Legislative Program
Floor Speech
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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I anticipated this was going to be an extraordinarily hostile colloquy.
Louisiana was so incredibly lucky. However, it cost me, I admit to the world, I guess. I hope I don't get in legal trouble. But the Republican whip and I had a little sort of side bet, so I owe the Republican whip a crab dinner for four people. That is the bad news.
The good news is the minority whip will now be eating the best crab in America, not Louisiana crab. It will be Maryland crab that I will be giving him for dinner.
Mr. Speaker, if my friend would like to ask some questions about the schedule--or he did ask me, I am told. But I knew that game was coming.
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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I think it keeps getting worse. In any event, we will move on to the schedule.
I congratulate LSU. They played an excellent game, as did Maryland. It was a really good game. There has to be one winner and one loser, and we lost.
We have the fourth youngest team in the NCAA, so we will be back next year. Maybe we will be able to play LSU again, if they make it.
On Monday, the House will meet at noon for morning-hour debate and 2 p.m. for legislative business, with votes postponed until 6:30 p.m.
On Tuesday, the House will meet at 10 a.m. for morning-hour debate and noon for legislative business.
On Wednesday, Mr. Speaker, the House will meet at 9 a.m. and recess immediately. The House will reconvene at 11 a.m. for the purpose of receiving a joint meeting with the Senate. His Excellency Jens Stoltenberg, the Secretary General for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, will address us. Members are advised to be on the House floor and seated no later than 10:30 a.m. for the joint meeting.
Mr. Speaker, 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 suspension bills will be announced by the close of business tomorrow.
Mr. Speaker, the House will also consider a major piece of legislation, H.R. 1585, the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2019. Frankly, that bill should have been reauthorized prior to September 30 of last year in the last Congress. We extended it until February 15 of this year, at which time it lapsed. We are very hopeful and expect that this will pass this next week.
It is sponsored by Representative Karen Bass. I am pleased to bring this bipartisan bill to the floor, in response to our Nation's crisis of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking.
The Violence Against Women Act officially expired on September 30. As I said, it was extended. It is way overdue that we consider a long-term authorization of this legislation.
Mr. Speaker, it is possible that we will bring to the floor legislation regarding the crisis that is occurring in Yemen. There are 22 million people at risk of starvation--22 million people at risk of starvation--noncombatants, women, and children.
We also may consider other legislation, if it comes from the Senate.
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Mr. HOYER. It is a very interesting question, Mr. Speaker, that the minority whip asked me.
I would ask, in response, a question: Does the minority whip remember when last year, when you were in charge, you brought the budget to the floor?
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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I asked the gentleman a simple question. He asked me about when the budget was coming, and I asked him when did he bring the budget to the floor last year.
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Mr. HOYER. I appreciate, Mr. Speaker, a lot of words of the minority whip.
He didn't pass the budget last year. There was no fiscal year 2019 budget. He is correct that we had reached a caps deal. That is not the budget, Mr. Speaker.
A budget is a plan that is reported out and brought to the floor and passed and sent to the Senate, and the Senate passes it and we have a budget that is in the same position on each side of the aisle. That is a budget. That has rarely been done in the last 8 years.
A caps deal has been reached. I would like to see a caps deal reached.
I have been talking to Mr. McConnell, who wants a caps deal reached; I have talked to Mr. Shelby--both of those, Republican leaders. I have talked to the White House about a caps deal.
Unfortunately, I don't think Mr. Mulvaney wants to reach a caps deal. He wants to use it as leverage as opposed to allowing us to proceed in the regular order.
But a budget is a different kettle of fish, I will tell my friend, than a caps deal. A caps deal does, in fact, set the 302 level of discretionary funding for both defense and nondefense spending.
Yes, we reached the 2-year cap deal. I have been trying for the last 2 months to get meaningful negotiations underway to do the same. I have not been successful, largely because the President, apparently, and Mr. Mulvaney are not interested in reaching such a deal. I regret that.
But the Budget Committee is meeting this week--it is going to meet next week, and we are going to be reporting out what will be what the minority whip refers to as a budget. It will certainly speak to the levels of funding that we need to spend.
I want to pass the appropriation bills by June 30. That has never been done, but I want to do it. I think we can do it, Mr. Speaker, and I am going to work towards that objective. It will require reaching what numbers are going to be for discretionary spending.
Unfortunately, the budget that the President of the United States sent down to Congress is totally unreasonable and irrational, and there is not a single person, I think, on this floor who will support his budget.
I will tell the minority whip that I will be glad to give his party the opportunity to vote on the President's budget. If he asks me, I will have it put on the floor.
Mr. Speaker, it is unfortunate that we are not able to get to a budget caps deal. We passed and began, in my view, an irrational--and I voted for it, and I am sorry that I voted for it--Budget Control Act, creating the sequester.
``Sequester'' is a complicated word which starts with S, which I tell my people in my district and town, many, stands for ``stupid.'' It was an irrational document that took numbers out of the air without regard to our responsibilities and our opportunities.
But I am hopeful, and I tell the Republican whip, my friend, that we are going to try to--hopefully, working with his party--establish some reasonable, rational numbers for defense and nondefense discretionary funding so that we can move ahead with doing what really makes the difference, and that is the adoption of appropriation bills on this floor; send them to the Senate; have the Senate consider them; and we will have a conference, and we will pass those bills and send them to the President of the United States.
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Mr. HOYER. I want the public, Mr. Speaker, to understand that a caps deal is not a budget. They are two separate items:
A budget is a plan for expenditure on defense and nondefense objectives. A caps deal is to simply set not necessarily those priorities per se, but to set a top level of discretionary spending. That is why it is called a cap.
It has been about $1.1 trillion or $1.2 trillion--now, it is going to be a little over that this year, I presume--for discretionary spending. Most of the budget, of course, is not discretionary spending. Two- thirds of the budget is either mandatory spending or debt payment.
I just want to clarify that we are talking about two separate items. One is a budget, which is a budget plan which can, in fact, include caps within it, but a caps deal is a separate deal.
As the gentleman has pointed out, we have usually made them now for 2 years since the sequester would otherwise have gone into effect. The reason we made that deal is both sides--both sides--are unwilling to follow the sequester because we think the sequester does not make rational sense for the security of our country and for the investments our country needs to make.
The President doesn't want to do that either. The difference is, he wants to borrow an additional $180 billion-plus to fund defense and leave domestic discretionary spending largely at 2010 or 2009 levels. We think that doesn't make sense.
But I will clarify for the gentleman again that the Budget Committee is, in fact, considering what legislation they should bring to the floor in order to facilitate us, as the caps deals did, to facilitate us achieving the ability to mark up our appropriation bills, send them to the Senate, and try to reach agreement between the Senate and the House prior to September 30, and certainly to avoid the historic and very harmful shutdown that occurred at the end of the last Congress and continued into this Congress.
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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, what it found is six of the President's closest associates--his campaign manager, his deputy campaign manager, his foreign policy adviser, his national security adviser, his lawyer and counsel for over a decade--all committed crimes. All were either convicted or pled to crimes.
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Mr. HOYER. You had a lot to say. I have something in response.
There is not a person on our side of the aisle who doesn't believe the letter that you issued regarding Mr. Schiff isn't totally a partisan distraction from what you hope is not found. There has been no Mueller report yet that we have received.
The gentleman, Mr. Speaker, voted to have the Mueller report, as did every other member on his side of the aisle and every member on our side of the aisle, to be disclosed. Hopefully, it will be.
Hopefully, it will not be just a four-page letter from the Attorney General of the United States appointed by Mr. Trump. Hopefully, we will get Mr. Mueller's full report. That is what the Congress voted to get. That is what we expect to get, and that is what we hope to get.
Let me assure the gentleman that there is not a person on my side of the aisle that believes that Mr. Schiff has done anything but act in the highest interest of our government, of the Intelligence Committee, and of full knowledge for the American people, unlike his predecessor who worked hand-in-glove with the White House, not as an independent coequal branch of government, but as an advocate for the White House's position, who clearly should have been removed and was not.
Mr. Speaker, I say to the minority whip that Mr. Schiff is a member of the highest integrity, highest intellect, and has great responsibility. I expect him to pursue his responsibilities as chairman of the Intelligence Committee to assure that neither Russia nor any other country will in the future be able to interfere in the elections of the United States, as Mr. Mueller concluded the Russians have.
Now, the President hasn't concluded that, but almost every American understands that the Russians tried to, on behalf of the President of the United States, affect the elections. So I tell my friend, I hope that we can have the debate. Let's look at the Mueller report.
Very frankly, there are other investigations that are going on, as the gentleman knows, in the Southern District of New York, as well as in the Government Operations Subcommittee, as well as in the Foreign Affairs Committee, as well as in the Financial Services Committee, as well as in the Intelligence Committee.
We still pale in insignificance in the number of investigations that we have had or oversight hearings that we have had when compared to the oversight hearings the Republicans had of the Obama administration and Mrs. Clinton in trying to undermine their credibility, an administration that, by the way, I don't think anybody was put in legal jeopardy and there were no scandals in the Obama administration.
There were disagreements, but I would think the gentleman ought to be very reserved, very frankly, in terms of making conclusions based upon a four-page letter before we have seen the Mueller report, before we have seen the actions of the Southern District of New York, and before we have seen the results of the oversight hearings that are continuing.
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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I don't think I will respond to all of that, time being of the essence, I suppose.
The gentleman represents a party who held eight hearings, all headed by Republicans, on Mrs. Clinton. All eight reached the same conclusion, but the first one wasn't enough. The second one wasn't enough. The third one wasn't enough. The fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh weren't enough. So the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Gowdy) was appointed to do one more because it was pretty close to the election then, Mr. Speaker.
The majority leader, now the minority leader of this House, said: Oh, no, they accomplished something. They accomplished the political objective. He said that on television, roundly criticized by his party. Why did you say that? Why did you admit that?
But for the minority whip to say that the Mueller report instigated X millions of dollars spent for political purposes, Mueller was appointed by a Republican, not by a Democrat, and the Attorney General recused himself so the Deputy Attorney General, Mr. Rosenstein, was the one that appointed him.
Why did he recuse himself? Because he had been involved, contrary to what he testified to in his nomination hearing, with the Russian Ambassador. I don't know if there was anything of substance in this conversation because we don't fully know what that conversation was.
But the fact of the matter is, for the minority whip to be talking about political hearings or oversight, and then to say he has had an opportunity to review the Mueller report, the gentleman has had more than I have had.
He reviewed the four pages of the Barr letter, appointed by Mr. Trump, and what we know is Barr's reading and his conclusion. But, frankly, we knew that before, because he sent a 19-page letter months ago that he thought this investigation would not reach any conclusion, and that it should not, and that the President could not be held accountable, in any event. That was Justice Department policy.
So I listened to a long discussion, in my view, with all due respect, I tell my friend, the whip, at odds with the performance of their administration and the eight hearings they had in trying to bring Mrs. Clinton down and never finding--never, eight hearings, all led by Republicans--a conclusion that led to anything.
So we will see what the Mueller report says, I hope. And I am pleased that the whip and his party voted to have the Mueller report fully disclosed. He is correct. There are some national security interests that will properly restrict some of that, so we don't out sources or ways and means of discovering information.
But having said that, I say to the whip that we will have a time to debate this. We will have a time to debate it when we have the information. We will have a time to debate it, perhaps months from now, when all of these investigations are through.
But I wouldn't take too much solace in what the Mueller report did. It led to, as I said, the indictment and conviction of the President's campaign manager. It led to the indictment and conviction, either through plea or trial, of five other individuals to date.
That is not something to be very proud of in terms of the President of the United States being so close to and so involved--Mr. Cohen, in particular, brings that information forth to a hearing, and he was apparently his closest legal adviser for over a decade. We will see. But I don't think now, Mr. Speaker, is the time to debate it. Because the time to debate it will be to see when we see, and the American people see the Mueller report.
I want to say to my friend, so he understands, I am pleased that we don't have a finding that the President of the United States colluded, as he said he did not do. Colluded, of course, is not a legal term. Conspiracy is the gravamen or the essence of a criminal activity, a conspiracy to commit something that is illegal.
But we have a time to debate that and discuss it. And the American people, hopefully, are going to have an opportunity to reach their own conclusion, which, obviously, in the final analysis, will be the most important conclusion.
But the good news is, we are continuing to do the substantive business of the people of the United States. We are continuing to focus on jobs. We had numerous hearings this week on jobs, on wages.
We had numerous hearings on healthcare, and the costs of healthcare, and the costs of prescription drugs. We passed one of the most far- reaching reform bills that we have seen on the floor of this House, H.R. 1. Every Democrat voted for it. Almost every Republican voted against it.
We have passed some rational and reasonable controls on people with criminal records who are on the no-fly list or with mental health problems from not getting weapons to hurt a lot of people quickly. We have seen the tragedy here and around the world.
So we have done a lot of very substantive legislation in a relatively short time, and, very frankly, we would have done more if the Republicans hadn't let the government shut down and repeatedly voted against opening it up for the first month of our session.
Mr. Speaker, this is obviously about scheduling, and we are going to continue to bring substantive bills to the floor to respond to the needs of the American people. Yes, we can do oversight as well, but that will not preclude us from pursuing, as the majority, the agenda that we think the American people sent us here to Washington and made us the majority to do.
I hope that my Republican friends will join us in that effort and offer substantive amendments when they think there are differences that they have with that legislation, consider those, and send them to the Senate, because that is really what the people want us to do.
To the gentleman's observation about impeachment, I know he has been here. I know he has voted on efforts by some to move ahead on impeachment, and surely I know that he knows the overwhelming majority of Democrats voted ``no.'' I know that he must have heard Speaker Pelosi say that we are not pursuing impeachment and that we want to focus on the needs of the American people. I am sure he heard that, Mr. Speaker, but he tends to reference otherwise on that. I think that is not accurate.
The American people ought to understand that we are pursuing their agenda: their jobs, their healthcare, and the welfare of their families. That is what our duty is, that is what our responsibility is, and that is what we are doing.
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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I would ask my friend: Is he at all concerned that somebody that he didn't mention, Mr. Flynn, was, in fact, indicted and convicted of lying about his relationship with the Russians and his having clients in Europe, in Ukraine, which he failed to disclose?
He was appointed to one of the highest offices, the National Security Advisor to the President, and he lied about his relations with the Russians to law enforcement, which is a crime, and was convicted and, in fact, pled.
I understand what Mr. Barr has said in a 4-page letter after some 48 hours of review of all of the documents, all of the evidence, that was adduced. None of us really knows. I am not going to make a conclusion until I have an opportunity to review the report. I hope we will have a full debate on that.
All of us are concerned, Republicans and Democrats, about the extraordinary number of people very close to the President--and, most importantly, Flynn, who was the National Security Advisor to the President--who were convicted of lying to law enforcement, some not paying their taxes and cheating the American people and all of us by not paying their fair share of what was due. I think that ought to be of concern to all of us.
These weren't just some people. They were the President's campaign chairman. They were one of the President's foreign policy advisers, Mr. Papadopoulos. It was his personal attorney for 10 years, a so-called fixer, did anything he was told or implied to do. We all ought to have concern about that.
But we ought to also be happy that, hopefully, correctly, Mr. Mueller found that we were not in a conspiracy with--I don't know about that, but colluding with--I don't really know what that exactly means; I have a sense, but it is not a legal issue--that the President did not, because any President who did collude with a foreign government that was clearly not our friend and, indeed, for the most part, our competitor and, yes, enemy, that would be something, I think, of which all of us would be extraordinarily concerned. I am glad that Mr. Mueller didn't find that.
But to think that, as the President says, this was a whitewash and no problems when five or six of your closest allies and friends have been or are about to be sent to jail, that is not something to be happy about.
It wasn't that Mueller didn't find wrongdoing. What Mueller didn't find was, beyond a shadow of a doubt, there was criminal behavior on which he believed he could act. That is what Barr said. And, in fact, Mr. Mueller, in Barr's letter, concluded that the President could not be exonerated or indicted on the basis of obstruction of justice. He made a conclusion that there was not sufficient evidence.
We don't know the answer to that question, but Mr. Mueller says that he could not find beyond a reasonable doubt and, therefore, made no assessment as to whether he did or did not.
In any event, we need to move on, as I said, Mr. Speaker, with the people's business: jobs, healthcare, integrity in government, safety in our neighborhoods, education of our children, and the health of our people.
Mr. Speaker, I want to tell the whip that I look forward to working with him on such an agenda for the people.
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