pursuant to clause 12-a of rule 1, the chair declares the house

mrs. mcmorris rodgers: our hearts remain those who have been in train crashes this week, both in south carolina and those on the way to our conference last week and we are especially keeping the family -- families of those that have lost loved ones in our hearts and in our prayers. this is really a heartbreaking time. i'd like to share a call that i received this week from a young woman in spokane, washington. she said, i just got my paycheck for the first time and i'm getting $47.98 more than i had in the past which is about $1,200 a year. for me they're not crumbs.

it's more money to help me put food on the table. i was so happy i wanted to tell everybody, the whole world, these tax cuts work. i'm so excited. she's right. we share in that excitement what tax reform, tax cuts will mean to everyone in this country. these are the results that we promised. after last week's house-senate joint conference, where we continue to focus on building a strong, safe, proud america. it's also critical, so critical and it was emphasized at the retreat that we provide for our national defense. we're continuing to work on the broader budget agreement that properly funds our military. this is the funding that our troops rely on to be paid and the resources that they need to protect us and that's why i'm pleased that congressman jim banks is here. he's in the navy reserve, and he's going to speak about the importance of funding the readiness within our military. we urge the senate democrats to stop the games and to stop

holding our military hostage for partisan demands and let's join together, republicans and democrats, to put the safety and the security of america first. before i turn it over to congressman banks, i also wanted to highlight two other bills on the floor this week. first is the commonsense nutrition disclosure act. this brings menu labeling regulations into the 21st century. it gives places like grocers or convenient stores more flexibility to provide the required nutrition information to their customers in a more user friendly way. whether it might be using an app or going online. i'm also pleased that we're fast tracking the bipartisan legislation to ensure that the congressional workplace is safe and welcoming for all. members of congress must be held to a higher standard and they must lead by example and so i'm looking forward to that vote later on today. mr. banks: well, thank you to

the leadership team. good morning. thank you for an opportunity to share a few words with you. when i'm back home in northeast indiana, i continue to hear the good news about hoosiers receiving bigger paychecks, about businesses expanding and employers investing in resources back into their companies. just last week a company in my district, 2020 plastics in indiana say they are raising wages for every single one of its employees because of tax reform. what may be crumbs to some is not to working-class hoosiers back home in indiana. i'm hopeful we can build on the momentum, though, from what we achieved with tax reform by focusing on another important priority for my district and that's rebuilding the military. i was deployed to afghanistan in 2014 and 2015, the most recently deployed member of congress, and i saw firsthand our military's readiness crisis. it's affecting not just the training, resources but also

the morale of our men and women who wear the uniform and serve our country. this is a real and growing problem. just last year 80 service members died in training-related incidents while 21 service members died in hostile-related incidents, to put that in perspective. while some in congress are arguing over unrelated issues and holding hostage the funding our armed services need, lives are at risk. funding our military should never be a political tool, and i urge my democrat colleagues, as the chairwoman already said, to do the right thing and give our military the resources that they need. each day that congress fails to provide these resources is another day that our enemies increase their capabilities and put our men and women at risk. thank you. >> thank you, jim. good morning. this will be a busy week in congress and it starts today. mr. scalise: we're doing important work to pass a bill that properly funds government

and most importantly removes the uncertainty that our men and women in uniform have right now. by including the d.o.d. appropriations bill in this funding of government bill it actually gives real certainty to our troops, our men and women for too long in military that serve our country, that sacrifice for our nation have not had the certainty because we've been operating under c.r.'s. the generals will tell you that's one of the most dangerous things. the biggest threats to our military is not having the certainty that they're going to have the tools they need so we can not only have the ability to go out and confront the enemies all around the world, but that our men and women in uniform can have the safety in understanding and knowing we are giving them the best equipment that's available. it's about time we do it. it's about time the senate actually takes this up and hopefully in the next day or two the senate will take action after the house does this. one of the other issues included, we had some funding for community health centers,

something very important for people all around the country and also included in this bill is something i worked very closely with our conference chair, cathy mcmorris rodgers, on and that's to make permanent the steve gleason act. this is something congress came together in a bipartisan way to at least have a two-year renewal of the steve gleason act which is spornt that's important to the entire a.l.s. community. there was a ruling that would take away the speech generating devices that are so critical giving a voice to those people with diseases like a.l.s. that lose their voice and so steve gleason and his foundation became very vocal in making raising awareness all around the country and ultimately congress came together and took action. but that action expires, and in this bill, this funding of government bill, we actually make permanent the steve gleason act so that all of those people in the a.l.s. community can have the certainty they need that they will have the ability to speak and have a voice that they

deserve. mr. mccarthy: couple quick notes just so you know. every day we're seeing more bonuses and more companies to the employees which is a very good sign. this month you will be beginning to check your check. individuals will get more in their paychecks simply because the withholding and the tax benefits from the tax bill. later today i will be holding another meeting in regards to immigration and daca. we will have senator durbin and congressman steny hoyer, also the white house, secretary of homeland will be in my office. we'll continue to have these meetings. i look forward to the day we can solve this and be able to move foorned. unfortunately, we're back at that point we're just here a few weeks ago. the american public was reminded it's not one simple party rule in the senate. it takes 60 votes to pass anything. unfortunately, last time we had to have a shutdown. hopefully we will not be in

that situation again. i did not find that to be productive. i don't think the american people did either. as all of you know during that process we had voted numerous times on the chip scarborough -- children's health insurance program. we have community health centers. we have voted on that in the house. unfortunately the minority party has decided to vote no on that. hopefully we will be able to get that through. as many of you know, we have passed all 12 appropriation bills out of this house. we passed those back in september. first time majority has done that since 2009. the republican majority. unfortunately having to have 60 votes in the senate, those have lingered. but listening to during the schumer shutdown the comments that were made about not holding up the military. and during our retreat, i would say probably one of our best discussions we had secretary tillerson and secretary mattis talking about the readiness, talking about the future,

talking about what the world looks like to actually secure our men and women and give them everything that they need for a productive and protect them wherever we need to go. it is a challenge, and i read back and i want to read some of these quotes so i'm hopeful when we move this bill today and send it to the senate that these words will ring true. on january 21 during the schumer shutdown minority leader schumer said, "we don't want to use the troops as hostage." senator manchin said, "we want our military to be funded properly and to be able to defend us in making sure they all have the necessary equipment and armament and all the technology they're going to need to be safe themselves." senator durbin said, "let's get this right for the department of defense. let's give general mattis and the secretary of defense the resources he needs to spend money wisely in defense of this country to make sure we never

come in second in a war." this is an opportunity. we will put on the bill that we passed in appropriations dealing with d.o.d. back in september onto the continuing resolution, a place we do not want to be because back in september we want government to be fully funded. we do not think this is the best way to fund government, and we will send that to the senate. having just read these quotes from a few weeks ago and understanding what they want to get done, this is an opportunity that all americans can win on. our military men and women could have what they need, and we will not be using from a perspective of playing politics with this and we can continue to move forward to solve the other problems as well. speaker ryan: yesterday the president was in ohio to talk about the good news still rolling in on tax reform. just over this past week companies like u.p.s., lowe's, cigna, thermo fish erskine tisk and best buy announced bonuses,

pay raises, additional benefits for their employees. right now thanks to tax reform, companies have announced more than $2.5 billion in bonuses, and $179.5 billion in new investments in this country already. more than 4.3 million workers benefited. of course, as a result of tax reform, the average family of four will save more than $2,000 this year. tax reform is working. and there have been significant economic gains. u.s. employers added 200,000 jobs in january with the biggest -- unemployment is at a 17-year low. and tax cuts are only going to help raise wages and create more jobs. finally, as was mentioned by the majority leader and others, we are voting on yet another continuing resolution this week. i will remind you the only reason we do not have a full budget agreement is because democrats continue to hold funding for our government hostage on an unrelated issue. they must stop using our troops as pawns in a game of politics.

and that's why the house will send the senate a bill to fully fund our military for this year while we keep working toward a budget agreement. i urge the senate democrats to stop their filibuster and provide our men and women in uniform the resources they need to support they need. quite literally the safety of our service members and the security of country is at stake. does anyone have any questions? reporter: is the senate able to reach an immigration agreement and pass the bill, would you take any bill to the house floor? speaker ryan: we have been very clear about this. we will take the bill that the president supports. put it this way. president trump made a very serious and sincere of good offer to the hill. those are the bipartisan negotiations that the majority leader is conducting on our behalf. so we're not going to bring immigration legislation that the president doesn't support. we are working on something

here in the house. we are working on bipartisan negotiations. it's going to be a bill that we support, that the president supports. reporter: mr. speaker, [inaudible] democrats say they do want to fund defense. speaker ryan: great. we will give them an opportunity today. wonderful. reporter: do you not give any credence to their argument that nondefense should get an increase? speaker ryan: we have been trying to get a budget cap agreement for six months. i argue strongly the reason we don't have these agreements is because they're holding government funding, particularly funding for our military hostage, on completely unrelated items that have nothing do with funding the government. reporter: would you urge the president to declassify the majority memo? speaker ryan rrts about sources and methods. you know what's ironic about this issue -- is the republicans on the hipsy committee, intelligence committee, voted to declassify their memo. the democrats voted against declassifying the republican memo but not their memo.

i think what you see here is republicans are for letting all of this information out there provided we scrub for sources and methods. the republican memo was written to make sure that sources and methods were not compromised so that full disclosure could occur. we do not know whether that's the case for the democrat memo. it has to go through that scrubbing process. here's what i would like to encourage all of you. you're the press. you're the avatars of the first amendment, fisa abuse matters to each and every one of us as citizens. and if our government abused the fisa process, a very unique selective process, which if mishandled could complicate and compromise american civil liberties, we should care about that. this is about making sure our civil liberties as citizens are protected in the fisa court and that it is not politicized. reporter: mr. speaker, last week you made the case the memo -- the memo was separate from

the mueller investigation. over the weekend the president claimed total vindication from the nunes -- was he vindicated in any way? speaker ryan: this is about fisa abuse and about holding our government accountable and this is about congress doing its job in conducting oversight over the executive branch which in this particular case has been given great power over us as citizens. we need to make sure that power is used correctly. thank you. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2018] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> currently on capitol hill, the house in recess. when members return expect work to start short-term measure funding the federal government through march 23. earlier today passage