mr. ellison: let's keep working on this. i just want to say we are talking about medicare for all tonight. h.r. 676. i thank mr. john conyers who carried the bill all these years but we are carrying the bill forward. it's important to note, the progressive caucus recognizes that the affordable care act made critical steps to get more people covered and we must continue to fight. we have to protect the affordable care act and do what we can to defend it. there are people in our congress who just want to get rid of it. but the truth is, it actually helps many people. and helped bring coverage to people who hadn't had it. and brought real answers. we can look further down the line and think about a system in which everybody pays and everybody benefits and look forward to a system like that. we can look for a medicare for all-styled system where health care is a right for everyone. education is guaranteed for everyone. every school kid in america can go to a public school in the united states. fire services. you don't have to pay

mr. ellison, who is an original co-sponsor of this legislation. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from minnesota is recognized for two minutes. mr. ellison: i thank chairman smith and the ranking member for standing together on this important house resolution 128. it is true that minnesota is home to a large number of people who find their roots in ethiopia and are of the oromo background. these minnesotans have made it very clear by reaching out to their elected representatives that while their feet are firmly planted on american soil, they still, like so many other americans, have a heart and a sentiment where they want to support justice in the homeland that they came from. and as a result, i have been able to get an education from my constituents about circumstances in ethiopia which make this resolution necessary. so i do rise in support of house resolution 128, which calls on the government of ethiopia to make clear, concrete steps toward becoming an inclusive, more democratic, more respectful of human rights of all of its citizens. i'd

mr. ellison. mr. ellison: i want to thank the gentleman from california, congressman desauliner, i appreciate what you do in this area and i want to thank you for raising this particular issue for this special order because i agree with you. inequality is the moment -- is the issue of the moment because not only does inequality funnel money from working americans up to the richest people, but what do they do with the money once it's up there? there's only a certain number of boats you can ski behind. only a certain number of houses you can buy. only a certain number of luxury cars you can buy. what do the billions go to? much of it goes to things like merger and acquisition. also, political influence. it's very important to understand this economic inequality has grown. political inequality has also grown. because nowadays, the money goes into a super p.a.c., where they do independent expenditures, pour money in favor of their friends. politics in america has become the battle of the billionaires now.

mr. ellison brought this up. absolute poverty is a definition by economics -- the economics' profession. it is not limited to nations outside our borders. we like to talk about the rest of the world has come up from a dollar a day to $2. 3.2 million people in the united states now live under $2 a day. in the united states of america. this is extreme poverty that we often ascribe to very, very nderdeveloped americans. anything under $4 is due to costs. a day. to live under $4 in comparison, let's say based on this, if you took the $4 and go up to 3.5 million americans are in this definition of absolutely poor. more people in absolute poverty in the united states than in sierra leone or napal. zero%. 2/10 of great britain and they live in absolute poverty. so this is just the extreme that i think we have to hear about because we gloss over the issues in this chamber of people who are really struggling, the absolutely poor, the very poor, the most vulnerable amongst us while we creggetly try to help everybody in the

mr. ellison. >> thank you, mr. chairman. welcome to the committee, mr. mulvaney. >> mr. llison good to be back. >> you know what the doctrine of absurdity is right, in statutory construction? remember law school. >> been a long time. help me on that one. >> you started out by saying that that you under the law you could come in here and sit there. >> i think that is one interpretation of that, right. >> under the law of statutory interpretation i know you know, if an interpretation would lead to an absurd result then you don't apply it that way. and you sitting there, playing "candy crush" as the chairman's pointed out or twiddling your thumbs as you point out that would absurd result. so anyway, we start out with that. >> and i hope. >> let me ask you a question. when you got to the cfpb, was the glass clear in your office? >> yes, sir. >> is it frosted now. >> part of it is. >> is that your office up there on the screen? >> yes, sir. >> so, when somebody walks by your office they are obscured from seeing what you're doing? yeah, they are. >> i'm sorry. >> that is the wh

mr. ellison for your comment where you suggested that it just requires that you appear and not testify. i think your subtlety has been lost. in asking for a gold star for being willing to testify. you are here saying that you want to be accountable and you want to be on the appropriations and you don't believe the statute in the way that it's written to date aches a lot of sense in terms of a member of congress is that a fair sense of your position? >> let's say the next director comes in and takes the position. so many folks talked about how the agency has been. in fact its very founding was supposed to be independent and explicitly removed from oversight by congress and were supposed to be micromanaged by congress. congress. congress. it is a love of language out of there by people that go exactly to that point. if you take that and combine that with the actual language of the statute you could make the case i don't have to answer your questions and neither does the person. >> should the president be able to fire you without cause? i enjoyed your january 23 article in the journal and

mr. ellison. >> good morning, mr. quarles. how are you? >> good morning. >> 31 mortgages, and they found evidence that redlining is still alive and about 61 major american cities. did you see that report? >> i have not had a chance to study it, no. >> we will send it to you. i think this is absolutely unacceptable. 50 years since the passage of the fair housing act, which banned discrimination in lending, 41 years since the passage of the community reinvestment act which allows them to invest in communities in which they operate, including low and moderate income communities. you want to improve, and i'll quote, the current supervisory and regulatory framework to further the statute's objective of promoting access to credit and financial inclusion. what did you mean by that? >> well, i think that, you know, the objective of the cra is a broad braud one. >> i'll reclaim my time. i was hoping you had some things in mind. do you have some specific things you want to do with the cra that you could identify today? >> we're working with the othe

mr. ellison for your comment where you suggested that it just requires that you appear and not testify. i think your subtlety has been lost. in asking for a gold star for being willing to testify. you are here saying that you want to be accountable and you want to be on the appropriations and you don't believe the statute in the way that it's written to date aches a lot of sense in terms of a member of congress is that a fair sense of your position? >> let's say the next director comes in and takes the position. so many folks talked about how the agency has been. in fact its very founding was supposed to be independent and explicitly removed from oversight by congress and were supposed to be micromanaged by congress. congress. congress. it is a love of language out of there by people that go exactly to that point. if you take that and combine that with the actual language of the statute you could make the case i don't have to answer your questions and neither does the person. >> should the president be able to fire you without cause? i enjoyed your january 23 article in the journal and

mr. jackson. connell? >> ellison thanks. ellison barber tonight at the white house. for more on this, let's bring in judith miller adjunct fellow at the manhattan institute for policy research, pulitzer prize winning author and journalist. good to see you. >> good to see you. >> we will talk about the president's rally and it is getting set to begin, and once it does, in michigan, we will take you will live in a moment. white house correspondents dinner as well maybe. to ellison's report on this back and forth between the president and this montana senator john tester over ronny jackson, what do you make of the calls for the senator to resign? >> there's no doubt that senator tester is heading into a tough election. he's seeking a third term in a state that went 56% for donald trump. so he can't take reelection for certain. on the other hand, i think he must be comforted by the support of senator johnny isaacson. because isaacson of the republican chairman of the senate affairs committee actually said he had no problem in the way this investigation was conducted. >>

mr. jackson. molly? molly: ellison, thank you.s and the political impact of this escalating feud, let's bring in a columnist for national review magazine. john, this reminds me that as tip o'neil said all politics is local, going after senator tester who could be in a tough race. >> well, the decision is going to be made largely on local issues. montana is an agricultural and mining state, those will be far more important than a veterans administration choice. however, i think this does go to senator tester's temperament. this is a hair trigger decision he made to rely on unattributed sources to attack the character of a white house physician. by the way who served president obama very loyally for four years. eric: how come we didn't hear about it then, while president obama was in the oval office? and it comes up now when president trump is in the oval office. >> one reason may be is apparently the two worst charges aren't true. the secret service they have no record of complaints. >> the democrats say 23 people came forward with

mr. papadopoulos, of all people, who was supposedly meeting with some folks in london, how that made it over across into the fbi's hands. eric: and ellison barber is lye with more. >> an agreement to share various information, signal intelligence between the u.s., the uk, canada, new zealand and awes traiaustralia. part of the agreement is that those countries don't spy on each other. house intelligence chairman devin nunes seems to suggest a tip reporting former trump campaign adviser george papadopoulos would have appeared in some way on channels related to five eyes and there's no evidence that it does. listen. >> it took us a long time to actually get this -- what's called the electronic communication. what that is, it's the original intelligence, original reason that the counter intelligence investigation was started. now this is really important to us because a counter intelligence investigation uses the tools of our intelligence services that are not supposed to be used on american citizens. we've long wanted to know what intelligence did you have that actually led to this investigation. so what we found now, after the investigato