Legislative Program
Floor Speech
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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, on Monday, the House will meet at 12 p.m. for morning-hour debate and 2 p.m. for legislative business with votes postponed until 6:30 p.m.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, the House will meet at 10 a.m. for morning- hour debate and 12 p.m. for legislative business.
On Thursday, Mr. Speaker, the House will meet at 9 a.m. for legislative business, with last votes of the week expected no later than 3 p.m.
We will consider several bills under suspension of the rules. The complete list of suspension bills will be announced by the close of business tomorrow.
The House will consider H.R. 2214, the NO BAN Act. This bill would repeal the President's Muslim travel ban and prevent the administration from putting in place other discriminatory travel bans.
In addition, the House will consider H.R. 5581, Access to Counsel Act. This legislation would make certain that those held or detained while attempting to enter the United States are guaranteed access to legal counsel. That legal counsel, Mr. Speaker, would not be paid for by the government.
The current FISA authorization expires March 15, requiring action in this House. Conversations are ongoing, and I hope to bring legislation to the floor next week.
Lastly, following Senate passage of Senator Kaine's bipartisan War Powers resolution, it is possible that the House could also consider the resolution as early as next week.
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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
I will give a relatively short answer. First of all, there is nobody in this House on either side of the aisle--certainly none of the proponents of this legislation--who want to in any way limit the President's ability to protect America, whether it is from terrorists, whether it is from the coronavirus or some other threat that manifestly presents itself to the safety and well-being of the American people.
What the bill attempts to do is simply to preclude violating, in effect, the Constitution of the United States in either making a religious test for admission to the United States of America, which, very frankly, a number of statements of the President would indicate that, in the past, that was what he intended to do and, in fact, was manifest in the very broad reach, unrelated to whether somebody was a terrorist but related to what their religion was or some other distinction unrelated.
Now, obviously, both the health and safety of the American people would not preclude the President from acting to protect that. I think we would all agree on that. But, clearly, we believe the President has, in fact, gone far beyond specific ways and means to protect the American people and simply preclude people, as I said, of a particular religion, a particular nationality, or some other broad base unrelated to the specific items to which you referred, with which I think most of us agree.
Of course, we will debate that next week.
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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I want to assure the gentleman that it is our view that nothing in this legislation will preclude the President of the United States from acting, either on the basis of national security or the security of our people, either from threats of terrorism or from health, or for some other identifiable threat to the American people.
This simply says that he cannot act based upon the generalization that somebody is a Muslim, somebody is from this country, somebody is from a different nationality or different religion, or some other arbitrary distinction. He has to focus on specific reasons.
In China's case, for instance, we know that China has a very large outbreak of coronavirus and that it poses a proximate threat to the health not only of the American people but of people around the world and that we need to take steps to ensure that that is contained.
So, we will debate that next week, but we certainly don't accept the premise that the gentleman has just stated, that somehow we will limit the President from protecting the American people for legitimate and necessary reasons.
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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be able to tell the gentleman that, this morning or late last night, we sent a response to your offer, and the committees now have that in their possession. I see they are shaking their heads that they may not think that we did it, but we did. We have already sent a response to your offer, with reference to the reforms.
As the gentleman knows, we have agreed on a number of items as, frankly, the person that dealt with the person who had your job previously, Roy Blunt and I, with Senator Bond, also from Missouri, as is now-Senator Blunt but then-Minority Whip Blunt, and Jay Rockefeller from West Virginia. We worked on the reauthorization of FISA in 2008, and we received broad bipartisan support. I am hopeful that we can do that.
This bill, as the gentleman knows, the authorization for section 215 expires on March 15. The Attorney General, as the gentleman knows, recommended that we pass a clean reauthorization.
Obviously, both sides felt that there were some things they wanted to deal with, and we are doing that now. Hopefully, we can get this done.
Mr. Speaker, I will assure the gentleman that, once we have agreement, I will bring that bill to the floor.
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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, somewhat like the recitation of the Mueller report that has been quoted--the Mueller report, of course, found substantial reason to believe that there was wrongdoing. It was projected by the Attorney General and others that the Mueller report was a conclusion that the President or others had not done something wrong. That was not the fact.
In any event, with respect to the gentleman's comments, with respect to what was done by the FBI, it should not have been done, obviously.
But the gentleman didn't read this very important sentence from the inspector general's report regarding the court's decision: ``We did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced his decision,'' meaning the court's decision, the judge's decision.
The bill that we are talking about is reauthorizing section 215. None of this deals with section 215. It deals with metadata on which the parties have an agreement. It also deals with business records and issues of lone wolves, who are not necessarily associated with a terrorist organization but present a danger to the United States.
There are reforms that we can pursue to ensure that the FISA court gets all the information that it needs and, in fact, has a representative who makes sure that they get that and who is not associated with, necessarily, the law enforcement officers or intelligence officers who are presenting information to the FISA court.
Unfortunately, and I want to say candidly, Mr. Speaker, the President's focus on the Page case and distracting from the issues that we are dealing with--Attorney General Barr recommended that we reauthorize the FISA section 215 as is. That is what the Attorney General recommended. I don't know what his present position is because he was criticized by the President in a tweet, so heaven knows what he did in response to the tweet.
But the fact of the matter is, the issues which the gentleman raises, we all want appropriate, honest disclosure from individuals who present to the FISA court. That is not an issue, and we ought to pursue reforms that lead to that end. But in this case, the focus on an issue unrelated to section 215, which we are really talking about, is slowing up this process. And I would hope that in the coming days, because the 15th is upon us, we come to an agreement.
As I said, we sent an offer back, Mr. Whip. Hopefully, we will hear back from you and, hopefully, reach agreement in the near term because this is an important thing to pass, to reauthorize for the security of our people.
The gentleman was talking about security before. We need to make sure that we act in a bipartisan way to ensure that the FISA process is working and working properly.
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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I don't have anything further to say.
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