Legislative Program

Floor Speech

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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, on Monday, the House will meet at 12 p.m. for morning-hour debate and 2 p.m. for legislative business, with votes postponed until 6:30 p.m. On Tuesday and Wednesday, the House will meet at 10 a.m. for morning-hour debate and 12 p.m. for legislative business. On Thursday, the House will meet at 9 a.m. for legislative business.

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

The House will also consider H.R. 1500, the Consumer First Act. This legislation seeks to reverse the administration's efforts to dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

In addition, the House will consider H.R. 1994, the Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement Act of 2019. The legislation is intended to increase the flexibility of 401(k) plans and improve access to the accounts, particularly for small businesses and employees. The bill includes a host of provisions aimed at encouraging small businesses to provide private retirement benefits to their workers.

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

As the gentleman knows, we passed an initial bill some many weeks ago. The Senate didn't pass that. We then passed, more recently, a bill which did, in fact, take care of everyone we know who has had a natural disaster in the interim as well as those we had taken care of the first time around.

So, we think we have a good bill that was passed; however, as the gentleman also referenced, the President has asked for an additional supplemental of a little over $4 billion referenced for humanitarian issues at the border. That is being reviewed.

As the gentleman probably also knows, an offer was made to our side. That offer has now been responded to with respect to both the initial and the supplemental--initial, I mean the disaster bill--and we are looking for an answer back at some point in time to our response. But, hopefully, we can reach an agreement.

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Mr. HOYER. Will the gentleman yield?

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Mr. HOYER. Clearly, if we get an agreement--and that, of course, is the big if, but, hopefully, we can. If we can do that, then we will want to move as quickly as possible.

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Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman for his comment. We have had this discussion on a number of occasions.

I am convinced that Mr. McGovern, the chairman of the Rules Committee, does, in fact, want to have the kind of process that we talked about and that the gentleman just referenced. He also knows that, in the last Congress, we had the most closed rules of any Congress in which I have served, and perhaps in history, 103 closed rules.

But having said that, I am hopeful that the gentleman's side will come forth with amendments that are, as the gentleman says, subject to rational debate and are not gotcha amendments. I am not alleging they are gotcha amendments, but that is obviously a concern that the gentleman had when he was in charge and that we have when we are in charge.

But I know that Mr. McGovern wants to have a fair process, and we are talking about that, so we will continue to do that.

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Mr. HOYER. First of all, I would say words are important. That is why we all debate, because we think words are important.

But having said that, I share the gentleman's view, as he well knows, with reference to the BDS movement, which I think is contrary to the interests of our ally, Israel, and contrary to our own interests.

Having said that, as I indicated to the gentleman last week, I have been discussing this with Mr. Engel, and he, as you know, shares the view which I have expressed and my friend has expressed, and his committee is going to be addressing that, I expect, in the near term. When they do, we will decide what actions to take at that point in time, and I look forward to discussing it with the gentleman.

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Mr. HOYER. My friend mentioned there are essentially four components of the bill to which he referred, three of which are noncontroversial, as the gentleman knows, and one of which has issues with respect to its constitutionality. Without resolving that issue, the three that are in that bill, I think, enjoy bipartisan support. They were held up in the Senate, as the gentleman probably knows, but we want to make sure those three certainly are adopted.

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