July Wrap Up

Floor Speech

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, as the Speaker knows, I am also the minority whip. As the minority whip, at the close of the week we normally have a colloquy between the majority leader and myself. That colloquy is to discuss the schedule for the week to come; it is to discuss the priorities that each side believes ought to be considered by this House. We do not have that colloquy when the week to come does not have a session.

We have now adjourned, or will soon adjourn, for a period of 5 weeks when we will not be in session. We have adjourned without doing the people's business. We have adjourned without resolving some of the most vexing challenges that confront this Congress and confront our country. We have adjourned without addressing some of the priorities that the Senate has acted upon and sent to this House, or if they haven't sent them to this House have passed them and are ready to respond to our initiatives. Mr. Speaker, that's unfortunate.

Mr. Speaker, I will be talking about in this hour--and I probably won't take the whole hour--but I will be talking about some of the things that we have not done that we ought to be doing, some of the things that we ought to be doing rather than taking a 5-week break.

But let me quickly add: I'm one of the Democratic leaders. I do not criticize the Republicans for this 5-week break, because we normally take a break in August so that Members and their families can take some time, so that Members can be home to talk to their constituents, seek their advice, seek their counsel, explain what is happening here in Washington to, at this point in time, a rightfully angry group of Americans who see their board of directors that we call the Congress of the United States not working very well, not attendant to the significant issues that confront us.

The House passed a budget. It passed a budget about 125 days ago. The Senate passed a budget about 123 days ago. The way the process is supposed to work is the way it works in your families, Mr. Speaker, and in my family. When we have a dispute, we sit down, we talk about it and we try to come to a resolution. Some call that resolution a ``compromise,'' a recognition that you have a perspective, I have a perspective; if we are going to move forward, we need to harmonize those perspectives. That is what democracy is all about--bringing together disparate views from various geographic locations with various interests at heart and try to resolve those differences and move our country forward.

Notwithstanding that, Mr. Speaker, notwithstanding the fact that the Speaker says that--and said during the campaign--he wanted to make sure that: a) the House worked its will; b) that we pursued regular order; and c) that he wanted the Senate to pass a budget, they did so. But the House has refused to go to conference. That's unfortunate, but it is not unique in this House.

The Senate also passed an immigration bill. That immigration bill tries to deal with one of the most vexing challenges that confronts our country. It is an issue that has a large amount of agreement outside this institution. The United States Chamber of Commerce, representing much of business in America, and the AFL-CIO, representing organized labor, have agreed that this immigration bill should be supported. The agriculture community from California to Florida to Maine to Arizona have essentially agreed this is a bill which will move us forward. Essentially, there is a broad-based agreement that the Senate bill is something that will create jobs, grow our economy, and make our country more stable.

There is a general agreement--I would say an almost unanimous agreement--that we need to keep our borders secure, that people whom we do not authorize should not be allowed to come into the country. We all agree on that. So we are working to make sure that our borders are even more secure. There is unanimity on that issue. In fact, the Senate appropriated a large number of dollars to accomplish that objective. We have not taken up an immigration bill in this House; and, certainly, because we have not, we haven't gone to conference.

Then, Mr. Speaker, we took up a farm bill on the floor of this House, significantly, after the Senate had passed a bipartisan bill dealing with agriculture and dealing with assistance to those in America--the richest country on the face of the Earth--who are going hungry, a large number of whom are children who live in America. The Committee on Agriculture passed out a bipartisan bill in the last Congress, and it was never brought to the floor by my Republican friends. This year, the committee also passed out a bipartisan bill that was brought to this floor. It could have and should have been passed with a bipartisan vote, not because I agreed with all of it, but because it was appropriate to have a bill to go to conference with on this important subject. Our Republican friends added three amendments which we thought were clearly harmful to those in need in America.

As a result, we didn't vote for it, but that's not why it failed, Mr. Speaker. It failed because 62 Republicans voted against the bill reported out with every Republican voting in committee for it; but as Mr. Lucas, the chairman of the committee observed, it apparently wasn't good enough for those 62 Republicans. Compromise seems very difficult for some people in this House, but I again remind us all it is absolutely essential.

We then passed a farm bill which said, unlike the last half a century, we would drop food assistance to the needy in America. Mr. Speaker, my faith tells me to try to feed the hungry, house the homeless, clothe the naked, attend the least of these. The bill that we passed for the first time in a half a century left out the neediest in America.

In the course of passing that bill, the chairman of the Rules Committee, Mr. Speaker, said we are passing this bill so that we can go to conference with the clear implication at that point in time--because the Senate bill does take care of the neediest who are hungry, adults and children, along with the needs of our farmers, who produce our food and fiber on which all of us rely--that, with this bill, we can go to conference. Mr. Speaker, you and I both know we haven't gone to conference. So we leave here with much of the business of America undone, unattended, without an effort to reach compromise.

Mr. Speaker, additionally, as you know, on September 30, the authorization for the operations of government and the funding thereof will come to an end, so it will be necessary for us to come to an agreement. I hope--but I know of none--that there are being plans made to utilize these next 5 weeks to try to reach a compromise, an agreement, a way forward to ensure the funding of our government and the operations so critical to so many millions not only here but around the world.

Mr. Speaker, we began the July work period with a measure of optimism. With 4 full weeks of session in July and the first few days of August, we have not met that optimism. There was much reason to hope that this House could make serious headway on appropriations bills and reach a compromise on student loans. Now, we passed that student loan compromise this Wednesday. That was a good thing to do, and it was along the lines that the President proposed some months ago. My Republican colleagues would rightfully say it was along the lines that they had proposed and passed this House, and of course our Senate colleagues will say it is the compromise that the Senate formed and that we passed.

But in this time, the majority's strategy for moving appropriations bills through this House has utterly and completely failed. The Ryan budget--or the ``Ryan retreat,'' as I call it--has failed. With 4 full, consecutive weeks in which to get things done, we have not enacted a single appropriations bill that was consistent with either the Budget Control Act of 2011 or this year's Ryan budget.

In fact, we haven't enacted a single appropriations bill--period. Now, we've passed bills through this House, but we haven't been able to get to compromise, and that's not unusual. We've found the appropriations process difficult over the past few years, but it is still an indication of failure to attempt to reach compromise that we have not gone to a budget conference to determine what numbers we will use, because, if you can't agree on a number or numbers, it is impossible to agree on legislation.

Frankly, Mr. Speaker, I sadly note that my friends in the majority have not even had the courage or, in my opinion, the intellectual honesty to go to conference on the budget to resolve these differences. Why? Because I believe that Mr. Ryan believes that any compromise he would make would not be supported by his party because they don't want to compromise, which is anathema to many of our Republican colleagues. ``Regular order,'' it seems, means simply ``their order.''

Now, as I've said, we are leaving for the August recess with just 9 legislative days remaining until the end of the fiscal year--9 days. That's what is scheduled for legislative business between now and September 30--9 days. As I said, not a single appropriations bill has been sent to the President's desk. A bill that we were considering this week, which was supposed to be the principal item of business this week, was taken from the floor because it did not have the support of the majority party. This is not a recipe for responsible governance by the majority. It is a recipe for another manufactured crisis and threat of a government shutdown.

Mr. Speaker, our economy, our businesses, and our middle class families cannot and ought not endure further uncertainty as a result of this Congress' failure to do its job. The most egregious manifestation of the majority's failure to govern has been the irrational sequester policy that they not only refused to prevent but have now fully embraced. Why do I say they've fully embraced it? Because it gets to their number included in the Ryan budget without their having to make one single choice of cutting a single item. It simply says, This is the number. Meet it--no prioritization, no choice, no decision. The Ryan budget passed this House in March without a single Democratic vote--an endorsement, in theory, of this Republican Congress of cuts even deeper than the sequester imposes.

Now, let me say parenthetically that a lot of my Republican colleagues will stand at that podium or at one of these podiums and say, This is the President's sequester. Mr. Speaker, America needs to know that is not true, and I believe too many who make that statement know it not to be true. We passed legislation in this House in the middle of July of 2011 which said we're going to reach certain numbers, and if we don't, we're going to have a sequester. Mr. Speaker, you may recall that that was the Republican Cut, Cap, and Balance bill, whose policy was to have a sequester if the numbers set forth were not reached. That was before it was included in the bill which was a compromise to reach resolution so that America did not default on its bills.

I was not for the sequester. The President was not for the sequester, and we Democrats voted overwhelmingly--almost unanimously, perhaps unanimously--against that Cut, Cap, and Balance bill and its sequester. Why? Because cutting across the board the highest priority and the lowest priority by exactly the same percentage is an irrational policy. No family in America would do it.

Mr. Speaker, the example I use is that somebody in the family loses his job. The family income goes down. They have a budget. They have a budget for food, and they have a budget for movies. The sequester says take 10 percent from food and 10 percent from movies. There is no rational family in America that would do that. They would say, This month or this 6 months or this year, we're not going to the movies, but we're going to keep food on the table. That's the rational judgment that we would make, but that's not what the sequester says.

Having said that, we have offered amendments seven times in the last 6 months to set aside the sequester while, at the same time, reducing the deficit by the same amount. Seven times we were refused by the majority party the opportunity to even offer that amendment to have, as the Speaker says he wants, the House work its will. If they didn't agree with our amendment, they could have voted against it; but they didn't want to deal with our amendment because they like the sequester, because the sequester gets them to their number without their having to make a decision on cutting a single thing.

As I predicted then, when theory turns to practice in the Ryan budget, even Republicans, themselves, cannot live with the policies. Their own chairman of the Appropriations Committee characterized just the other day--this was Chairman Rogers of Kentucky, a conservative Republican, my friend with whom I've worked for many, many years as a member of the Appropriations Committee--he characterized the cuts included in the Ryan budget as ``unrealistic and ill-conceived.''

That's the Republican chairman of the Appropriations Committee saying of the Republican budget, known as the Ryan budget, ``unrealistic and ill-conceived.'' Their policy of sequester remains, Mr. Speaker, an albatross around the neck of the American people and of our economy.

If there were not a single Democrat in this House or in the Senate, not a single Democrat, Mr. Speaker, it is my belief that the Ryan budget could not pass this Congress.

The Republican pro-sequester spending-cuts-only approach simply does not work, and this week's Transportation-HUD appropriation debacle proves it. I want to quote again the chairman of the committee:

With this action, the House has declined to proceed on the implementation of the very budget it adopted just 3 months ago.

Let me make it clear. No Democrat had the opportunity to vote on this; no Democrat voted against this. We weren't for it--make no mistake--but the decision was made completely on the majority side of the aisle that they didn't have the votes for their bill. They could not implement the very budget that was adopted just 3 months ago.

``Thus, Mr. Speaker, I believe the House has made its choice,'' said Chairman Rogers. ``Sequestration and its unrealistic and ill-conceived discretionary cuts must be brought to an end,'' so said Hal Rogers, Republican, conservative from Kentucky, chairman of the Appropriations Committee. ``Sequestration must be brought to an end.''

As I've said, Mr. Speaker, those are the words of Hal Rogers. Not my words, his words. I know that Chairman Rogers is not the only Member of his party who is fed up with the Tea Party faction and their extreme agenda. As we prepare to go home to our districts over the month of August and hear their concerns about jobs and our economy and the pain of sequester's senseless cuts, I have spoken to hundreds of employees who work in our defense establishment who are lamenting the fact that not only are they being forced to take off 1 day a week for no pay and they can't even volunteer to work, who are lamenting the fact that those at the point of the spear in Afghanistan and other troubled parts of the word, they cannot take off Friday. They need the support that we give them from here in this country and, indeed, around the world in the civilian workforce, in DOD, the Department of Defense, all the time, not just 4 days a week.

As we prepare to go home to our districts over the month of August, as I said, and hear their concerns and the pain of the sequester's senseless cuts, I hope that we can turn the page of the July work period and return in a different spirit. See, September need not be July's second act.

In the short time we have left, just 9 legislative days before the fiscal year ends, I would urge the Speaker to take a different path. Instead of taking the familiar road of partisanship, posturing and spin, let us embrace the path of compromise and shared accomplishment, one we in this Congress might call, as the poet Robert Frost said, the road less traveled by. It's a wonderful poem by one of America's greatest poets. He said:

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

We have difficult and pressing challenges to address in a short time: passing a budget; replacing the sequester with a balanced alternative; and averting a default on our debt, a default which would be catastrophic for America, for its people, for its economy, and would have ramifications throughout the world.

We can begin, Mr. Speaker, by going to conference on the budget and allowing both sides to sit down and start working on an agreement. That seems to be, Mr. Speaker, the road less traveled by; a road forward; a road that leads to positive, constructive, supportable results, not backward; a road to constructive compromise, not destructive confrontation; and to results that benefit our people and our economy. Mr. Speaker, such a road would surely make all the difference for this Congress and for this country.

Mr. Speaker, we need to work together. Newt Gingrich, a former Speaker with whom I served, reached a compromise with President Clinton. There were a lot of people on his side of the aisle that didn't want to see an agreement between President Clinton and Speaker Gingrich. It was on the funding of government, the basic responsibility this Congress has, or any board of directors of any enterprise has.

Mr. Gingrich stood at that podium, Mr. Speaker, and talked to what he referred to as his perfectionist caucus, people who wanted it their way and were not prepared to compromise from a road other than their way. He said, Mr. Speaker, to that perfectionist caucus, Look, I know this is not exactly what you want, but the American people have elected a President of another party, Bill Clinton, and they've elected a Senate with a lot of Democrats in there who don't agree with us, and, yes, some Republicans who don't agree with us. They also elected a lot of Democrats to the House of Representatives. He said, Obviously, a majority of the Members of the House were Republicans. But if the country was going to move forward, if there was going to be a positive resolution to the conflict that existed between differing points of view, that there would need to be compromise. He admonished that perfectionist caucus to understand that this was a democracy, not a dictatorship, and that agreement and compromise was the essence of what democracy meant.

Mr. Speaker, I hope that over the 5 weeks that are to come that Members will reflect, communicate with our citizens, and come to an understanding of the necessity to act not just our way or my way, not just to reflect what I want, but to reflect what we as a country working together can accomplish. Mr. Speaker, if we do that, America will continue to be the greatest country on the face of the Earth, providing opportunity for our children and our families, our workers and our seniors, and continuing to be that shining city on a hill of which Ronald Reagan spoke so glowingly

Mr. Speaker, let us hope in these 5 weeks we learn how to work together. That's what our people want. As importantly, that is what our people need.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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