Legislative Program

Floor Speech

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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Scalise) for yielding the time.

Mr. Speaker, on Monday, the House will meet at noon for morning-hour debate. On Tuesday and Wednesday, the House will meet at 10 a.m. for morning-hour debate and noon for legislative business. On Thursday, the House will meet at 9 a.m. for legislative business, with last votes no later than 3 p.m.

We will consider several bills under suspension of the rules. The complete list of suspensions will be announced by the close of business tomorrow.

Members are advised that additional legislative items are possible, including additional legislation related to fiscal year 2019 appropriations.

I want to make it clear to Members that when we leave today or tomorrow, we will leave with the notice to Members that they are subject to being asked to come back Saturday, Sunday, Monday morning, or any day thereafter, if there is a possibility of opening up the Government of the United States, so that it can serve the American people.

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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, let me make very clear that which ought to be very clear: We believe the President of the United States, with the aiding and abetting of the majority leader of the United States Senate, has taken the Government of the United States hostage, and the President of the United States is asking for ransom, and that ransom is to accept his policy or go home and stay shut down.

I will tell the gentleman, Mr. Speaker, that I have been in this body for a long time. I am in my fourth decade. I have never supported shutting down the Government of the United States.

Now, the gentleman may point out that I have voted from time to time against bills that would have opened it up because of things that were in the bills and these bills passed the House of Representatives when you were in charge. They did not pass the Senate, of course.

I believe that shutting down the people's government is an unacceptable--unacceptable--tactic in a democracy when one is discussing differences that need to be resolved. Unacceptable.

Furthermore, as I said on the floor the other day, Mr. Speaker, I can find no free government in the world that shuts itself down, other than the United States of America. Now, we have a relatively unique system of government.

But I will tell my friend that we are for border security. We have supported bills that affected border security. During our tenure, there was more border security fencing, I will tell the gentleman, constructed than when they had been in charge over the last 8 years. Look at the record.

But the issue is, we are not going to negotiate at the point of a gun, which is shutting down the Government of the United States, affecting 800,000 of our employees.

Some of you say: I run a business. I am a businessman.

Well, if you are a car company, or you are a real estate company, or you are a contractor, or whatever you may do, can you tell your employees: I am going to have you work, but by the way, I am not going to pay you.

Mr. Speaker, we want to negotiate. We want to get this resolved, but we are not going to pretend this is business as usual. This is the longest shutdown in history, and the other side has consistently voted against every bill that we have offered to open up government.

Now, the other side offered a bill where they want to pay employees while they don't work. I voted against that. I think the taxpayer deserves to have his employees or her employees working, and, yes, he should pay them and she should pay them for working, not some stopgap measure to pretend that somehow we are lessening the consequences of a shutdown, in light of a consistent, overwhelming vote on the other side of the aisle to keep government shut down.

I tell my friend, he voted against Boehner, when he was the Speaker of the House, requesting to open up the government. Maybe he believes, Mr. Speaker, that shutting down the government is good policy, good practice, the way to treat your employees. I emphatically reject such a premise.

When the gentleman asked me if will we negotiate, I am pretty proud of my reputation, having negotiated with George H.W. Bush a major piece of legislation that was very controversial, the Americans with Disabilities Act, negotiating in league with Roy Blunt, one of the gentleman's predecessors on his side of the aisle; and Jay Rockefeller and Senator Kit Bond from Missouri to get FISA, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which was a very controversial issue, resolved, with Democratic and Republican support, and President George W. Bush signed that bill.

So anybody who knows my reputation knows that I am prepared to sit down and come to agreement, because that is what you need to do in a democracy. I won't get everything I want; you won't get everything you want.

But the fact of the matter is, as long as government is shut down, we are not going to have business as usual.

I remind the gentleman that his side was in charge last year and went 11 months and 20 days and didn't bring a Homeland Security bill to the floor of this House--11 months and 20 days. It was in the waning 10 days of the year when his majority brought a bill to the floor that they knew wouldn't pass the Senate.

We have passed Senate bills that would open up the government. We have sent simple CRs with no controversy to them that would have opened up the government. We have sent 10 different bills, 11 different bills. The 12th lost on suspension, because their side voted against it.

So I tell my friend, I am prepared to negotiate. I am prepared to negotiate in good faith. I will tell the gentleman, the Speaker of this House is prepared to do the same, and our Members are prepared to do the same.

There are significant, strong differences. We differ on whether the wall is an effective way to keep the border secure. But we agree on a number of other things.

When the gentleman and I were down at the White House, for instance, the magnetic resonance of trucks and vehicles that are carrying contraband, drugs, guns, and other material that we don't want to come into the United States, we can agree on that. We can agree on much, I think, of border security.

That was a long answer to the gentleman's question, but until we open up government, it is not going to be business as usual, until we open up government and put those 800,000 people back to work. I represent 62,000 of them. Now, not all of them are laid off, because we funded some portions of government. But a significant number of them are, and they are hurting.

A TSA agent comes in at $28,000 per year. We make substantially more than that, and they are living paycheck to paycheck. Tomorrow, they are not going to get a paycheck. But they have been told by their government they have to work, and because they are conscientious, patriotic Americans, they are working. But you can't expect them to work much longer. We can't expect people to work when they are not getting paid, when they are not getting respected, when they are not getting treated as we would want to be treated ourselves.

So I say to the gentleman, in answer to his question, we are prepared to discuss and negotiate and compromise, but not in the face of this shutdown.

I would hope that it would end. It is the wrong policy. It is a cruel policy. It is hurting America. It is hurting our economy. It is hurting our reputation around the world. And it is hurting our people who work for us.

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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his comments.

The gentleman, of course, just voted against funding the Department of Homeland Security, as did his colleagues.

The gentleman proudly said that all of his colleagues--and not all of his colleagues voted against it--but he voted against opening up the Department of Homeland Security. He voted against paying the personnel in Department of Homeland Security. Yet, he cites them as experts who have given us advice, and why don't we follow that advice.

But, Mr. Speaker, the minority party doesn't have enough respect for them to open up the government, open up the Department of Homeland Security, pay the people who are protecting our border, pay the people who are processing paperwork for those border security guards, pay the people who are answering the phones, pay the people whom we ask to protect our borders, and then laments that somehow we are not coming up with a number.

Open up this government, Mr. Speaker.

And, yes, I used the word, ``hostage''; and, yes, I used the word, ``ransom.'' And, yes, I believe there are two people, and a lot of complicit people, with this government being shut down and with the pain and suffering that we are imposing on our employees. Anybody who thinks Democrats are responsible for that doesn't know what is happening.

I am very concerned about the President being able to communicate with the American people. The historic, greatest tweeter of all time. You can't get away from hearing what the President has to say, every morning, every afternoon, and every evening. He has plenty of time.

And, by the way, the President said: Yes, I am not going to give the State of the Union until the government is open. He just said that, just a few hours ago.

Open up this government.

And for anybody who watches the votes on this floor, watched that we voted unanimously to open up DHS; we voted unanimously to open up the other departments of government; we voted unanimously to make sure that the people are being served by their government agencies.

And, Mr. Speaker, again, I understand Mr. Scalise and I have a difference. When the Speaker of the House John Boehner brought a bill to the floor when the government was shut down to open it up, Mr. Scalise voted ``no''; and the other person who voted ``no'' is Mr. Mulvaney, who is now the chief of staff.

I get that. They think shutting down the government is not a bad option to try to force the other side to agree with them or to pay their ransom.

Yes, I use those words. And, actually, if either one of us adopts that as an acceptable alternative in the negotiation process, this country is in real trouble--real trouble.

And so we ought to open up the government, and then, yes, we can sit down, and, yes, we will resolve this.

But my friend's great angst--he did not mention why it took them 11- 2/3 months while they were in charge last year. They didn't offer a bill until they were about to walk out the door and be the minority. Mr. Speaker, 11 months and 20 days, no Homeland Security bill was brought to this floor. I don't know why. My supposition is they didn't have the votes, but I wasn't counting on their side.

Mr. Speaker, I have been to probably 37 or 38 States of the Union. Never was the government shut down. This shutdown is not only of historic length, it is of historic irresponsibility and historic danger to our country, to our people, to our national security, and to our economy.

Let's vote to open up this government, and then let's resolve the differences that we have in the way democracies resolve differences: by discussion, by debate, and by votes.

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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, these CRs carry forward the spending in 2018, the CRs the gentleman voted against. They have $1.6 billion in them. He voted ``no.''

And would the gentleman tell me why he didn't bring a bill to the floor for 11 months and 20 days that would have done what he says is such important work to be done? Can he tell me why he waited 11 months and 20 days to bring a bill to the floor?

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Mr. HOYER. Let me first say that Mr. Scalise and his party over the last 8 years that they were in charge passed bill after bill after bill after bill that they knew without any doubt they had no chance in the United States Senate--none, zero, zip. They passed them for message. They knew that, we knew that, and America knew that. So that is not the reason they didn't bring the bill that they talk now so passionately about to the floor for 11 months and 20 days. They only brought it as they were going out the door.

Let me tell you what they rejected, Mr. Speaker. They rejected a bill from the United States Senate which would have opened up government and paid all 800,000 of the people who are now either furloughed or asked to work without pay. They rejected that bill that passed overwhelmingly and unanimously on voice vote from the United States Senate that the President of the United States was said, by the Vice President of the United States, to support.

But something happened during those 24 hours as it came from the Senate to the House. A bill that passed the Senate, they rejected that bill, the Republicans in this House, and then they, and only then, did they bring a bill which they knew would not pass the Senate. Talk about negotiation and compromise, and you have done that over and over and over, Mr. Speaker--not you but the Republican majority.

Now, Mr. Speaker, let me tell you who sent it over here: Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader of the United States Senate.

Let me quote Senator McConnell in a CNN report:

In his strongest words to date, Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, tried to quash talk that he would allow another government shutdown if he becomes Senate majority leader next year.

What was his response? `` `Of course not. Remember me? I am the guy that gets us out of shutdowns,' McConnell told CNN in an exclusive interview Wednesday.

Then he went on to say: `` `It's a failed policy,' he said of shutdowns.''

Now, sadly, in league with the Republican minority here in the House of Representatives and the President of the United States, he has done exactly the opposite of what he said he would do. He hasn't opened up, he has shut down government.

The minority whip is correct, Mr. Speaker. We are not going to pretend that this is business as usual as long as we have 800,000 of our employees--some working, some not--not being paid and not being treated with respect because it is a tactic that they have adopted. And I tell my friend again: it must be a tactic he believes in because he voted against his own Republican Speaker and the majority leader who is now the Republican leader who voted and urged Members: vote to open up this government.

Now, he was not alone in that vote. There were 143 other Republicans. Only 87 voted to open up the government. So apparently he believes this is a tactic that is acceptable in a democratic government. We reject that emphatically and proudly.

We have passed bill after bill after bill after bill that would open up this government, and Mr. Scalise, Mr. Speaker, and his colleagues have almost to a person--not always unanimously--rejected that effort.

So I tell my friend: open up the government and we will talk, but we are not going to talk while you hold hostage the employees of this government--not all of them, but 800,000 of them--who are worried about whether they can put food on the table.

There are food lines. Our people at food lines--public employees--do we have no shame?

Do we have no moral commitment to those whom we ask to work to protect this country and to serve these people?

What is it that the President and his party refuse to open up the government?

This is historic. Never in the history--he talked about going back to George Washington in 1799--has this ever happened before that we kept the government shut down. The longest before that, of course, was the Republican shutdown of 2013.

It is not a tactic I tell my friend that we accept. We reject it emphatically, and we are not going to subject ourselves tomorrow to the same kind of blackmail or the day after to the same kind of blackmail or the day after that to the same kind of blackmail.

I will tell my friend: we will have a Democratic President at some point in time. And he ought to reject this tactic as well because it is bad for the government. Much more importantly, it is bad for the people of this country, the economy of our country, and the national security of our country.

Mr. Speaker, I have nothing else to say.

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