Commerce, Justice, Science, Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, Interior, Environment, Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, Transportation, and Housing and Urban Development Appropriations Act, 2020

Floor Speech

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

I want to thank Mrs. Lowey and Ms. Granger for their leadership on this committee. I want them to know that I appreciate their commitment to doing the appropriations process the way we are supposed to do it.

But this day is a recognition of failure, a failure to do our work as those who adopted the Budget Committee report in 1974, as those of us who have served on the Appropriations Committee since 1983, 23 years active on the Appropriations Committee, but still on it but under a waiver.

This is an admission of failure. It is a recognition of failure. It is a recognition that the Senate did not do its job. It is a recognition that the White House would not cooperate in getting to 302(b) allocations.

I talked to Senator McConnell in January of this year. Leader McConnell and I agreed that we wanted to get the appropriations work done in a fashion that it was intended to be done, considering discretely and individually appropriation bills, considering them on the floor.

Now, frankly, we did not do that. We did not do it for time's sake, so that we could do things in a timely fashion. And we considered three omnibus bills, minibuses as we called them, and we sent them to the Senate prior to June 26 of this year, which gave the Senate more time. They had all the time they needed. And because the White House, and, in particular, the acting chief of staff, Mr. Mulvaney--who has been one of the most negative people I have dealt with in terms of fiscal responsibility and doing the work of the House on time, and the person who would say ``amen'' would be John Boehner. Paul Ryan would be not too far behind.

But Mr. Mulvaney wanted to go to sequester. That was his original play. And when that didn't fly some months into the sequester gambit, he went to a CR for the whole year.

But then he found the Pentagon rightfully was very concerned about that proposal that would damage our national security, so he continued to delay. I don't know whether the President was involved in it or not, frankly. So we did not get to a 302(a) allocation.

For those, Mr. Speaker, watching all this jargon that we are using, that means how much discretionary money we are going to spend in total. By the way, our citizens, Mr. Speaker, ought to know that it is only about one-third, maybe a little less, that is discretionary. The other is Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, things of that nature.

We needed to come to an agreement on how much we were going to spend. After all, we understand the President has to sign the bills. But it was not the committees that made that agreement. It was not the Budget Committee that was involved in that agreement. It was Speaker Pelosi and Secretary Mnuchin meeting together. The Senate wasn't really involved.

We got to a number, and that was good, in July, which meant that the Senate had another 2 months to pass its bills, to come to an agreement.

They didn't have to take our 302(b), and they weren't going to take it. They would have taken it within the constraints of the Mnuchin- Pelosi agreement or, more properly, the Pelosi-Mnuchin agreement. But they still did not enact a single appropriations bill.

Now, the floor is not filled. The galleries are not filled, Mr. Speaker. This is sort of inside baseball. But, very frankly, there are only 12 bills that need to pass. All the other bills can be put off. It will have adverse effects, but it will not shut down the people's government. But if we don't pass these 12 bills, it shuts down the people's government.

For the first time in the history of the Congress, this Congress took over with a government partially shut down.

I am going to vote for this CR, but I do not delude myself that this is a successful pursuance of the appropriations process. It is not. It is a failure. It is not our failure. We did our work on time.

The Republican whip, Mr. Speaker, keeps telling me: Well, it was a partisan exercise.

It may well have been a partisan exercise, but 10 bills went to the United States Senate unattended, untouched, unconsidered, and so we are here.

The alternative is shutting down government at midnight on December 21. That is not an acceptable alternative.

I want to tell my friends, Mr. Speaker, and I want to say to those in this Chamber, that I have great respect for Ranking Member Granger, with whom I have worked for longer perhaps than either one of us want to say, but a long time. I have respect for her commitment to the appropriations process, her commitment to regular order, and her commitment to doing our work in the fashion that the American people can have confidence.

Mr. Speaker, I have confidence in Mrs. Lowey, the chair of the committee. I know that they are working together and have the same objective. That does not mean they agree on every dollar, as to how it ought to be allocated, but it does mean they think it ought to be considered in the way that it should be. This is not the way it should be.

This is the way it is, and I am going to vote for it. I urge my Members to vote for it. But I will say, Mr. Speaker, if I am upset today, if we don't get our work done, and I mean done, and you talk about a CR on December 20, I will not be happy. I don't know what that means, but I am going to have additional discussions with Senator McConnell, as I have had with the chairman of the Appropriations Committee in the Senate and the ranking member, Mr. Leahy. I have talked to both Mr. Shelby and Mr. Leahy. They want to get this work done.

There is no reason on God's green Earth that we cannot do the appropriations bills in the way that they ought to be done, except we lack the will to compromise. We lack the will to work together. We lack the will to do the American people's business on time, rationally, and without creating a sense that this institution cannot and does not work.

I hope we use these days that are left between today and December 20 in a productive, effective way so that the appropriations process can be concluded on December 20 or before.

This probably is going to have no constructive effect this day, but I hope in the days to come that we will all have such a sense of urgency that we owe it to the country, to our people, and to this institution to show the American people we can make it work. Let's do it.

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