cable satellite corp. 2013] the speaker pro tempore: pursuant to the order of the house of january 3, 2013, the chair will now recognize members from lists submitted by the majority and minority leaders for morning hour ebate. the chair will alternate recognition between the parties with each party limited to one hour and each member other than the majority and minority leaders and the minority whip each, to five minutes but in no event shall debate continue beyond 11:50 a.m. the chair recognizes the gentleman from maryland, mr. hoyer, for five minutes. mr. hoyer: thank you, mr. speaker. mr. speaker, as we proceed with the 15th week of the republican policy of sequester, this house continues to avoid taking the steps it ought to be taking to replace the entire sequester with a balanced alternative. instead, house republicans have fully embraced the sequester's draconian cuts which slash funding from our highest and lowest priorities equally and put our economic recovery and national security at risk. last week they approved a rule deeming the ryan budget's caps for next year which locks in the sequester cuts. this is a blatant violation of the budget control act agreement reached between the two parties in august of 2011. now, we're about to consider defense authorization bill that shifts $54 billion in sequester cuts from the pentagon onto domestic programs which were already cut by sequester like head start, meals on wheels, rental assistance for low-income families. how shameful. this follows the passage of two appropriation bills last week as part of a strategy from republicans we've seen before. it came as no surprise they chose to consider two of the most popular bills first, those that fund programs that protect our homeland security and provide care for our veterans. i'm glad there's bipartisan consensus that these bills represent important funding priorities, but let me quote from an associated press article from june 4 which sheds some light on their strategy, and i quote, the boost for veterans came even as republicans controlling the chamber marched ahead with a plan that would require most other domestic programs to absorb even deeper cuts next year than those in place now after the imposition of across-the-board spending cuts. this refers, of course, to the sequester. the article continues, and i quote, republicans are coping with a shortfall by slashing across a broad swath of domestic programs, forcing cuts in the range of 20%. for instance, to huge domestic spending bill that funds aid to local school districts, health research and enforcement of labor laws. the article goes on to say, the g.o.p. strategy is to early on advance popular bipartisan bills for which almost all of us voted and then bring up bills making deep cuts later in the summer, if at all. in fact, i predict they will not bring up most of the bills notwithstanding their discussions about regular order. by insisting on budget numbers that not only include the sequester but cut even further into domestic priorities, in clear violation of the budget control act and the agreement that we reached between the two parties, republicans are torpedoing any chances of reaching a big and balanced solution to deficits. the longer we wait, mr. speaker, to forge a compromise that can replace the entire sequester with a balanced alternative the more pain will be felt across our economy and the greater the risk will be to our national security. just ask the joint chiefs, not us. let me review just some of the sequester's many effects. 70,000 kids kicked off head start. 10,000 teachers' jobs at risk from title 1 cuts. furloughs to cause delays in processing retirement and disability claims. four million fewer meals for seniors. 125,000 less h.u.d. rental assistance vouchers. ergency unemployment cut 11% for two million americans out of work. 2,100 fewer food safety inspections. longer waits to approve new drugs. furloughs equivalent to 1,000 fewer federal agents, f.b.i., border, etc., on the job. we talk about border security while at the same time slashing border guards. one third, one third of combat air units are grounded in america. it's now been over 70 days since the house passed its budget and since the senate did the same. regular order. yet speaker boehner, who claims to wish regular order for this house, will not appoint conferees. or shall i say he's unable to do so as a result of a severely divided caucus. "the washington post" reported on june 3 that the house republicans had, and i quote, disintegrated into squabbling factions no longer able to agree much less execute some of the most basic government functions. it seems what matters is only a commitment to deep austerity and a weakened government. this ideology has achieved a dangerous manifestation in the sequester which has been the republican policy all along and which, as i pointed out in the past, was included in their cut, cap and balance bill passed in july of 2011 when 229 members of their caucus voted for sequester as an option. now we have further evidence policy ester is their as they refuse to negotiate. there is, however, mr. speaker, an alternative. there is a balanced bill that will replace the sequester entirely. the ranking member of the budget committee, mr. van hollen, has put forward a proposal that deserves a vote. the speaker so often says, let the house work its will. in fact, he's asked for a vote on it six times, van hollen has, and will ask for a seventh time at the rules committee today, but speaker boehner and republican leader cantor has so far said no. the house cannot work its will. the house cannot consider this option. the american people deserve to see where their representatives stand on a balanced alternative to the sequester, and they deserve a congress where real compromise proves stronger than partisan maneuvering. if the van hollen alternative were to come to the floor for a vote, i would hope that a majority of members would vote for it. the majority of democrats certainly would, and i believe a substantial number of republicans who are concerned about our fiscal future. hal rogers, in fact, the chairman of the appropriations committee, has opined how much pain the sequester would be causing and how much dysfunction it would be causing. it's exactly the kind of compromise approach we need, the van hollen alternative. all we're asking to do in the mmediate term is for speaker boehner allow the house to work its will and have a vote on mr. van hollen's alternative and to follow regular order and agree to go to conference. that's what they said they wanted to do. that's what they said they would do. but they're not doing it. it's time for democrats and republicans to work together in a bipartisan way to rise to our budget challenges and send our country back on a sound fiscal path. let us have regular order. let us have a vote and let us restore sanity to this house and replace the sequester with a balanced solution, and i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the chair recognizes the gentleman from california, mr. cclintock, for five minutes. mr. mcclintock: thank you, mr. speaker. we learned about the plight of sarah, the 10-year-old who will die within weeks unless she gets a desperately needed lung transplant. there are no peed at rick lungs -- pediatric lungs, but there may be an adult lung. but because she's nearly 11 years old but not 12 the bureaucratic regulations prohibited it. as secretary of health and human services, kathleen sebelius, could have modified those regulations to conform to the judgment of the doctors, but she wouldn't. her warm words of sympathy for sarah and her family at a congressional hearing last week were horrific. some live and some die. fortunately a federal judge intervened and concluded what sebelius wouldn't, that the regulations are arbitrary and capricious and thank god sarah is now on the adult transplant list. but the incident provided all of us with a chilling look at what health care will be like when bureaucrats like kathleen sebelius are making more and more of our health care decisions. sebelius constructed a straw man to argue with. she said that we shouldn't have public officials making these choices and a lung provided for sarah necessarily means a lung denied to someone else. that is utterly disingenuous. sarah's family, joined by members of the house, were not calling on sebelius to pick winners or losers, but rather we're calling on her to place the judgment of the doctors ahead of the rigid one-size-fits-all dictates of the federal bureaucracy in all such cases, not just this one. and the fact is ms. sebelius is picking who lives and who dies. the difference is that she is doing so not by defering to the judgment of doctors but rather by conforming to the cold and rigid regulations that cannot discern between individual cases. this is the process to which we are about to consign every american as government dictates every detail of their health coverage. sorry, you're a few months too young or too old. tough luck. ome live and some die. one grew up in the soviet union and a question when an ambulance called, how old is the patient? that's what bureaucracy does. they choose two lives and two dies and they do so in an unreasonable manner. the fact is we don't want officials making choices which is exactly what ms. sebelius was doing. those decisions should not involve the federal government but rather by the professionals directly involved. until the court stepped in that's what this administration was impeding, and that shouldn't surprise us. this is the same administration that has substituted the individual medical insurance choices once made by families with the one-size-fits-all mandates of the very same federal officials who dismissively tell dying 10-year-olds some live and some die. mr. speaker, this incident was a dire warning to us all of the danger that lies ahead for every american. remember that the same i.r.s. that abused its fearsome authority to harass ordinary citizens for political reasons now will have the power to enforce regulations over our families' choice of health care by obamacare. we may face the same peril as sarah because of what we set in motion by empowering this government to take an ever-widening role in our health care decisions. we have taken a process that once was determined by individual choice and was once guided by the professional judgment of the physicians who actually gathered around the patient's bed and turned those decisions over to the likes of kathleen sebelius. and i'm afraid in coming years we will pay dearly for that due policity as we move -- duplicity as we move forward to democratically controlled health care that we can already see so clearly through a 10-year-old's life or death battle with the federal bureaucracy. i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the chair recognizes the gentleman from illinois, mr. quigley, for five minutes. mr. quigley: thank you, mr. speaker. mr. speaker, i rise today to announce my reintroduction of the states ethics law protection act. at a time when indictments and allegations of ethics violations of our elected leaders have become all too common, now more than ever we must use every tool at our disposal to fight corruption. unfortunately, the federal government is currently preventing numerous states from using one of the most important tools we had to fight cronyism, corruption and waste. my home state of illinois, which is no stranger to these issues, along with several other states around the country, has taken a stand against crupping by passing laws to elimb -- corruption by passing laws to eliminate pay to play politics which is the practice of trading campaign contributions for lucrative government contracts. pay to play practices erode the integrity of our public works projects and allows individuals to profit at the expense of american taxpayers. . fortunately it is one of the easiest to solve, anti-pay-to-play laws is designed to ensure the competitive bidding process for government contracts is opened and fair. not rigged or otherwise biased by lining the campaign pockets of those responsible for awarding the contracts. amazingly, a loophole created in a previous administration in the federal highway administration's contracting requirements is making it difficult if not impossible for states to implement these anti-corruption laws. the federal government has threatened to cut off highway funds to any state that passes an anti-pay-to-play law. the highway administration's competitive bidding requirements have been interpreted to mean that states can't weed out corrupt contractors. clearly this was not the intent of congress when it passed these requirements. that is why i'm reintroducing the states ethics law protect action. this important measure simply amends the federal highway administration's contracting requirements to allow states to pass these important laws. ensure states that do pass anti-corruption laws do not face financial penalties for doing so . it is time for us to make it clear that congress supports the right of states to fight corruption as they see fit. states have the right to ensure their contracting conforms to the highest ethical standards and offers the best value to taxpayers. it is not the federal highway administration's place to second-guess a state on how to best ethically award contracts. states like connecticut, new jersey, south carolina, pennsylvania, kentucky have all passed laws like illinois to root out this kind of blatant corruption. these states should be applauded not punished for doing the right thing. by amending the federal highway administration's contracting requirements, we can ensure that states have every tool at their disposal to encourage transparency and accountability. our states have shown they are ready to reform. it is now our ability to ensure they have the ability to implement these reforms. i am often asked what the true cost of corruption is. i will tell you in my view coming from illinois it's the loss of the public's trust. we cannot lead without this trust. and if this -- at this critical juncture we must do all we can to ensure trust and inspire the confidence of people across this country. thank you. i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the chair recognizes the gentleman from alabama, mr. brooks, for five minutes. the justice department targets associated press, fox news, and other journalists for political reasons the state department and white house contrive a false story about americans murdered in benghazi. cover-ups ensue. the president promotes rather than fires the principal deceiver. the president promises to punish the benghazi murderers, yet the only person jailed is a scapegoated filmmaker the white house falsely blamed for inspiring the benghazi attacks. armed federal swat agents raid gibson guitar and threaten to put them out of business. why? , gibson guitar imported the same guitar materials they have imported for years, yet martin and company, a gibson guitar competitor, imports the same guitar materials with impunity. the difference? gibson guitar's c.e.o. contributes to republicans like congressman marsha blackburn and lamar alexander of tennessee. while martin contributes $35,000 to democrats. the i.r.s. targets law-abiding citizens who use names like tee party and patriots and dare exercise their freedom association and speech rights. in one particularly outrageous example, texan katherine engelbrect is harassed by the i.r.s., f.b.i., occupational safety and health administration, and alcohol, tobacco, and firearms. why? she founded the king street patriots, which posts weekly discussions on economic freedom and true the vote which trains volunteers to fight voter fraud. the white house manages the fast and furious gun running scandal that left hundreds of mexicans and an american border patrol agent dead. health and human services secretary, kathleen a billous, unethically and perhaps unlawfully shakes down company she regulates for donne nations to support obamacare. president obama thumbs his nose as america's immigration laws by not only giving millions of illegal aliens a free pass, obama rewards illegal conduct by giving illegal aliens work permits in direct violation of american law, thereby undermining the ability of americans to obtain good-paying jobs. america's in unchartered waters. when our own federal government aggressively undermines our rights of freedom, speech, and association. rights one with american blood on -- won on the american battlefield in trenton, princeton, saratoga, and yorktown, among others. mr. speaker, america faces a policy debate between privacy and national security. 50 years ago our fauxes were -- foes were well-known nation states like communist china and the soviet union. now our enemies may be foreign neighbors, foreign tourists, or foreign students. foreign terrorists seek chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons of mass destruction that can destroy an american city or murder hundreds of thousands of americans in a single attack. as america seeks the proper balance between our privacy rights and national security, one thing stands out -- americans must be able to trust our federal government to do the right thing with the privacy information americans give up. if we cannot trust the federal government to use our privacy information solely for anti-terrorism purposes, then the balance shifts. we will not give up our privacy information thereby increasing the risk of a successful weapons of mass destruction terrorist attack on american cities. more and more our own federal government disregards the rule of law that is essential to avoid the strife and bloodshed of anarchy. more and more the federal government targets american citizens who differ politically with the white house. while the i.r.s., gibson guitar, benghazi, fast and furious, and numerous other scandals are troublesome, the bigger picture is that this white house, this administration has breached the public's trust. the bigger scandal is that this white house, this administration by their breach of trust has undermined america's national security and thereby risks american lives. mr. speaker, the white house can still do the right thing, but the right thing is not cover-ups. the right thing is not rewarding and promoting political cronies and lawbreakers. the right thing is with full and open candor telling the american people the truth about these scandals. the right thing is very publicly and aggressively firing, offending federal employees. the right thing is very publicly prosecuting lawbreakers. then and only then will the trust of the american people in the federal government be restored. then and only then can america fight the war on terror with certainty that we will win. mr. speaker, i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the chair recognizes the gentleman from california, mr. miller, for five minutes. mr. miller: i ask unanimous consent to revise and extend my remarks. the speaker pro tempore: without objection. mr. miller: mr. speaker, i rise to commend two young men from richmond, california, who will begin class this is fall at tallahassee community college in tallahassee, florida. sounds pretty straightforward, i know, but these are no ordinary students. what makes these young men from my congressional district stand out is their background. it's not just that most people thought they would never go to college, in fact most people thought they would never make it out of the neighborhood. people thought they would end up in jail or even worse. two senior fellows at the city of richmond's office of neighborhood safety peacekeeper fellship, an office that does remarkable job in changing violent lives. they are shining examples of what remarkable transformation