Legislative Program
Floor Speech
LEGISLATIVE PROGRAM -- (House of Representatives - May 03, 2007)
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Mr. HOYER. I thank my friend for yielding, and respond to him that on Monday, the House will meet at 12:30 p.m. for morning hour business and 2 p.m. for legislative business. We will consider several bills under suspension of the rules, and we expect to appoint conferees on the fiscal year 2008 budget resolution.
Again, Monday night, we intend to have a motion to go to conference and appoint conferees, so that Members know it will be in addition to suspension bills.
On Tuesday, the House will meet at 10:30 a.m. for morning hour business and noon for legislative business. We will consider additional bills under suspension of the rules. A complete list of those bills will be distributed by the end of business tomorrow.
On Wednesday and Thursday, the House will meet at 10 a.m. On Friday, the House will meet at 9 a.m. We expect to consider the fiscal year 2008 intelligence authorization bill; the fiscal year 2008 Homeland Security Department authorization bill; H.R. 1873, a bill regarding small business contracting; H.R. 1294, the Thomasina E. Jordan Indian Tribes of Virginia Recognition Act; and a bill to reauthorize the COPS program.
We are still determining which rules and bills will be considered on which days.
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Mr. HOYER. As you know, Speaker Pelosi and Leader Reid in our meeting at the White House indicated that it was their intent and their objective to have to the President's desk before the Memorial Day break another bill to fund our troops, and for such other purposes as the bill may include.
In that context, I am hopeful that we will move a bill through this House no later than the 15th or 16th of May. In other words, not next week but the week after. If we can do it next week, we would maybe do it; but it is our intention to move it before the middle of the second week.
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Mr. HOYER. If the gentleman would yield, I am not sure I am accurate because when you say come before the House again, what we will do is take
the Senate bill from the desk, substitute the House language, ask for a conference, move to go to conference, and then you will have in order your motion to instruct conferees. To that extent, the bill will come before us, but only to that extent. In other words, the budget that was passed by the House, we will take the Senate bill from the floor, substitute the House language.
The reason we need a rule, frankly, is we asked unanimous consent to do that procedure, a unanimous consent which we had given to you in 2003 and 2005. For whatever reasons, it was not your personal determination, but it was the determination of your side not to give unanimous consent for that purpose. Therefore, in order to effect that objective, we need to pass a rule to allow us to do that which is what we will do Monday night.
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Mr. HOYER. That is not my understanding. Now the gentleman may have more information than I have, but if that is the fact, I don't have that information. At this point in time, I was not aware of any such problem.
The only problem I was aware of, as I informed the gentleman, we can either do this by asking for unanimous consent to effect the process of taking the Senate bill, substituting the House bill, and then requesting the conference and appointing conferees by unanimous consent. Or, failing to get unanimous consent, we have to do that by rule. We did not get unanimous consent. The Rules Committee met today. We will consider that rule and the bill itself on Monday late afternoon, early evening.
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Mr. BLUNT. I would also ask the gentleman, and then we go to conference on the budget after taking what will be a separate vote on the budget?
Mr. HOYER. Yes.
Mr. BLUNT. And all of that would happen on Monday?
Mr. HOYER. Yes, sir.
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Mr. HOYER. It will not be this coming week. That is being worked on. We want to make sure that it is a bill which accurately reflects reform and is workable. That is what we are trying to achieve.
Mr. BLUNT. Is it the gentleman's view that bill will go through a committee process or will it be coming directly to the floor?
Mr. HOYER. It is my view it will go through a committee process. The Judiciary Committee is considering it. Mr. Conyers' committee is considering it.
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Mr. HOYER. If the gentleman would yield, if we have the full cooperation of all those people who have mothers or had mothers, we can accomplish that objective.
Having said that, as you know, I announced we have Friday scheduled as a day for us to do our business. Now if we were extraordinarily fortunate and got our business done by Thursday, or frankly could conclude it late Thursday night, perhaps we would be able to do that. But I do not anticipate that. I know as many Members on my side of the aisle, I want to assure the gentleman, have talked to me, as I am sure Members on your side of the aisle have talked to you about that, and if we can accommodate them, we will. But you heard the schedule. It is a pretty full schedule with a lot of substantive legislation. We have the intelligence authorization and other bills. It is my expectation that we will be in on Friday. But it is also my intent to make every effort to make Friday as short a day as we possibly can. As you know, our objective is no later than 2 p.m.; but if we could do earlier, 12:30, before 1, to accommodate Members and their flights, we certainly would like to do that. I would certainly welcome your help in accomplishing that objective.
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Mr. HOYER. Let me say, I agree with the gentleman. I was not pleased myself that we did not give more notice to Members. As you pointed out, we had votes very late in the day.
I take full responsibility because I think we may have been able to get, certainly early Tuesday at the latest, information to Members. We probably should have done that.
As you know, the issue was the veto, when it was going to go down there and when it was going to come back. That was not decided until late.
But I think the gentleman's criticism is a constructive criticism, and I take responsibility. We should have done that, in my opinion. I was not pleased, frankly, with myself or with the notice our office gave because we do want to give Members as accurate information as we possibly can. And, frankly, we want to give them as timely information as we can so they can accomplish what you have said, make their schedules comport with what we are actually doing. To the extent that did not happen this time, I will try to prevent it from happening a second time.
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