The majority and minority leaders for morning hour debate. 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 limited to five minutes. But in no event shall debate continue beyond 1 50 p. M. The chair recognizes the gentlewoman from indiana, mrs. Brooks, for five minutes. Mrs. Brooks i ask unanimous consent to address the chamber for up to five minutes. The speaker pro tempore without objection. Mrs. Brooks thank you, mr. Speaker. I rise today to discuss the sobering but extremely consequential topic of christian persecution. Last week i had the honor of visiting with more than 100 parishioners at st. Al fon as Catholic Church in zionsville indiana. Including many Interested High School students who shared with me their passionate concerns about the senseless persecution of their christian brethren. Through the churchs social action committee, they wanted to know how a small faithful community could make a difference in bringing attention to this commonly overlooked matter. However, they wondered if their cries for mercy were falling on deaf ears in washington. They felt helpless in bringing to light the barbarity torture, and Living Conditions that christians in places like iran endure. The parishioners felt that too often horrendous massacres are met with isolationism and arguments that its not americas job to promote human rights beyond our shores. Today i want to let the people of st. An fon sews and all those who seek to give the voice of the silent victims of religious perfection cution know i hear you and others in washington, d. C. Do as well. I believe that america must reassume its leadership role in protecting those most destitute and downtrodden. That American Leadership in the world should advance not only our National Interest but also the interest of those who yearn for freedom across the globe. That christians who have to shield their faith for fear of crucifixion or beheldings have beheadings have an ally in america, an ally who will fight for the dignity of all mankind. Incidents of persecution of christians more than double in 2014 alone. I wish i could say i was surprised by this increase, but im not. I think this is part of a larger trend in the globe. The world we live in is remarkably unstable right now. People lack security. Too many regions of our world are fending off the rise of groups that espouse extremely radical ideologies. Groups that hate this nation. Groups that often hate all other religions. Groups that feed off of destruction and fofert groups that value violence over peace. Groups that are clearly not a true or worthy representation of the religions they claim as their own. The parishioners at st. Alfonsos church asked me what we can do. I told them America First needs a smart plan because the threats christians face is significant and not going away. The United States must work with free nations across the globe to reaffirm a simple but important message, human rights are not negotiable. Countries dont get to pick and choose which rights they allow and which ones they deny. We also need to work more locally to raise awareness for the specific issue of christian persecutions. There must be a strong grassroots element to this effort. Each month approximately 180 christians are killed across the globe because of their faith. Thats a startling number. In america, a country where its so easy to take our freedoms for granted its easy to not notice the pain and suffering of others. But we must. And i know we are a truly generous and kind. When japanese communities were torn apart by a massive tsunami in 2009 americans mobilized, donate more than 700 million in charitable relief. Americans always answer the call when people are suffering. Today, theres clearly a tsunami of hatred. Sweeping parts of the world and there are people who need our help. So churches and other groups with a concern for their fellow christians and all global citizens need to take a stand. Like those at st. Alfonsos have, christians and people of all faiths across this nation need to reach out to their elected officials and let them know of the tragic persecution of christians that it deserves attention. The religious freedom is a value we must defend and promote. Only then will everyone in this body know what was foretold in matthew, that blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness for they are seeking the kingdom of heaven. Let us work to bring that kingdom of heaven closer to earth. Thank you. I yield back. The speaker pro tempore the gentlewoman yields back the balance of her time. Pursuant to clause is it 12a of rule 1 the chair declares the house in recess we will check in with mike, congressional reporter for the hill. Guest thank you for having me. Host the posturing in washington about iran how do you see things taking shape in town this week as negotiations continue . Guest this is, the letter started a fire. Everybody is still talking about it. A lot of support for the letter and a lot of blowback on the republican side. Senators who signed it seemed to be regretting or walking back some of their support for signing the letter to the iranian leaders. The question is how is this going to affect legislation on the floor . This goes back to the sanctions debate. This was always a bipartisan push. There were a lot of democrats on both sides of the aisle who want tougher sanctions and they are even ignoring obamas calls not to use legislation well he was negotiating. That changed when john boehner asked Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of israel, to speak. Wendy politics of that got involved especially in the senate, democrats said this is going to become so political. We are going to stop pushing for sanctions to allow space for obama to negotiate. Mr. Mcconnell is saying he wants to bring something to the floor. We are in the middle of the debate over Human Trafficking and the Loretta Lynch nomination for attorney general. We are not sure when that would have time to come to the floor. There is this conflict now between do we do sanctions, do we get obama the space, it has become a very partisan issue. In the past, it was not. Host you mentioned Loretta Lynch. We thought a vote or debate was coming this week. The majority leader changed course over the weekend. One of the headline says the Human Trafficking bill stands in the way of the pic for attorney general. First, are theese two issues related . Guest not at all. Two Different Things happening. The fight over Human Trafficking, this was another bill that was bipartisan and supposed to sail through. Everybody thought it would come to the floor and be a done deal and they could move on to Loretta Lynch. What happened late last week democrats discovered an antiabortion provision in the republican bill, it was not in the house passed bill. They say they were caught offguard. Republicans say it was in there all along. There has been that debate happening. The crux of it is it does not seem like the bill now has the 60 votes needed to pass it through the senate and mcconnell went on tv yesterday and said we are not going to move to the Loretto Lynch vote until they can break the impasse over the Human Trafficking bill. So it is tough to say how that is going to end. Are republicans going to pull the language out sit on it and hope they can get democratic votes to pass it . We do not know how that is going to play out. We will know soon enough, Tuesday Morning is the coach or vote Tuesday Morning is the cloture vote on the Human Trafficking bill. Host how are the votes lining up for Loretto Lynch . Guest the expectation is that she will be approved. 3 republicans voted her out of committee, a good sign. The fact that there is a lot of opposition is not good for her or the white house. In testimony before the Senate Committee last month, she was asked pointedly by a lot of republicans whether or not she supported president obamas executive actions on deportations and immigration and she said explicitly that she supported it. So the backlash from republicans has been pretty severe. We do anticipate a lot of republican no votes but probably not enough to sink her. We expect her to become the next attorney general is a question of when. Host mike lillis, lets talk about the budget. Reading that the gop will lay out it Budget Priorities this week. Re looking for two . What are we looking forward to . Guest the senate is controlled by republicans for the first time is 8 years. Over that time, they went after democrats for not putting forward annual budget. It became a talking point. And a lot of pressure to bring a bill that balances the budget over a decade to the floor and to pass it and unite it with ehousepassed bill. With a housepassed bill. Two things, in 2011 they pass the budget control act and set caps on domestic and defense spending. Theres a Deficit Reduction Group on the republican side that wants to keep this caps on place and thinks they are important for the health of the economy. Then you have defense talks on the republican side who want more money for the military. That battle is going to happen internally within the party. People who want to lift a sequestration caps on are ready to deal with democrats to do so, democrats want to lift domestic spending to other programs which is anathema to a lot of conservatives. House republicans in the past they have had control of the house in the past four years unlike the senate. They have put for these types of proposals, paul ryan was chairman of the Budget Committee and he made specific cuts to entitlement programs medicare and medicaid. That was part of his messaging strategy. He is the policy wonk and he was the Vice President ial candidate. There were political reasons for him to do that. We do not expect Senate Republicans to do the same thing, they just want a topline number and date want to let committees who have jurisdictions make specific cuts. I think you will see a little bit of a division between the house and the senate in terms of how they go about proposing these cuts. This is a bill that just sets topline numbers, it does not go to the president. It is not an appropriations bill. We will see what happens but that is going to be the big fight this week. The start of the big fight. They want to pass these things before easter recess. Host yesterday texas senator ted cruz was in lincoln, New Hampshire and spoke on a range of issues including isis, education, tax reform. [applause] senator cruz well, thank you very much. Thank yall for coming out. God bless the great state of New Hampshire. [applause] i spent all of last week down in washington, d. C. So it is great to be back in america. [laughter] now, jennifer, i enjoyed hearing you said that you thought New Hampshire was ready for hillary. Im actually told that they tried to get hillary to speak. Unfortunately, they couldnt find a foreign nation to foot the bill. But i will say weve seen some exciting news. Ready for hillary has announced their new director of email security. Lois lerner now has a job. [applause] im thrilled to be back in New Hampshire with so many friends. I appreciate yall being here. These are extraordinary times. Theyre remarkable times. Every one of us is here, we came out tonight because were deeply concerned about the direction of this country. Every one of us is here because were concerned about our kids and grandkids. There is right now i think an urgency to politics unlike anything any of us have ever seen before. This next election in 2016, i believe it is now or never. I dont think weve reached the point of no return yet but we are close. There comes a point where the holes too deep. There comes a point where the debt is too great, where our liberties have been too far eroded, where the world is too far gone, and i believe if we continue four or eight more years down this current path we will risk losing the greatest country in the history of the world. Now, the men and women here are assembled because none of us are willing to let that happen. None of us are willing to go quietly into the night. None of us are willing to let go and give up on the United States of america. [applause] you know, to underscore how extraordinary this moment is, today for the first time in history a majority of americans, 65 , believe that our kids will have a worse life than we did. I want you to think about that. In centuries of our nations history, that has never been true until right now this instance. It may be the noes unamerican idea has ever been. The basic american ideal back in the 1700s and today has been that our kids would have a better life than we did and their kids would have a better life than they did. Theres something extraordinary. So i want to talk to yall about how we turn that around and i want to come to you with a voice of hope and optimism. I think the central challenge in this country in 2016 and Going Forward is how do we reignite the miracle that is america, and i want to suggest we need to do three things to make that happen. Number one bring back jobs and growth and opportunity. My number one priority since showing up in the senate has been Economic Growth, because Economic Growth is foundational to every thing else and i can tell you across the state of texas it doesnt matter if youre in east texas or west texas or the panhandle or the valuey the top priority is jobs and growth. And that ought to be a bipartisan priority. That ought to bring us all together and say, look, regardless of what we think on other issues, if we have Small Businesses pros perg and growing and creating prospering and growing and creating jobs and opportunity, that lifts all ships. Now, everyone here knows growth doesnt come from government. Government comes from the men and women in this room, from the private sector. The government is awfully good at screwing it up. [applause] and the two most effective levers that government has to facilitate the private sector, to facilitate Small Businesses creating jobs are tax reform and regulatory reform. Now, tax reform, right now the current i. R. S. Code, you know there are more codes in the i. R. S. Code than in the bible. Not a one of them is good. Ill tell you the best and simplest tax reform. We should abolish the i. R. S. [cheers and applause] we should move to a simple flat tax thats fair and that less every american fill out their taxes on a postcard. We need to padlock the i. R. S. Building and put all 110,000 agents on our southern border. [applause] now, i say that somewhat tongue in cheek to our friends who are with us, but i want you to think for a second. Imagine you had traveled thousands of miles in the blazing sun, imagine youre swimming across the rio grande and the first thing you see is 110,000 i. R. S. Agents [laughter] youd turn around and go home too. [applause] and when it comes to regulatory reform, we have seen over the last six years federal regulators descending on Small Businesses like locusts. I was out one time in west texas and i said the only difference is you cant use pesticide on the regulators. And an old texas farmer looked at me and said, wanna bet. I got to admit, that kind of seems like an attitude folks here in the North Country would understand. The single most important regulatory reform, we need to repeal every word of obamacare. [cheers and applause] look, obamacare is a train wreck. It is a disaster. Five years ago maybe reasonable minds could have differ on whether this could have worked. Today we have seen millions of people lose their jobs millions of people forced into a parttime work millions of people lose their Health Insurance, lose their doctors, pay higher and higher insurance premiums. You know, some months ago i was in nebraska. The big rally out in north plat, nebraska where 1,000 people in the countryside out in north plat, a young woman came up to me and hugged my neck. She said ted, im a single mom. She said, i got six kids at home. My husband left me and hes not paying child support. She said, im right now working five different jobs. Neither one of them is even 30 hours a week because obamacare kicks in at 30 hours a week. She started to choke up. She said, im having a hard time keeping clothes on the backs of my kids, but the single hardest thing is i never get to see my kids. I got from job to job to job and they dont get the mom that they need and they deserve. Look, thats who were fighting for. Thats who obamacare is hurting. Its the people who are struggling to achieve a better life. Our First Priority needs to be to bring back jobs and growth and opportunity. Our second priority is to defend our constitutional liberties. [applause] all of them, the first amendment, the right to free speech. You know the i. R. S. Has been demanding of citizen groups, tell us what books youre reading. Tell us the content of your prayers. You know what, the federal government has no business asking any american the content of our prayers. [applause] you look at the assault on religious liberty that every one of us is seeing. Sadly, it was manifested in my hometown of houston when just a few months ago the city of houston subpoenaed five pastors. Issued subpoenas to the pastors to hand over their sermons. Now, i got to know. Listen, if we had gone out and said if i had gone out on fox news and said, the government wil