i did earlier rob graduated. ms. boothe do you see chairman rogers out there? i think he is too. mr. chairman, we have just finished a big roast actually of the gentlewoman from north carolina, mrs. fox. as you may know, nita, chairwoman fox will be moving to the chairwoman of the labor and workforce committee and education workforce committee. she was just presented with a brand-new gavel and some flowers. it's virginia fox day today at the rules committee.

>> congratulations. >> thank you, nita. >> we will welcome both our distinguished guests who join us today. mr. chairman and nia i want you to know that we welcome you here to talk about the amendment to hr-2028 the gentleman from kentucky is recognized. >> mr. chairman, thank you for having us here. we hope to be brief with you, answer any questions you may have. let me first -- >> is that microphone on? >> congratulations to the gentle lady, ms. fox. we're proud of you. there is not a harder working member on of this organization, virginia fox. and very few exceed her wisdom. so we're thrilled with her new role and we wish her.

we're here to bring forward the committee's consideration an amendment to the senate amendment to hr 2028, the second fiscal year 2017 fiscal resolution we have considered this year. we are here before you to the seek an appropriate rule to allow for the timely consideration of this bill. i've also submitted a technical amendment to correct a drafting and also one that you considered can. this is a necessary bill, mr. chairman that will prevent a governmentdown, including national defense. this cr runs through april 28th of next year and hits the budget control act discretionary act of 1.07 trillion. this legislation continues current policy and funding from fiscal 2016 and makes certain

changes to prevent harm to programs and ensure government. we take care of our military. increasing resources through oko and include provisions for procurement items that need to be addressed in the near term the, such as apache helicopters, blackhawks, ohio replacement submarine, and the can kc tanker, among others. we also funding for the department of homeland security to protect our borders and skies and extend the freeze on members pay. in addition this legislation includes 10.1 billion to continue the fight against isis and terrorism around the globe, as well as 4.1 billion in

emergency disaster relief to help communities across the country recover from recent natural disasters like hurricane matthew and devastating floods and droughts. there's also 170 million for critical health and water infrastructure improvements which is fully offset. lastly, the legislation includes 872 million in funding for the house passed 2 century act, including money for nih programs and 500 million to respond to the opioid epidemic. it is the best path forward given our deadline. and mr. mayor chan, this should be my last time appearing before the rules committee as chairman of this committee. i wish it were under better

circumstances. i wish we had 11 complete full year appropriations bills to present to you. but that is not the case. as i have said it before, and i'll say it again, governing by cr is no way to conduct our business. with a cr, we're wasting money and venting good policies from going into place. we're creating uncertainty both in federal budgets and in the economy and our power of the purse throwing away the voice of the people that we represent. as i said, it is our best. it is is actually our only path forward. so i urge my colleagues in the house and the to pass it in short order, given that our current mechanism expires on friday. thank you for your great work.

i've always started to say enjoyed chances to be with you. and i have enjoyed that. but i appreciate the great work that you do, mr. chairman and members of the committee. this is a tough chore you have being the traffic cop for all the bills that go to the floor of the u.s. house. so thank you for your consideration of this bill, this rule. and the chance to appear before you today. thank you. >> mr. chairman, thank you very much. i will take just a second now and say on behalf of this committee, your service, your attention to detail, your work that you have performed so ably not only with mrs. lowe and the staff is and both on both sides of the aisle, as well as your commitment to the united states senate of dealing with them is

appreciated. i will tell you lots of lonely nights. i want you to know you have ably not only represented your interests in kentucky but those of the nation, and i appreciate you very much. and we'll have a chance as we go around to really offer our congratulations to you. but i did not want this minute to go by without saying job well done. >> thank you. >> mrs. lowe, we recognize that you're here. >> thank you, mr. chairman. always a pleasure to appear before you. i always look forward to coming here with this distinguished committee. and i extend my congratulations to you, ms. fox as well. i know you will serve with great distinction. chairman sessions, ranking member slaughter, members of the rules committee, i really do

appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss the second continuing resolution for fisk year 2017. although i am pleased to be here my friend hal rogers, but frankly the legislation before us is an abdication of our entire congress. it is is a disgrace. that more than two months into the fiscal year congress will kick the can down the road, nearly another five months for purely partisan reasons. having already failed this year to adopt a budget, to pass appropriation bills, and restore regular order, the majority's failure to enact full-year funding is not surprising but nonetheless shameful.

as my good friend chairman rogers has said, i know how hard you worked and we both tried together with members of the committee to move these bills. so it is unfortunate that we're here today to just push the whole schedule down the road. but here we are. >> gentle lady. >> i'd be delighted. >> thank you for those nice words. we passed off 12 of these bills through the committee. five of them i think went through the floor. and then we hit the 60 vote in the senate which shut everything down. thus, we are here for that reason. i want to thank you for your service to your country is and to this committee. and as a personal friend of mine. >> thank you so much. and i know we'll have much opportunities to do a lot of good work together so i thank you, my friend, for those kind

words. several administration requests were either not included or were drastically discounted. the commodity futures trade commission would be frozen under the cr, likely causing staff furloughs and making it impossible to protect market participants. i'm also extremely concerned that the majority included just $7 million. one fifth of the amount requested by the administration and by new york city to reimburse for the cost of helping protect the president-elect until his in inauguration. new york tax payers should not foot the bill for the president-elect. i view the amount in the cr, however, as a down payment. i'm putting the majority on notice that a future funding

bill must fully cover these costs. and by the way, i welcome all of you to take a walk around fifth avenue, notice the barricade, notice the dozens and dozens of police that are protecting trump tower. and if you do that, not only will you enjoy our great city but you will become very aware of the challenge to protect the president-elect. so come to new york. i hope we will be able to fully cover the cost of the new york police department in the near future. mr. chairman, i'm pleased the cr provides additional fund to go provide for natural disasters to assist flint michigan and from recovering from a lead crisis, threats a provide, prevent on opioid addiction i want to congratulation the chairman again. he has been just the leader of this effort.

i know this has had tremendous impact on on your district as well as all of ours. so i thank you for your leadership in that area. we are also so grateful for our distinguished chairman tom cole in your leadership for increasing the investment to the biomedical research. all of us have family and friends and neighbors who are struggling frankly to overcome a disease, to fight it every step of the way. and i know those investments make such a difference. i would triple it. i would keep going. i thank you for your leadership because it's so very important. but i must say we should have made these investments along with a full year bill that would have dealt with every government program. finally, this bill should not include the provision that would

limit to date on providing a waiver to allow the next secretary of defense to have been retired from active duty for less than the current requirement on of seven years. is civilian leadership of the military is a bedrock principal of our democracy and a new standard deserves full debate by congress. and i just want to say i know there are many who know this gentleman, who praised this gentleman. it is is nothing to do with him. but this should be an opportunity in the congress to really debate and understand the background and the candidates. but here we are. i know chairman rogers worked to have the appropriations committee return to regular order. i tried to be a partner with him because i think the american people want us to do our jobs of keeping the government

operating. it should be a bipartisan full year spending measure. this is the bill before us today. i look forward to continuing to work with my distinguished chair. thank you for your time. >> ms. lowe, thank you very much. mr. chairman, a few minutes ago down on the floor you and i had a chance to visit on several issues that were of particular importance to members. one of them was directly related to the issue of a relation to h 2 b workers. can you elaborate on how they handled the h 2 b workers on this issue and perhaps influence the members who would wish at another time to the address this issue with your ideas about

where to the direct them. >> under the cr, what has continued is the ability of the department of homeland security to process applications up to the existing cap, which is 66,000 for the full year. what they cannot do is exceed the existing cap. it would require a statutory change in the immigration and nationality act. we did not include an anomaly in the cr before you to do that. there was a request from omb or anyone else to include an anomaly on the h2b visa issue. we heard from members on both sides of the issue. both on supporters is and opponents. when we included the ledge staeufb language in fiscal 16

bill there was strong by cam ral sport for a one year fix to give time to the authorizers to address the issue and an authorization bill. that's where the venue for action is now. and we did not feel appropriate to take action on this huge policy change. especially where there was considerable opposition from the judiciary committee, among others. so we did not feel it appropriate to tackle that in a cr. >> mr. chairman, thank you very much. i want to really applaud you for your forthrightness not only on taking issues that might be extraneous necessarily to the direct impact of your committee but your participation to represent all of us. and i want to thank you, hal,

for being forthright about making sure our members get a chance to address issues, ask questions, and to receive a straight answer, which is what i believe you and your staff most forth rightly did the on the floor. and i want to thank your staff director who was personally involved in this. and i want to thank both of you. mrs. fox. >> thank you, mr. chairman. you know i subscribe to the same philosophy, you can't thank people too much. so i think we should thank you both again for your work, in particular chairman rogers, say amen to you have had in this.

and thank you for your forth rightness. it is an issue where there's strong opinions on both sides. we know that makes your job much more difficult to do. we do need revisions in our immigration laws. we need a lot of things done in that regard. in the past you have helped the employers who needed help. but i understand this is not an easy situation for you. >> if i could add briefly, as i said, the proper avenue on this issue is to seek action in the authorizing committee.

especially on a big policy issue that needs to go through the regular process. that's the authorizing committee. which in the case of the house is the judiciary committee. they're the committee with jurisdiction for the immigration act which is what would have to take place for people supporting this. >> well, again, i thank you. and i thank you for you being very straightforward about it. we all want to keep the government operating. and i understand the need for this continuous resolution given the fact that we can't act unilaterally i think i have suppressed to you the importance of our having to explain to our constituents often when they throw around that term power of the purse, there is a real

misunderstanding out in the public that the house somehow or another has unilateral authority to pass appropriation bills. so i'm constantly reading article 1, section 7 to people and repeating it to them that they somehow or another forget that it says the house -- all revenue bill should originate in the house but the senate may amend and then the president has to sign. so i think we still have a lot of work to do in that area because we still have people who think that the house appropriations committee can operate unilaterally. i'm sure you would welcome some folks shadowing you for a day or two to see that you don't have that authority unilaterally or things would operate a whole lot

differently around here. >> amen. >> so thank you for your good work and congratulate you on your opportunity to have a little more time to do other things on other than negotiate. god bless you. >> thank you. >> the gentleman from florida, judge hastings. >> thank you. >> i now see, i want you to determine that order you were walking in. judge hastings. >> mr. chairman, just for information, i'm in my 12th term here. and i just skr informatiask for. what term is this for you? >> this is my 10th term. >> then ms. slaughter and i have been here the longest on the rules committee, not necessarily the longest he has a long time on the rules committee. but all of that time, and no

fault of chairman rogers and of ms. lloyd, they have exhausted themselves trying to get us to return to regular order. and i take chairman rogers's point that matters leave here and get over to the other body and somehow or another everything bottles up. and then we wind up taking the bullets every two years from people because the allegation that we don't do our work. well, the simple fact is that in the time that i'm here, we have not done all 12 appropriations bills since 1994 if my

recollections are correct. we have had pledges from democratic majorities, from republican majorities that we would return to regular order. we have had budget end responsibility. but at the end of the day nothing materializes. i'll be here another term or two, whatever the law allows. and i no longer am going to believe that we are going to return to regular order. i am just going to give up on that. i don't see it happening. in terms of under modality. that said, mr. chairman, i join our colleague billy long from missouri about the two measures. i'm not asking a question. billy approached me, and i'm sure he did other members as

well, about the h 2 returning worker exemption. so as not to belabor things with a protracted statement, he says spending the returning worker exemption for the entire first half of fiscal 17 is contrary to congressional in turn and will be devastate to go many small businesses who rely on this program to function and operate their businesses. and i happen to know he raises concerns there in missouri. and we have similar concerns in some respects in florida. introduce the letter to me. others may have received it. but at least i believe what he

says is -- >> thank you. >> i will yield back. >> thank you very much. mrs. slaughter, we would love for you to go. >> if you're sure you don't mind. >> i'm glad you're here. >> first, i want to thank you all for doing whatever possible job you're able to do. i really don't know what's in there. i received mine about an hour ago. except what i have read in the press i want to express some concern about general mattis and a waiver for him. one of the most important tenets of the democracy that we are so proud to protect is that control over the military. the department of defense has always headed by a civilian with the exception we all know about

of general george c. marshall who had such important work to do in the second world war and the marshall brand. they gave him this waiver but said at the time don't ever do this again. i have not had time to see how this is written, the waiver is written. but i hope that it is not so inspecific that anybody who could be appointed to that job and the future of the restriction of the civilian would be loss because that is far too precious for us to give up. so i have great concern about that. and certainly going into what my colleague had said about congressman long. i don't know why the h2 db visa has disappeared. there may be good and sufficient reason. i don't know of one. lacking that, i would appreciate if we could consider his amendment to put it back in.

and i have no further comments. mr. chairman, thank you. >> does any republican seek time, the gentleman from oklahoma. chairman cole. >> first of all, i can't allow these two members of congress to come forward before this committee without saying kind words about both of them, particularly the chairman's last appearance before this committee. nobody has served our committee with more distinction than the gentleman from kentucky. he has done yeomans work of moving us in the right direction to push us towards regular order. and his help in partnering that has been the gentle lady from new york who despite over policy don't agree about process at all. and the appropriate wait for this committee to operate is.

both of them have set a remarkable example of moving it i want to really reiterate a point the chairman made which was all 12 bills have been reported out of this committee. they were reported out last year. they were reported out again this year. in my view, they should have all 12 gone to the floor. it's great we got to five. we got six or seven last year. but that's not a decision that the chairman and the ranking member get to make. so they have done their part of the appropriations process. and they demonstrated last year even if you don't get the bills across the floor they could gave us funding for this entire year. we have had a pretty good year in congress. in some ways i think your bill is something we all worked together on. we're probably going to get this for the second in a row.

the every student succeeds act. a lot of that was done because we had a framework set up, the regular orderly funding on of government. it was done omnibus. it wasn't done in a way that ranking member would have liked, but it was done. it was unfortunate they weren't allowed to sit down and work their magic again in my opinion with their counterparts in the united states senate. i'll certainly support the bill. i agree with the chairman and the gentle lady that allowing a government to shut down and all the chaos and disruption can come from that. it is just an inappropriate solution is. they have done the best within their ability to adjust within this cr things that will at least allow us in the military and some other areas to not have the rigidity having the exact same funding.

we were talking about the wonderful work the ranking member had done on the national defense authorization act ask and made the point that as great as it was, if it wasn't married up with an appropriations bill, it is a wonderful policy. but there is not enough to implement the policy and make the decision. that's not your fault. what is not the chairman's fault who worked with the house armed services committee. that is not passing and allowing a normal appropriations bill to occur. so while i will support this bill, i am very frustrated over us allowing us that. again, this committee did its job. congress did not do its job. the administration did not. and the senate certainly did not. and frankly i'm going to make a prediction now which i'm loathed

to make. the new administration, this would have been true no matter who would have won the election, they have their agenda to advance. got to get all of these people confirmed in the united states senate. we're going to have a debt ceiling discussion in march. it would have made a lot of difference to have these things done and secured through september 30th of next year. i don't think anybody recognizes outside the appropriations committee. that's probably too strong a statement. how difficult this is going to be for the new administration. i think some people think it has advantaged them i think it has disadvantaged them. they will be dealing dealing with a whole host of problems that should have been settled and could have been settled by this congress and administration. i know it could have been

because you did it last year. you're capable of doing it i think decisions were made above your pay grade and certainly the pay grade here that were bad decisions. they will guarantee us legislative and fiscal turmoil in the opening part of next year. i'll make a commitment, which i know i suspect my good friend's share, the danger will be by going to april 20th that we will just do another cr to get to september 30th. that's a big mistake. i guarantee you that our new secretary of state, so we can have our disagreements whereby the mechanisms hopefully will be expedited. i bet the first thing after he is confirmed he's going to go to the president of the united states and say what the heck are we doing. my funding doesn't match up. we have done a lot of things to

match the funding up. i can give you several projects you weren't able to the deal with. and you're going to have cabinet member after cabinet member saying what in the heck happened. i'm sort of handcuffed. i hope that next year -- i hope certainly by april 28th we do a normal omnibus or a you couple of minis that finishes '17 funding. i hope we don't go the cr route. i know how strongly or friends feel about this because they know how much it hobbles the effort to implement the excellent job they did on the mdaa. and it will put us behind

schedule in working at the appropriations bill for 2018. it cannot help but do that. so is this -- you have been -- done the best job you can do with the bad cards you have been dealt mr. chairman and the ranking member of new york. i'm very grateful for that. i don't know what more you could have done. so i look forward to supporting your work. we need to recommit ourselves to a normal process. it can't happen. it should have happened this time at least at the omnibus level. again, i predict about 60 to 90 days into next year people that made this decision will regret this decision and will come to you two and your successor, mr. chairman and say you guys have got to fix this you have to clean this up. i certainly yield to the chair. >> to your point about the cr

and how it has strings what the government can or can't do, what most people may not realize is under a continuing resolution, the agencies have to spend the money that's in the old bill that they no longer need perhaps. billions of dollars. and secondly, they're not allowed to start anything new which is what they need today. they're locked into year old policy and year old is set of provisions that they have to spend the money on which they don't need or want to do. the military especially if that's true they cannot do new starts even though they need it, the troops in the field need it. they don't do it because it is a continuing resolution. so we need to pass that we went

through the committee with and amended and changed and a argued and debated and negotiated. we need to pass those bills so that the agencies don't spend billions of dollars on old policies that are no longer needed. >> well, postponed things that have not been authorizationed but funded. the artillery piece. we are modernizing one and a half pieces per month. there was a bill to raise it to six. you will be be funded to do one and a half a month. >> if we have been doing these crs back in time, our modern airplanes would be versions of the wright brothers flyer. >> i thank the chairman for his

indulge thens. this is not the right way to do things. it is bad governing. it is sloppy appropriation. and it's not sloppy through either of your fault. you both have made this point over and over and over. and you both have worked together to break the cycle. and the omnibus last year, we should have done that. we were told we were going to do that. this will all get done by the end of the year. there will be a series of om omnibus omnibuses. with that, mr. chairman, again, i fully support the bill and fully support the ranking member for doing what they can do to mitigate what was i think a bad decision. and they have done you that in this bill as much as humanly possible. but the authorizing committees need to authorize. they don't need to rely on the two of you to pull the bacon out of the fire. if you're going to lead and govern, then you need to lead

and govern. you guys have done your part. but the rest of congress has fallen down. i regret that. next year is a new year. we will see if we can do better. we know we can do better than this because we did better than this last year. yield back. >> i want to in choir about the status of a couple of elements that i had hoped would be in this bill and are not. one of them is the minors protection act. i'm sure you're familiar with that. i joined a bipartisan group. this affects tens of thousands of coal miners. it's been before congress many years. we did have a bipartisan effort to include that. i wonder if you could comment by that particular provision was not included. >> well, it is included. not the full version. but the cr does provide fully

off set for the continued health care benefits for certain retired miners under the united mine workers association 1993 benefit plan. miners will no longer have the benefits they would have had from the private sector due their once employing companies having gone out of business. this is necessary to prevent the loss of their medical or health care benefits for these miners and their families which is scheduled to expire december 31st of this year, a few weeks from now. so that is what is in the -- >> yeah. it's just the patch for four months, not the long-term fix which was the topic of the bipartisan letter. so is what you have is you have all of this uncertainty for the tens of thousands of people that

this affects where it rides with our expenditures. it is at risk every few months. there is a battle every few months as you know in the bipartisan letter we were hoping for a long-term solution. we need to accomplish that in the next congress. they have earned every single time we have an appropriations bill. >> will the gentleman yield? >> happy to yield. >> in my district i have 10,000 laid off miners just in my district alone because of the coal funds we have seen. and i wanted to get the whole ball of wax. pension benefits as well as the health care. i was unable to convince others to go that far. so we did get the health care thankfully. >> for four months, right? just for the duration of the

bill. the other one i want to ask about is clean energy tax credits. i supported it enough to extend tax credits for large utility scale rooftop solar bond their expiration at the end of 2016 i wanted to inquire why that was not included in the final bill? >> well, it never came up. it never came up. that's a ways and means jurisdiction. >> it is. but there is no other bill we're doing this week, i don't think. >> it never came up. >> the other was the h2b. there's an amendment that i cosponsor along with mr. harris. i wanted to speak to the urgency of this in my district. i have a district that has a lot of tourism, seasonal tourism. and i have heard from over

several dozen constituents today regarding the value of h2b american jobs. our economy all works today. i heard from richard from vale. without those workers they can't hire those american workers. and the program supports our local economy. so i'm hoping that the amendment will be made in order. and i wanted to ask the chair and ranking member if they plan to be supportive of the amendment if our committee makes that in order. >> we discussed this i guess you were outside on a telephone call. we discussed that earlier here. >> okay. >> the provision the carried in the 016 homeland security bill. it had by part -- bicameral

support at that time. that same support does not exist in fiscal 17. there is substantial disagreement among various parties. and there is not that bipartisan support that we saw earlier. it's a matter that has to be done by the authorizers. >> when we disagree, we in fact, disagree on the underlying cr itself. there will be votes for and against it i assume from both democrats and republicans for different reasons just as there would be the h2b. it is easy to say we disagree. the way to resolve that is is to advance to the floor. if more people support it, it would be included.

>> we on our -- in constructing the cr, the appropriators, we can't make drastic changes in policy without the approval at least of the authorizes committee. >> the authorizing committee didn't mark it up and bring it to the floor. this would provide app opportunity for the members on the floor to vote for it or vote against it. and we resolve our disagreements then. and one side prevails. that determines what occurs. maybe i can go to ms. lowe. i was just going to say i wish unanimous support. so the cr in a bill such as this where there is an issue, where there are very strong differences of opinions. you realize that this should be

another debate and perhaps whether it is judiciary or another vehicle this would not be the vehicle for it. it is is not a d versus r issue, as you well know. >> it isn't. but neither is the cr. people will be voting for and against the cr i assume on the democratic and republican side for ava right of reasons. you know, h2b, if the members of the body want to include it in the cr, that could affect a few votes both ways. it could affect my vote to vote for it instead of against it because it is important in my district. but i don't think most people view the h2b policy as a policy to shut down government over, right? whatever their disagreements are. i would hope we could have the will of the body articulate whether we want to move forward with the harris amendment, which i'm telling you is important in my district. we are more like there i to vote

fort cr. but it is not kind of the tail wags the dog. it is just one of these many elements. there's a lot of provisions where it is traditional and we are this is my bill and there are things we need to do. it is very important for american jobs in my district. and it's absolutely critical to get it done. >> i'm curious as to why that was taken out? was it an immigration issue? what would be the objection to it? is it appropriate to ask you. >> i don't mind if you want help, hal. otherwise, i'll let you tackle that. >> it was a temporary provision

that was included last year. so what they tried to do is to take the permanent things that had been in the bill, then the discussions came up between the house and senate, this is an issue we need to refer back to authorizers as opposed to appropriators. if it had been permanent, it would have prevailed. it was a one time provision i believe that was in last year. i've tried to look at this also. i want to make sure i could answer you. but i didn't know the answer. >> there is trouble in different parts of the country. you consider this to be a serious issue? >> we have a tourism-based economy, yeah, in part of my district. >> we likely won't have another vehicle to get this on, correct?

>> i'm not aware of. >> if it's not on this, it's finished. >> well, there's not been -- there's a reason why. there is an authorizing committee and appropriations committee. the authorizing committee holds hearings, delves these these policy issues in depth, as they should. but to have this all of a sudden want to be funded even after it's not been authorized is contrary to our responsibility. >> well, i understand what you're saying. however, from what i've been told, there was no discussion at all. it was there and then it wasn't. i don't believe anybody really has any -- >> again, the reality is this is the end of year last major bill. so things that need to be done need to be done in this bill. in a perfect world, there is room for everything. >> and the rules committee has always powered. >> we don't live in that perfect world.

unfortunately, we stand before you saying is jobs in my district are jeopardized. i don't stand alone. there are many members who feel that way. >> i happen to agree with both chairmen i would have liked to see the 12 bills. they may not -- >> we don't have that. >> for us to be taking up this cr at this point and include an issue that really wasn't completely discussed and really resolved in the authorizing committee is not appropriate for the appropriations. >> i understand. >> i i could give you a more profound -- >> it had been included as you know. jobs are in jeopardy.

we don't often fall in this regular order here. i know we -- that's an argument of convenience rather than of standard practice. and so it is an easy way to say but there is a lot of easy ways to say no. given that we're not passing any more bills, i'm hoping we can pass this. i yield back. >> thank you very much, gentleman yields back his time. does any member seek time? gentleman from georgia, mr. woodall. >> 60 seconds to have our witnesses in on a happy note. mr. hastings said he didn't think we would get back to regular order. i shared his pessimism. i saw the first appropriations bill signed into law by a president of the united states before the statutory deadline. it was four our veterans, and you all did it together. i don't know how we get to the finish line, get it done every cycle, but i know we don't get

to the finish line if we have folks committed to getting us started. you've done what hasn't been able to be done for a decade, 2008 before a bill was signed before the statutory deadline. i'm grateful for not just the heavy lifting, but for the model and what we may be able to do tomorrow. thank you very much for that. >> member seeks time, i want to thank both of our members for being here, mrs. lowy, as always, thank you for your graciousness and charm. please tell steven i said hi. thank you very much. tell cynthia, merry christmas, also. and thank you very much. >> and to you. merry christmas. >> any other member that will give testimony on this amendment, hr 2028. this closes the hearing motion. mrs. pox. >> mr. chairman, i move the

committee providing for consideration of the senate amendment hr 2028, energy and motor development and related appropriations act 2016, the rule makes a motion offered by the chair appropriations or his designee that the house concur and senate amendment to hr 2028 with an amendment consisting of the text of rules 114-70, modified by the amendment in the rules committee. all points of order for consideration of motion. the rule provides the senate shall be considered as read. the rule provides one hour debate equally controlled by the chair and ranking minority on appropriations. section two of the rule provides for consideration of 612, to designate the federal building and united states courthouse located 1300 victoria street, l loredo, texas. one hour debate equally divided,

ranking minority members, with the committees on energy and commerce, natural resources and transportation, the rule is all points of order against consideration of the bill. the rule provides an amendment in the nature of substitute consisting of the text of rules committee print 114-69 shall be considered as adopted and the bill as amended shall be considered as read. all points of order and the bill is mended. motion to recommit with and without instructions. >> you've heard the motion from north carolina. is there an amendment or discussion to that? >> yes, sir, thank you, mr. chairman. i have an amendment to the rule. i move the committee make an order and give the necessary waiverers for the amendment to s 612, representatives jones, number three, which will make the provisions permanent for projects financed through the epa's drinking water fund and i ask for yes vote.

>> thank you very much. you've heard the motion from the gentle woman from new york. is there a discussion on that amendment? seeing none, say aye. >> roll coal vote. >> miss fox, no. >> mr. cole, no. mr. woodall. no. burgess, mr. burgess, no. stivers, collins, no. mr. burn. mr. burn, no. mr. new house, no. slaughter. >> aye, to make american great again. >> mr. mcgovern. >> mr. hastings, mr. polis aye, no. >> mr. chairman, no. >> report the total. >> three ayes, eight nayes. [ inaudible ] >> myself, number one, which

would allow the h 2 b returning worker exception that's in current law to continue for the duration of the cr and again, i spoke to this briefly, but i couldn't argue how important this is for my district. it is important to have this stability. it does expire. it was in the bill. if -- without this, many companies in my district will be forced to cut their american workers, have a negative impact on the economy, and by the way, for each worker, 4.64 american jobs are created and we see that everyday in companies like richards, that without the workers, there is no role for american supervisors and formen and it is so important for tourism areas like vail and

breckenridge. i yield back my time. >> thank you very much. mr. polis, i want you to be aware, given myself time, there were a number of colleagues who most respectfully not only presented their arguments, but specifically addressed issues back home. i received a number of calls from dallas, texas about this. i've received a lot of information, and i do want to thank you, not only for your feedback, but i want you to know that this new opportunity that will occur next year, this cr is until april 28th i believe, there will be committee action that will happen as quickly as we get back fid do you rememb.

the fiduciary committee would be the proper committee. okay, the vote will be on the -- those in favor, say aye. those opposed, say no. roll call. >> miss foxx. >> no. >> mr. cole, no mr. woodall no. mr. burgess, mr. burgess no. mr. stivers, no. mr. collins, no. mr. burn, no. mr. new house. aye. slaughter, aye. mr. mcgovern, hastings, polis, aye. mr. chairman, report no. >> total? >> the amendment has not agreed, seen none, the vote will be on the motion from the gentle woman from north carolina. those in favor, aye? >> aye. >> no? >> ayes have it.

the gentleman from georgia, mr. woodall will be handling it for republicans. and mrs. slaughter will be handling it for the democrats. i want to thank the committee. we have no scheduled meetings for the rest of the week or i believe the rest of the year. i want to thank all the members. we thank mrs. fox for her details. best of luck. we're finished for the year. >> thank you.

so that wraps up this meeting this afternoon of the house rules committee. we heard the chairman said it

should do it for the years for the house rules committee as they work on this funding measure that would fund the federal government past this friday, when the temporary spending bill currently enforced would run out. if you missed any of this, we'll have it for you on our website, c-span.org. this morning, our guest on "washington journal" tim ryan, talking about his a skrgenda, a his failed attempt to unseat nancy pelosi. >> a week removed from his unsuccessful attempt to unseat nancy pelosi. you said your 63 votes sent a message. remind us what that message was and what gives you confidence the message was heard? >> two things internally about reforms to our caucus, which the leader has adopted a good many

of those that were pushed from a lot of our newer members, open up the caucus, have people elected as opposed to just appointed, more communications chairs, dealing with getting our mess saej o message out. that was the internal stuff adopted in the last week or so, which i'm very pleased about. externally was our message. we weren't talking about economics, we were slicing and dicing the electorate, who black, who is white, who is gay, who is straight, you know. and then trying to talk to people just in that lane, and i wanted us to start talking about economics, the things that unite all of those people, you know. everybody wants a job. everybody wants higher wages, security, a good pension, good health care. when we talk like that, when we speak to the economic needs of people, because that's what is on their mind, then we connect better to them. and in the last week or two, i think we've been moving in that direction with our message.

so i consider it a success. >> are you happy with how the election was run a fairly short window there? you still got 63 votes to her 134, and one of nancy pelosi's comments against you during the election was that you couldn't even carry your own district for hillary clinton, saying why should you lead the democratic party? there was a story out from the "daily coast" noted that you did actually win your district by about five or six points. >> yeah, well, you know, i wasn't in charge of the national message. i wasn't in charge of saying, hey, we need to really hit the economic core here. we're not connecting the people. i tried my best. but when there a national message, ad buys and all the rest, that's out of my hands. there is a lot of members of congress who got elected and secretary clinton didn't do well in their congressional district. i don't think it is our job to help get them elected. my main point was look, we've got to get away from slicing the

electorate up. we've got to talk about jobs. we talk about the minimum wage, but we speak just to that. we're not talking about middle class wages and how we give people a raise. if you see the economic gains in the last 20 or 30 years, the bottom 90% of americans haven't seen anything. it went clearly to the top 10%. if you're not hitting that theme every single day when people are sitting at their kitchen table trying to figure out how they're going to make ends meet, pay for college, make house payments, there is a hole in the roof. those are things that are on people's minds and we've got to do a better job connects. >> if you see the democratic caucus optimistic that they're going to the in the past week, what do you do? is there something you can do inside the caucus? is there a coalition you can build? you've seen the conservative freedom caucus build a coalition on their side. and make changes policy changes

or at least move policy in a direction that they want to see go. is that something you could replicate among house democratics. >> we're having those con says n -- conversations now. there needs to be something internally to drive this message and keep our focus. leadership is about keeping the organization focused on task, on message, few filling the mission of the organization, and you know, we're having conversations now with a lot of the people who supported me publicly and supported me privately. >> congressman tim ryan is our guest from ohio. the youngstown area of ohio. the phone lines are open. democrats can call in at 202-748-8000, 8001 for the republicans, and 802 for the independents. viewers are calling in, i want

to get your thoughts on how donald trump is speaking that necessary sage that you've been talking about, specifically with his actions in recent days on the carrier deal. your thoughts on -- was that a policy win for him? was that more of an image win for him? >> well, i commend him for getting involved. i'm not one of those people who will bash him for trying to save jobs in america. i'm thrilled for the 1,000 people that are going to be employed there. i mean, we deal with that in my congressional district. i would be the first one calling the state folks who are in charge of tax incentives and all of that to put together a deal for a company leaving my district. but it is not a sustainable model for us. we need to have national policies that incentivize companies like carrier to be here in the united states to invest here in the united states. we need a national manufacturing

policy. we need a national jobs policy. we need to make sure every able bodied american can go to work and we're going to make sure that happens. so while i am glad and happy that this happened, you know, in a couple of months, donald trump is going to be president of the united states. he is going to be dealing with syria, isis, the middle east, a variety of other issues. he isn't going to be able to get on the phone and make calls. we just lost 1,200 jobs at our local gm plant, they laid off the third shift. this is happening. this happens in the economy. so while i commend the sentiment, i think the best thing we can do is sit down and figure out a policy to keep these companies and grow. >> jack is up here from providence, rhode island. good morning. >> good morning, gentlemen. let's lay it on the line here. the congressman is a nice guy

and i like him. but here's the situation. the democratic party, because i know, i worked on wall street for over 30 years, and did quite well. i reached the levels of middle management be now, he is smiling there, but there are things he cannot say, okay? the democratic party is under the control of coastal financial elites. the coastal financial elites, who i worked for, and they were good to me, controlled hillary clinton. okay, now, ohio went for the republicans because of what the congressman just described. you know, the working situation. but see, he can't say that, because if he says that, they'll come down on him like a ton of bricks. >> can you say that, congressman? >> i've said it. i said it in the last couple of weeks we have become a coastal party. and we have been perceived by many people in the country as

more concerned with fundraising, more concerned with, you know, being in a high dollar fund-raisers with celebrities than we have with being concerned with working class people and places like youngstown, ohio. it has been a problem. i've said it. i will say this too, though. we can't be hostile to business. clearly, we need to make sure that we have people who want to do business in the united states, want to invest in the united states. it is about bringing a level of fairness, and making sure we have growth that everyone can participate in. not just the top 10%. as i've said in the last 20 or 30 years, all of the income gains that went to the top 10%, and the people in my congressional district have seen flat line, not even really a cost of living. the other thing i don't like to talk about too, there are people on the coast who need us, who are working class people.

i would go on some of these tv shows in new york and i'm talking to the people behind the camera who are living paycheck to paycheck. there are wealthy people in new york and wealthy people in california, but there are a lot of working class people. so i don't want to get into completely dividing. this is about bringing everybody together. we're all americans, we want to play by the rules and you know, do well by our families. >> to the buckeye state. cincinnati, lawrence is waiting, line for independence. >> good morning, gentlemen. first off, to the congressman, i appreciate the fact that you ran against nancy pelosi, despite the outcome. it sent a message to your party that visionary leadership is needed. also, i could tell you, you know, i voted for barack obama twice. and this particular election, i went the other way, because i didn't think that the democratic nominee was really speaking to

the needs of our region. i could say i felt like i felt politics were being played to an extent i've never seen it before. i just want to get your comment on the identity politics within the democratic party, because i noticed that african-americans within our community, it is expected we're supposed to vote democratic, but not an all of us feel because of the identity politics being played. >> you ended up voting for donald trump? >> i did. >> there you have it, you know. that's exactly what i'm talking about. there is an african-american male in cincinnati, ohio, who voted for donald trump, because donald trump was speaking directly to his economic interests. there was an article, i think in the new york times a couple of weeks ago, about the dropoff in milwaukee with african-americans because of the same reason. so either they went and voted for trump, like there gentleman did, or they stayed at home. either way, it is an unsustainable model for democrats to think we're going to be a national party.

we've hallowed out middle america. we don't have much representation in any of those states. if you look in the last few years, we've lost 900 state legislative seats. we've lost, you know, i think it is 60-something state legislatures, 33 governors, 31 secretaries of state. we don't have anything down here in washington right now and we're soon to get a new republican supreme court nominee. we're getting slaughtered. and it is about being honest with each other as to what the hell happened with our party. i mean, this isn't -- this is a tough conversation to have, but we need to have it. >> fellow democrats who didn't vote for you, i believe it was 69 house democratic seats lost just since 2008, in the past four cycles. >> yeah. i think the sentiment, this is an internal election. this is much different than a popular election, and there are

a lot of internal dynamics about committee chairmanships, or getting on committees, and you know, speaker pelosi has had a lot of personal relationships with people. and i was trying to make the argument, this is not personal. this is about our party. and everyone has to be accountable for their position, their vote, the direction they want to see the democratic party. but i wanted to lay down the marker, saying this is what i believe, this is the direction i think we need to go in. and speak boldly about that direction. >> any concern on your part because you stuck your neck out that you could see some impacts on your committee seats, or that you might lose a post in the party? >> no, huh-huh. i mean, i was giving -- me and 62 others were giving voice to real concerns that we have. and you know, i think we represent a lot of people in the country who feel the same way. >> let's talk to a democratic.

sag harbor new york, fay, good morning. fay a fay, are you with us? >> let's go to joe in hackensack, new jersey. republican line. good morning. >> good morning. >> go ahead, joe, you're on with the congressman. >> how are you, sir? >> okay, just a little tip. i used to be a democratic, but i got to tell you, your party is taken over by the socialist end. i know you tried to defeat pelosi, but your party is done. it has gone so far to the left. your beliefs. all you do is go for welfare and killing babies. i mean, i don't know what's going to be with the democratic party. socialism hasn't worked any where in the world. >> well, look, we still have progressive values. i still do.

there are many issues that i'm very supportive of. we are not for socialism. but we are for economic security. we are for the average person having job security and increased wages and a secure pension and secure retirement and good healthcare. that's what we're for as democrats. we're also for creating the kind of economy that the millennial generation can move around in. it will be a much different economy, more mobile. we need to talk to them and others in the economy about portable health care, portable pensions, portable job retraining benefit, maybe even portable welfare benefits, because we need to allow people to maneuver in this dynamic economy. the problem is, many way, neither party is addressing the kinds of changes that need to happen in order to allow the economy to thrive. what i'm hearing from trump, too is i don't think it will have at that big of a difference. >> let's go to corey, santa fe,

new mexico. good morning. >> good morning, how are you? >> good morning. >> my question is given its effects on climate change and given that it is a model built on inequality, does the democratic party have any plans to replace capitalism, and if not, why not? >> well, no. the short answer is no, we're not going to replace capitalism. i think most people believe that capitalism is still the best system for us to have. the way it moves capital around the world, it has a lot of benefits, a lot of efficiencies as opposed to command control government run economy, period, end of story. but the capitalistic system isn't working for many americans, and it is our responsibility to make sure that people do have economic security, and what are the

policies we need to put in place. if you go back, you know, 100 years, 75 years, we needed social security to provide security for people who are going into retirement, because you can't work when you're older. medicare, so people had dignity and health care in their later years. medicaid, so if you were poor, you would still be able to have some health care. safety at the workplace, 40 hour workweek. pensions, all of these things came out of make the capitali capitalistic system, knocking those rough edges off and providing security. here we are again, high levels of income inequality, wages stagnant for 30 years, people are losing their pensions. we have to be aggressive, those of us in policy-making positions to have economic security. so capitalism needs to stay in place, but we need to be more proactive in addressing kind of those difficulties that come

with the capitalistic system. not ignore them. >> a lot of democrats want to talk to you. one of them is david in mount sterling, kentucky. >> good morning. good morning, tim. i'm sure glad that you're on this morning there, and i hope you don't cut me off there. on social security, 1935 there, the republican party voted against social security. 1965, they voted against medicare. tim, i appreciate you being on there, and i truly, i'm sure glad that you run against nancy pelosi, which i think the world of, but it is time to change. i hope you run for president in 2020. thank you. >> on your radar? >> no, not right now. i just got off a tough two week campaign. i can't imagine what that would look like. >> who is the face of the

democratic right now? >> i think it is in flux. i'm trying to provide some leadership in the last couple of weeks. and i'm happy to do that. i think it is time for people who have been around as long as i have and been in congress 14 years, politics 16 years, i think it is important for me to step up and others like me who have been around here for a little bit who have a unique blend of being younger, but also, having experience. and really, what this was about too, you know, the run against leader pelosi was trying to say, look, i was a little in my comfort zone too, you know. i've got three kids, two dogs, here three or four days a week, i hate not being with my family. and so you know, these campaigns can get tough. but you know what? we have to step up. it is time for people to step up. and challenged myself and did it, but i hope in some ways that challenged other people not just here in washington, but around the country. we need new leadership, we need

people to be excited about pushing progressive values and economically progressive values around the country. >> you talk about new leadership. what about old faces in the democratic party, there is a story from the hill, democratic lawmakers see a key role for joe biden after his time in the administration. >> i love joe biden, you know, i think the fact that he is signal to everyone, he is still in the game, and he has been saying this for the last six months or year. i'm not going anywhere, i'm going to be around. i love that about him. that's what we love about joe biden and democrats and we're x excited to have him out here. >> even though is isn't a new face. >> he was the guy we were bringing into union halls in youn youngstown, ohio. he really embodies what we stand for as democrats. >> a reminder to our viewers,

3:00 on the senate floor, a tribute to joe biden is expected. it is going to begin at 3:00. we'll find out when it ends, but we'll be carrying it live on c-span-2. neil is in augusta georgia, an independent. you're on with congressman tim ryan. >> thank you for your service, congressman. basically what my question is i think you've kind of got a movement inside the democratic party, and i think this also is a movement ensued the republican party for more like a third party system of independence. it could be a counterweight against the democrats, and the republicans. and my question basically is i think you could be the face of that, simply because you know, you got 63 votes and i'm sure you could have got 80 or 90 if everybody wasn't afraid of the party basically, the money. and my question is, would you be willing to go that route, and

look out for the american public, versus the parties? >> well, i understand that sentiment of people really getting tired of both parties at this point. i think there is an independent flavor happening in our politics today. but i am a democratic. i believe in the democratic party. i believe in the values of the democratic party. i've seen what the democratic party can do when it gets itself focused on the issues that really, really matter to all americans. and you know, i'm going continue to be a democratic and stay a democratic, although as you've seen in the last couple of weeks, i'm not afraid to have an independent voice and it is important for us to do what president obama has asked us to do, and i know there is a lot of ret particular, but we need to very closely evaluate what his proposals are once they land on a sheet of paper and presented

to us at the capitol to look and ask the question, will this benefit my constituents, if it can, we're going to respect what the american people have done, many have disagreed with it president-elect trump, but we have an obligation to sit there and try to figure out if it is good for our people, and we have an obligation to support it. >> should there be less time spent ringing hands about donald trump tweets by democratic party leader. >> i think to a certain extent, i understand what the media is saying that, you know, this is the only way he is communicating with us right now, and the media has an obligation to provide a lot of criticism, and critique. that's what their role and your role and your responsibility is. but you know, clearly, he is having a bad news cycle, and he tweets something about flag burning, and it is a constitutional issue, so the

media feels obligated to address it. this is a first amendment issue. you know, we're -- we're the defender of the first amendment. we've got to address it. so everything shifts and he knows what he is doing. he is very good at this stuff. and you know, i think you have to be careful, but we're, i think we're all going to get used to this, and we have to stay focused on what the real issues are. we can't just because donald trump has a very small attention span, and kind of gets tossed around, we've got to stay focused, and that's what the american people want us to do. >> line for democrats, june is in fairfax, virginia. june, go ahead. >> yes, representative tim ryan, i'm so proud of you as a democratic and a person who leans independent. i wish you had been on the ticket. i'm very proud of you running against nancy pelosi. i think she had her time.

i think your voice of reason would have been a much better hope for us to have moderation in congress, and find compromises that work for the american people. i hope you stay in politics. and i wish i had been one of your constituents and could have vot voted for you. >> robert is in pinehurst. >> good morning, i have a question for the representative. we talk about economic security and we talk about capitalism. you know, capitalism to me is a system that has -- it is the only one out there. it is not perfect, but better than anything else out there. in america, we don't have capitalism per se. we have something between capitalism and socialism. economic security is to me something that is pursued by the individual that government cannot guarantee. so my question to the representative is, if you are

different from nancy pelosi and other democrats, how so? as far as economic security and capitalism? >> well, let me first just disagree with you a little bit on the idea that the government, us collectively, don't have a role in providing economic security that that's clearly an individual responsibility, which for the most part, it is. but coming from an area and you probably know this in north carolina, you know, maybe not necessarily pinehurst, but in north carolina, where you have people working 30 or 40 years in a factory pay into a pension, their money when they're negotiating the contract, they say don't give me wages right now. set this aside to the company, take this money, and invest it. i want it back in 30, 40 years. that contract was broken, and many people in places like youngstown, ohio, lose their pension. i believe the government has a responsibility to step in, because the government is just us acting collectively as a

society. saying wait a minute, that's wrong. they paid into a pension, and we need to make sure it is secure. so i think we do have an obligation. same with health care. just because you grow up poor or health care costs are too much for you to afford, we have an obligation in the wealthiest country that god has ever created in the history of our planet to make sure everybody has some basic health care, some preventative health care. i do this i we have an obligation do that. that doesn't mean you have to get rid of the capitalist particular system. you don't. provide security around it so there is humanity in our system and not just, you know, profits and not just efficiencies, because in many ways, profits and efficiencies lead to a collapse of the economy, like we saw, you know, where people were chasing their self-interests. i remember reading a column about this prime mortgage. it is like everyone chased their

self-interest right offer the cliff. that's exactly what happened. we have a responsibility to come together through our government, through our legislative bodies to provide some security. and policy wise, you know, there is, like, again, i'm a progressive. but i want us to focus more on being economically progressive and not just, you know, socially progressive. people want a job. they want higher wages, go on a vacation, and they don't want to have to work 80 hours a work, they missed the school play, soccer match, because they have to work so much to pay the bills. that to me is not the kind of america that many people want to live in. >> the tar heel state, beverly is in hurtford, north carolina. a democratic. good morning. >> good morning, how are you? >> hi, beverly. >> i'm calling because i'm hearing black people call in and saying that they didn't like hillary and so they voted for trump. obviously they didn't listen to mr. trump when he was running.

he is -- what can i say about him? he is an egotistical idiot as far as i'm concerned. the democratic party has not changed. it has always been for the little man. now, maybe because we lost this election, everybody is going crazy. america is full of hatred. that's why trump won. as far as i'm concerned. and also, i'm sorry you lost, but i think most people felt that because we did win the popular vote by millions, we really didn't win -- we really didn't lose. so we'll go through this another time and maybe the next time, you win. thank you. >> thanks. i would just say, it wasn't really about only 2016. clearly, presidential elections affect congressional down ballot

elections. this is about 2010, didn't win enough seats in 2010, 2012, we barely won seats. it is about 33 governors are now republican. and 31 secretaries of state, and all of this, we've been demolished. >> to go back to her comments, was hate the reason donald trump won? >> well, look, i think there were elements. david duke endorsed donald trump and tweeting the white supremacist rhetoric and that's repu repungnant to a lot of us. a lot of people voted for barack obama twice, and then voted for trump, an african-american. saying we can't put these in little boxes to make ourselves feel better, you know. yeah, of course, david duke --

there was an element in his campaign that we totally disagreed with and we will try to keep that suppressed in our society, because it has no place in a diverse country like the united states. but there were a lot of people who were feeling pain and hurt and not making ends meet. and we've got to be there, not just say you're racist. look, you voted for obama twice in ohio. in pennsylvania. in michigan. in wisconsin. we lost these states. and it wasn't just because of that. that was an element of it. but most people are not racist, and most people want a job. they felt like we weren't talking to them. >> once more to north carolina. bill is in wilmington, an independent. go ahead. >> good morning tim ryan. >> good morning. >> as a general motors retiree, an ex-youngstown, resident, i'm going to make a brief story. i spent most of my working life

living in youngstown, one block from gypsy lane on a street that just ran between elm and logan. when i decided to stay in youngstown, i looked around, i said we have three major hospitals here. we have the youngstown state university. one mile down the road. we have commercial sharing, general fireproofing, all of this. and i thought, what could go wrong. well, i left skid marks getting out town ten years ago. the first time in ten years, i rode down my street. one block from gypsy lane, it looked like a war zone. what i'm saying is not geared to republicans, democrats. it is geared to everybody involved. where have all you people been for the last 40 years? if i can live there and watch that city fall apart around me, surely, somebody else could have. and it is just, you could take youngstown, detroit, dayton, i don't care where you take it. this just never should have

happened. somewhere along the line, business, government, people, unions, everybody should have been getting together and saying look, we've got a potential problem and we need to solve it. and it just didn't happen. >> well, i'm going to say two things. one is there say lot of positive things going on in youngstown. it is a tale of two cities like most cities you mentioned. we've got the number one university affiliated incubator in downtown that is getting international acclaim in the last two or three years, starting business software jobs. we have president obama first manufacturing, innovation manufacturing which is an area of the economy projected to grow about 25% a year for the next ten years. so we're making these investments, working closely with the university. we have president jim trestle there, the former coach at ohio state and now youngstown state

university. working very, very closely with him and the university to continue to try to grow new sectors of the economy. but you hit on something that i want to talk about. we need to figure out in this country if we are committed to rebuilding the united states of america. we have got to rebuild the country. we have a concentration of wealth, as i've said a couple of times already, where over the last, you know, 20 years or 30 years, that all of the income gains went from the 90% of the people in our population who used to get the income gains to the top 10%. we have got to ask those folks to help us rebuild the country. jobs that can't be outsourced. yes, it is infrastructure, roads and bridges, but it is also broad band, moving to a renewable clean energy economy. it is also building out the grid. all of these jobs cannot be outsourced to klechina.

it is by moving to a clean energy economy, where we'll build wind turbines and solar panels, knowing they have 8,000 component parts, aluminum, steel, concrete, hydraulics, things we make in all of these places. if we move to a clean energy economy, we can build out a new manufacturing base. advanced manufacturing. high end manufacturing, aero space. we've got to be committed to rebuilding the united states. water lines, sewer lines, making sure there isn't lead in our drinking water lechlt's rebuilde country and get people back to work. i think most people would be excited about it. it is going to lift people's wages. put people to work. every able body american can go back to work, period. that's what democrats are for. and that's how we fix the economy. >> just about five minutes left with the congressman. joe is waiting in miami,

florida. a democratic. >> can we go to miami, florida? >> how you doing? >> i've heard the deal that there is $26 trillion off shore hidden. problem is, 322 million people in the country and an economy that runs for $100 million. the other thing that keeps capitalism going is demand. and if you don't start getting money in the people's hands for paying them $20 an hour, this country is finished. have a good day, sir. >> amen. demand side economics. that's what i'm talking about. we've got to figure out how to get the money, get people back to work, living wages, union jobs. with union wages and union pensions. unions have been really set aside, even in many ways in the democratic party, we're afraid to talk about the men and women in the building and construction trades, the men and women that are steelworkers, people who take showers after work who don't want to be retrained to run a computer. they want to run a backhoe.

they want to sling cement. >> you mentioned earlier that you're in discussions at least with those who supported you in your run for house party leader to see if there is some way to try to keep that message going. so what do you need to see from nancy pelosi to ensure that that message continues? how soon do you need to see it before the discussion you were talking about goes to action something like some sort of freedom caucus inside the democratic caucus? >> well, i think we need to talk, and the conversations i've had with the people who are now taking over the message through the democratic policy committee are very focused. from my conversations with them, on the economic message. they recognize how important it is. ben louhon, d triple c, vo ve focused on economics, he is ready, set go, to make it happen. a lot of other changes need to

happen, but ben ray is focused. what i would like to do is pull people together and really create in some sense an ideas committee. you know, i want the democratic party to be the party of ideas. the economy is so dynamic. it is changing in so many ways, talking about additive manufacturing, the whole maker movement, etsy stimulating commerce and small businesses and startups all across the united states. what are the policies we need to have in place to grow out this newy con me. you look at the issue of food and local food and farm to table and farm to school, and you know, how do we help that sector of the economy grow. we see these huge high rates of diabetes happening, many of these folks are on the medicaid program. many of them are kids on the medicaid program, in schools that we feed nothing but sugar. >> i guess the question -- >> what's the why idea that will

solve some of these problems. >> how much time do you give the party leadership to hit the ground running with it before you go perhaps outside the usual party structure to try to push them to do it? >> i think we do it now. i don't think there is any time to wait. there is no -- it is not like well, we've got enough good ideas. we're fine. everybody needs to be working to push out this message and i don't think there is any time to wait. >> go back to ohio. novelty, ohio. mark, an independent. good morning. >> good morning. thank you for c-span. thank you mr. ryan for your service. >> thank you. >> basically, going back a few other callers ago that brought up the fact that we're not capitalistic, and we're mo because of school funding, we get rid of stuff like this, people are going to have more money in their pocket. let the corporations pay for the schools. let's get back to the

constitution, because we're not supposed to be doing things the way we're doing things according to the constitution. it would help out the average american greatly. >> are we doing too much? >> i'm not exactly sure. >> too far from the constitution? >> i think maybe in some regards we are and some regards we weren't. you can't have blanket statements like that but i think corporations funding schools solely is really not the way to go. there is a real value in public education. a real value, you know, corporation may not want to teach history or whatever the case may be that helps people. the arts help us con tribute to society. maybe a work force development system, not getting people for trained for jobs coming up and that's where donald trump came in and said i'm going to help you get a job. and we were talking about retraining. and that's part of the disconnect.

>> last call. a democratic, gary, go ahead. >> good morning, guys. mr. ryan, in the name of the grassroots movement and all respects, i salute you. you're friend of the people. and i have heard people say that republicans and democrats come from the same cloth. when i listen to you talk, i have a hard time believing that. i am i'll make this quick here. want you to explain to some of these people who say when we send jobs overseas, it is our chance to make money. please explain to these people why that is wrong. thank you. >> you have a minute to do it. >> well, you're exactly right. i think part of the problem we have is there has been so many incentives to move jobs overseas. we've seen so many factories from ohio in the mid to late '90s go right over the border in mexico and ship the very same product back. we had workers who had to go down to mexico and train the workers. my cousin worked at a company, his last act for the company, was to unbolt the machine, and

ship it off to china. those are the kind of things, the kind of traumatic events that folks are going through. that's why i'm saying as democra democrats. the centerpiece needs to be getting revenue from those people who have sent our jobs overseas. and hallowed out the united states to fund a jobs program and a massive rebuilding effort here in the united states to knock down dilapidated buildings, to make sure our downtowns are fresh and spruced up and police and fire folks on call ready to go and serve that country. that we pay our teachers more. that we have revenue to make sure that startup businesses can get capital to grow the economy, clean water lines and sewer lines, make sure every kid has safe drinking water, and not lead paint in the old homes. we need to ask people who have shipped the jobs overseas and seen a huge increase in profits to help us pay for that. that's the new democrat

particuldemocratic party. >> come back and talk to us again. >> thanks. c-span "washington journal" policy issues that impact you. coming up thursday morning, oklahoma republican senator, james langford will join us to discuss unnecessary or excessive federal spending. california democratic mark desonia, examining president-elect trump financial interests. and house democrats agenda in the next congress. be sure to watch c-span "washington journal" beginning thursday morning. join the discussion. all day saturday, american history tv on c-span three is features programs about this week's 75th anniversary pearl harbor. national archives, christopher

carter, reads from deck logs, describing events on ships under attack in pearl harbor, followed by the casualty burial at the arlington scemetery. his remains were recently identified 75 years after the attack. then at 9:00, tour pearl harbor attack sites on the eye land of awahaa. december 8, 1941 speech to congress, asking for a declaration of war. followed by the pearl harbor 75th anniversary ceremony. co-hosted by the national park service and the u.s. navy. from 11:00 to 1:00, we're taking your calls and tweets. war at sea in the pacific, 1941-42, discussing the pacific war from the attack on pearl harbor through the u.s. victory over the japanese at the battle of midway. we're live with paul traf verse,

eyewitness to infamy, an oral history of pearl harbor, december 7, 1941, behind the scenes account, from his more than 200 interviews. then at 1:00, the pearl harbor, 75th anniversary ceremony in washington, d.c., with remarks by arizona john mccain. saturday, on american history tv on c-span 3. often when you look at a project, you look afterwards to see whether you've achieved your objectives and at what costs. and so i wanted to see through this last half century of military interventions, partisan politics aside and morality aside, what happens after the party is over. what are the after affects of war. what are the human and financial costs on both sides. >> sunday night on q & a, media entrepreneur and travel writer, brian gruber discusses his

latest book, a global walk about through a half century of u.s. military interventions, which chronicles his travel experiences affected by u.s. involved conflicts. >> i went to all these places, of course, we come with some form of bias, but i went to all these places with an open mind, again, trying not so much to understand what a partisan point of view might be or be validated, but to look at was the mission accomplished, and what were the costs on both ends of the gun barrel. >> sunday night at 8:00 eastern on c-span, q & a. congress is set to take up a bill authorizing water infrastructure projects, melanie zinona, your article, congress strikes deal on water bill with flint aide focuses on the legislation for flint, am itmic. what were the major differences between the house and senate on

funding for flint? who were the lawmakers that made the deal come together? >> we saw two separate versions the water bill passed. the house version contained $170 million in authorizations, where the lead contaminated community of flint, michigan. the senate actually appropriated an fully paid for $220 million for a communities all over the country that are facing a similar drinking water crisis. some of the leaders that we've seen on this issue include dan kildee of michigan, he worked directly with house leadership to craft an amendment for the house bill. and on the senate side, we've seen debbie stagnaw and peterson work on this issue. >> you mentioned dan kildee, were they pleased with the end product? >> well, they wanted a higher number. so first of all, the number that we ended up getting was $170 million. but the other sticking point, it is only an authorization.

as opposed to an appropriation in this final bill with the goal of the appropriation being on the continuing resolution, which is also set to be vote on this week. now, the issue here is that in order to spend the money on the cr, it needs to be authorized on the water bill. it is important that both of these pieces of legislation pass in order to deliver the aid to flint. >> this bill also includes language regarding the california drought with the state's two democratic senators taking opposite sides on this issue. your article entitled "senate damns may block water bill over drought language" focuses on the differences. what is going on? >> senator boxer has come out and said she'll fielt ght it to and nail and not allow the language. it was included on the last minute. it provides drought relief to central and southern california. kevinen mccarthy has been

pushing for this. her colleague also a democratic, senator feinstein, said i'm going to support this, it is not perfect. it is better than nothing. and she is worried that if it doesn't pass this year, the drought relief, trump administration she says it may be more harmful to the environment. >> what is the white house saying about the bill. >> we haven't seen the official policy as of 4:30 today, but we heard josh earnest, the white house secretary, tell reporters that they're very concerned about the drought language, but didn't go as far as saying they're going to she a veto threat. >> tell us more about some of the water projects that are in this bill. how many are they? are there? who would build these infrastructure projects? >> these are army corps of engineer projects, nearly 30 of them amounting to nearly 12 billion in authorizations, and it is really a wide range from

ports, damns, infrastructure, water related improvements all across the country. this is something the water bill has done every two years, on a two year cycle. leaders are happy to get back i. so that's large companies, could some of this go out to smaller construction outfits? >> it's all over the board but democrats have been pushing for a provision called the buy america amendment that would have required all projects for the drinking water to be american made u.s. steel and iron. >> melody writes for the hill. she is on twitter at mzanona, thank you very much, melanie, for joining us. >> thanks so much. >> c-span student camp documentary contest is in full

swing. this year we're asking students to tell us what's the most important issue for the new president and the new congress to address in 2017? joining me is ashley leave, her documentary is help for homeless heroes. ashley, tell us about your student documentary? >> so my pan and i produced a documentary where we covered issues of homeless veterans on the streets of orange county, california. we decided that these sort of people who have fought for our country, who have given their all for our country and the fact that they are now living on the streets, knots having family, not having anyone who cared for them were not ok. so we decided we're going to talk about this issue within our community and we decided to make a c-span documentary about it. i encourage all seniors in high school, encourage even juniors in high school, even middle schoolers to use this platform to speak your voice, to raise your voice, to say that your

generation deserve to be heard in the government, and if there is a better place to speak these issues, this is it. i think my advice for the students who are on the fence or starting this documentary is to really look into your community and see what is affecting those who are around you. they are the one who you love. they're the one who you see the most. they're the one you are around the most every day. so if there is an issue that you see happen every day on the street, that's probably where you can start. be a part of this documentary, because you want to be a voice for your community. >> thank you, ashley, for all of your advice and tips on student cam. if you wane more information on the contest go to our website studentcam.org. . >> the house rules committee

debated a recall and approved a bill one authorizing the water bill we heard the reporter speaking about and another that would extend government funding. this is two hours. >> come to order. thank you very much for joining us today. the opportunity that we have to be together for this meeting will include two specific pieces of legislation that this committee will be handling. the first will be the amendment hr 2028, further continuation and security appropriation act of 2017 as well as s612, the water infrastructure improvements for the nation act. the senate amendment to 2028 contains a short-term continuing resolution to maintain funding at the current budget cap level

of 1.07 trillion until april 28th, 2017. this legislation includes overseas contingency operation funds, including $5.8 billion for the department of defense and 4.3 billion for the state department to support military efforts in the fight against isis and other threats that are being made against this nation and to support the readiness of our troops, wherever they may be in harm's way in light and in darkness and in heat and in cold, as they protect this great nation with their faithful missions that stand before them. the second bill under consideration, the water infraainfra infraare structural amendment addresses the need of american harbors, locks, dams, flood protection, other water resources that protect our infrastructure, that are critical to the nation's

economic growth, health, and competitiveness. there's been a lot of work done on this bill also, and we're pleased to know that it will be before us today. this legislation follows a strong bipartisan reforms included in the water resources form and development act of 2014 and adheres to the process congress established in the 2014 law for oversight, review and legislation of the water resources development activities of the corps of engineers. i'd like to welcome some of my favorite chair american back to the rules committee today. my big brother fred upton, bill shuster the gentleman from pennsylvania is here. bob bishop who has graduated from the rules national resources committee. among my favorite of all the chairmen in this house, you know that the work's going to get done when these chairman have

shown up. they've done their homework and done their work on a bipartisan basis. they're making sure that the best interest of the taxpayers are taken care of but we're going to move forward with great exuberance to unleash an opportunity for the american people to know this the people's work has been accomplished. i also want to thank the gentleman from pennsylvania, mike doyle. coach, thank you for being here. if you'll take this seat up here, we appreciate it. before we come to you without objection, we look forward to your testimony. we're going to defer to the gentlemen woman, the young woman from new york for any statements she'd choose to make. >> the young couldn't make it today. >> well, you're here, luis, and that's good enough for me. >> i have no opening statement. i'd just thank you as usual for your good work. thank you. >> thank you. >> and i will put peter's statement in in a little bit. >> good. thank you very much.

look, she's not here yet. lot of members are busy this afternoon, but we're going to also wish virginia fox the very best. these flowers that are here in celebration of virginia's years of service not only to this committee but also to the house of representatives. mrs. fox will be leaving the rules committee to resume her own chairmanship. she will be doing this january 3rd but until then she'll have to put up with some flowers and kind words. we'll wait until she gets here to do that. we're going to open testimony on s612 that is all -- i did ask mr. doyle to please come forth and i'll ask him again. mike, do you mind sitting there? yes. we're going to share that microphone. you're into sharing today. >> sure. >> good. ok. i'm going to first go to the gentleman from pennsylvania, the gentleman, chairman of the committee, the gentleman mr.

shuster's now recognized. >> thank you very much chairman sessions. and for the record i'd like to point out that my colleague from pennsylvania is the manager of the other team, not just the coach. so i just want to make that clear. he didn't get demoted, did he mike? >> i can make sure you got the green lights on. thank you very much. >> i want to thank the rules committee for considering s612, water -- the water infrastructure improvement for the nation or the win act. this prehencive bill includes water resources development act as title i and i want to thank ranking member defazio for working on it and the ranksing member will present his statement for the record. appreciate that. however, this is a bigger -- bigger than just that. i want to thank mr. upton,

chairman up torn and bob bishop for working with me and this is an example of where we have shared jurisdiction, where we worked very well together and there is no need for us to take he'd of each other's jurisdiction. we can come together and work together to get this type of legislation done, so it's been a great pleasure working with these two gentlemen. want to thank our counterparts in the senator for working with us on this. i'm not going to describe the two chairmen's titles i'm sure they do it. but the win act includes the water resources and development act which was pasted 399-25. this provides important direction for the congress to improve our infrastraur. strengthsens america's competitiveness. the act maintains congress's authority to ensure that our infrastructure is safe and

effective. i hope we as we move forward in congress i hope we continue to claw back our constitutional authority so that it has to go through congress and not just through the bur rock ra sis downtown. we've increased transparency and have been powering the congressional authorization process. this bill contains authorization for eight authorization reports for projects across the united states. all corps projects are locally driven, reviewed by the corps of engineers, presented to congress for consideration for water bills. these improvements are critical, local and regional priorities that provide environmental and economic benefits. just an example of some of the provision that positive impact regions and states throughout the country. the authorization for the everglades port, port everglades. authorization for boston harbor.

provision pertaining to a kettiwick man. core facilities for colorado and other states to benefit. an authorization for upper ohio river, authorization for headquarters that cover western new york and massachusetts and many, many more. these and other provisions aren't critical just for parts of the country. they're important for the nation as a whole. it reduces barriers for state local and other -- this is also physically responsible. we deauthorized $10 billion and we authorized just shy of 10 billion. so they're fully off set. further, the bill reduces the deficit by over half a billion dollars. the bill sunsets new authorizations to help prevent future backlogs and the act contains no earmarks.

i don't know if i'm particularly that happy about that you be i needed to say it. today's legislation restores -- >> thank you very much. >> today's legislation restores regular order. the two-year cycle of congress consider these bills this has been one of my top priorities. i think that record is unacceptable. every delay in regulatory passing a bill places america another step behind competitors. next year we plan on moving another water bill. this maintains our competitiveness by restoring regular order and getting congress back to the two-year cycle. thank you for considering this. i ask my colleagues to support worda and the win able to. >> thank you. i want to take a second and tell you that this committee has missed you. we're proud of the work you're doing in natural resources or at least most of the members are

pleased where your work. we're going to give you a chance to defend that now. the gentleman is recognized. >> thank you, i think. our section of this bill probably dwarves the other section of the bill as far as the number of pages there and clearly subtitle c is easily the best part of the they'll be we are n presenting. ok. which happens to be mine for the 19 states that are helped with this, 17 of them are found in the west. plus indian country statement. this bill specifically goes back to help native americans by repairing or authorizing the repairing of their aged dams and irrigation va nals. it finalizes native american rights in florida, oklahoma, and montana and has some land exchanges and transfers to

native american communities which are successful. it goes to lake tahoe with additions to this bill. it also helps other communities in the west that battle the drought simply by authorizing storage and even local alternatives like desal niceation, but the bachk premise is simply the water is going to be raining down. catch it before it goes away and store it for the future. i hope you golt the idea that we have an indian water settlement in oklahoma. want to make that very clear. [inaudible]. >> also also the ability of getting provisions in there so that if you have a project and wish to pay it back early, it authorizes you to do that. that could bring up to $6 million yearly. this has been noeshlted with the

ssh senator from california, a democrat in favor of it as well as the minority leader from our side, a republican from california. they've been able to come up with elements of the bill we passed, taking out many of the controversial parts and the things we've agreed upon by those two individuals which is a very good step forward and it does so without undermining the endangered species act. that's not a way of validing and applauding this, but simply as a matter of fact. i would be happy to but this doesn't do it. that section of it's been endorsed from everything that the council of american indians to the family farm alliance and it's been vetted. i think it's a good addition to the bill. i'll answer questions when that time comes. >> you're joined by the gentleman from pennsylvania and i know that both of you enjoy

the opportunity of being here today. i'm going to defer to the gentleman from michigan first and then come back to the gentleman from pennsylvania who i believe has the amendment that he would like to seek this committee to move forward with, so we're going to have you wait for just a second, if we can, sir, chairman upton, you're recognized. >> thank you mr. chairman. i'm going to submit my statement for the record and say a couple of things. first of all, this bill is fully offset. second, including a new program to provide grants to small and economically disadvantaged communities in general compliance with the general water act perform angsz. we have a program for flinlt. i know that we all care about flint. and i want to compliment the efforts of dan kilde who brought it to our attention and seeing legislation that we think can reach the president's desk.

with mr. kilde, you can point the finger at all elements of government for flint. we learned sadly that then epa knew about this as well. one of the things we passed on the house floor and every member on this committee voted for it. for 12 to two we mandate that when a federal agency is aware of contamination of water they literally within 24 hours have to notify the governor and the state. that language is included in this bill. i want to thank mr. shutter as we worked really well together on this to get it in the last couple of days of this congress. as it relates to the aid oov communities like flint, in essence it's a two-stage

process. one, it's norgs pardon of the worda authorization. the other is the money, the front of the check. that's in the cr and i want to complement speaker ryan for continuing his pledge to make sure that there is the money that is going to be there. we authorized a hup million dollars in additional capitalization grants in state loan funds to aid states where the president has dlashd a disaster related to public health threats associated with the presence of led or other drinking water contaminates in the public water system. we authorized another 20 million for the creation of a committee at the cdc. we also boosted the childhood led poisoning program at the cdc and hoped start an initiative at the department of hdas. what we're seeing is what happened in flint can happen in other places and we want to help those communities as well. that's why the k ilde-upton bill

passed with such a large margin. last but not least after effort we're closer than ever to enact reforms concerning coal ash. i'd like to say that section 2301 provided for the establishment of a state and epa permit for a coal combustion standards. i can say with an absolute straight face this this was a bipartisan solution. i want to particularly thank chairman shuster for the work we did together and i look forward to speaking for the bill on the house floor. >> thank you. welcome to the rules committee. >> thank you. >> we're delighted you are here. we don't see as much as we wish you would come. the gentleman is recognized. >> thank you, ranking member slaughter, members of the committee. thank you very much for considering my bipartisan amendment which i'm offering

with my good friend walter zones joenls from north carolina. i think this will make a good bill even better. let me say so you for the record that i believe that penn state and michigan should have been in the final four. >> would you yield? >> yes. >> i was on the super committee few years ago. that was going to be an amendment at the end. the cubs and the wolverines were going to be in the playoffs no matter what. i would look out for you. >> i want the record to reflect that those two teams got hosed and ohio state shouldn't be in it. >> if they bring a resolution praising ohio state they better know the name of the ref. >> i'll get back to my amendment. thank you. this is simple. all this is going to do is codify the bye america provisions for the epa's drinking water fund, making them

permanent. this isn't something new. thlt merely brings them into line with all other federal infrastructure programs. other clean water programs like the epa's clean water safe revolving funneled and the invasion act programs have permanent buy america provisions. other major taxpayer finance programs like the department of transportation's funneleding for highways, transit, rail. the senate voted 95-3 to make the buy american requirement for the drinking water state revolving fund permanent. for some reason, that got changed in this bill to a provision with just a one-year extension i believe this undercuts our if steel industry, our iron industry, our cement industry and the workers that support it nationwide.

our country depends on good manufacturing jobs to support their families and this amendment would give those families peace of mind. chairman shuster knows we watch commercials in western pennsylvania during this presidential election where our president-elect says he wants to build america's ra infrastructure and he wants to use american steel to do that. i agree with the president-elect on that. we should be using american steel. our tax dollars should support american manufacturers and help preserve these communities across the nation that are struggling. my colleague congressman jones and i both think that the workers in these industries deserve more certainty that a permanent extension would give them. we don't want to sigh our tax dollars going to buy chinese steel. there's overcapacity in the chinese steel market. it gets dumped over here below the cost of production. i think it's time that -- most americans will tell you if we're going to use our tax dollars to

deliver infrastructure projects we'd like to see us buy american steel. so mr. chairman this is a simple amendment. it strikes the 2017 makes this permanent, brings its into line with all the other programs, mirrors the overwhelming bipartisan support it got in the senate and gives our steel producers and workers some certainty about their future. i hope you would take this under serious consideration and i would be happy to yield to my good friend walter jones who's my co-sponsor of the amendment. if you'd like to add to that. >> thank you very much. i'd welcome the gentleman from north carolina joining us and i apologize. i should have equated these two together. walterer and i rode up on the elevator and he told me with great enthusiasm about his ideas that he felt like were very much in line with not only bipartisan ideas but about american products and the gentleman from north carolina is recognized. >> i'm going to be very brief because mr. doyle told it all and there's nothing else i can

really add to it. but i do not understand why, with all the threats to our industry in america, with all the dumping that comes out of china, especially, this is an opportunity for this congress with a new president-elect, no matter how you might feel about this president, he godid make ts statement. we are going to rebuild america and we're going to rebuild this country with american products and as mike said, the american worker has a right to know what his future is, so i hope that this committee will give us a chance with this amendment to get it to the floor of the house and let all the members on the house floor make a statement for the american workers. thank you for giving me just a few seconds to speak. thank you very much. >> mr. jones, thank you very much. i will take the first question. mr. jones, i'd like to personally thank you for your service to this great nation, to the men and women of the marine

corps at camp lejeune, north carolina, day in and day out every time you're up here, i talk with you about your commitment to the men and women who protect this great nation. i have no doubt that what you're trying to bring to us today is a buy american product and it's not done with just responsibility, ice done with the conviction of the kind of men and women that represent this country and i want to thank you very much. gentlemen, i've equated myself with the package that you've got here. i appreciate your hard work. many mr. chairman shuster, i want to thank you for working with me and others. i think every single member of the house of representatives has something they needed to make sure got prioritized. i think you probably had more requests than abilities. needs always outpace resources, but i want to thank you for your

commitment to this body, republican, democrat, friend, foe, whatever it might be, for doing your job and i commend you for that and i want you to make sure you tell your dad i said hi. chairman cole. >> thank you mr. chairman. i want to begin by echoing your congratulations to all three of these chairmen for what they've managed to do here in very short order and accommodating some really important issues. very appropriately for me, obviously, the chickasaw-choctaw state of oklahoma water settlement is a model of how things ought to work but we got that done late. five years, but that's pretty quick for indian water settlement. but for us to work together to incorporate here at no cost to the federal government but it will settle some real issues in my state that require federal approval just because they've

all signed off and the administration still takes congressional approval, so that's a big deal for us. thank you for that. i also want to thank you -- there's all sorts of provisions in here for indian waters. pa changas has been up here, a number of other tribes, the definitional changes that allow tribes to be eligible to compete for projects that -- bid proposals for projects that historically impoverished communities. it's a huge change and a big change in the right direction. i want to again thank all of you for working with us on that. and finally, i want to echo my friend from michigan's words about the flint settlement. i mean, i couldn't agree more, mr. chairman. you're exactly right. this is a failure at multiple levels, federal, state, and local. our friends mr. killh mr. kilde

right. i commend the speaker. i know you made a commitment on this. it took all of you to honor the commitment. so thank you for that. i think it's a really good piece of work, given the challenges, jurisdictional and in terlsz of policy, particularly you, mr. shuster of getting a second water policy done, two in three years is quite a level of achievement. we thank you very much on these indian issues. you've worked tirelessly to solve some tough issues for us. and let us be in the position. so i think it's a good piece of work. i don't have any objections to anything in it. i'm like everybody else, i have another list that i'd like to

have in it but this is really, really well done. i look forward to giving you the kind of rule that you need to proceed with the excellent legislative effort that you've made on behalf of a lot of communities around the country. just again, it's extremely well done. so thank you very much. yield back. >> thank you very much, mr. chairman. i want to associate myself with your words of appreciation for the breadth that this bill took. thank you very much. gentlemen woman from new york. >> thank you. good work. i'm particularly happy with the work you've done on the great lakes, the restoration. it's terribly important. it's important to many of us with small harbors that you had 10% of money for dredging, which we hope means we won't be on our hands and knees to get a little brejing every year. and harbor maintenance, which i think is terribly important.

i certainly -- before i get any further with this, i really want to say i hope we do make an order, the buy american bill. i think it's important and i'd like to do it. we're not sure why you have for such a short duration in this bill or some reason we'd like to hear about but i'd like to make it permanent and if we could put that in order. also, we're concerned a little bit about the california, mainly because we hear from so many of our constituents and environmentalists that it's important. we've dealt with california water for a long time. am i right? i think probably the recommendation i can make is move where there's more water. i don't see a way that we're -- many as much as we cannot produce water. we cannot manufacture it. but that takes up an inordinate amount of time. i hope that doesn't sound unkind, because i appreciate they've got a problem there.

but i surely do wish they could settle it in sacramento and i'd be pretty happen about it. the coal ash rules i think were good. grad f glad for what you've done with flint. we don't want anymore led. in my mi any led in my mind is too much. we should vote how we want to, which is what we always do. he said the following language "house republican leadership stripped key democrat priorities and air dropped in trovrg priorities to appoint where the bill no longer represents the bipartisan traditions of american infrastructure." we know the legal conservation of voters is against and the national manufacturing

association and chamber of commerce support. with that, i will yield. >> gentleman from georgia. >> thank you, mr. speaker. i have the great honor of serving on the transportation community. it's been a great delight. i thought about what mr. doyle said about the ak sense of certainty has an impact on folks. we get this idea that there's one train leaving the station. as you said you didn't get everything you wanted, mr. speaker, but when you think there's only one train leaving the station, you end up fighting so much over the last seat, nobody gets that seat. he has done exactly that. i can look absolutely everybody in the eye, mr. speaker, who didn't get everything they wanted in this bill and said you've got a chairman who worked hard for you last cycle, this cycle and a chairman who's going to be back working hard for you next cycle, too. it is creating a culture of success, mr. speaker, that we

can benefit from not just on the transportation committee but all across this institution. just want you to know how much i have appreciated what you have done, not just for me as a member of the committee but what you have done for this institution by sticking to what you said you were going to do and making it something that we can rely on rs so that there is certainty for us and for our constituents back home. so thank you for that and congratulations. with that mr. speaker i yield back. >> thank you. gentleman from florida. >> thank you very much mr. speaker and gentlemen, i add my thanks for the extraordinary work that you all have done. i tracked a lot of it with many of you over the course of time and particularly florida specific projects port every glabds and the central everglades planning project as well as the picayune strand

areas that i'm delighted that are being addressed and i know that each of you have had. yield hearing about it. on port everglades i came here advocating that we should be able to make the necessary preparations for enhanced shipping in that area and toward that end, i am pleased that we finally come to that position that the army corps of engineer can stop studying and get on with the business of doing what's necessary there. colleague of mine from florida is very opposed to one issue that my good friend from georgia and i might be continuously concerned about, and that's the florida-georgia-alabama wars. i'm not talking about football

here. there's plenty -- [inaudible]. >> yeah. that war -- that war won't probably be over for some years to come. but you will not have my good graces as long as they play for it, i will be pulling for florida. but the florida, alabama, georgia waurp wars, mr. burn and my colleagues, i'm sure all of us are concerned about and i did hear that senator nelson and senator brooks are -- of alabama are upset with the inclusion of this language, and ms. shorter has spoken to and i echo the sentiments about the controversy over the california provisions and that does raise some concerns, but perhaps mr. bishop, you can help me if i address it to you. i may not have heard you

correctly, and correct me, that you don't feel that will this measure gets rid of or impacts in a negative way the edge dangd species act. >> that's -- >> then why do you think that certain of the senators are as upset as they are, such that they are making pronouncements, i might add, i don't care how long the other body stays here, i just want us to get out of here. but they're making statements along the lines that they would be oh boegz opposing it for a protracted period of time. have you had conversations with them on how to allay some of their fears. >> yes and no and you said that came from senators and that should have answered your question right there. >> up to a point, as a matter of

fact, there's a split between the two senators in california with reference to the measure that -- >> the element, though, of this provision is not the complete package that we passed in the house. it's a portion of it set going forward which is a good beginning to try to come to a solution. and when you get one senator and the majority leader agreeing to something, i think it's time to take yes for an answer. >> i hear you. i am very much supportive of the measure brought by our colleague and good friend mr. doyle and backed up and also brought by my good friend walter jones, and perhaps either of you can answer me. why did we not go the route of our senate who passed the buy america provision without a sunset? what's the reason for the

one-year sunset? chairman upton? >> you seem to know the answer. >> it just was the way that the members worked in trying to get it done before the end of the week. we had a lot of things on our plate. we had cures. thank you for your support, just passing the senate earlier 94-5. >> right. >> we had an engineergy bill wee working on. i like this will way we can individually work on the amendment. i think members may prefer that,versus having it included in the bill. >> i sure hope -- >> see where members are. >> i sure hope it's made in order, many of you will remember that our former colleague of ours jim traficon, every morning he made a speech about buy american. he kept that drum beat going and

we're just coming off a presidential election where the talk has been substantial on us dealing with buy america. nevertheless, i hope the amendment is made in order. i certainly intend to vote for it. and i thank you all for all the work that you've done. thank you very much. >> thank you very much. are dr. burgess. >> thank you mr. chairman and thanks to our chairman for being here. chairman upton cliegss on curio -- congratulations on cures. it's a big dealaged we're all proud that that has gone all the way down to the president's desk. i am grateful for the bill. there's one portion that catches my mind, bishop, i guess it's

title iv which is other provisions that follows your section, but it is out west. that deals with the gold king mines bill recovery, section 5004. i went out to silverton, colorado and witnessed what the devastation that was brought about by the environmental protection agencies when they lifted the roof or the bulwark off of the gulf king mind and allows all that water to -- all that water to discharge into the cement creek and the animus river. i got up in the mountains to see what it looked like. that was a disaster caused by the epa. they had no business doing that.

i'm glad this will help off set the costs. i'm grateful for the protection of the tax dare dollar. i guess my concern is we're not offsetting those funds from the operational budget of the environmental protection agency because they were directly responsible. yesterday in the oversight committee energy congress two assistant administers from the epa talking ablgtd how fines and penalties are necessity because of a nonautomotive manufacturer who they thawedthought had done something wrong and now this is necessary to keep anybody from doing anything wrong in the future. fines and penalties are appropriate for an automotive manufacturer why wouldn't it be ok for a government agency who caused a great deal of problem for everyone not just this colorado but are downstream in -- i think four states were

affected by this. i know you don't have an answer. but it's one of the frustrations we deal with up here. we'll hold private industry to account. ok. well and good, we should. a federal agency messes up, too bad. that's the cost of doing business with your federal government. i don't know if you have any views on that. >> that's part of the. [ inaudible ] >> yes, sir. >> i tend to agree with you. [ inaudible ] think we got into some kind of big debate about -- but it's something we can certainly review and [ inaudible ] >> well, thank you, chairman. >> since -- [ inaudible ] but our committee is the one that did the investigation. like you're saying spot on. this is not the vehicle to do that. but you're spot on.

there was -- they did it. they caused it. they knew what they did. they tried to cover it up. >> yes, they did try to cover it up. thank you for that acknowledgement. i would look forward to in next congress perhaps holding them to account. >> mr. pole is. >> thank you. some of the discussion seems to be around the buy america provisions and the duration. did the -- i was wondering if the committee did any hearings or work on those and if it found that the senate provision would drive up infrastructure or there was some down side in either cost or quality of the infrastructu infrastructu infrastructure. >> not really. i think it was under suspension. it sailed through with almost 400 boats. do you know what that was?

15. but it was -- didn't have a lot of attention so it was a relative new issue for us. the senate might have spent a little more time on it than we did but at the end, i think frankly this is a pretty good process where we could offer that amendment and let everyone vote their conscious and it passes, send it to the senate where i think -- i assume that they would accept it, too. >> thank you. yield back. >> ya yields back his time thank you very much. mr. burn. >> thank you mr. speaker. >> yes, sir. >> i was intemperate in my remarks earlier ability football but i got carried away in the skpirt of the moment. i hope everybody will forgive me for that. i say that with washington and ohio state right there. the football wars aren't truly over yet. i appreciate all three chairmen for the work you did on this. this is a hard bill, i know. last time it was hard then. i guess it will be hard every time. there's some things in here that are very form my district and i

want to thank you for that. i do want to speak in favor of two of the amendments. mr. hutchins has already alluded to 5u78d number two which is ms. graham's amendment, the water wars between florida and alabama. they do not affect my part of the state but i do want to speak on the that. the one we've had a lot of discussion on, mr. doyle and mr. jones' e-mailed regarding buy america. let me say one thing about that. >> china is producing more steel than there is total worldwide demand. there is no market-based economy in the world where firms produce more steel than there is demand. there is something funny going on there. it's because the state, the chinese government is essentially backing up what they're doing to the set meant of everybody in the world. and i think it would be a very strong statement by the federal government of the united states

to say we're not going to buy your steel if you're dumping and producing at that level. i know this is a controversial thing but i think it's very important for both the american economy and the steel industry in the united states of america and i support that amendment. i thank you mr. speaker. >> want to thank the. >> i believe i told the gentleman that his favorite -- one of his favorite senators, senator shelby from the state of alabama had called me and asked me to may particular attention to this amendment, which i spoke with you about, and the water piece. i do appreciate your consultation on that, your ideas and thank you for your comments today. thank you very much, gentlemen. gentleman from the state of washington, mr. new house. >> thank you very much. want to thank all of you who are here to bring this testimony own the water bill. two for two. as far as i'm concerned, this is the way it goes since i'm a freshman. i appreciate the model that you're setting forth.

particularly, flmpltd bishop was interested in the comments you were making in also a representative from the western state, state of washington, where we also experienced the long peshds of drought, insufficient snow pack, having very difficult time meeting our water needs for a growing population as well as industry and citizens, particularly difficult issue and one i think this -- the water bill goes to good lengths to help us in the west, the arid west, i should say, bring some solutions forward. from reading what i understand the bill -- i want to get clarification here if i could, did win act will authorize the secretary of interior to participate in and provide financial assistance to develop new and expanded federally owned state-led water storage projects. if certain criteria are met.

and i think it additionally creates a new water storage account -- yes, mr. bishop, but you mentioned which is good news, for surface water projects which would receive this federal funding if the interior secretary recommends the project in the appropriate appropriations legislation is enacted for those specific projects. so my question is, are all states in the west would be eligible for these new funds i guess is the pertinent question. >> yeah. as i understand it -- i want staff to correct me if i'm wrong -- as i understand it, this applies to every state or gives the possibility of it applying to every state, yes. >> so that definitely will go a long ways in my view of bringing some needed solution to unfortunately we have the term arid west too often used in describing the situation that we

faced and so i again appreciate very much the work that has gone on in many areas of this bill, but particularly as it addresses some of our western state problems. that, mr. chairman i yield back. >> thank you very much. does any other member of the committee have a question? i'm going to break with, if i can, for just a second your -- we're joined by three distinguished young chairmen here and i'd like to, if i can, make a presentation at this time the gentleman from north carolina. the gentlemen woman yet was given an opportunity to defend herself and she chose not to. and again today, so gentlemen, just so you know, mrs. fox. [ applause ] >> will be -- will be leaving the committee after many years of service, not only to her conference but the entire

congress and her honor and the way in which she has been very faithful, i think has really shown well upon not only her state but also herself, and i would like for each of you to know she will be joining you next year as chairman. want to present you with a gavel. >> oh thank you. >> that you will be allowed to -- you can make your own rules now, virginia. [ laughter ] >> you don't want people to talk more than three minutes which is what the democrats -- they don't want anyone to talk longer than that. >> it's heavy. >> yes. now i'd like to recognize you to defend yourself from yesterday's nice comments. you are recognized. >> these gentlemen probably hope we're allowed to leave. >> too bad. >> yesterday i tried to express

myself on spur of the moment because we had a few minutes, but i want to say again, it's been a real joy to be on the rules committee. as i said yesterday, i came here kicking and screaming. i didn't really want to be on rules. most people don't know about rules. i didn't know about it. but it has been one of the most educational experiences i've ever had. i am in the education birks and i like learning. so it's been wonderful. it's given me a chance to see all of so many members that i would not have had a chance to interact with otherwise. and that's sort of been my -- i didn't say this yesterday, but that's been my life. i've always had a chance to be sort of in the middle of things and work with people across party lines and across division lines, so it's been really, reveal great opportunity, and pete's a wonderful chairman.

i wish we did have time limits. sometime up here. but he is very gracious and we all have a lot to learn from him in his kindness and his graciousness to other people. and his respect for other people. so this has been wonderful for me to have been here and learn so much from pete and from my colleagues. i wish i had the wit that some of my colleagues have. i certainly wish i had the expansive knowledge that some of them have. so i have a great deal more respect for members by having served on this committee. and again, members from all -- all parts of our conference as well as our colleagues on the

other side of the isle. so i thank you. this is a gorgeous arrangement. i love beautiful flowers and this is lovely. thank you. [ applause ] >> i will take this -- >> the committee had dime yesterday to engage in anything they wanted to say but if anybody wants to say anything, feel free. gentlemen woman is recognized. >> virginia, good luck and congratulations and we'll miss you up here. and you've always been a great addition to the rules committee and we're very grateful for that, for your friendship. >> the best of everything. >> mr. chairman. >> says i can come back. >> ok. >> yes and we're going to -- mr. mcgovern agreed last night to offer the first s.a.p. when she's up here. >> i thought he was going to have the first. i'm glad you explained that.

>> yeah. best of everything, rirge. we'll miss you. >> judge hastings. >> thank you very much mr. chairman and dr. fox. i'm delighted that you're going to -- as i said to you on the elevator -- be in your lane in education and i believe the congress and the nation will benefit from your wisdom in that regard. it's been a great experience. you and i don't agree on much of anything, but at the very same time, weaver had some extraordinary discussions at times when you changed my mind regarding some positions and hopefully i changed yours regarding some positions. i look forward to working with you in the committee that you are designated to go to. it is, without any question in my mind, the most important thing that we request do in this country and that is provide for our children and the work force portion of it, or help as best

we can to provide for jobs. i do say i'm a keen observer of not only our committee but members generally, and ross latham and i take great pride in bloefg that we have some of the best with tw constituent services in florida and i know your reputation, and i've watched you work, and you work harder than almost all members addressing your constituents and i'm sure they appreciate you for it and i certainly do on behalf of them and the rest of us. so good luck. >> thank you. le. >> i see before me two chairpeople. my two chairmen. i'm excited of course. i'll be seeing just as much as drrmt fox. she is my new chair of the educational work force committee and chairman sessions. this may be the last time i see you seated together there. il look forward to serving under both your chairmanships in the

respective committees and dr. fox i look forward to continuing to work with you on higher education authorization. hopefully we'll be back before this committee at some moinlt in the next session. that would be wonderful if we could accomplish that. >> mr. chairman may i make one comment. yes. i talked about my learning here, but i should have said i hope you'll be kind to me when i have a chance to come back as chair of the education and work force committee. maybe i better ask that while i'm sitting on this side of the room. >> stop trying to be nice to us, virginia. >> it is a great honor to go to the education and work force committee. i think we are in sort of a unique situation and both of us having served on this committee and both serving on the education and work force committee. and so it is going to be a

delight to continue to work with him on that committee. i'm leaving only because i've -- >> because you want to come back. i've got a great opportunity as judge hastings says, to work in my lane and hopefully use my talents and skills there. thank you. >> thank you. i'm sorry i couldn't be here yesterday and had to step out. but thanks on the work that's been done on this bill. turning to virginia, i remember coming up here four years ago and you go around and you try to find your committees and you talk to people in steeringaged you find -- and i ended up in virginia's office. she's sitting behind her desk. brought me in and i sit in front. and the classic teacher-student mold. she begins to tell me, well, if you're doing this the right way -- and have you ever considered rules? i said well, that's not the spot i'm looking in. judiciary. >> well, just think about it.

you can learn so much. she began to tick off her passion. i think the thing that is amazing. the chairman said this last week about teamaged team player about her it's beyond even our side over here who admires and loves you. it's about this institution. it's about the institution of this hill that means so much to so many of us. and the passion that you bring and the willingness to sit down with someone who is trying to learn and i have to say i told my chief as we walked out of the room, i said what do you think about rules? he said no, just keep focused, keep focused. i was inspired by what you said and two years later asked for that. it was coming from you. it was because i saw the love you had for this place, the love for people here and with that, the education and work force cannot be in better hands as we go forward. we'll miss you here. we'll treat you well when you come back, but it is just -- i want to say thank you for what

you mean to me up here and also what you have meant from day one really of my clear in congress. it means so much. so i just wanted to say thank you. >> the gentleman from alabama mr. burn. >> i, too, will be serving on the education work force committee ms. fox. i think she knows of my tremendous affection for and admiration, but i've watched her on this committee, that committee and she's a terrific leader. i'm married to a strong woman. i'm the son of a strong woman. i'm the father to two strong women and i've learned the two most important words in life "yes, ma'am." yield back. le. >> i'll tell just one story. we're going to get everybody moving down the road. couple years ago we were doing at the end of the year this package and david obie came up

in virgin and virginia decided she was going to take him on. she said mr. obie, you have used your words correctly. looked up kind of like and trai animals. you do tnot train people. whatever is going to happen over there at the education committee, good luck, because she knows that you educate people and you train animals. you will be chairman obey, and we will obey you. i think you see from the love of this committee and the love of your fellow chairmen-to-be, not only how proud we are of you but how much we want you to be successful. thank you very much. gentlemen, thank you for taking the time to be here, i hope you all have a wonderful day. is there any other member that

seeks to be heard? seeing none, we now will move -- close the hearing portion and we'll move to amendment of hr 2028. we're expecting the gentlewoman from new york, mrs. lowey, and mr. rogers. i earlier said rob graduated. ms. booth, do you see chairman rogers out there? i think he is too.

mr. chairman, we've just finished a big roast, actually, of the gentlewoman from north carolina, mrs. foxx. as you may know, nita, chairwoman foxx will be moving to be the chairwoman of the labor and workforce committee. and an education workforce committee. she was just presented with a brand-new gavel and some flowers. and it's virginia foxx day today at the rules committee. >> congratulations, that is very lovely. >> we welcome both of our distinguished guests to join us today. mr. chairman and nita, i want you to know that we with great admiration welcome you here to talk about the amendment to hr 2028. it will be entered into the record and the chairman from kentucky is recognized. >> mr. chairman, thank you for

having us here. we hope to be brief with you and answer any questions you may have. let me first add my -- >> that microphone on, hal? >> -- congratulations to the gentlelady, ms. foxx, we're proud of you. there's not a harder working member of this organization than virginia foxx, and very few exceed her wisdom. so we're thrilled with her new role. and we wish her well in that effort. we're here to bring before the committee's consideration an amendment to the senate amendment to hr 2028, the second fiscal year 2017 continuing resolution that we've considered this year. we're here before you to seek an appropriate rule to allow for the timely consideration of this bill. i've also submitted a technical amendment to correct a drafting

error that i also want you to consider. this is a bill, mr. chairman, that will prevent a government shutdown and maintain essential government operations including national defense. this cr runs through april 28th of next year and hits the budget control act discretionary cap of $1.07 trillion. this legislation continues current policy and funding from fiscal 2016 and makes certain changes to prevent serious harm to government programs and to ensure good government. we take care of our military, increasing resources through oco, and include provisions to accelerate production rates for certain procurement items that need to be addressed in the near term, such as the apache attack helicopters, blackhawks, the

ohio replacement submarine, and the kc tanker among others. we also maintain funding for the department of homeland security to protect our borders and our skies and extend the freeze on members' pay. in addition this legislation includes $10.1 billion in overseas contingency funding to continue the fight against isis and terrorism around the globe as well as $4.1 billion in emergency disaster relief to help communities across the country recover from recent natural disasters like hurricane matthew and devastating floods and droughts. there is also $170 million for critical health and water infrastructure improvements, which is fully offset. lastly, the legislation includes $872 million in funding for the

house-passed 21st century act, including funding for fda and nih in innovation programs, as well as $500 million to respond to the opioid epidemic around the country. this is a good bill. it's the best path forward given our deadline. and mr. chairman, this should be my last time appearing before the rules committee as chairman of this committee. i wish it were under better circumstances. i wish we had 11 complete full year appropriations bills to present to you. but that is not, unfortunately, the case. as i've said it before and i'll say it again, governing by cr is no way to conduct our business. the cr, we're wasting money and preventing good policies from going into place.

we're creating uncertainty both in our federal budgets and in the economy. and we're ceding our power of the purse, throwing away the voice of the people that we represent. but as i said, this is our best. it's actually our only path forward. so i urge my colleagues in the house and the senate to pat it in short order, given that our current funding mechanism expires on friday. thank you for your great work. i've always started to say enjoyed chance to be with you, and i have enjoyed them, but i appreciate the great work that you do, mr. chairman and members of the committee. this is a tough chore that you have on this committee, being the traffic cop for all of the bills that go to the floor of the u.s. house. so thank you for your consideration of this bill, this

rule, and the chance to appear before you today. >> mr. chairman, thank you very much. i will take just a second now and say on behalf of this committee, your service, your attention to detail, your work that you have performed so ably, not only with mrs. lowey but the staff and people on both sides of the aisle, as well as your commitment to the united states senate with dealing with them, is appreciated. i will tell you, there's lots of lonely nights, i know cynthia recognized what you were doing. but i want you to know that you have ably not only represented your interests in kentucky but those of the nation, and i appreciate you very much. >> thank you. >> we'll have a chance as we go around the dais to really offer our congratulations to you. i did not want this to go by without saying job well done, hal.

>> thank you, that's very nice of you. >> mrs. lowey, we're delighted that you're here, the gentlewoman is recognized. >> thank you, mr. chairman, you are so gracious and you welcome us with such enthusiasm, i always look forward to coming here with this distinguished committee. and i add my congratulations to you, ms. foxx, as well. i know you will serve with great distinction. chairman sessions, ranking member slaughter, members of the rules committee, i really do appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss the second continuing resolution for fiscal year 2017. although i am pleased to be here with my distinguished chairman of the appropriations committee, my friend hal rogers, but frankly the legislation before

us is an abdication of our responsibility for the entire congress. it's a disgrace that more than two months into the new fiscal year, congress will just kick the can down the road, nearly another five months, for purely partisan reasons. having already failed this year to adopt a budget, to pass appropriation bills, and restore regular order, the majority's failure to enact full year funding is not surprising but nonetheless shameful. and as my good friend chairman rogers has said, i know how hard you worked, and we both tried together with members of the committee to move these bills. so it's unfortunate that we're here today to just push the whole schedule down the road. but here we are. >> will the gentlelady yield? >> i would be delighted. >> briefly. thank you for those nice words.

we passed all 12 of these bills through the committee. five of them i think went through the floor, and then we hit the 60-vote rule in the senate, which shut everything down. and thus we're here for that reason. but i want to thank you for your service to your country and to this committee, and as a personal friend of mine. >> thank you so much. i know we'll have many opportunities to do a lot of good work together. so i thank you, my friend, for those kind words. several administration requests were either not included or were drastically discounted. the commodity futures trading commission would be frozen under the cr. likely causing staff furloughs and making it impossible to adequately protect market participants. i'm also extremely concerned

that the majority included just $7 million, one fifth of the amount requested by the administration and by new york city to reimburse for the cost of helping protect the president-elect until his inauguration. new york taxpayers should not be forced to foot the bill for the federal responsibility of protecting the president-elect. i view the amount in the cr, however, as a down payment. i'm putting the majority on notice that a future funding bill must fully cover these costs. and by the way, i welcome all of you to new york, take a walk around fifth avenue, notice the barricade, notice the dozens and dozens of police that are protecting trump tower. and if you do that, not only will you enjoy our great city, but you'll become very aware of the challenge to protect the

president-elect. so come to new york, and i hope we'll be able to fully cover the costs of the new york police department in the near future. mr. chairman, i'm pleased the cr provides additional funding to provide for natural disasters, to assist flint, michigan in recovering from a lead crisis, to respond to threats abroad, to prevent opioid addiction. and i just want to congratulate the chairman again, he has been just the leader of this effort. i know this has had a tremendous impact on your district as well as all of ours. so i thank you for your leadership in that area. we are also so grateful to our distinguished chairman tom cole, for your leadership in increasing the investments to biomedical research. i think all of us have family,

friends, neighbors, who are struggling, frankly, to overcome a disease or to fight it every steppe esof the way. and i know those investments make such a difference. i would triple it. i would keep going. i thank you for your leadership because it's so very important. but i must say, we should have made these investments along with a full year bill that would have dealt with every government program. finally, this bill should not include the provision that would limit debate on providing a waiver to allow the next secretary of defense to have been retired from active duty for less than the current requirement of seven years. civilian leadership of the military is a bedrock principle of our democracy and a new standard deserves full debate by the congress. and i just want to say, i know there are many who know this

gentleman, who praise this gentleman, it's nothing to do with him. but this should be an opportunity in the congress to really debate and understand the background and the candidates. but here we are. i know chairman rogers worked to have the appropriations committee return to regular order. i tried to be a partner with him because i think the american people want us to do our jobs of keeping the government operating. notwithstanding the constraints facing the chairman, the bill we consider today should be a bipartisan full year spending measure. however, this is the bill before us today, and i look forward to continuing to work with my distinguished chair. thank you for your time. >> ms. lowey, thank you very much. mr. chairman, a few minutes ago, down on the floor, you and i had a chance to visit on several

issues that were of particular importance to members. one of them was directly related to the issue of a relation to h 2 b workers. can you please elaborate on our your committee handled the h 2 b workers in this bill and perhaps some members who would wish at another time to address this issue with your ideas on how to direct them? >> under the cr, what is continued is the ability of department of homeland security to process applications up to the existing cap, which is 66,000 for the current -- for the full year. what they cannot do is exceed the existing cap. and it would require a statutory

change in the immigration and nationality act to do so. we did not include an anomaly in the cr before you to do that. there was no request from omb or anyone else in the administration to include an anomaly on the h 2 b visa issue. more over, we heard from members on both sides of the issue, both supporters and opponents. when we included the legislative language in the fiscal '16 bill, there was strong bipartisan and bicameral support for a one-year fix to give time to the authorizers to address the issue and authorization bill. that's where the venue for action is now. and we did not feel it appropriate to take action on this huge policy change,

especially where there was considerable opposition from the judiciary committee, among others. so we did not feel it appropriate to tackle that in the cr. >> mr. chairman, thank you very much. i want to really applaud you for your forthrightness, not only of taking on issues that might be extraneous necessarily to the direct impact of your committee, but your participation to represent all of us. and i want to thank you, hal, for being forthright about making sure our members get a chance to address issues, ask questions, and to receive a straight answer, which is what i believe you and your staff muha forthrightly done. i want to thank both of you. mrs. foxx? >> thank you, mr. chairman.

i subscribe to the same philosophy that i think the chairman subscribes to, that you can't thank people too much. i think we should thank you both again for your work, and particularly chairman rogers, i say amen to all the things that the chairman said about the difficult task you have had as chairman of this committee. and i appreciate also your forthrightness in explaining the h 2 b issue. it does -- it is an issue where there are strong opinions on both sides. and we know that makes your job much more difficult to do. we do need revisions in our immigration laws. we need a lot of things done in that regard.

and so i appreciate the effort that you've put in in the past to help those employers who needed help. but i understand, this is not an easy situation for you. >> if i can add briefly, as i said, the proper avenue on this issue is to seek action in the authorizing committee. as you know, the appropriators don't get into authorizing very often, especially on a c contentio contentious, big policy issue. it needs to go through the regular process. and that's the authorizing committee, which in the case of the house is the judiciary committee. they're the committee with jurisdiction to amend the immigration and nationality act, which is what would have to take place for people supporting this. >> again, i thank you, and i

thank you for your being very straightforward about it. we all want to keep the government operating. and i understand the need for this continuing resolution given the fact that we can't act unilaterally. i think i've expressed to you the importance of our having to explain to our constituents often, when they throw around that term, "power of the purse," there is a real misunderstanding out in the public that the house somehow or another has unilateral authority to pass appropriations bills. and so i'm constantly reading article 1, section 7 to people and repeating to them that they somehow or another forget that it says the house -- all revenue

bills shall originate in the house but the senate may amend and then the president has to sign. so i think we still have a lot of work to do in that area, because we still have people who think that the house appropriations committee can operate unilaterally. and i'm sure you would welcome some folks shadowing you for a day or two to see that you don't have that authority unilateral, or things would operate a whole lot differently. >> amen. >> around here. so thank you for your good work. and i congratulate you on your opportunity to have a little more time to do other things other than negotiate. god bless you. >> thank you. >> the gentleman yields back his time. the gentleman from florida, mr.

hastings. i want you to determine that order, you were walking in as a departed. >> the gentleman judge hastings. >> i'm in my 12th term here. i ask for information, what term is this for you? >> 10th term. >> then ms. slaughter and i have been here the longest of the members on the rules committee, not necessarily the longest, i think she has at least a long time on the rules committee. but all of that time, and no fault of chairman rogers and ms. lowey, they have exhausted themselves trying to get us to return to regular order. and i take chairman rogers' point that matters leave here and get over to the other body and somehow or another

everything bottles up. and then we wind up taking the bullets every two years from people because the allegation is that we don't do our work. well, the simple fact is that in the time that i'm here, we have not done all 12 appropriations bills since 1994, if my recollection is correct. and so we've had pledges from democratic majorities and problems from republican majorities that we were going to return to regular order. and we've had pledges on budgeting responsibility. but at the end of the day, nothing materializes. so i'll be here another term or two, whatever the lord allows. and i'm no longer going to believe that we are going to

return to so-called regular order. i just am going to give up on that cause. i don't see it happening. i don't see the other body changing very much in terms of their modality, arcane though it is in my view. that said, mr. chairman, during our colleague billy long from missouri, about the 2 b measure, and i'm not asking a question, billy approached me, and i'm sure he did other members as well, about the h 2 b returning worker exemption. and so as not to belabor things with a protracted statement regarding it, i'll just lift from it, he says, suspending the returning worker exemption for

the first time is devastating to many small businesses who rely upon this program to function and operate their businesses. and i happen to know, he raises the concerns there in missouri, and we have similar concerns in some respects in florida. so, mr. chairman, with your permission, i ask unanimous consent to introduce into the record our colleague billy long's letter to me. others may have received it, but at least i believe what he says is with great currency. >> without objection, that will be in the record. >> thank you, then i'll yield back. >> thank you very much. mrs. slaughter. we would love for you to go. >> if you're sure you don't mind. >> i'm glad you're here. >> first, i want to thank you all for doing whatever impossible job you're able to do. i really don't know what's in there because it only came to my

attention about an hour ago except for what i've read in the press. and i have to tell you, i want to express some concern about general mattis and a waiver for him. one of the most important tenets of a democracy that we are so proud to protect is civilian control over the military. and the department of defense has always been headed by a civilian. and with the exception that we all know about and have read before general george c. marshall, who had such important work to do after the second world war with the marshall plan and other things, that they gave him this waiver. but they said at the time, don't ever do this again. i have not had time to see how this is written, the waiver is written. but i hope that it's not so unspecific that anybody who could be appointed to that job

in the future, that the restriction that it be a civilian would be lost, because that's something far too precious for us to give up. so i have great concern about that. and certainly join in with what my colleague has said about congressman long. i don't know why the h 2 b visas disappeared. there may be good and sufficient reason. but i don't know of one. and lacking that, i would really appreciate if we could consider his amendment to put it back in. and i have no further comments, mr. chairman, thank you. >> thank you very much, the gentlewoman yields back her time. the gentleman from oklahoma. >> chairman cole. >> i appreciate that. first of all, i can't allow these two members of all two members of congress to come before this committee without saying kind words about both of

them, particularly the chairman, he's not just my leader but my mentor and friend. nobody has served with more distinction than the distinguished gentleman from kentucky. he has done yeoman's work in moving us in the right direction, not quite as far as i know he wanted to, to push us back toward regular order. and his help mate and partner in that has been the gentlelady from new york who despite their occasional agreements about policy, don't disagree about what the appropriate way for this committee to operate is. both of them have set a remarkable example. i want to reiterate a point that the chairman made. all 12 bills have been reported out of this committee. they were reported out last year. they were reported out again this year. and in my view, they should have all 12 gone to the floor. it's great that we got five. i think we got six or seven last

year. but that's not a decision that the chairman and the ranking member get to make. they've done their part of the appropriation process. and they demonstrated last year, even if you can't get the bills across the floor, they could sit down and bargain an omnibus bill that gave us stability and funding for this entire year. we've actually had a pretty good year in congress. in some ways, we'll probably get the bill for the second year in a row, that's a big deal, the ndaa, the every student succeeds act. a lot of that was done because we had a framework set up of the regular orderly funding of government. i grant you it was done in an omnibus, it wasn't done in the way the chairman or the ranking member would have liked, but it was done. so it's unfortunate that they weren't allowed to sit down and work their magic again, in my opinion, with their counterparts in the united states senate.

i'll certainly support the bill, i agree with both the chairman and the gentlelady, that allowing, you know, government to shut down and all the chaos and disruption that comes from that is inappropriate solution. they've done the best in their ability to adjust within this cr things that will at least allow us in the military and some other areas to not have the rigidity of having exactly the same funding. we've had chairman thornberry up here recently, we were talking about the wonderful work that he and his ranking member had done on the national defense authorization act, and made the point that as great as it was, if it wasn't married up with an appropriations bill, it's wonderful policy but there's not money to implement the policy and make the decision. that's not mr. frelinghuysen's

fault. it's the fault of not passing and allowing a normal appropriations bill to occur. so while i will support this bill, i'm very frustrated, as i know my chairman and my ranking member are, over us allowing this committee to do its job. congress did not do its job. the administration in my view did not. and the senate certainly did not. and frankly, i am going to make a prediction now which i am loath to make, but everybody is going to regret that we did not do an omnibus, that we did not have secure funding. the new administration, and this would have been true no matter who won the election, has got a lot of problems on the table. they've got their agenda to advance. you've got to get all these people confirmed in the united states senate. we're going to have a debt ceiling discussion in march. it would have made a lot of difference to have these things done and secure through september 30th of next year.

and i don't think anybody recognizes, outside the appropriations committee, that's probably too strong a statement, how difficult this is going to be for the new administration. i know some people think it has advantaged them. i think it is disadvantaged them, because they will be dealing with a whole host of problems that should have been settled and could have been settled by this congress and this administration. i know it could have been, because he did it last year. so i know you're capable of doing it. i think decisions were made above your pay grade, and certainly the pay grade here, that were bad decisions. and they will guarantee us legislative and fiscal turmoil in the opening part of next year. i will make a commitment, which i know i suspect my good friends share, you know, the danger will be by going to april 20th, that

we will just do another cr to get to september 30th. that's a big mistake. i'll guarantee you that our new secretary of defense, and we can have our disagreements over the mechanism whereby hopefully debate will be expedited, i bet you the first thing he does is go to the president of the united states and saying, what the heck is going on, i can't operate the military operating under a cr, my funding doesn't match up. we've done a lot of things to try and match the funding up. we haven't completely done it. i can give you several projects that you weren't able to deal with in this thing that we would have been able to deal with in the full cr. so that's -- and you're going to have cabinet member after cabinet member going to the new president of the united states saying, what the heck happened? you've put me over here but i'm handcuffed and wrestling with a lot of problems i shouldn't be

doing. i hope that next year, you know, i hope certainly by april 28th, we do a normal omnibus or a couple of minibuses and finish the '17 funding. i hope we don't go the cr route. i'm certainly going to push for it. i suspect members in other committees, not just our own, will also be pushing. i know how strongly our friends on defense feel about this, they know how much it hobbles the effort to implement the excellent job they did on the ndaa. and it will put us behind schedule in working on the appropriations bills for 2018. it cannot help but do that. so you have done the best job you can do with the bad cards you've been dealt, mr. chairman, and the gentlelady from new york, the ranking member. i'm very grateful for that. i don't know what more you could have done. i look forward to supporting your work. but we need to recommit ourselves to a normal process.

it can happen. it should have happened this time, at least at the omnibus level. and again, i predict about 60 to 90 days into next year, people that made this decision will regret this decision and will come to you two and your successor, mr. chairman, and say you guys have to fix this, you have to clean this up. >> will the gentleman yield? to your point about the cr and how it hamstrings what the government can or can't do, what most people may not realize is, under a continuing resolution, the agencies have to spend the money that's in the old bill that they no longer need, perhaps. billions of dollars. and secondly, they're not allowed to start anything new,

which is what they need today. they're locked into a year-old policy and a year-old set of provisions that they have to spend the money on which they don't need nor want to do. and in the military, and the dod part, especially that's true, they cannot do new starts, even though need it, the troops in the field need it, they can't do it because it's a continuing resolution. so we need to pass these bills that we went through the committee with, and amended and changed and argued and debated and negotiated. we need to pass those bills so that the agencies don't spend billions of dollars on old policies that are no longer needed and can't start new things. >> or postpone things that have been authorized but cannot be

funded. i can give you the pallet and artillery piece, we're modernizing 1 1/2 pieces a month, there was enough money in the bill to raise it to six, which is what we needed to move through. we've done the authorization work but you'll still be funded to do 1 1/2 a month. >> if we had been doing crs back in time, our modern airplanes would be versions of the wright brothers flyer. >> i'm not going to belabor this point. and i have, and i thank the chairman for his indulgence. this is not the right way to do things. it's bad governing. it's sloppy budgeting. it's sloppy appropriation. it's not sloppy through either of your fault. you've made this point over and over and you both have worked together to break the cycle. in the omnibus last year, we should have done that. we were told we were going to do that, that this will all get done by the end of the year, there will be a series of

minibuses or omnibuses, magically, no, we'll wait until next year. it's a mistake. with that, mr. chairman, again, i fully support the bill and fully thank the chairman and ranked member for doing what they could do to mitigate what was a bad decision. and they have done that in this bill i think as much as is humanly possible. but the authorizing committees need to authorize, they don't need to rely on the two of you to pull their bacon out of the fire. if you're going to lead and govern, then you need to lead and governing, and you guys have done your part, but i think the rest of congress has fallen down. i regret that. next year is a new year, we'll see if we can do better. and we know we can do better than this because we did better than this last year. i yield back. >> thank you very much. mr. polis. >> yes, i wanted to inquire about the status of a couple of elements that i had hoped would be in this bill and are not.

one is the miners' protection act. i joined a bipartisan group, this affects, as you know, tens of thousands of coal miners. it's been before congress for many years. and we did have a bipartisan effort to include that. i was wondering if you could comment on why that particular provision was not included. >> well, it is included, not the full version. but the cr does provide $45 million fully offset for the continued health care benefits for certain retired miners under the united mineworkers association 1993 benefit plan. miners will no longer have the benefits they would have had from the private sector due to their once-employing companies having gone out of business.

so this provision is necessary to prevent the loss of their medical or health care benefits for these miners and their families, which is scheduled to expire, as you may know, on december 31st of this year, a few weeks from now. so that is what is in the -- >> yes, it's just the patch for four months, not the long term fix that was the topic of the bipartisan letter. so what you have is you have all of this uncertainty for the tens of thousands of people that this affects, where it rides with our expenditures, it's at risk every few months, there's a battle every few months, as you know, on the bipartisan letter. we were hoping for a long term solution. we will need to accomplish that in the next congress. i don't think we want to have this very basic discussion about health care for coal workers that they've earned every single time we have an appropriations bill. >> if the gentleman will yield,

this is permanent sonal to me b of my district, i have some 10,000 laid-off miners in just my district alone because of the coal plunge that we've seen. and i wanted to get the whole ball of wax, pension benefits as well as the health care. i was unable to convince others to go that far. so we did get the health care benefits, which i'm thankful for. >> for four months, just for the duration of the bill. >> yes. >> the other one i wanted to ask about is the clean energy tax credits. i know that there was -- i supported an effort to extend tax credits for large utility scale wind projects and rooftop solar beyond their expiration in 2016. i wanted to inquire why that was not included in the final bill. >> it never came up. number two, that's a ways and

means jurisdiction. >> it is. but there's no other bill that i'm aware of that's moving. there's no other bill we're doing. >> that never came up. >> okay. the other one i wanted to ask about was the h 2 b. there is an amendment that i co-sponsor along with mr. harris. and i just wanted to speak to the urgency of this in my district. i have a district that has a lot of tourism and seasonal tour i am tourism. i've heard from several constituents today regarding the value of h 2 b for american jobs. our economy all works together. i heard from richard from veil who said the h 2 b program is critical for his company's ability to hire additional american supervisors, because without h 2 b workers they can't hire those american workers. the program really supports our local economy. so i'm hoping that the amendment

will be made in order, and i wanted to ask the chair and ranking member if they also plan to be supportive of the amendment if our committee makes that in order. >> we discussed this, i guess, while you were outside on a telephone call. we discussed that earlier here. >> okay. >> the provision was carried in the '16 homeland security bill. it had bipartisan, bicameral support at that time. that same support does not exist in fiscal '17. there is substantial disagreement among various parties. and there is not that bipartisan support that we saw earlier. it's a matter that has to be done by the authorizers.

>> i mean, you know, when we disagree, we in fact disagree on the underlying cr itself. there's going to be those four and against it, i assume, democrats and republicans, for different reasons, just as there would on the h 2 b. it's easy to say we disagree. the way we resolve that hopefully is advance that to the floor and then whichever side, if more people support the h 2 b, that would be included, if not, it would not be. i mean, that seems to be the way to resolve it. >> it has to be done by the judiciary committee. there was substantial disagreement on that committee on what to do. and so we, on our -- in constructing the cr, the appropriators, we can't make massive changes in policy without the approval at least of the authorizing committee. >> sure. the authorizing committee didn't mark it up and bring it to the floor. so this would provide an opportunity for the members on the floor on the harris

amendment to vote for it or vote against it, and we resolve our disagreements then, and one side prevails and that determines what occurs. maybe i can go to ms. lowey on that. i think i saw her -- >> i was just going to say, i wish i could say that there was unanimous support for it even in our conference. >> of course. there's not unanimous support for the cr itself. >> for a bill such as this, where there is an issue, where there are very strong differences of opinion, you realize that there should be another debate and perhaps whether it's judiciary or another vehicle, this would not be the vehicle for it, because it's not a d versus r issue. as you well know. >> it isn't, but neither is the cr, right? there's going to be people voting for and against the cr, i would assume, on both the democratic and republican side for a variety of reasons. you know, h 2 b, if the members of the body want to include it

in the cr, that could affect a few votes both ways. it could affect my vote to vote for it instead of against it, because it's important for my district. there could be somebody else's vote it affects the other way. i don't think most people view the h 2 b policy as a policy to shut down government over, right? whatever their disagreements are. so i would hope that we can have the will of the body articulate whether we want to move forward with the harris amendment, which i'm telling you is important to my district, i'm telling you it would make me more likely to vote for the cr. i certainly understand there's people that it would make them less likely to vote for the cr. but it's not the tail that wags the dog, it's one of many elements. while we realize we would like regular order on a wide variety of things, we haven't had that. there's a lot of provisions where it's traditional, and we are -- this is a must-pass bill just like worda is, and they're full of things we need to do.

in my district, this is an example, it's very important for american jobs in my district. it's absolutely critical to get it done. i'm happy to yield. >> i'm very curious why it was taken out. is it appropriate to ask you, is it an immigration issue? what would be the objection to it? >> i don't mind if you want any help, hal, otherwise i'll let you tackle that. >> it was not a part of a permanent provision. it was a temporary provision that was included last year. so what they try to do is to take the permanent things that had been in the bill, then the discussions came up between the house and the senate, as has already been discussed, republicans and democrats, and the decision was made, this is an issue that we need to refer back to authorizers as opposed to appropriators. if it had been permanent, it

would have prevailed. it was a one-time provision i believe that was in last year. so i've tried to look at this also, because i want to make sure i could answer you. but i didn't know what the answer was. >> a lot of trouble in various parts of the country not to have it. in fact you consider it to be certainly a serious issue. >> it's a big issue in my district. we have a tourism-based economy. it would be part of my district. >> we're not likely to have another vehicle that we'll be able to get this on, am i correct about that? >> i'm not aware of any other vehicle. >> if it's not on this, it's finished. >> there's not been -- there's a reason why. there's an authorizing committee and an appropriations committee. the authorizing committee holds hearings, delves into these policy issues in depth, as they should. but to have this all of a sudden

want to be funded when it's not even been authorized is contrary to our responsibility. >> i understand what you're saying. however, from what i was told, there was no discussion, it was there and then it wasn't. i don't believe anybody really has any -- >> and again, the reality is this is the end of the year last major bill. so things that need to be done, need to be done in this bill. in a perfect world there's regular order for everything, in a perfect world judiciary would have marked this up. >> and the rules committee has all the power. >> that's right. but we don't live in that perfect world. unfortunately we stand before you saying, jobs in my district are jeopardized. it's not partisan, many members feel that way. >> i don't have anything else to say other than i happen to agree both chairmen. in this imperfect world, i would have liked to have seen the 12 bills, regular order. for us to be taking up this cr

at this point and include an issue that really wasn't completely discussed and really resolved in the authorizing committee is not appropriate for the appropriations. >> i understand. >> i wish i could give you a more profound answer. >> it had been included, as you know, that's why we're having this discussion. this is relatively new information. we're trying to put it back, with the harris amendment, i'm hoping the rules committee will allow that, given that jobs are in jeopardy and we don't often fall on the sword of regular order here. i know that we -- that's an argument of convenience rather than an argument of standard practice. and so it's an easy way to say no. but there's always a lot of easy ways to say no. given that we're not passing any more bills, i'm hoping we can include this important job creating provision in this bill. i yield back. >> does any member seek time?

the gentleman from georgia, mr. woodall. >> 60 seconds to have our two witnesses end on a happy note. mr. hastings said he didn't think we were going to get back to regular order. i shared his pessimism. because of the work the two of you have done, i saw the first appropriations bill signed into law by a president of the united states before the statutory deadline that i have seen in my entire career and it was for our veterans and you all did it together. i don't know how we get to the finish line or we get it all done every cycle. but i know we never get to the finish line if we don't have folks committed to getting us started. you did what hasn't been able to be done for almost a decade, i think it was 2008 a bill was signed about the statutory deadline. i am grateful to you not just for the heavy lifting of getting it done but for the model it set for what we may be able to do tomorrow together. thank you very much for that. >> the gentleman yields back his time. i want to thank both our members

for being here, mrs. lowey, as always, thank you for your graciousness and charm. please tell stephen i said hi. mr. chairman, thank you very much. tell cynthia merry christmas. >> and to you, merry christmas. >> is there any other member that would seek to give testimony on senate amendment hr 2028? seeing none, this closes the hearing portion. the chair will now be in receipt of a motion from mrs. foxx. >> mr. chairman, i move the committee grant a rule providing consideration of the senate bill appropriations act 2016. the rule makes in order a motion offered by the chair of the house on appropriations or his designee that the house concur in the senate amendment to hr 2028 with an amendment consisting of the text of rules committee print 114-70 modified by the amendment printed in the

rules committee report, all points of order against consideration of the motion. the rule provides that the senate amendment motion shall be considered as read. the rule provides one hour debate on the motion equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the committee on appropriation. seconds 2 of the rule provides for the consideration of s-612 to designate the federal building and united states courthouse located at 1300 victoria street, laredo, texas, and the george p.cazon federal building and courthouse. the rule provides a one-hour debate controlled by the respective chairs and ranking minority members of the committees on energy and commerce, natural resources, and transportation infrastructure. the rule waives all points of order against consideration of the bill. the rule provides an amendment in the nature of substitute consisting of the text of rules committee print 114-69 shall be considered as adopted and the bill as amended shall be considered as read. it waives all points of order as

amended. one motion to recommit with and without instructions. >> wea've now heard the motion. is there amendment or discussion to that? >> yes, sir. thank you, mr. chairman. i have an amendment to the rule. i move the committee make in order and give the necessary waivers for the amendment to s-612 by representatives doyle and jones, number 3, which would make the buy america provisions permanent for projects financed through the epa's drinking water state revolving fund. i ask for a yes vote. >> thank you very much. you've heard the motion from the gentlewoman from new york. is there discussion on that amendment? seeing none, those in favor signify by saying aye. opposed? the gentlewoman asks for a roll call vote. >> fox, no.

no. burgess, no. survivors. collins, no. byrne, no. newhouse, no. slaughter. >> aye. to make america great again. >> mr. ma govern. mr. chairman, no. >> clerk will report the total. >> three aye's, eight nay's. >> the amendment is not agreed to. >> i move the amendment offered by representative harris and myself, number one, which would allow the h 2 b returning worker exemption that's in current law to continue for the duration of this cr and again, i spoke to this briefly, but i couldn't argue more how important this is for my district. it's important to have the stability. it does expire. it was in the bill. without this, many companies in

my district would be forced to cut their american workers. it would have a negative impact on the economy. and by the way, for each h 2 b worker it's estimated that 4.64 american jobs are created and sustained. we really see that every day in companies like richards where without h 2 b workers there's no role for american supervisors and foremen. and it's so important for tourism areas like vale and winter park. i yield back the balance of my time. >> thank you very much. mr. polis, i want you to be aware, to give myself time, there were a number of colleagues who most respectfully presented not only their arguments but that specifically addressed issues back home. i received a number of calls from dallas, texas about this. i received a lot of information.

and i do want to thank you, not only for your feedback but want you to know that this new opportunity that will occur next year, this cr is until april 28, i believe, there will be a committee action that will happen as quickly as we get back. the judiciary committee would be the appropriate committee to bring this issue up at. and i know that they would be addressing that issue with feedback from members. so thank you very much. further discussion? okay. the vote now will be on the amendment. those signify by saying aye. opposed? >> roll call, please. >> fox, no. cole, no. woodall, no. burgess, no. collins, no. byrne, no.

newhouse, aye. slaughter, aye. ma govern, hastings aye. polis, aye. mr. chairman? >> no. report the total. >> four ayes, seven nays. >> not agreed to. discussion? seeing none, the vote will be on the motion from the gentlewoman from north carolina. the ayes have it. accordingly the gentleman from georgia, mr. woodall, will be handling this for republicans. >> and i shall handle it. >> mrs. slaughter will be handling this for democrats. i want to thank the committee. we have no scheduled meetings for the rest of the week or i believe the rest of the year. i want to thank all the members, mrs. foxx for her attention to detail, best of luck. the committee is complete for the year.

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with a friday midnight deadline fast approaching, congress is set to take up a continuing resolution, or cr, extending funding to april 28th. nancy oganovich, why is congress facing yet another government shutdown deadline? >> well, the house and senate just couldn't seem to get those 12 appropriations bills done in a timely way this year. they got one done before the fiscal year started october 1, which is the first time in years

they got one done before the start of the fiscal year. but the others will remain on hold because they had them mostly written, they say, but in the end, the transition team of incoming president donald trump wanted them not to proceed with the omnibus, but they wanted to put together in december to close out fiscal year '17. and leave some things open until next year when the new administration can have more of a say in setting spending priorities. >> let's talk about some of the key details in the bill and some of the riders. how does the bill fund government agencies and departments considering that they are still under budget caps previously agreed to? >> well, they already have that discretionary cap number from the two-year bipartisan budget deal which is $1.707 trillion. that's part of the deal that former speaker john boehner made

with the white house to ensure there wouldn't be a government shutdown. that they would have a couple of years of certainty in terms of what the discretionary spending level would be. so they're using that as a guide, and that's what they used for the first cr that they wrote and passed in september. and this was a continuation building on that first cr. when all is said and done, this plan calls for the government to be funded by stop gaps for the first seven months of the fiscal year. and that's causing some concern with appropriators who compare the crs to autopilot. and they really don't believe that the department of defense in particular should be operating under crs, especially when they have so many operations going on overseas. >> let's talk about flint, michigan. this provides funding for the flint, michigan, water system. how much is actually included in the bill, and why is it in the

cr? >> well, there 24 things going obut this cr is supposed to be carrying $170 million in appropriations to help flint deal with its drinking water crisis. but there's another bill moving through the congress this week also. the water resources development reauthorization. and that water bill has the authorization for the flint money. so republican leaders want to see both of these things passed. the water resources bill creates the authority for the spending, but the cr provide the real money and for flint to be insured of the money, they need both bills to be passed and signed into law. >> there's also a provision regarding a waiver process for president-elect donald trump's pick for defense secretary. retired general james mattis. explain that issue. >> current law says a member of the military cannot become the secretary of defense, which is a

civilian position and that a person would have to be out of the military for seven years before they could be considered for that post. now in the cr, lawmakers inserted legislative language in the spending bill to provide a waiver to that seven-year real. and democrats today said they don't like that a cr to fund the government is being used to change the law. but this kind of change should be debated in congress and given care f careful consideration, but some of them said they still don't really object to him getting that waiver and that sort of signals that will not be a big, you know, stumbling block for the cr. >> there's funding for security for the president-elect. explain that fund, particularly, the differences in the bill and what new york city has requested. >> it's much less than new york city has requested.

the ranking member of the appropriations committee says this is not going to help new york city nearly as much as it needs to address what's going on in new york right now. and the kind of extra law enforcement resources that are being used. and yet that in itself doesn't seem to be a stumbling block either. there are other things. for example, joe manchin, the senator from west virginia is very angry that only a minor extension of minors benefits is in the cr. he'd been talking to republicans about extending protections to make sure retired miners and their widows would receive their health benefits for a number of years. in this cr, health benefits only would be extended for the duration of the cr so today he was threatening to withhold consent until he could negotiate

a better deal. and he was talking about perhaps offering an extension through next week, maybe next monday, tuesday, in order to give them more time to negotiate these and other things. >> there are other provisions you've been taking a closer look at? >> it's very interesting. democrats say they've really been frozen out of the negotiations on the cr even though they have been negotiating the other spending bills together all year long. and the one thing that the white house has gotten into this cr, maybe not at the levels they wanted but they've gotten extra money for the defense department and the state department to conduct overseas operations in iraq and afghanistan. it's not the entire amount that president obama requested a few weeks ago, but it comes close. and another thing is disaster assistance. that's something that the white house was pushing for louisiana

and other states, and in the end it looks as though this cr will carry about $4 billion in extra funding that the states hurt by flooding last august, including louisiana and other states that were hurt during hurricane matthew in the early fall can share. it's not enough, lawmakers say, but it's another good installment on what they need. >> will the white house support the continuing resolution? >> we don't know yet. we haven't seen a statement of administration on that. they are evaluating it. senate democrats are also evaluating it. they say they'll have a special caucus because there are a number of democrats who are very unhappy with the provisions. and so maybe we won't know until tomorrow what definitively the democrats will do. >> nancy oganovich writes about

congressional appropriations. thanks for being with us. >> thank you. c-span's "washington journal" live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. coming up thursday morning, oklahoma republican senator james lankford will join us to discuss a report highlighting unnecessary or excessive federal spending. and then california democratic congressman mark desonier to examine president-elect's donald trump financial interests. and house democrats agenda in the next congress. be sure to watch c-span's "washington journal" beginning live at 7:00 a.m. eastern thursday morning. join the discussion. all day saturday, american history tv is featuring programs about this week's 75th anniversary of the japanese attacks on pearl harbor beginning at 8:00 a.m. eastern. national archives christopher

carter reads from u.s. navy deck logs describing events on ships under attack. followed by the burial of one of the casualties aboard the "uss oklahoma." rs he mains were recently identified. and then tour pearl harbor attack sites with national park service site historian daniel martinez. president reagan's december 8th, 1941 speech to congress asking for a declaration of war followed by the 75th anniversary ceremony at pearl harbor co-hosted by the national park service and u.s. navy. and from 11:00 to 1:00 p.m., we're taking your calls and tweets live. ian toll, author of "pacific cruc well -- war at sea in the pacific" discussing the pacific war from the attack on pearl harbor through the u.s. victory over the