Legislative Program

Floor Speech

LEGISLATIVE PROGRAM -- (House of Representatives - June 15, 2007)

(Mr. BLUNT asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 minute.)

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. Speaker, I take this time for the purpose of inquiring about next week's schedule. I yield to my good friend, the majority leader, for information about the schedule next week. In light of the agreement we reached this week, any sense you could give us at all about the remaining 10 appropriations bills would be helpful.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I hope my recitation of the schedule for next week is a little more accurate than my recitation of the schedule last week, which had a little bit of a problem getting done.

In any event, my distinguished friend, on Monday the House will meet at 12:30 p.m. for morning hour business and then at 2 p.m. for legislative business. We will consider several bills under suspension of the rules. A complete list of those bills will be announced later today.

On Tuesday, the House will meet at 9 a.m. for morning hour business and 10 a.m. for legislative business. On Wednesday and Thursday, the House will meet at 10 a.m., and on Friday the House will meet at 9 a.m. We will consider the following fiscal year 2008 appropriations bills: Energy and Water Development; State, Foreign Operations; and the Legislative Branch bill.

In addition to that, in the week following, I am waiting for it to be written up for me, but I know Financial Services we hope to have up on the last week of the session; the Commerce, Justice, Science bill and the Interior bill in the last week; and then in July, the week we get back, which is the second full week of July, we expect to have the Labor-Health bill, the Agriculture bill and the Transportation-HUD bill.

In addition, after that, we will have the Defense appropriations bill as we had always planned to have that, approximately mid-July.

I want to tell my friend that obviously the three bills that are scheduled for the second week in July may slip to the third week in July because of the difficulty of getting together all of the projects that will be added to the bills as a result of Members' initiatives and the committee's action. But whether it is the second week in July or the third week in July, they will be in mid-July sometime.

Mr. BLUNT. I appreciate that. I would ask my friend, on the Energy and Water bill that we expect to do next week, it is my understanding we will come back at a later time and finish that bill, once time has been adequate to allow projects that would have otherwise gone in at some time even later than House passage.

Mr. HOYER. If the gentleman will yield further, yes, the Energy and Water bill, again because of the numbers of projects in Members' districts that are very important to them and, I think, to the country, but will take time to vet properly to make sure that they are justified and to check with the agency, those projects are going to be added after we consider the Energy and Water bill, which is scheduled for next week.

But before the Energy and Water bill is sent to the Senate, we will have those add-ons added to another appropriation bill that will come to the floor and will be, therefore, subject to Members' actions on each and every one of the legislatively added provisions. When that bill passes, those provisions will then be added to the Energy and Water bill and then, and only then, sent to the Senate.

Mr. BLUNT. I thank my friend for that.

I would also ask, this was covered extensively last night, but just to verify this one more time as we look at the schedule for these appropriations bills and for next week, on Monday of next week, we intend under unanimous consent to reinstate the rule that we had at the end of the last Congress that would provide for a point of order on any projects that are put in a conference report that we hadn't had an opportunity to see prior to that. That would happen on Monday?

Mr. HOYER. If the gentleman will yield further, let me be precise.

Mr. BLUNT. I will be glad to yield, and I am not trying to be unusually prescriptive in describing that.

Mr. HOYER. Let me be precise so there won't be any misunderstanding. I am not sure, but I think your rule dealt with more than appropriations conference reports. I may not be correct on that.

But in any event, the rule that will be offered Monday night, hopefully by unanimous consent, will be a rule that will say that a point of order will lie to a conference report from the appropriations conference which has added a project that was not listed in either the House consideration or the Senate consideration, and that point of order would have 10 minutes of debate on either side, 10 minutes for those in opposition to allowing the conference committee report to be considered, and 10 minutes for the proponents of the conference committee report being considered, effectively adding a third to the hour.

So it would be an hour and 20 minutes of debate rather than just an hour.

Obviously if the point of order is sustained, then the conference committee with the add-on or add-ons would be referred back to the conference committee.

Mr. BLUNT. That is the way I understand it, my friend, and our agreement at this point is for these appropriations bills, although in our rule last year we also extended that to authorizing bills. As you know, we don't want to continue that discussion, but the agreement we made this week, the majority leader is fully in compliance with the agreement we made so we can move forward with these appropriations bills with the understanding that while now we will have a significant opportunity to look at the remainder of the specific Member projects or earmarks in the bill, we also would have an opportunity to have a debatable point of order on the conference report if those appear.

I would also like to ask about energy. I know in previous discussions on the floor at the end of previous weeks, I believe we discussed the likelihood that there would be an energy bill on the floor by July 4. I know in either this week's schedule or future scheduling that the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, the Ways and Means Committee, and the Energy and Commerce Committee have all delayed some markups that they had intended, and I am wondering if the leader has a sense of what that means in terms of an energy bill on the floor, and also that bill on the floor in light of the appropriations works we just discussed.

Mr. HOYER. If the gentleman would yield, obviously the gentleman is correct. There has been a change in the July schedule in part because of the moving of three of the appropriations bills to July. So they will not be considered in June. It was always the intent, however, that there would be an announcement prior to July 4 of component parts of an energy policy, not necessarily one bill but an energy policy prior to July 4. We always contemplated energy bills being on the floor in July. As far as I know, that is still the plan.

Mr. BLUNT. I thank you for that response.

In addition to that, every indication I have up to this point is that those energy bills would go through the regular order of the committee. Is that what the leader and the majority still anticipates?

Mr. HOYER. That is correct.

Mr. BLUNT. On another topic where we had some discussions that indicated there would be an effort to have a vote before the August work period on the topic of trade. And of the agreements out there, generally the discussion was that there would be a significant effort made to have the Peru agreement on the floor in July. I know these take a significant amount of time because of the various things that have to be done in this trade promotion authority process. I am wondering on trade if my friend has a sense where those items might be.

Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman for yielding, and not with precision in the sense of weeks or months or days, I mean. Obviously as the gentleman knows, Chairman Rangel and Chairman Levin of the subcommittee is working very closely with Ambassador Schwab and Secretary Paulson and the administration on these issues.

They have reached an understanding and that is moving forward, I believe, but I could not tell the gentleman at this time what will be scheduled or when it will be scheduled. As the gentleman well knows, there is discussion with reference to Peru and Panama and actions that may be taken in Peru or Panama, and that is being discussed, as a matter of fact, I think today between Ambassador Schwab and Mr. Rangel and others.

Clearly I think things are moving forward on that, but I cannot give the gentleman any time frames.

Mr. BLUNT. I thank my good friend for that. We are interested in that. We will continue to talk about that both on the floor and off. It would certainly be one of my goals. By this time next week if we have any information on that, we can begin to get a sense of meeting those deadlines. Under this process, as the leader well knows, a number of things have to be done. There is very little flexibility in the time frame once you start the clock on a particular agreement, and the clock has to start right here in the House of Representatives. I look forward to that. I thank my friend for the information.

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