Legislative Program
Floor Speech
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Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman from Georgia for yielding.
Madam Speaker, on Monday, the House will meet at 9 a.m. for morning- hour debate. I would repeat that because it is unusual. On Monday, we are meeting at 9 a.m. for morning-hour debate and 10 a.m. for legislative business, with votes expected to occur as early as 2:30 p.m.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, the House will meet at 9 a.m. for morning- hour debate and 10 a.m. for legislative business.
On Thursday, the House will meet at 9 a.m. for legislative business.
The House will consider H.R. 1425, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Enhancement Act. This bill will significantly increase the ACA's affordability and subsidies, lower prescription drug prices, expand coverage, and crack down on junk plans, while strengthening protections for people with preexisting conditions and addressing racial health disparities.
The House will also consider, Madam Speaker, H.R. 7301, which is the Emergency Housing Protection and Relief Act of 2020. This bill would authorize nearly $200 billion for the dire housing needs arising due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
H.R. 7301, which was included in the HEROES Act, would help renters and homeowners by extending the eviction and foreclosure moratoria and providing $100 billion for emergency rental assistance; $75 billion for homeowners assistance to cover mortgages, property taxes, and utilities; and more than $11 billion for homeless assistance programs.
I would again reiterate that that bill passed as a part of the HEROES Act, which is now pending in the Senate.
Lastly, the House will consider H.R. 2, the Moving Forward Act. This bill would invest more than $1.5 trillion in modern, sustainable infrastructure, while creating millions of good-paying jobs; combating the climate crisis; and addressing disparities in urban, suburban, and rural communities.
The bill includes a 5-year reauthorization of the surface transportation program, invests in schools with the Reopen and Rebuild America's Schools Act, invests over $100 billion in our Nation's affordable housing infrastructure, delivers affordable high-speed broadband internet access to all parts of the country, and promotes new clean renewable energy infrastructure.
We expect, at that point in time, to be out on Thursday for the July Fourth break. I would tell the House that the 2 weeks that will follow the July Fourth weekend will be reserved, as were the first weeks in June, for committees to do their work, in particular, the National Defense Authorization Act being considered by the House Armed Services Committee.
That bill is, obviously, very lengthy. It composes a little more than half of the discretionary spending, and we expect the committee to need substantial time to mark up that bill.
In addition, the Appropriations Committee will be marking up its 12 bills for consideration by the House.
Then, the last 2 weeks, we will be taking the products that will not be limited to the NDAA and the appropriations bills, but we will be primarily taking up the time with other legislation that will be promoted and sent to the floor for consideration by the committees.
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Mr. HOYER. Yes. I talked to Mr. McCarthy yesterday. Obviously, because of the timeframe that the COVID-19 health strictures have imposed upon us, it takes a long time to vote on amendments. So, rather than consider amendments individually, the leader and I talked about having amendments either in manager's amendments or in amendments that have a lot of individual amendments within them. And they will be considered en gros so that there may well be a lot of amendments, but we hope to hold the votes down to a manageable level.
As the gentleman knows, votes have been taking about an hour. If we took every amendment seriatim, frankly, we wouldn't finish until September. So, we are trying to manage that, and we are working with the minority leader.
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Mr. HOYER. No, it turns out that we considered the bill in the House the same way the majority leader in the Senate wanted to consider the Scott bill, or the Republican policing bill. So, both Houses wanted to consider them, apparently, in the same way.
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Mr. HOYER. Will the gentleman yield?
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Mr. HOYER. We are hopeful that the Senate will pass a bill. I know that my friend will say, Well, yes, but it is the Democrats that stopped the bill.
Let me tell the gentleman, I genuinely hope that we have a bill passed by the Senate, that we go to conference, and that we adopt a bill that can garner the support of the majority of the House and the Senate and can be signed by the President of the United States.
As I said on the floor when we considered the bill, Karen Bass, the Congressional Black Caucus, and those of us who strongly supported the bill, we don't want to send a message. We want to make a difference. To the extent that making a difference requires us to have agreement between the two parties, I am hopeful we will get to that objective.
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Mr. HOYER. Will the gentleman yield?
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Mr. HOYER. The gentleman will surely note that when his party was in power and was scheduling bills, you had the most closed rules of any Congress in the history of the Congress.
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Mr. HOYER. First of all, of course, I reject emphatically the premise that this is absurd. As the gentleman knows, there were some 70, some weeks ago, who cast a vote. There were 30 today. They cast their votes because they were concerned about their health or families' health to whom they would return.
I think the gentleman probably has been reading, as well, and maybe listening to the extraordinary spike in cases that have been identified and the concern that hospital beds will be overrun.
We will end this when the medical community, not somebody who has no medical knowledge and very little command of the facts, tells us it is time to get together again. When he told people to do that, they did get together, 10 of whom apparently work for the White House who have gotten infected, and, frankly, spikes in Florida, Texas, Arizona, and, yes, even California and some other States as well, including Arkansas.
Now, I am not sure exactly what the figures are in the gentleman's State. But, Madam Speaker, I believe that we are going to continue to be concerned about the health of the Members, the health of the staff, the health of the people who cover us on behalf of the American people.
So, I can't tell the gentleman whether it is going to end because I can't tell you when the pandemic is going to end. I can't tell you when the spike in the numbers of people who are getting sick or people who are dying is going to end.
But I can tell you that we will be very sensitive to the risks, and we will act accordingly.
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Mr. HOYER. Will the gentleman from Georgia yield?
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Mr. HOYER. I hesitate to ask the gentleman a question I don't know the answer to, so I won't. But I don't know which Governors the gentleman is talking about. But I will, certainly, want to find that out from the gentleman at some point in time.
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Mr. HOYER. Let me tell the gentleman that we certainly intend to continue, as I said, to try to protect the American people. A lot of people have died. Over 122,000 people have died.
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Mr. HOYER. The President of the United States said this virus was a hoax.
Because he said it was a hoax, people thought they didn't have to worry about it. I tell my friend from Georgia, a hoax. He is a gentlemen who refuses to set the example of wearing a mask, which the science and medical people say we ought to do, a gentleman who really shunted aside much of the science and medical advice that he got.
So I tell the gentleman we hope that the President is as concerned as my friend has stated he is, and I know that I am and I think all of our Members are.
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Mr. HOYER. Will the gentleman yield?
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Mr. HOYER. Madam Speaker, I hope the gentleman has as high an expectation for the President of the United States as he has of others.
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