Legislative Program
Floor Speech
(Mr. McCARTHY asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)
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Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman for his comments.
Mr. Speaker, the legislation we will be considering next week, I am sure, has support in a number of quarters. The majority leader mentioned, in the last line, that we will be considering efforts to fund the government, the so-called continuing resolution.
Mr. Speaker, as the Speaker knows and the House knows, we have not passed any appropriation bills through the Congress and sent them to the President, nor have we adopted a budget. In the absence of both of those, certainly in the former, we need to have a funding of government passed by September 30th.
I ask the majority leader, therefore, Mr. Speaker, if the majority leader has any knowledge of the status of the CR, either in this House moving forward or in the other body.
I yield to the gentleman from California.
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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the majority leader for that.
Let me say that I would hope, given the fact that we have a maximum of eight or nine legislative days left before the end of the fiscal year, end of the September 30 fiscal year, that the CR hopefully will be a document on which we have consensus on all its parts.
The majority leader, I am sure, Mr. Speaker, has heard the same kinds of rumors I have heard, which is not unusual, that the Senate may pass a CR and then decide their work, at least prior to the election, is done.
If that is the case, or, in any event, whether it is the case or not, and we initiate a bill, it will be critically important that that bill be a bill that can be supported by both sides.
So I look forward to working with the majority leader to ensure that when a CR is brought to the floor, either a Senate bill--which will be a House bill amended by the Senate, I presume--or a House bill, that we have agreement, Mr. Majority Leader, on the component parts of that continuing resolution so we do not put at risk the shutting down of the government of the United States. I don't know whether the gentleman wants to respond at all.
I yield to the gentleman from California.
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Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman.
In addition to the CR, which is necessary to fund government, we have a crisis in America, a health crisis. We spent a lot of time talking about it last time. We won't spend a long time, but Zika continues to be a real challenge. We have continuing incidents. The moral and fiscal costs of not addressing this issue are of great magnitude, great seriousness.
Can the gentleman tell me whether he believes that sufficient resources to respond to the Zika crisis will be included in the CR or whether it may be a freestanding bill that we could reach consensus on and send to the President?
I yield to my friend.
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Mr. HOYER. I thank the majority leader, Mr. Speaker.
I would reiterate, Mr. Speaker, the observation that I made last week, that the Senate has, in fact, passed a Zika response with 68 votes. And if the Senate fails to move legislation, the majority leader--and I share his view--hopes it will be included in a continuing resolution. In the event that does not occur, I would urge the majority leader, Mr. Speaker, to consider putting a House bill in which reflects the Senate compromise supported by more than two-thirds of the Senate and a bill which I represented to the majority leader last week--but I want to represent again--I can't say unanimously but overwhelmingly, with well over 180 votes, in my view, we would support.
I give that information, Mr. Speaker, to the majority leader so that he will know that in the event we have not responded in the CR that I believe the Senate-passed legislation incorporated into a House bill and brought to the floor can pass on suspension and may well even be able to pass on unanimous consent. I don't know that that is the case, but it certainly could pass on suspension. I would urge him to consider that as an alternative available to us to respond so that we do not have the situation which we had in July of leaving town for 7 weeks without having addressed this crisis that confronts the health of our people.
Mr. Speaker, let me indicate that we have a number of other pieces of legislation that I would last like to ask the majority leader about. There are rumors that our schedule is going to be over in the next few weeks. I don't know. The Senate was planning on going presumably to the first week of October. I don't know that they are going to do that. We are planning to go to the end of September.
There are a number of other pieces of legislation which I think need to be addressed. We continue to be very concerned about our failure to respond to the Flint crisis. The mayor of Flint was in my office yesterday. They are still drinking bottled water because the water in their pipes that is being delivered to their homes is still unfit for human consumption unless a filter is in place and unless that filter is working efficiently and effectively. We really need to, I think, help on that.
With respect to opioids, we passed a piece of legislation that was, Mr. Speaker, a bipartisan piece of legislation. We continue to believe, however, the resources to carry out the policies included in the authorizing bill need to be addressed.
Lastly, Mr. Speaker--I mentioned this before--we continue to urge that in light of the scourge of gun violence in America that we take up two bills sponsored by the former chairman, Republican chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security. They are not Democratic bills, although Democrats support the bills and are cosponsors of the bill, but they are Peter King's bills to provide greater safety.
First of all, Mr. Speaker, we have adopted the premise that background checks are a good thing. We require background checks. The problem is, we don't require background checks in every instance of a transfer of a weapon from seller to buyer. The problem with that, of course, is if you want to buy a gun for a nefarious purpose, one would assume you are not going to go and have your background checked. You will find some other way to purchase that gun. We would hope that bill would be brought to the floor.
The second bill that Mr. King has, of course, seems to us to be a very reasonable piece of legislation, which simply says, if you are judged too dangerous to fly on our airplanes, you ought to be too dangerous as well to buy weapons to injure people in our country; we think you are too dangerous to go on an airplane and that you might injure people in that fashion.
I would urge, Mr. Majority Leader, Mr. Speaker, before we leave before the election, two things, that we bring those to the floor and we carry out--and I want to repeat again because I think it is important. Speaker Paul Ryan said on October 29, 2015, just a year ago: ``We will not duck the tough issues; we will take them head on . . . we should not hide our disagreements. We should embrace them. We have nothing to fear from honest disagreements honestly stated.''
Mr. Speaker, I share that view. I think the bills that I have mentioned--Flint, opioids, gun violence, and certainly Zika, and, yes, there are others--ought to be brought to this floor, and the House ought to work its will. I would hope that in the next few days that are available to us that the majority leader, Mr. Speaker, gives careful consideration to bringing those pieces of legislation to the floor.
In the gun violence case, the polls reflect that over 85 percent--and in one case over 90 percent--of Americans support those pieces of legislation. They would pass, Mr. Speaker, overwhelmingly. The only reason they haven't passed--the only reason they haven't passed-- contrary to the statement that we will not duck the tough issues, said by Speaker Ryan just about a year ago, the only reason they haven't passed is because they have not been brought to the floor. I would urge, Mr. Speaker, the majority leader consider that.
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Mr. HOYER.
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