Providing for Consideration of H.R. National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year Providing for Consideration of S. Protecting Our Gold Star Families Education Act; Providing for Consideration of H.R. Women's Health Protection Act of Providing for Consideration of H.R. Ensuring Access to Abortion Act of Providing for Consideration of H.R. Active Shooter Alert Act of and for Other Purposes
Floor Speech
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Mr. HOYER. Madam Speaker, this is going to be a very busy week. There are over 600 amendments made in order to the defense bill.
Clearly, if we do what we just did, and we do it too often--take three times the time allotted to vote; this took about 47 minutes, 48 minutes to vote in the first vote--we will be here for a very long time. No one wants to shirk their duties, but they do want to do their duties on time.
I want to make it clear to the House that I have asked the leadership, the Speaker's Office, to join with me in ensuring that 5- minute votes are 5-minute votes.
My colleagues, invariably, that announcement brings cheers, and invariably, those cheers come after 10, 15, 20 minutes have elapsed on a 5-minute vote--not all of us, but some of us, and many of us sometimes.
In consideration of our colleagues on both sides of the aisle, some of you are going to be angry because you are going to miss a 5-minute vote.
Now, for those of you who are casting proxies, I ask you to cast them immediately upon the vote opening so that we can process the proxies at the desk.
Yelling at one another doesn't help trying to bring some self-respect to this institution. Each of us has to take personal responsibility to do our job, which is to put our card in the voting machine, to put our proxies in, to move along.
I ask all of us to respect that because I am going to try, to the extent humanly possible, to end votes at 5 minutes. Some of you are going to be upset. You are going to walk down the aisle.
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Mr. HOYER. I yield to the gentleman from California.
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Mr. HOYER. Ladies and gentlemen----
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Mr. HOYER. Madam Speaker, reclaiming my time, I just admonished some people.
This is a serious issue of how the House operates and how your time is respected. We have proxies. We are going to keep proxies. We can debate that, but the fact of the matter is, as long as we have proxies, we are going to have to take into consideration proxies.
But we don't have to simply waste time by people not showing up, proxy or not. That is my whole point, so that we can respect one another's time, respect the work of this institution, respect the work of our committees.
I would urge--and I will yield again--I would urge us to respect one another, respect our time, and respect the constraints of voting within a timeframe, whether it is 15 minutes or 5 minutes.
Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. McCarthy).
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Mr. HOYER. Let me conclude, Madam Speaker, by urging everybody to stay on the floor. What we are seeing happen many times is somebody votes, they are registered, and then when you go to the next vote they are 10 minutes, 15 minutes late. That is not what we ought to be doing.
We are going to hew to the time limits as closely as humanly possible within the constraints of our clerks who are working very, very hard to accommodate us.
Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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