Legislative Program

Floor Speech

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

First of all, of course, there was no budget last year. There was a budget that was passed in the latter part of the year before, but that was for reconciliation purposes so that Republicans could pass their tax bill with less than 60 votes in the United States Senate. So I wouldn't go too far on the budget.

Republicans were in charge for 8 years, and they never had a budget. That doesn't mean we didn't pass one through the House, but there was never a budget. There was never a budget that was implemented, that I can remember, in the long term.

But that aside, as the gentleman probably knows, I, in January, started talking with his leadership, with Ranking Member Granger, with Senator McConnell, with Senator Shelby, with Senator Leahy, with Mrs. Lowey, and with our leadership about the necessity to reach an agreement on the level of discretionary spending, which we call the caps.

Clearly, as Senator McConnell pointed out in our discussions, the White House was a critical component of that because, as the gentleman knows, in order to change the sequester, which I think is one of the stupidest policies that we put in place, but in order to change the sequester, we would have to have a bill signed by the President. So, clearly, the President would have to be involved.

Unfortunately, sometime thereafter, Mr. Vought and Mr. Mulvaney suggested that we ought to go to sequester, that we ought to just march to the sequester numbers.

For the Members who may not know exactly what that means, that means a $54 billion cut in defense spending. I don't really think anybody in this House thinks that is an appropriate step for us to take, but that is what Mr. Mulvaney and Mr. Vought of OMB suggested, except, by the way, they crossed their fingers to say we will use $180 billion of additional deficit spending out of the overseas contingency operations to fund defense.

In other words, yes, we will do the sequester, but it will really only have an effect on the nondefense, education, healthcare, medical research, law enforcement, et cetera. It would only have an effect on that side of the budget.

I didn't think that made much sense. And, very frankly, I think all of the people that I just mentioned that I had talked to didn't think it made sense either.

Obviously, Paul Ryan, when he was Speaker, didn't think it made sense, because he led a deal with Senator Murray to give us numbers that we thought were reasonable, and we came to an agreement.

I would hope that we could do that now. I know there are some negotiations at the top four level and in the White House that have not reached agreement yet. I think that is unfortunate.

Now, the gentleman observed that we haven't passed a budget. He is correct. But we did pass the exact same number that the Budget Committee reported out for discretionary spending, and we adopted it in the rule.

He is right; we did not adopt it in the budget as it was offered, but that wasn't necessary, because in either event, that wouldn't have solved the problem.

But we adopted the same exact number, the Democrats voted for that number, to which the committee marked its bills. As the gentleman knows, that was $733 billion on defense and $639 billion on nondefense. There was some argument on our side as to whether those numbers ought to be closer together, but that aside, that is what those bills have been.

So there is a number, and it was a number that was used by the Appropriations Committee, and it is a number that is reflected in the bills that we will be bringing to the floor.

Now, of course we could wait, as I think, frankly, the White House wants us to wait, until September, maybe September 27, 28, or 29, and then they would say: Well, we are going to do a CR at last year's numbers.

Now, that would be a little more than sequester, no doubt about that, but it would not be a number that I think the Members of this House on either side of the aisle would be happy with--maybe for different reasons but, nevertheless, not happy with.

So I am in agreement that we need to reach a number. We need to pass a bill, because, if we do not, under the law that we passed some years ago, 15 days after the first session of this Congress adjourns, sequester will automatically go into effect.

Nobody would be happy. America will not be happy. Our security will suffer and our people will suffer under those numbers. So I am in full agreement that we ought to reach a number.

Now, with respect to the appropriations bills, I think we need to move them. Obviously, there is going to be a lot of negotiation back and forth, a lot of different steps will need to be taken. But this is a first step; it is an important step; and it sets a marker as to where we are going to start negotiations.

Hopefully, those negotiations will bear fruit with the Senate and with the White House, because I know the gentleman shares my view that shutting down the government is not an option that we ought to be pursuing. Hopefully, we, through these actions, can preclude that from happening, and I think that will be a positive result.

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

Very frankly, the person who rejected the premise that this matter was over was Robert Mueller in a relatively short press conference in which he answered no questions, but he clearly demonstrated that he thought Mr. Barr misrepresented the fact that this was over. In fact, he said:

If we thought the President had not done anything wrong and we were convinced of that, we would have said so. We did not say so.

Now, having said that, this is not related to impeachment. This is related to the Congress' authority, under the Constitution of the United States, to receive information from the executive on behalf of the American people.

Now, if Mr. Barr believes that the information requested need not be submitted, then he had nothing to fear, because what we are seeking is a court ruling, an independent body's ruling as to whether or not he ought to be held in contempt and directed by a court to provide the information to the Congress of the United States, acting pursuant to its constitutional duty.

Madam Speaker, I will tell my friend that it is a sad day when the Republicans and Democrats do not stand together on behalf of not only this institution's constitutional authority, but responsibility to get the information it needs both with respect to, as, again, Mr. Mueller pointed out, the very serious issue of the Russians trying to affect our democracy and our elections.

There is no dispute of that fact. In fact, nine Russians were indicted by the Mueller special counsel for exactly that purpose.

Now, this resolution to which the gentleman refers authorizes the Judiciary Committee to pursue civil action to seek enforcement in Federal court of its subpoenas to Attorney General Barr and former White House Counsel McGahn, who is no longer a Federal employee. It also authorizes House committees that have issued subpoenas as part of their oversight and investigation responsibilities. Let me emphasize that: Investigation responsibilities, oversight. That is part of the constitutional responsibility of the Congress of the United States, which, by the way, your party pursued extraordinarily vigorously over the last 8 years of the Obama administration, and, very frankly, in previous administrations.

We are seeking civil enforcement to have a determination as to whether or not Attorney General Barr, Mr. McGahn, and indeed others, who have refused to comply with constitutionally sanctioned requests by the Congress of the United States for information on behalf of the American people. The President of the United States, like Barr, said it is over.

Mr. Mueller says it is not over. Mr. Mueller says he did not have the authority pursuant to Justice policy to go further, but he pointed out that there are other bodies that have the authority and responsibility to do so. Who is that? Us, the Congress of the United States.

Now, one of the problems that we are having is that the President has instructed almost all of government not to respond to the Congress of the United States, not to answer questions, not to testify, not to appear. I have called that perhaps the biggest coverup in the history of any President who has, in effect, given a blanket suggestion, and in some cases order, that people ought not to testify. He said there is no reason to go any further. He has made that decision. And especially in Congress where it is very partisan, obviously very partisan. We did think this is not partisan. This is our responsibility to the American people.

By refusing to cooperate with Congress, the Trump administration has engaged in a refusal to allow the Congress to exercise its responsibility, and therefore, we are going to continue to pursue the facts on behalf of the American people. And that is what this is about. You will note that we have not sought criminal contempt. We have, however, found it to be untenable, unacceptable to have an administration, any administration, Republican or Democrat, tell the Congress whether it is a Republican Congress or a Democratic Congress that it will not respond to requests for information, to subpoenas to testify, and for other information that Congress needs. So that is what we are going to do.

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Mr. HOYER. The Republicans held up consideration of a disaster bill that we passed in January. Now, this dealt with natural disasters, not the humanitarian crisis at the border. I understand that.

We passed that Monday ultimately because the administration wanted to undermine very badly the American citizens who live in Puerto Rico. Finally, we got agreement that that was the right thing to do and the Senate passed it overwhelmingly, then sent it over here. We tried to pass it by unanimous consent, and your side objected. You objected three times. So we had to pass it this Monday. We did overwhelmingly. Not as many perhaps on the gentleman's side as on my side, but we passed it handily.

The fact of the matter is, we need to deal with this humanitarian crisis. We need to deal with the humanitarian crisis, and if we limit it to dealing with the humanitarian crisis, Madam Speaker, we will do it. And, in fact, Ms. Lucille Roybal-Allard is in discussions on that now. My view is the four corners, meaning the Speaker, the Republican leader, Senator McConnell, the majority leader, and Mr. Schumer are dealing with it. I hope they get it done very soon. And if they get it done we are going to move it because there is a crisis and we need to deal with it.

But I would urge my friend to urge his colleagues not to try to do some of the President's agenda unrelated to the humanitarian crisis. And if we can do that, we will get to an agreement, in my opinion.

Now let me go back to your what I believe to be inaccurate, recitation--as I believe Attorney General Barr's recitation of what the Mueller report says, and Mr. Mueller clearly made that very, very crystal clear that he had a different view as to whether that was.

Now, I have got a whole page here of things that the Mueller report says with reference to--``collusion'' is a word that the President has created. It is not collusion, not a crime, per se. Conspiracy is a crime, but the President uses this word ``collusion'' as fake news, as a distraction, as a magician's trick to look over here, not here, so that I can fool you.

I asked the gentleman to yield when he said, well, the special counsel decided to do nothing. The special counsel made it very clear that under Justice Department directives, a sitting President cannot be indicted. And Mr. Mueller said if he can't be indicted, I don't want to make an allegation, which would not be fair because he cannot be indicted, and therefore, there will be no fora on which to defend himself. But he observed there was another forum, that was inappropriate for him, that did have the responsibility and the ability to take action, and that, as I said, is us.

Now, I won't go through this list of findings that the Mueller committee or task force, the special counsel concluded, but in my opinion, and I said this in a release 2 days after, were pretty damning and at a minimum worthy of the Congress of the United States trying to get to the bottom of what Manafort and Stone and others did in reference to WikiLeaks, welcoming the Russian participation that they thought was helping them. Mueller report.

So we can go into that at great length, but the proper way to do that is to do what we are doing, ask questions, have witnesses, review documents and other communications to get to the bottom of this, and we intend to do that. And we intend to do it in a considered, focused way.

Neither the Speaker nor I, as the gentleman has read, are saying that we are seeking impeachment, but we are seeking to do our constitutional duty, our responsibility to the American people and to the Constitution to ensure that, in fact, the American people know what this administration or individuals who work with this administration or others were doing.

Madam Speaker, lastly, because we can go on at length about this, let me say that the gentleman protests too much. The Republicans control the United States Senate. Very frankly, the Intelligence Committee is working in a bipartisan fashion with Mr. Burr from North Carolina and Mr. Warner from Virginia.

Madam Speaker, if the gentleman, my friend, the whip, is frustrated, I suggest he call up his friends in the United States Senate to say they ought to do this; they ought to do that; and they ought to do the other.

If they think it is the right thing to do, maybe they will do it. But we intend to do our responsibility here.

Again, I would hope that we could join together in defense of the Congress' responsibility and authority and not have any administration--Republican, Democratic, Obama, Trump, any President-- say, no, it is not going to give us any information, that some other body has disposed of that question.

Some other body is not us, and we need to move ahead on doing our responsibility.

Again, I would hope the gentleman would cooperate, but we are going to continue to do the business of the people of this country as well.

We have differences on that. We think this was a pretty historic week. We passed the disaster bill. We extended flood insurance, and we extended TANF, so neither one of them expired. Then, we passed the American Dream and Promise Act, legislation that will relieve the fears of 2-plus million people who are positive participants in the American Dream.

It was a bipartisan bill, not a lot from your side, but we think it is a historic piece of legislation. We hope the Senate takes it up.

We have been trying to get that bill on the floor for 8 years, without success. We got it on the floor. As I knew it would, it passed. I think it would have passed had we put it on the floor in the previous Congress, but we didn't get it to the floor.

Madam Speaker, I look forward to working with the whip toward reaching some bipartisan resolutions.

In particular, I agree with him, and I think we all agree that we want to make sure that we have the resources necessary to handle what is, in fact, a humanitarian crisis, with so many people fleeing natural disasters and man-made disasters--terror, murder, mayhem--for safety for themselves and their families, as have millions and millions and millions of people who preceded them who came to this country. Whether they came from Europe, Asia, Africa, South America, Central America, they came here because America had a beacon that they saw as a land of opportunity and a land of freedom, equality, and justice, a land in which they wanted to live and make better.

Madam Speaker, we will continue to do our business as well as exercise our responsibilities.

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