Legislative Program

Floor Speech

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Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman for his information with respect to the legislation that is going to be considered next week.

I would note that he talks about the highway bill, the infrastructure bill that is pending. Obviously, we had expected to consider that bill on the House floor. On our side, at least, our expectation was that it was going to be considered a number of weeks ago. It has not come to the floor here. As I understand it, we are now talking about an extension of some period of time. We are concerned that you rightfully, personally and as a party, made it very clear that certainty was an important aspect of growing our economy. That's a proposition on which I agree. I think you are absolutely right. I think that we need to create certainty and, clearly, we need to create jobs.

I said this morning, Mr. Leader, to the press--and I'm sure you get it as well--that the public says to me: When are you guys going to start working together? When are you going to get something done in a bipartisan way?

The Senate has done that, I will say to my friend. The Senate has done it in an overwhelming fashion. They had 74--it would have been 75, but Mr. Lautenberg was absent but was for the bill. So 75 percent of the Senate, three-quarters of the Senate voted for what was a very bipartisan bill. And, as a matter of fact, half the Senate Republicans essentially voted for that bill.

As you know, it had a technical flaw in the bill in that it had revenues which need to be initiated in the House of Representatives. Representative Tim Bishop of New York has introduced the Senate bill, which has overwhelming support in the United States Senate and, very frankly, in my view, would have at least 218 votes in this House if it were put on the floor.

The Speaker has said in the past that he is committed to letting the House work its will, obviously referring to the open amendments process. But if a bill doesn't come to the floor, we have no opportunity either to amend or to vote. That's been one of our problems, of course, with the jobs bill that the President proposed that we had hoped would have been brought to the floor which has not been to the floor.

But I ask my friend, rather than continue to delay--and both sides have done that on the highway bill--to give that confidence, of which you have spoken and others on your side of the aisle have spoken I think absolutely correctly, in order to give the confidence that we can, in fact, act, that we can work in a bipartisan fashion, I would ask my friend whether or not he, as the majority leader, would be prepared to bring the Bishop bill to the floor, which, again, is the Senate bill, supported by 75 Members of the United States Senate, half of the Republican caucus in the Senate, and which will give some degree of certainty for a highway program which clearly is also a jobs bill and will have an impact on almost 2 million jobs and maybe another million jobs along the way.

We think that's the way that would be good for our country to proceed, and it would send a message--because I think it would get bipartisan support if you brought it to the floor--that it would send a good message to the country that, yes, from time to time, we can work together. And, very frankly, Mr. Leader, if we did that, it would be consistent with every transportation bill that we have passed since 1956 under Dwight Eisenhower, where we worked together in a bipartisan fashion. This is the first time that I have experienced a partisan divide--I mean, people have had differences of opinion, but a partisan divide on the highway bill.

As you know, Senator Boxer and Senator Inhofe came together to agree. I think that's a pretty broad ideological spectrum of the United States Senate. They came together, they agreed, and they led the effort to pass that bipartisan bill.

I would very much hope that, Mr. Majority Leader, that you could bring that bill to the floor and see whether or not, in fact, it could pass. I think that would be good for the country.

And I yield to my friend for his comments.

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Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman for his comments. But I will say again to the gentleman, we've been down this path before. We've been down this path before where the Senate was able to reach a bipartisan agreement on legislation very important to jobs, to the economy, and to the confidence of America.

That bipartisan piece of legislation would have enjoyed the support, I think, of certainly the overwhelming majority, almost the unanimous support on our side on a bipartisan agreement. I don't mean a Democratic proposal from the Senate, but a bipartisan agreement that came from the Senate. That dealt, of course, with payroll taxes and extending those, and ultimately we did that. We took that bill.

But I would say to my friend that the Speaker indicated he wanted a bill on this floor. I've been asking you for approximately a month now if it was going to come to the floor. That bill hasn't come to the floor. We all know it hasn't come to the floor because there's very substantial disagreement within your party about that bill. The papers report that. Everybody talks about it. We understand that.

I say to my friend that he and I do have a disagreement. I think it would enjoy bipartisan support on this floor if you brought the Bishop bill, the Senate bipartisan bill, to the floor. But the only way we're really going to be able to find that out--it's not by me saying, I think it would and you saying, I think it wouldn't. There's a very easy way to see whether it would, and that is to bring it to the floor next week.

I don't think there is anybody, hopefully, that wants to disrupt and have literally hundreds of thousands of people thrown out of work or not have opportunities for work. We know the construction trades in particular have been very badly hit by the lack of construction that's going on.

You can have your opinion and I can have my opinion, but there is a way to determine whether or not, in fact, we can get bipartisan agreement; and that is, as I said, and as the Speaker has indicated, let the House work its will. The only way the House can work its will--having been majority leader--is for the majority leader to bring the legislation to the floor for a vote. Then you may be right, I may be right, but we will know and it won't have to be speculation. We will know.

If I'm right and we do pass that bill, then next week, before March 31, before the expiration of the current highway authorization, we can send a bill to the President of the United States, and he will sign the Senate bill. We don't know that he will sign a bill that's still languishing in your committee because we haven't seen the final parameters of that bill because it is obviously pretty controversial on your side of the aisle.

Again, if you want certainty, we have an opportunity for certainty. We have an opportunity with a bipartisan bill that the Senate has passed. I don't know why we're rejecting that bipartisanship. The gentleman says, well, this is a unique economic time. He's right. It seems to me that's a greater argument for trying to embrace a bipartisan agreement and move forward with giving certainty to the construction industry, to States, to municipalities, and to counties on what is going to be available to them to plan and to pursue infrastructure projects critical to commerce and to their communities.

I regret that the gentleman has indicated that's not an option that he will consider, but a short-term extension seems to be the continuation of uncertainty, not the allaying of uncertainty. I don't know whether the gentleman wants to make another comment on that or not.

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Mr. HOYER. Well, I won't pursue it any further, Mr. Leader, but you've been unable to get agreement within your party on this side of the Capitol for well over a month. I hope you can get there. I would hope you would get there in a bipartisan fashion so that Mr. Rahall and Mr. Mica could agree on a bill, which has been my experience in the 31 years I've been here. It's not my experience this year. That hasn't happened. But almost invariably--and I think for the years you've been here, you've experienced that as well.

Let me ask you now with respect to the budget. Do you expect the budget to come to the floor? You indicated that. If so, would that be Wednesday?

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Mr. HOYER. Normally, as you know, we've had alternatives made in order. We, of course, want to make in order an amendment which will guarantee that Medicare

will be available to our seniors and that we will not decimate Medicaid, which we think is appropriate for our seniors. We also want to make sure that we have revenues that can sustain health care for seniors, education for kids, help for our communities.

Will the gentleman be able to tell me whether or not, in fact, alternatives will be made in order by the Rules Committee that would be offered either by the minority ranking member of the committee and/or others as historically has been the case?

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Mr. HOYER. Was there a bipartisan vote in the committee on that? I thought it was a totally partisan vote in the committee. Was I incorrect?

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Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman for his comment.

The last thing I would ask the gentleman: Am I correct that the agreement that was reached between our parties, which led to the passage of the Budget Control Act in a bipartisan fashion, does not reflect the substance of that agreement as it relates to the discretionary spending number for fiscal year 2013? Senator McConnell is quoted, as you know, as saying that that was an agreement that was reached and that he expected it to be pursued.

I want to make it clear that he was not referring to the action of the Budget Committee, but he was referring to the agreement on the discretionary number.

Am I correct that the agreement that was reached, in order to get a bipartisan vote on the Budget Control Act, which we passed, which made sure that this country did not default on its debts for the first time in history, am I correct that that number is not the number that is reflected in the budget?

I yield to my friend.

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Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman for his comments, but I will tell the gentleman that if we're going to have negotiations, and we have one number and you have another number, and we agree on a number, and then we pass a bill which reflects that number, put it in law--it doesn't say it's a cap; it says that will be the number. As we pass the budget, we said that will be the number. Now this is the law. And as was observed by others on the other side of the Capitol, but I will observe it here as well, if we're going to have those kinds of negotiations, it's sort of like the guy who comes up to you and says, look, I've got something to sell you, do you want to buy it? And you say, yes, let's negotiate on price. And you come to a price of $100. And then you come to settle, and the guy says, well, that was my top number. I'm going to give you $92 for that item. You don't have a meeting of the minds as a contract requires.

Very frankly, nobody on our side, and frankly I don't think anybody on your side that negotiated the deal--I don't mean that didn't vote for it--and as a matter of fact, I know for a fact the Speaker, and I believe yourself, have been quoted that that was the number and we ought to stick with it. Clearly, Mr. Rogers believes that's the number that was agreed to.

Now, we're not going to be able to agree on things if all of a sudden it becomes, well, that was a notional thing that we did, not an agreement. A lot of our people voted on that to make sure, A, we didn't go into default as a country, and, B, that was not the number we wanted. It clearly was not the number your side wanted. But it was a number we agreed upon. And it seems to me that if we're going to try to keep faith with one another and with the law that we passed that we should stick with what we agreed to.

I understand that we want to bring the budget deficit down. As a matter of fact, on this side of the aisle, I've made those comments, and I've been criticized by some on my side, as you well know. Yes, we do need to get a handle on the budget. We're going to have a real debate on the deficit and debt, and I've been working very hard on that. We're going to have a debate, a fulsome debate, hopefully, on whether or not your budget does that. We've had disagreements all the years I've been here on that, and performance has not reflected, from my standpoint, that the representations made have always worked out, perhaps on either side.

But I regret, I regret deeply, Mr. Majority Leader, that we've reached an agreement, and based upon that agreement, this House took an action, it took a bipartisan action, and it passed a piece of legislation that was critically important to make sure that America did not go into default. And now we see 7 months later, crossed fingers, well, we really didn't mean that, it was a cap. Nobody on our side--there was no mention in the law nor was there any mention in the negotiations that that was a cap, not a number.

Unless the gentleman wants to say something further, I yield to my friend.

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Mr. HOYER. I look forward to next week debating how we bring that deficit down, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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