURCE: Congressional Record Vol. 167, No. 211(1), Congressional Record Vol. 167, No. 211(2)
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