Further Continuing Appropriations Act, and Other Extensions Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate Ms. DeLauro. She and I have served on the Appropriations Committee together and in the Congress for a very long time. She is one of our most able, energetic, and knowledgeable Members.

As someone who is very proud of my relationship to the Appropriations Committee, I know that she will do an excellent job working with the minority and the ranking member, with whom I also served, to make sure that the Appropriations Committee works in a way that benefits the American people and does so in a timely fashion.

Normally, I would not speak--well, though I do speak most of the time on the CR, because the CR is a recognition of failure. It is not any one individual's failure. It is not a bad thing. It is just that we have had trouble getting together and coming to an agreement.

I want to observe, and maybe it has already been observed, we passed 10 of our 12 appropriations bills by July 26. That was 2 months before the end of the fiscal year. The Senate, unfortunately, didn't pass any of its appropriations bills. It still has not passed any of its appropriations bills. It has a document that they did not pass through committee and has not passed the Senate that is the basis for our negotiations.

That has delayed us substantially, not because the House didn't do its work on time, but, because for whatever reasons, the Senate did not address the appropriations process in a timely fashion.

Mr. Speaker, I have served on the Appropriations Committee for a long time. I went on in January 1983. I was on the subcommittee that Ms. DeLauro now chairs as well. When we would pass a bill, the Senate would pass a bill, and we would go to conferences. Some of our Members don't know what a conference is.

The Members of the House committee and the Members of the Senate committee came together in a room and talked about how we were going to resolve the differences between the two bills. That hardly ever happens now, and we are losing something of the legislative process because it doesn't happen.

With all due respect to the four people who now are called the four corners, whether it is the chairs of the committees, or the Speaker and the minority leader in the House, and the minority leader and the majority leader in the Senate, those four people have a lot of work to do.

I am the majority leader over here. I know I have a lot of things to watch out for, and I cannot focus the way the members of the subcommittees focus on the substance of the issues. Therefore, we lose something by not having all of the Members included.

Now, because that hasn't happened, and they haven't come up with a product, we are here with what we call a continuing resolution. But that really is an admission of failure.

We passed one before September 30 so the government didn't shut down. It was the right thing to do. We are going to pass one now. It is the right thing to do. This is something that we have to do to keep the government working.

But we ought not believe or pretend or represent this is the way we ought to do business. It is not. It is a function of procrastination, a function of failing to come together and making compromises.

That is what this body is about, all of these chairs here. We have to come to an agreement. The Constitution says if we don't come to an agreement and the Senate doesn't come to an agreement and the President doesn't come to an agreement with exactly the same thing, nothing happens.

I make this observation every time we do this. But I will tell you this, Mr. Speaker. I have talked to the new chair--and I know the ranking member, and I have worked with her and have great respect for her, as she knows. Why? Because she wants to get a job done.

She was a mayor. She was a mayor of a great city in the State of Texas. She knows that you have to get things done.

Ms. DeLauro is a person who gets things done.

I am going to work with both of them, Mr. Speaker, in this coming Congress. We are going to pass every one of the appropriations bills, every one.

We haven't dealt with homeland security because of the wall, not because of the other items, but the wall. We had a disagreement. We couldn't forge agreement on that and compromise on that.

I am going to work with both the chair and the ranking member, and, frankly, all the Members on both sides of the aisle to get our work done by June 30 of this coming year. That will give us 90 days to reach agreement with the Senate, pass the bills, and do it by September 30.

We have rarely done that. I think in my 40 years of service in this House, I think we have done it twice. I would have to check. Maybe it was only once. Maybe you could tell me that, and we could find out. But I am hopeful that we will do it.

There aren't many Members on this floor. This CR has to pass. All we did was change the date because of practically recognizing we have not gotten our work done on time.

And whoever is listening, whether the public or other Members are listening, Mr. Speaker, as I speak, I hope they will take to heart our responsibility to the American people, and to this institution, to make it work on time.

I told the majority leader of the United States Senate just about 2 days ago, 3 days ago, I said: Mitch, there is no agreement we can make on December 18 that we can't make on December 11. There is no magic in these next 7 days--now, I guess, 9 days. There is no magic in it. It is just, psychologically, we have until December 18, so we won't make the agreement today.

That is why I set December 11, because I was hopeful that we could do it by December 11. I urged the Members to do December 11, very frankly, for two reasons. Number one, it is the right thing to do. And number two, our Members are at risk when they travel. They are at risk here. They need to be in their homes quarantined with people who do not pose them any risk.

It is not that we want to shirk our duty. We can do our duty, but we don't need to be here for 2 more weeks or 1 more week to do it. We just have to have the thought in mind we are going to get it done today.

This will give us 8 more days, 9 more days to do it. I know the staff is going to be working round the clock over the weekend to get us a bill done.

We need to pass three bills. We passed the NDAA last night. That bill should be passed in June as well, or late May. I told Mr. Smith and the new ranking member that I am going to do everything I can to have that bill on the floor this coming May. We traditionally did that. I am not inventing something. Ms. DeLauro knows we did that; the ranking member knows we did that.

We all say it is a very important bill. Well, if it is a very important bill, let's deal with it in a timely fashion and not have this last-minute veto; we are going to do this.

We need to pass it, and 335 of us yesterday said we need to pass this bill.

So, I will end this tirade by simply saying congratulations to Ms. DeLauro and to the ranking member, who is a good friend and a very responsible Member of this House.

I will work closely with them and with all of our Members, Mr. Speaker, to make sure that the American people can be proud of the fact that the House of Representatives knows its responsibilities, meets its responsibilities, and passes legislation in a timely fashion and does not say to the Federal employees and the people who are operating government: Maybe you will be funded tomorrow and maybe you won't.

We have wasted billions of dollars over the years I have been here with the government trying to figure out how they are going to prepare for a shutdown. Any business that operated that way in America would go bankrupt pretty soon. The CEO would be fired, and the board of directors, which we are, might be fired as well.

Let's learn the lesson that we learn too often, and let's do our work on time and do it well.

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