Legislative Program

Floor Speech

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

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman's premise is absolutely incorrect, and the American people ought to know that. The Senate hasn't voted to go to conference because the Republican Members of the United States Senate won't vote to go to conference. There was nothing in that motion, however, that said there was a prerequisite that the House agreed to anything, Mr. Speaker. Nothing.

Now, my friend, the majority leader, Mr. Speaker, has said repeatedly that we have a prerequisite. We have a difference of opinion. That's what democracy is about. There's no prerequisite. There's no precondition. There's no condition precedent, as we lawyers say, for going to conference. Number one, the Senate couldn't make us agree. That's what conferences are about, Mr. Speaker. They're about coming together and understanding there are differences. There would be no need for a conference if there weren't differences. There are differences.

We're $91 billion apart, Mr. Speaker, on our budgets. We are 14 days away from the end of this fiscal year, Mr. Speaker, in terms of legislative days available to us to get to a compromise, to get to a number, to get to some understanding of how we are going to ensure that government operations continue. There's no prerequisite. There's no precondition. I don't know where that comes from, Mr. Speaker. I've heard it a lot. I have no idea where it comes from.

Nothing the Senate does can force this body, Republicans or Democrats, to do something. What they have asked is come to the table and talk. There has been a refusal to do that, Mr. Speaker, and it's bad for the country.

A $91 billion difference between us on budgets has to be resolved somehow, some way. And the way democracies do it and the way the legislature does it, Mr. Speaker is to meet and try to resolve those differences. Now, you can divide the differences in half. The Senate comes down 46, we go up 45. My own view is Mr. Ryan believes there's nothing he will agree to. I'll get to that a little later, Mr. Speaker. That's why we're not going to conference, and he said so in the paper. He didn't say it about the conference, but I'll get to his quote in just a second.

Mr. Speaker, the majority leader mentioned that the T-HUD appropriation bill is on the floor next week. So far, Mr. Speaker, we are now essentially going to be at the end of the session before the August break coming next week on Friday, and we've done four appropriation bills. The House T-HUD bill of which the majority leader speaks, Mr. Speaker, is 17 percent below the Budget Control Act that we agreed on. Not only that, Mr. Speaker, it's 9 percent below the sequester level.

Now, we're not going to vote for it, Mr. Speaker. We believe it badly underfunds, transportation, housing, and infrastructure in this country, but this performance makes some sense considering the lack of regular order. We talk about regular order, but we don't follow it. Going to conference is regular order. It doesn't change the fact, however, that we just have 14 days left to go and that we need to reach agreement.

I will tell my friend, the majority leader, Mr. Speaker, that we are willing to work together. We have been willing to compromise. We have compromised. In every one of these agreements we've reached, we've compromised. My friend, the majority leader, would say, yes, and they have, as well. But you cannot compromise if you don't sit down.

I will tell you nobody has called me to ask me how I believe we can get to the end of this year with a continuing resolution. Nobody's asked me that. I talked to Mr. Ryan and Mr. Van Hollen. Mr. Ryan has not talked to Mr. Van Hollen. With all due respect to this discussion about their talking, they're not talking. I talked to Senator Murray. No discussion of how we resolve the differences. I talked to the chair of the Appropriations Committee, both the ranking member here, Mrs. Lowey, and the chair on the Senate side, Senator Mikulski. Nobody is talking to them about how we resolve the question at the end of next month. And we won't be here at the end of next month. We're in session 2 weeks in September.

I want to use a quote:

But we should not pass a continuing resolution, and I will not vote for a continuing resolution unless we talk about preconditions for going to conference.

Talk about preconditions. Talk about demands and ultimatums:

I will not vote for a continuing resolution unless it defunds ObamaCare for the period of time of the continuing resolution.

Nobody in America believes that's going to be done. A lot of people, I know the majority leader would tell me, want it done. But we had an election. The President won. He won't sign the defunding of ObamaCare because he believes it's in the best interest of the health of our people and the welfare of our country, and, yes, even job creation and economic growth. But Marco Rubio says he won't vote for a continuing resolution unless it does something that's not going to happen. The majority leader, Mr. Speaker, said they weren't going to go to conference--another ultimatum--unless the Senate abandoned its point of view. The Senate has a right to its point of view. We have a right to our point of view. We need to discuss it. That's the way you get things done in a democracy, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I want to ask the majority leader, Does the gentleman expect that we will go to conference at all, at any time on the budget?

I yield to my friend.

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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman's recitation of history. Let me remind him, the first year I was majority leader, all 12 appropriations bills passed the House prior to the August break--all 12. That also happened the third year. It didn't happen the second year when we had a lot of political delays. And the reason we went to structured rules, as the gentleman I'm sure recalls, because we had filibuster by amendment. We had delay and obstruction in 2007, just as we have delay and obstruction today, just as there is a refusal today to go to conference. Over 120 days after both Houses have passed their budgets, we still have refusal to go to conference. That is why you can't get agreement.

The gentleman characterizes, I think Mr. Ryan has talked to Senator Murray, and I will tell you that Senator Murray does not believe it was a very long discussion or a very substantive discussion because--and you talk about Mr. Ryan. I've got a quote of his I know you'll like that I want to get to because it makes the point I'm making. I was going to make it a little later.

Paul Ryan, when asked about Senate Republicans' plan to work with Democrats to address the debt ceiling, said:

It doesn't matter. We're not going to do what they want to do. It doesn't really matter what they do. It doesn't matter what John McCain and others do on the taxes and the rest. If they want to give up taxes for the sequester, we're not going to do that. So that doesn't really affect us.

But, oh, it does affect us because, Mr. Speaker, if we can't get agreement, those American folks of which the majority leader just spoke who are looking for jobs, who want to see this economy grow, who are suffering because of gridlock, who have a lack of confidence because this Congress does not work--the most dysfunctional Congress in which I have served, and I've been here 33 years, the least productive Congress in which I've served. Mr. Speaker, that's what we need to be doing.

Mike Lee, another Republican in the Senate talking about trying to get to agreement: ``If Republicans in both Houses simply refuse''--and this is their strategy, Mr. Speaker. ``If Republicans in both Houses simply refuse to vote for any continuing resolution that contains further funding for further enforcement of ObamaCare''--and I understand the gentleman is opposed to it. He was opposed to it before the election. Mr. Romney was opposed to it. We had an election, and you didn't win that argument at the national level. I say that Mr. Obama won that argument. But Senator Lee says he will not vote for a CR if it includes ``further funding for further enforcement of ObamaCare. We can stop it. We can stop the individual mandate from going into effect.'' How? By shutting down government.

That's their strategy. We don't think that's a good strategy, Mr. Speaker. We think that's a bad strategy. We don't want to see that. We're prepared to work together to compromise. Nobody believes, just as the gentleman has said he's not going to agree to tax increases--I understand what he's saying, so we'll have to compromise on that somewhere along the road when we sit down. But nobody believes that either we on this side are going to compromise or the President's going to compromise after an election, after being reelected on a health care program that is benefiting millions and millions of people right now, nobody believes we're going to compromise on that. Thirty-nine times they've tried to repeal it in one form or another. It's failed. We've got to come to grips on that.

Now, one of the House Members, Mick Mulvaney from South Carolina, said:

It is completely appropriate to use the debt ceiling or the CR to ask for some changes that reduce the burdens of this law on Americans.

Now, they've offered that 38, 39 times. It's not going to happen. But apparently their strategy is: We're prepared to shut down government unless they will be bludgeoned into agreeing by doing it our way; if we don't do it our way, apparently we're not going to do it any way.

That's what the budget conference is about, and that's what this debate is about.

Now, Pat Toomey, Senator Toomey, on the other hand, said this, Mr. Speaker:

This has been the way we've been operating for a couple of years now.

This is Senator Pat Toomey, former chair of the Club for Growth, said:

It's a disaster. It's a terrible way to run government.

Senator Toomey and I don't always agree, but we agree very emphatically on that.

Congressman Tom Cole, former chairman of the Republican Committee, described the latest shutdown threat, which is what the previous three speakers had indicated--not Pat Toomey, but the three before that. Tom Cole described the latest shutdown threat as:

The political equivalent of throwing a temper tantrum.

That's Tom Cole, chairman of the Republican Campaign Committee, Mr. Speaker, not me.

We need to get past this ``you won't do this; I won't do that'' and figure out what we will do, I say to my friend, the majority leader, and we have 14 days to do it. We haven't gotten it done yet; and, frankly, we have nothing on the calendar for next week that shows that we're moving toward that end.

I would hope very sincerely that we could come to an agreement. And we're not going to come to an agreement on something that was so hard fought for the last 5 years, and we know that. We know you're probably not going to raise taxes, I tell my friend, the majority leader, Mr. Speaker. But the fact of the matter is that we need to come to an agreement. Americans expect us to come to an agreement.

With so few legislative days remaining before the fiscal year ends and the fact that we must address it in mind, I hope the gentleman can give us some clarity as to what Members can expect on the floor in September for the 9 days we're here in September since we're so far off course from regular order on the budget and the appropriations schedule.

Can Members expect to see a CR? And if so, does the gentleman have any idea what the CR will look like, what it will encompass, and what we can expect?

I want to say to my friend that we Democrats are prepared to cooperate in that effort. We're not going to--and the gentleman clearly knows that we're not going to--repeal the health care act. The election, we think, decided it. As a matter of, Speaker Boehner said that it decided it after the election. He said, well, the health care law has been confirmed. But I want to make it clear that we are willing to do some things.

We are not willing, however, to see the sequester cripple policies that this Congress has adopted. We're not willing to defund the Affordable Care Act. We're not willing to sacrifice our economic recovery to push the cost of deficit reduction onto those who can least afford it. We are not willing to shift more of the tax burden onto the backs of the middle class. We're not willing to target Medicare or Medicaid and education, or the deep cuts that were in the Labor, Health bill which has now been pulled. Apparently, we're not going to consider the Labor, Health bill. It's not on the schedule. It was supposed to be marked up today. It was pulled.

So I say to the gentleman, Mr. Speaker, that he and his colleagues should be willing to compromise on the few legislative days we have remaining; and if he is, he will have a willing partner in me and in Democrats because we believe we need to come to an agreement.

Now, lastly, let me speak on the debt ceiling. The majority leader, Mr. Speaker, has made it very clear he thinks not resolving the debt ceiling would be a bad policy for our country. In fact, I believe it would be disastrous for our country, for the economy, for every American, and for people around the world. We all know what happened last time; we were downgraded. It's the majority party's responsibility in each House to make sure that America's creditworthiness is not put at risk, that we pay our bills.

I'm hopeful, and I want to tell me friend that I'm prepared to work in tandem with the majority leader, Mr. Speaker, to pass a debt limit extension, and we will do so in an equal way so that whatever political consequences there are, we will take them together to do what the majority leader, Mr. Speaker, and the Speaker, and Mr. McConnell, the leader in the Senate, have said is the responsible thing to do. We're prepared to take half of that responsibility with them. We would hope that they would join us in that effort.

Senator McCain has said that some of my Republican colleagues are already saying we won't raise the debt limit again unless there is repeal of ObamaCare. Senator McCain said, ``I'd love to repeal ObamaCare.'' He agrees with the majority leader. He goes on to say, ``But I promised you, that's not going to happen.'' That's on the debt limit.

The President has made it very clear it's not going to happen. We've made it very clear it's not going to happen.

Going on with Senator McCain's quote:

So some would like to set up another one of these shut down the government threats, and most Americans are really tired of those kinds of shenanigans here in Washington.

That's Senator McCain.

I've quoted Senator Toomey, Senator McCain, who both believe we need to come to agreement. I have also, unfortunately, quoted Congressman Ryan, who says he doesn't care what Senator McCain thinks; who, of course, was a candidate for President on the Republican ticket just a few years ago.

Mr. Speaker, I want to ask the majority leader whether he expects we will take an up-or-down vote on a clean debt limit extension when we return in September.

I yield to my friend.

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Mr. HOYER. I have heard that answer, I think, more than the President has given the speeches that Mr. Cantor refers to.

This party has always been, is now, and will be focused on the working people to which the majority leader refers.

The President asked us to pass a jobs bill. No jobs bill has been brought to this floor. I know that there are some bills that the Republican Party leader wants to say, Mr. Speaker, are jobs bills. But there's been no comprehensive jobs bill. There's none scheduled for next week.

But what the American people are really concerned about is their board of directors is not working. This isn't about Washington. This is about people who voted all over America. And the leader and his party made their point, and we had an election, not here in Washington, all over America. And America voted. And it hasn't made any difference on this floor.

Politics as usual. Confrontation as usual. Refusal to compromise as usual. Talk about regular order, but not going to conference, not going to conference on a budget, not going to conference on a farm bill, not going to conference on a Violence Against Women Act. We finally passed that.

So when the majority leader repairs to the fact that we want to focus on working people, he's absolutely right. We do want to focus on that. And the working people of America voted. They didn't all vote for my side. But as I told the majority leader last week, 1,400,000 of them more voted for our side than voted for his side.

But his side's in charge. We understand that. And we know we need to compromise. We know we need to work together. But we haven't been doing so.

And he can talk as much as he wants. That's what the American people believe as well, I tell my friend, the majority leader.

I asked him about the debt limit and he said no.

Mr. CANTOR. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. HOYER. I want to clarify what he said no on was that a clean debt limit extension was not coming to the floor.

Mr. CANTOR. In September, yes, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. HOYER. I appreciate the majority leader's comment. Can he tell me whether there might be a possibility of having a clean debt limit extension after September?

Because I tell the gentleman again, I want to repeat so that he knows, his party knows, and America knows, we're prepared to work with the majority party to do, in a bipartisan way, what every leader believes is the responsible action to take.

One of his predecessors, Senator Roy Blunt, in responding to whether we ought to risk default by not passing a debt limit, he said this: ``No, I don't support that. I think holding the debt limit hostage''--in other words, if you don't do the debt limit, we're not going to do this, that or the other, or, said another way, if you don't repeal ObamaCare, we're going to let the country default. Senator Blunt, again, one of his predecessors: ``I don't support that. I think holding the debt limit hostage to any specific thing is probably not the best negotiating place.''

Now, I thank my friend for his comment, Mr. Speaker, and I would again ask him, could we expect a clean debt limit extension at some point in time between September 30 and November 15?

And I yield to my friend.

Mr. CANTOR. Mr. Speaker, I'd say to the gentleman that it is our hope that we can work together across the aisle to solve the problems, to come up with the answers as to how we are going to pay back the additional debt that we'll have to incur in this country.

And I think whatever budget you look at, their side or our side, Mr. Speaker, in any iteration, calls for the incurrence of additional debt. The object should be for us to reduce the need for us to incur that debt so we can relieve the American people of that contingent liability. And our side has said we would like to do so within the next 10 years, to bring the budget to balance.

I hope that the gentleman will join us in that spirit, rather than saying we should just continue to borrow into eternity, without some recognition that that just can't be a sustainable solution either.

So I would say to the gentleman, when he is off talking about the need to go to conference, and frankly, some of the statements he made about VAWA and the farm bill were inaccurate. But I do think that there were a lot of things that this House has done that the President nor the Senate seems willing to respond to.

And as I've said before, Mr. Speaker, what we're trying to do is to address the needs of the working people, the middle class of this country.

We passed the SKILLS Act. That was a bill designed to try and align the worker training programs at the Federal level with the employment opportunities out there across the different regions of the country so we could respond to the fact that there are hundreds of thousands of job openings in certain industries, simply because our workforce doesn't have the proper skills and training.

The President, if he wanted to help the middle class families, instead of off campaigning again, giving the speeches, he could come and call up Harry Reid and the Senate and say, Bring that bill to the floor, Mr. Leader; we can do something for the American people.

In the same vein, this House, last week, passed a bill which I believe--and I'm sure the gentleman shares my sentiment, that ultimately what we've got to do to grow our economy and secure our economic future is to provide for a quality education for our kids. We passed a landmark piece of legislation last week, without any bipartisan support, Mr. Speaker.

But again, if the gentleman is so intent on wanting to help and wanting to do something, not because of Washington's needs, but because of what we've got to do for the kids across this country and their families, then let's help try and forge an answer on reauthorizing the education bill.

We also, Mr. Speaker, passed a bill that made it easier for working families to spend time with their kids and hold down an hourly wage job. Is there any movement on that?

The President could certainly say, Let's do that; let's provide some relief to the middle class.

We also passed in the House, Mr. Speaker, several energy bills to help the families out there across this country who are on their vacations right now, choking when they see the price of gas at the pump.

We have bills. The President could go ahead and approve the Keystone pipeline. Where else in the world could you have an environmentally sensitive people, other than in America? We do it cleaner and better than anyone. And to sit here and deny us the opportunity to take advantage of our indigenous resources, all it does is cost our working families and businesses more money.

We also have passed bills to allow for safe and environmentally sensitive ways of going into our deep oceans, to go in and to tap into the resources that are there, things that technology has unleashed. But yet, neither the Senate nor the President seems interested in helping the middle class and the working families, because all we hear from the other side is what we can and can't do politically here in Washington.

I would say to the gentleman, there are plenty of things that we could get done together. Let's start to focus on the people of this country, not the political imperatives of this institution.

Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman for that response, which I took as a no, which didn't indicate that we could expect to see bipartisan work on making sure that the government pays its bills that have already been incurred. No, it was a lot of rhetoric.

And there was a lot of recitation, Mr. Speaker, about bills. All those bills have something in common: do it my way or no way.

Now, we had an election, I tell the gentleman again. He knows that. They thought they were going to take the Senate. They didn't. The majority in the Senate is Democrats. And the President of the United States was reelected. And the House, Republican majority, was returned. But that didn't mean the American people didn't expect us to work together.

I tell the gentleman, I'm not sure what error he thought I made. We did not go to conference on the Violence Against Women Act. We did not go to conference yet on the farm bill.

Mr. CANTOR. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. HOYER. I will be glad to yield to my friend.

Mr. CANTOR. There was no vehicle to go to conference on, Mr. Speaker. If the gentleman recalls, there was a blue slip on the Senate bill, Mr. Speaker, and so we took up the bill in the House and went ahead and passed the bill. So, I don't even know why that is even pertinent to this discussion, Mr. Speaker.

I'd also say, the gentleman understands as well, there was a bipartisan farm bill that came to the floor. And if I recall, that bipartisanship faded away, which is what now then caused the House to bring up another farm bill. This time, trying to be transparent in the process, brought up the agricultural policy piece, which has passed the House without any bipartisan support, Mr. Speaker.

Then we are also, as the gentleman knows, engaged in discussions with the chairman of the Agriculture Committee as to forging a consensus on a nutrition piece so that we can, yes, act again on that.

So I'd say, Mr. Speaker, to the gentleman, it is not accurate that we don't intend to eventually go to conference and iron out the differences between the House and the Senate on both of those issues, on the ag policy, as well as the nutrition policies.

Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman.

I didn't talk about intentions. I talked about fact. I talked about fact.

Pete Sessions, chairman of the Rules Committee, Republican, said this when we passed the farm bill: ``I believe that this is an honest attempt to get us to go by passing part of the farm bill, to go to conference.''

I asked the gentleman last week, I asked him again, there's nothing on here about going to conference. The gentleman's told me we're not going to conference until we pass something on the nutrition part. We want to see something on the nutrition part passed.

Pete Sessions said, in addition to that, when talking about why they brought the farm bill to the floor in the condition it was, dropping all reference and provisions for poor people to have nutritional assistance, said this:

We're attempting to then separate, bifurcate, offer today a rule and the underlying legislation which hopefully will pass which would go to conference and the Senate, because they've passed their own farm bill, has included in its provisions where they discuss the nutrition program.

This is Pete Sessions, Republican chairman of the Rules Committee speaking, Mr. Speaker.

As a result of that, that should be in their bill on a conference measure. The House simply, at this point, if we pass this part, could go to conference.

So the gentleman is not accurate when he reflects

there's nothing to go to conference on. The Senate has amended their bill into the House bill. We could clearly go to conference on that under the processes.

I think the gentleman must know that. And that was the expectation that Pete Sessions says was the purpose of passing the farm bill.

But let me go back to the point I was making before the gentleman wanted to correct me on what I think were accurate representations on all the pieces of legislation I mentioned. Certainly that's the case on the budget. My opinion, it's the case, certainly on the budget.

I don't know what the intentions are, but the fact is we haven't gone to conference on the farm bill and we didn't go to conference on the Violence Against Women bill.

The fact is, what those bills that he mentioned did have in common, Mr. Speaker, is--and he said, we've got no Democratic votes for it. There was no work to get Democratic votes. There was no work for compromise. That's, I tell my friend, why the polls reflect of working people such concern.

The majority, Mr. Speaker, talked a lot about confidence, talked a lot about building confidence if we were going to grow the economy. I agree with him. We need to have individuals confident.

And the gentleman knows, because he talks to a lot of business leaders, as I do, every one of them says that if they had confidence that we could work together and get things done, not put the debt limit at risk, not put the ongoing operations of government at risk, not continue to have fights--I talked to a major leader of one of the health insurers in this country and said, look, we may not like some of this bill, but we think it's the law, and we're going to work to try to make it work for all Americans.

We're not doing that, Mr. Speaker. We're trying to repeal. We're not conferencing. We're not cooperating. We're not trying to come to compromise.

And we can talk about working people, as is appropriate for us to do, and that's what the President is out doing, not here in Washington, not talking to all of us. He's talking to the people and saying, look, this is my program. This is what I want to do, and I'm not getting cooperation from the Congress of the United States.

I think he's absolutely right. And he's talking to the people, not to us, not here in Washington, but he's criticized for doing that by the majority leader.

Mr. Speaker, I think that's what he ought to be doing because the American people ultimately are going to have to make a decision as to who is looking out for their interest and who is just simply confronting and not listening to the people in the last election, just a few months ago, or right now.

When the people are saying, board of directors, work together, stop obstructing, I would hope we could do that, Mr. Speaker.

Unless the majority leader has something further he wants to say, I yield back the balance of my time.

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