Legislative Program

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. HOYER. Ladies and gentlemen, I know the consternation that exists with respect to our schedule and when we are going to leave. I want to announce what I believe to be the balance of the schedule tonight. I would hope that it would include, but cannot assert at this point in time because I don't know--and I don't believe it's the case--that 9/11 will be ready for us. They are still talking about it in the Senate. I just talked to Senator Reid.

We will go to a suspension bill, the child sex trafficking bill. We will then go to the rule for the continuing resolution. We will then do the continuing resolution. That would, unless we get 9/11, conclude the business for today.

It is, as Senator Reid indicates to me, a high likelihood that they will complete 9/11 sometime tomorrow. Now ``sometime tomorrow'' is, he says, no later than 4, as early as 2.

Ladies and gentlemen, I know we would all like to say that, well, let's go home. As you know, the 9/11 bill does, in fact, impact literally tens of thousands of people who participated subsequent to 9/11 in going into that building and initially looking for those who might still be surviving, and to look for those who did not survive and bring them out. So this is not a matter that does not have serious consequences for people who volunteered and, as a result of the atmosphere which confronted them as they went in, they became ill.

So I think all of us understand the seriousness of this bill and the consequences of not doing it. So I would ask you to bear with us. We will have these votes, and we will be in constant touch with Senator Reid, the majority leader.

But my expectation is that there is a high likelihood of a vote on 9/11 sometime tomorrow. As a result, I would be asking all of you to stay tonight and be here tomorrow so that we can convene and do this very, very important business, which is not just important to the New Yorkers; this is important to our country. At any time we may have a catastrophe in which people would volunteer and show heroic effort to save lives and to rescue people.

That is the schedule for the balance of the day. If 9/11 moves over here at any point and, frankly, what is happening now, I tell my friends, is that they're seeing whether or not, during the course of the START debate, which is going on now, whether they can get a time agreement and bring START to a close and a vote. If they can do that and then go to 9/11 and have a debate which is relatively brief, they've obviously had a long-term debate on that, and bring this bill to us tonight, I know that all of you would want and I would want and we will do it tonight. But I cannot assert that I think the Senate is going to move it in that time frame.

That is our schedule. And, hopefully, our business will be concluded tomorrow on the passage of 9/11.

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