Legislative Program
Floor Speech
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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, on Monday, the House will meet at noon for morning-hour debate and 2 p.m. for legislative business. Members are advised that no votes are expected in the House on Monday. Again, no votes on Monday, but we will do legislative business. We will be debating suspension bills, and the votes will be rolled until the following day.
On Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, the House will meet at 9 a.m. for legislative business. Let me stress that so that every Member understands. We normally go in at noon for a schedule like this on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, but we will be going in at 9 a.m. on those days, as well as Friday.
Members are advised that the first votes of the week on Tuesday are expected between 9 and 10. Again, I want to emphasize that, although we do not have any votes on Monday night, we expect Tuesday to be a full workday, so Members really ought to come into town on Monday.
We will consider several bills, Mr. Speaker, under suspension of the rules. The complete list of suspensions will be announced by the close of business tomorrow.
As Members know, the current continuing resolution expires on December 20. The House will consider some appropriation measures. Hopefully, and my expectation is, they are making progress in the Appropriations Committee on coming to a resolution on the 12 appropriation bills.
It is my hope that we will consider those appropriation bills on the floor on Tuesday, perhaps a series of minibus packages to fund all of government for the remainder of the fiscal year.
I would urge all of my colleagues on the Appropriations Committee to do everything they can in the next 24 hours, frankly, to bring this matter to a close and agreement so that the staff will have an opportunity to put the bills together for consideration next week.
This week, negotiators were able to reach an agreement on a new trade agreement. The Republican whip has been asking me about that agreement. I have assured him we wanted to get to yes, and we have gotten to yes. We are pleased at that, this trade agreement with Canada and Mexico.
It is possible that the USMCA trade agreement could be brought to the floor next week. The only reason it is possible and not assured is the administration is working on submitting implementing legislation to the Congress. My presumption is they will have that legislation to us in the relatively near term. It will be, therefore, available for consideration next week.
This week, the House Judiciary Committee began markup, as the House knows and the country knows, of two Articles of Impeachment. Following committee action on these articles, the Judiciary Committee will make a recommendation to the full House of Representatives. We will determine a path forward on the floor following that recommendation.
Lastly, Mr. Speaker, as is always the case in the last week, at least the last scheduled week of a session, there may well be other pieces of legislation that will ripen for consideration and that may well be considered next week. We will announce those as soon as we know which, if any, bills qualify for that treatment.
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Mr. HOYER. I appreciate the gentleman making the comment with respect to the Defense Department and the importance of funding them, and I agree with that.
I want to point out that the same challenge applies to all the other agencies of government. The more quickly they can be funded, the more they know what their funding is for the next 9 months--that is, between December 20 and September 30--and the more able they are to plan and rationally run their agencies. So I appreciate his observation about the Defense Department. It applies to all of government.
We are hopeful that we can fund, and our intention is to fund, all of government with full-year or at least the balance of the year appropriation bills.
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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his question. We don't have a specific day, but I will tell him that it is our intention, assuming that the administration gets the enabling legislation to us in a timely fashion, which is my expectation they will do, to consider that next week. Now, which day next week has not been decided, but we do intend to consider it next week. We want to pass it before we leave here.
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Mr. HOYER. Ambassador Lighthizer, as I have said all along, we have perceived as an honest broker. I think he has dealt with us fairly and openly.
Very frankly, we believe that the agreement that has now been finalized is substantially stronger and better than it was when it was first given to us for consideration. I say that in the sense that we took the position, and I have taken this position on the floor, the gentleman knows, that enforcement was critical.
The Chamber of Commerce has said, if you have a trade agreement without effective enforcement, you don't have a real agreement. What we were able to achieve was, we think, real enforcement, which protects workers, which protects the environment, which protects other aspects of the agreement.
We also are pleased that some of the things that were in the bill that we thought were harmful to consumers, in particular, were dropped.
But it was an honest negotiation, as the whip has pointed out. It was a hard negotiation, not so much between Mr. Lighthizer and ourselves, but between Mr. Lighthizer and some of the other interest groups, including our friends in Mexico.
We have now reached that agreement. Hopefully, we can pass this next week. Our friends in labor have endorsed this agreement. The Maryland/ D.C. AFL-CIO has endorsed this agreement because they have the confidence that, unlike NAFTA--for which I voted, Mr. Speaker--in which there was no successful enforcement action over the last two decades, this will have the opportunity for successful enforcement for economic reasons and for other reasons. And I hope that this will move forward.
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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, let me tell the gentleman very candidly, I have not discussed with Mr. Nadler or others on the Judiciary Committee that issue. So I really can't give you the rationale that was articulated by the chair or by others.
I will say, however, that the President has indicated he wants to move with dispatch on this issue. We are doing that, and we have little time left. Very frankly, there were other witnesses to come forward, and very frankly, there were a lot of witnesses who were precluded from coming forward that we thought would amplify, frankly, people who work for and with the President who may have had information to give. But I can't specifically articulate the rationale, but we can get that for you.
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Mr. HOYER. Will the gentleman yield?
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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
First of all, of course, this is not the jury in the sense of a petit jury that is going to decide guilt and innocence. It is, from a lawyer's standpoint, more analogous to a grand jury, which simply decides whether or not there is probable cause to believe the President abused his power in the exercise of his authority and, secondly, in the second Article, refused to cooperate with the Congress exercising its constitutional responsibility of oversight.
Secondly, let me say to the gentleman, as the gentleman knows, the President was given the opportunity to appear with counsel and to call such witnesses as he wanted to call--I believe that is correct--but to appear and defend against the allegations that are incorporated in the Articles of Impeachment, and the President chose not to appear.
The President chose not to have counsel present. Mr. Cipollone, counsel to the White House, in fact, responded to the offer to appear and said: We have chosen not to do so.
So to say that the respondent in this case--I won't call him a defendant. But the respondent in this case, the President of the United States, chose not to respond, chose not to appear, chose not to produce evidence in his defense. One could conclude that perhaps they decided they didn't have any, but I won't conclude that, but that could be one conclusion drawn.
But I will tell the gentleman, first of all, this is not a jury that is deciding guilt or innocence; it is a jury deciding probable cause whether or not there is cause to believe.
And, of course, we had extensive hearings at which many witnesses testified, some of whom worked for the administration, with the administration, in the White House, who testified to the facts, which most constitutional experts believe, if believed, constitute an abuse of power.
But, again, I will say to the gentleman, the central reality is the President refused to appear.
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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, my friend articulates many things that have no basis in fact and believes, in my view, that if he says it enough times that people will believe them. To that extent, I think he mirrors the President of the United States, who does the same thing.
First of all, the rules have been followed. Secondly, the evidence that has been adduced is overwhelming and has not been controverted.
John Bolton, when talking about this deal, which we believe is an abuse of power, said that this was the equivalent of a drug deal. That is John Bolton.
My friend has talked for many weeks about how the Mueller report found nothing.
First, let me read from the Mueller report something that was not part of an article but certainly informs us as to the intent and the feelings of the President of the United States.
The Mueller report said this: ``Our investigation found multiple acts by the President that were capable of exerting undue influence over law enforcement investigations, including Russian interference and obstruction investigations.
``The incidents were often carried out through one-on-one meetings in which the President sought to use his official power outside of usual channels.
``These actions,'' the Mueller report said, ``ranged from their efforts to remove the special counsel and to reverse the effect of the Attorney General's recusal, to the attempted use of official power to limit the scope of the investigation, to direct and indirect contacts with witnesses and the potential influence of their testimony.
``The special counsel did not reach conclusions because''--and this is critical, and the whip constantly ignores this when he says the Mueller report found nothing.
``The special counsel,'' it says, ``did not reach conclusions because Department of Justice guidelines prohibit indicting a sitting President. Therefore, the Mueller report makes clear, however, that it does not exonerate the President by saying this. If we had confidence''--the whip may want to hear this.
The Mueller report said: ``If we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. But, based upon the facts and the applicable legal standards, we are unable to reach that judgment that the President did not, in fact, participate in obstruction of justice.''
But because DOJ, for whom the counsel worked--not a special prosecutor, the special counsel--counsel demurred, essentially refused to make a judgment that he thought he was unable to make. But he made it clear that they could not find that the President did not obstruct justice.
Let me say something else. There are a number of people who thought the Mueller report and the Mueller investigation had great effect:
Paul Manafort, pled guilty to lying;
Roger Stone, convicted;
Michael Cohen, the President's counsel, convicted, in jail;
Michael Flynn, convicted of lying, the national security adviser appointed by President Trump, convicted;
Rick Gates, the deputy campaign manager for President Trump, convicted;
George Papadopoulos, who the President claimed was his foreign policy adviser--or one of his foreign policy advisers--convicted, pled guilty, served a short period of time, and now is a candidate for Congress on the Republican ticket in the State of California.
They all think that the Mueller report had some consequences. That is the context in which we see this crowd. No wonder so many of them didn't want to testify.
And when Mr. Sondland testified the first time and then, after that, he saw some of these convictions, he amended his testimony.
He came in and said, oh, yes, there may have been some discussion about a so-called quid pro quo or a bribery or extortion. He didn't say those words. Those are my words. He talks about obstruction of Congress and how there was no back and forth, and he says, well, they could have gone to court.
As a matter of fact, we have gone to court time after time after time. And guess what, Mr. Speaker, the court has said that Congress is entitled to that discovery. Now, they keep appealing it.
Mr. Speaker, that is the President's modus operandi, which he has pursued all of his adult life. When people said he owed them money; when people said he didn't fulfill a contract; when people said he should do this, that, or the other, he almost invariably took them to court and delayed and delayed and delayed.
There is an editorial in ``USA Today'' which says this: ``Trump has met the impeachment investigation with outright and unprecedented defiance.'' We share that view.
No President in history has refused to cooperate with the Congress of the United States in the exercising of its constitutional responsibility of oversight other than this President. Those are the facts.
This is not ``The Washington Post'' or ``The New York Times.'' That editorial went on to say: ``Allowing this obstruction to stand unchallenged would put the President above the law and permanently damage Congress' ability to investigate misconduct by Presidents of either party.''
Now, Mr. Speaker, I would again reflect that Articles of Impeachment under the Constitution of the United States are what Mr. Mueller said was the appropriate option if the Congress believed that this President ought to be held accountable for abuse of power, because he said he couldn't do it because the Justice Department policy said he couldn't do it.
We have had hearings. Those hearings were participated in by the Republican side of the aisle and the Democratic side of the aisle. Time was divided equally between the sides for questioning of witnesses.
The witnesses were an ambassador hired by Secretary Pompeo, appointed by the President to represent us; Mr. Sondland, a close friend of the President's, apparently, or at least a big contributor of the President's, appointed by the President, who came back and said no.
Certainly, I believe there was a quid pro quo that, if you didn't start an investigation, if you didn't announce that in public, then there wouldn't be the $391 million that you needed to defend your country and to defend freedom in Ukraine, which this Congress had, in a bipartisan way, sent to the President of the United States and that the Defense Department and others had certified reforms contemplated by that legislation had been effected, and they recommended the payment of that money.
And in addition, you could not have a meeting with the White House if this didn't happen.
So my friend continues to say no wrongdoing; nothing; no crimes; no this, that, and the other. That is not the case, Mr. Speaker. And no matter how many times he says it, whether it is an editorial in ``USA Today'' or an editorial in some other paper or articles in some other paper or--I will tell my friend--people with whom I talk on your side of the aisle--I will not name their names--they, like Zelensky, would be afraid of retribution, just as Mr. Sanford found out that disagreeing would incur the wrath of the President of the United States and get a response, either in a tweet or some other way.
Mr. Zelensky is in a very difficult position. The freedom of his country, the security of his people, he believes, are contingent upon whether President Trump will treat him fairly and as consistently as the Congress would want them treated.
So I say to my friend: We are going to move ahead. We will all have a chance to vote on these articles, and we will have a chance to debate them. And then the Senate will have a trial, if, in fact, articles pass this House. And that trial will be where the President, presumably, will offer witnesses.
But I find it interesting, Mr. Speaker, that Republican Senators are quoted frequently saying, we ought to have no witnesses. Republican Senators are saying, we ought to have no witnesses. Perhaps they just want to pass it so quickly. But it is as well, I think, because they don't know of any witnesses who will absolve the President from the actions that have been testified to without effective opposition to those premises.
So, Mr. Speaker, we can debate this. We are going to debate it, I am sure, next week. It will be debated in the United States Senate, and we can continue to debate it here today. But the evidence, in the perception of many, is overwhelming and uncontradicted.
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Mr. HOYER. Will my friend yield?
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Mr. HOYER. Will the gentleman tell me where he did that?
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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
I think I am speaking English. Let me repeat. What the Mueller report said was the Department of Justice policy was that they could not indict a sitting President of the United States. It went on to say, as I quoted, that did not mean that they could assert that there was no obstruction of justice. And if they thought they could assert that, they would have asserted it.
And Attorney General Barr then mischaracterized the Mueller report before it was released to put, in my opinion, the President's spin on the Mueller report, which, very frankly, the gentleman's side of the aisle has continued to spin all the time.
I mentioned the six people who were convicted of lying to the investigation, close associates of the President of the United States, now in jail or waiting to be sentenced. Mr. Stone falls into that category.
Mr. Barr said that there was no obstruction. He was wrong. He mischaracterized, misstated, and misled the American people. And Mueller said in his report that was not what he found.
Collusion is not a crime. Conspiracy is a crime.
But there were, in addition to the six people I have talked about, 10 Russians indicted for participating in trying to undermine the integrity of the elections in our country on behalf of Mr. Trump.
Now, the gentleman indicates that the Mueller report has not been mentioned. The Mueller report is not the gravamen or the central--we lawyers say ``gravamen''--but the central tenet here.
The central tenet is, on July 25 and, frankly, leading up to that and succeeding that, the President of the United States involved himself in a way to enrich himself in terms of the election that was coming up, 2020--not the 2016 election, the 2020 election.
The evidence has not been rebutted that that was the fact; and, in fact, people close to the President of the United States confirmed it.
What the articles say is there was an abuse of power, which is what almost every constitutional scholar says was the central concern of our Founding Fathers when they included the impeachment provision in the Constitution of the United States: to be a check on authoritarian power serving its own interests, not the people's interest. That is what the central claim here is.
And with respect to the other Article of Impeachment, it does not mention the Mueller report because what it was focused on--although Mueller focused on the obstruction of justice evidence, not the charge, but the evidence.
What we are focusing on is the biggest attempt to prohibit the Congress of the United States and the exercise of its legitimate constitutional responsibility of oversight from getting information, either in testimony or in documents. And almost every scholar of past Presidents--including President Nixon and including President Clinton and the extraordinary discovery that was exercised against President Obama on a regular basis--found that this President has stonewalled more than any other President and with less justification than any other President, because most Presidents referred to executive privilege.
This President went much more broadly than those who dealt with him personally, but simply wanted to preclude information from getting to the Congress so that it could make decisions based upon that evidence.
And, of course, the other suit that we have is a President who said he was going to release his tax information to the American people. He has fought in every forum to prevent that from happening, notwithstanding the legislation, which was not adopted by us--it is very old legislation--which says the tax writing committee can get that information.
And I would suggest the American people ought to have that information so they can determine for themselves whether this President is acting for his benefit or for their benefit, which is his constitutional responsibility.
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Mr. HOYER. I didn't say that. Don't mischaracterize what I said. I did not say that.
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Mr. HOYER. That is accurate.
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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
The irony is that the reason we got cooperation in the Nixon case and in the Clinton case is because those administrations cooperated. This administration has absolutely not cooperated.
The gentleman has those letters, and he put them down as if they mean something. They are further evidence of delay. The committee requested legitimately.
What the gentleman didn't say--he said we ought to go to court. Mr. Speaker, I wonder if the gentleman knows what happened when we went to court, because we have gone to court five or six times. We haven't lost a case yet. We have not lost a case yet where the court has said that Congress is entitled to that information.
So these letters are fine, but they are delay and dissemble as we throw them on the table, as if they mean something.
The gentleman says the Russians interfered in our election. They did. The irony is, one of the reasons that the Obama administration didn't get more involved in that is because there was knowledge by some that they were interfering on behalf--or suspicion of--Mr. Trump because of some of the evidence we have heard.
Mr. Stone's case, Mr. Gates testified about the knowledge that the President had about WikiLeaks and of the President's invitation for WikiLeaks to release information.
Sondland changed his testimony. We have gone to court. The administration has refused to cooperate.
The gentleman ignores those facts. They are facts, and they are facts that are generally accepted across the land, even by those who are supporters of the President.
So we are going to have this discussion. They are going to have this discussion in the Senate. But the President chose not to come to the House to defend against the allegations. His counsel said they weren't going to participate. They had the opportunity; they did not take it. We will see what happens from there.
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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, we could go, I guess, all day on this. But the fact is, let me say, with that letter, the gentleman says 1 week. The fact of the matter is this President has been defying Congress for years in terms of giving it information it constitutionally had the right to have. He has not responded. In fact, we have gone to court, and we have won every case. It is not like the court said: Oh, well, they have the right to do this; they can talk back and forth for days, years, and months.
The court said: No, they are entitled to that information.
Don't send me a letter; send me the information I request.
For my friend to pretend that that was just 1 week's delay--it has been years of delay to responding to information requested legitimately by the Congress of the United States.
After months of going to the court, the courts have come to a conclusion over and over and over again that the Congress is entitled to that information.
Two courts have now decided that we are entitled to his tax information and to his financial information. We haven't gotten it.
Why? Because he appeals again.
Why? Because that is his modus operandi, as I said. He did it in the private sector, and he is doing it in the public sector.
What surprises me is that--I am not wishing it, but my friend may be in charge someday again, and my friend is going to be very upset with the precedent that the gentleman is arguing for at this point in time in terms of not cooperating with the Congress of the United States in conducting its constitutional duties.
As I say, we could go on and on on this. We are going to have additional hearings. I would repeat again, from a USA Today editorial: ``Trump has met the impeachment investigation with outright and unprecedented defiance,'' which is one of the reasons I suppose he didn't appear and he instructed people who have information, like John Bolton, like Secretary Pompeo, and like so many others: Don't appear. Don't testify. Don't provide information. That is obfuscation and refusal to cooperate. But we will have an opportunity to deal with these in the future.
I would hope that, at this point in time, Mr. Whip, we might cease and desist so our friends could have an opportunity to say what they want to say. But I am prepared to proceed if my friend is so disposed.
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Mr. HOYER. Will the gentleman yield?
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Mr. HOYER. Of course he is.
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Mr. HOYER. This could go on forever.
Of course not. I didn't make that assertion. Don't put it in my mouth.
My friend has every right, not only the President, but every citizen has the right to repair to the courts of the United States for redress of their grievances and the pressing of their case, period. The President has that right.
I never asserted that the President ought to be impeached on that basis, nor do I assert it now, nor do we assert it in our articles which have yet to be voted on, so we will see what they do on that vote.
But let me remind the gentleman and let me remind Mr. Speaker of the House, we had a vote in 2017, we had a vote in 2018, and we had a vote in 2019. Those votes were on whether or not we ought to move Articles of Impeachment forward to impeach the President of the United States. I voted ``no'' on each one of those votes. Over 60 percent of the Democrats voted ``no'' on each one, some higher, on each one of those votes in '17, '18, and '19.
So when you assert, Mr. Speaker, that somehow the Democrats were just frothing at the bit to impeach the President--I don't want to impeach this President. I wish this would pass from us. No one ran for Congress to impeach the President of the United States. But no one ought to shirk their responsibility.
I will tell you, Mr. Speaker, my belief is that there is not a single Republican in this House, not one, confronted with these facts against President Obama who wouldn't have voted to impeach President Obama--not one of the minority. I am convinced to my bones, and I have been here a long time and served with a lot of people, that not one of them would have voted against either one of these articles if President Obama had done the same fact pattern with the same evidence. Not one of the minority would have voted against one of these articles.
That is my view, Mr. Speaker, but we will see.
I said this morning, quoting the papers, that we are not whipping this. This is not about whipping some partisan vote. This is about each Member having to decide for themselves, with their conscience, with their moral values, and with their oath of office to defend and protect the Constitution of the United States, whether or not--and my friend quotes one witness, one constitutional expert. Three constitutional experts said, if you do not move forward on impeachment, effectively, the executive power will be unchecked and you will create a king, not a President.
Three times this Congress said: We are not going forward. But then, on July 25, a phone call occurred in which this President clearly said to an ally to whom we wanted to give $391 million to defend himself and his people and his country, but withheld because: I would like you to do me a favor.
That favor was not to help America, and that favor was not to clean up corruption, because he already had certified by his departments that they had met that criteria. It was, as the evidence is almost uncontroverted, to help him in the coming election and to undermine somebody he perceived to be one of his, if not the, principal opponent.
This is a heavy decision this Congress and this House will have to make, and each one of us will have to make it. Let us hope that each one of us makes it honestly and unrelated to politics or party, but related to patriotism and oath of office.
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Mr. HOYER. The good news is they didn't bring impeachment against President Obama because he did nothing to warrant such an action. How proud I am of that.
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