Legislative Program
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. HOYER. Madam Speaker, I thank Mr. Scalise for yielding.
Madam Speaker, on Tuesday the House will meet at 12 p.m. for morning hour and 2 p.m. for legislative business with votes postponed, as usual, until 6:30 p.m.
On Wednesday and Thursday, the House will meet at 10 a.m. for morning hour and 12 p.m. for legislative business.
And again, as usual, on Friday the House will meet at 9 a.m. for legislative business.
The House, Madam Speaker, will consider Senate 2959, the Supplemental Impact Aid Flexibility Act under suspension of the rules. This bill passed the Senate unanimously. It is on suspension in the House. It is coauthored by Representative Joe Courtney of the House.
This bipartisan legislation allows local educational agencies participating in the Impact Aid Program to use the student count or Federal property valuation data from their fiscal year 2022 program applications for their fiscal year 2023 applications.
This, Madam Speaker, will prevent schools from losing substantial funding upon which they have relied to address COVID-19 learning loss by giving them more flexibility to use prepandemic data to calculate funding needs.
The House may consider other bills under suspension of the rules. The complete list of suspension bills will be announced by the close of business tomorrow.
The House will also consider H.R. 4673, the EVEST Act sponsored by Chairman Mark Takano of the Veterans' Affairs Committee, the rule for which we adopted this week.
This legislation would automatically enroll eligible veterans into the VA healthcare system so that no veterans are left behind when it comes to receiving quality, affordable healthcare.
Lastly, Madam Speaker, the House stands ready to act on the Build Back Better Act, as well as the Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act should the Senate amend them and send them back to us.
Additional legislative items, of course, are possible.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. HOYER. Madam Speaker, because I don't have it in front of me, and I haven't read it as carefully as perhaps I should have, I don't know the specific answer to that question.
What I do want to say, however, is that we need to have kids in school. Everybody says that the learning experience is substantially compromised by virtual learning. It is better than nothing, and it has been pursued very vigorously and with great positive effect.
But having said that, we all think that young people ought to be back in schools. But I don't know whether this bill, which passed the Senate unanimously, deals with that particular aspect that the gentleman asked about. But let me say this: I think that every school system has adopted the premise that in school is better.
Clearly, we have been assaulted by a virus whose transmissibility is substantially more than the previous virus, the delta variant. The omicron variant, as we know, one of the problems is it is easily caught and easily transmitted.
The good news is if you have taken a vaccination and had a booster, the likelihood of you going to the hospital is much smaller, and if you go to the hospital, you are much less sick. But having said that, we continue to have a challenge to get this under control. And the administration, properly so, and the overwhelming majority of the medical community, properly so, and the overwhelming majority of scientists are recommending that we wear a mask, that we wear a KN95 or N95 mask because they are much better than the surgical masks or the cloth masks, that we continue to wash our hands regularly, and we continue to keep our distance.
But the gentleman and I agree that we need to ensure that--to the extent that it is possible and that parents will send their children to school because of being dissuaded by the transmissibility of this disease--we need to have kids in school.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. HOYER. Will the gentleman yield?
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. HOYER. Madam Speaker, I think everybody is concerned about this. Certainly, every parent in my district and your district is concerned about this, and anybody who is concerned about the welfare of our children is concerned about it.
But I think it would be appropriate for me to say that the teachers of America--and my wife was a teacher, and I happen to believe that teachers are the most important people in any society because they educate the leadership and the citizens of tomorrow--have been put to an extraordinary challenge.
And I have a granddaughter who has four children, so I have four great-grandchildren, three of whom are in school and were in school in 2020 and 2021. And Judy, my granddaughter, who is named after my wife, has told me on numerous occasions what extraordinary ends her children's teachers--there were three different teachers at different levels in the school system--went to make sure that while they were home, while they were learning virtually that they had a positive, productive experience. But all of them felt, I think, it is a lot easier to have kids in school if they can do so safely. I think that bears saying.
Like medical personnel, teachers have been put through extraordinary stress, as have parents generally have been put through stress.
So I think the gentleman's concern is rightfully placed, and we need to do everything we can to make sure kids get back in school and have a learning experience like you and I had in the classroom.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. HOYER. Madam Speaker, I understand the gentleman's position, which is held by a number of people.
My own view is that employers make a reasonable decision when they say to an employee--for the sake, not only of the employee but for everybody else in the workplace with whom they work--that you are required to be vaccinated because we believe that science and medical personnel tell us that is a much safer route. But I understand there is a difference on that.
But even then, I know Governors who have been against vaccines are not necessarily against the employer requiring that as an employee requirement as opposed to a governmental requirement.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. HOYER. Madam Speaker, first of all, let me say inflation is a serious challenge confronting American families, particularly working families in this country.
I live alone, and because I am just one person, I buy relatively small amounts of food at the grocery store. And I go to the grocery store nowadays and whether it is the price of bacon, which is at $12 a pound for Hormel or another meat packing, it is high, and I think to myself how a family not doing as well as I am doing and with kids to feed, how tough it is on them. So this inflation is very tough.
It is a worldwide phenomenon. It is a phenomenon that is caused obviously by a pent-up demand asking for a lot of goods and chasing a lot of goods. And elementary economics, that any of us took in college, is that there are a lot of resources chasing few resources, i.e., a lot of money chasing a short supply of goods, and you have that demand so that it drives prices up.
This pandemic has had a global effect on the supply chain. The supply chain has been substantially affected. This was not the fault of, frankly, either Biden or his predecessor in terms of what happened to the supply chain. In Singapore they shut down companies, as you know, for months at a time. They just shut them down, which is one of the things that has led to this chip shortage, which has had ramifications.
So I want to assure the gentleman that the administration, our side of the aisle--I know your side of the aisle is very concerned about the inflationary pressure that is putting such a stress on America's families. This pandemic has caused extraordinary, historic things to happen. That is the bad news.
The good news is we have created more jobs in the last year and 2 months than were created--of course, net we lost jobs for the previous 4 years; over 2 million jobs net lost. So the good news is that we have a number of economic statistics that are, in fact, positive. However, having said that, we do need to be very concerned about inflation. The administration has expressed their concern.
We believe that the infrastructure bill will have a positive impact on inflation, assuming the Build Back Better Act passes, which I assume at some point it will.
I think that is going to have a very positive affect on inflation because it will help the supply chain, help the health of the people, the employees, it will make people more able to get out. Childcare. It is going to help people get back to work, which will have a positive impact on the supply chain and on the availability of goods and services. So I think we are moving in the right direction.
Unemployment, as the gentleman knows, which is down 3.9 percent. So while inflation is up and unacceptably high, historically high, over the last 4 years, we need to get it down. And we see this phenomena happening all over the world. This is not the fault of the President or the Congress, it is the fault of an extraordinary, invasive, and widespread disease that has caused extraordinary disruptions within our society and economy.
But we need to get a handle on it. We need to take action. So I will talk to the gentleman about what issues he believes would be helpful in that regard.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. HOYER. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman. Of course, as you know better than probably anybody, the Speaker appointed a task force to look exactly at that issue of the $800 billion and what has been done, what has been spent to make sure that it has been properly spent, because you are the ranking member on the committee headed up by Jim Clyburn that is looking at those issues. I know you had a hearing this past week.
Yes, we have a difference of opinion. The difference of opinion, you call it spending, I call it investment. We are investing in our children. We are investing in our families. We are investing in small businesses. We are investing in growth and opportunity. And we are investing in the ability of those folks that you talk about that are not in the workforce, the restaurant can't hire. Why can't they hire them? Because they are not paying sufficient amount to justify a mom getting childcare because childcare is so expensive. Or she is caught-- or a single dad--is caught in the catch-22 situation. If I go to work, I will earn money but I will pay it all to childcare. If I am going to pay it all to childcare, it is much better for me as a parent to be with my child, if the net result is going to be pretty much a wash.
We are investing in that. We are investing in childcare in the Build Back Better Act. We are investing in early childhood education, three- and four-year-olds. We believe that is investment. And it also is very important for that small business so that that mom or dad who has that child who is then going to go and be in a preschool environment can have time to themselves so that they can, in fact, pursue employment without simply putting it from one pocket to another pocket, none of which is their pocket.
So the difference, I think, really is you look at it as spending, we look at it as investment. We think it will have big, big return for our country. And that is what Build Back Better is about. The building back better you say it was not related to the pandemic. It clearly was related to the pandemic. The pandemic hit us in the gut. It hit everybody throughout the world in the gut. We have recovered better than anybody else in the world. And that is because we invested, sometimes in a bipartisan way, and sometimes in a partisan way, but we invested in our people, in our children, in our families, in our businesses, and in our health, generally of our country and indeed trying to help other parts of the world as well because this is a global pandemic that affects us all.
But I think the real difference is, we perceive this as an investment. We think it will help grow America. I am sure you have heard me talk about, from time to time, the Make It In America agenda. Our investment in both the infrastructure bill and the Build Back Better will have a positive effect on Make It In America.
So we see it, Mr. Whip, as investment. We think it will have a positive effect. We think it is having a positive effect. And as I say, unemployment is down below 4 percent and jobs are up over 6 million over the last 11 months. So that is a good accomplishment. Is it enough? Do we still have people who aren't working for a varied number of reasons, many of which are related to COVID-19?
So we see it as an investment, and I am hopeful the Build Back Better Act will pass and I hope that will have a positive effect not only on, as the President says, the next 5 years, but on the next five generations. So we are continuing to pursue that.
But inflation, which is how we started this discussion, is a problem and we need to deal with it. I would be glad to talk to the gentleman about what he thinks will be helpful to do that. I know part of that is stop spending money. I think if we stop investing money, our country will not get to where it wants to be and where it is now with respect to the rest of the world, leading the rest of the world in terms of economic recovery from the pandemic. We are not there yet but we are going to get there
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. HOYER. Right.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. HOYER. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I would say at the outset, I believe the committee on which he serves with Mr. Clyburn is one of the committees, among many, who ought to be looking at those facts.
But let me say this, because in stating the facts, as you just did, the appearance is that substantial progress has not been made. I don't think that premise is correct. Let me read you some statistics.
Last year, the first year the President came into office, testing in America was molecular in at-home tests per day. The beginning of last year, 1.7 million per day. Today, 11.7 million tests per day are being conducted.
So to imply that somehow there has not been substantial progress, that is a 10-fold increase in the testing available to Americans every day. And when Biden took office, zero at-home rapid tests were available to consumers--zero. Today, 300 million at-home rapid tests are on the market each month.
Enough? No. Are more coming? Yes.
Has the government used the Defense Production Act to accomplish greater production? They have. The administration started using, as I said, the Defense Production Act. The Biden administration is increasing places people can get free tests, for instance.
You talk about a plan. When Biden took office, there were only 2,500 pharmacies offering free testing. Today, there are 20,000 sites, an 8- fold increase. The administration is purchasing 500 million at-home rapid tests to be distributed for free to Americans who want them, with initial delivery starting this month.
The administration is distributing up to 50 million free at-home self-tests to community health centers and rural health clinics. In addition to already covering PCR tests, the administration is requiring private insurance plans to cover at-home tests starting on January 15, just a couple of days from today. A lot is happening.
Is enough happening? Enough is not happening until everybody has immediate availability. ``Immediate'' may overstate it, but easy access. The fact is that some people are having problems finding the at-home tests now, and we need to work on that.
Those statistics show you that extraordinary increases have occurred under the Biden administration, and that is their plan, to make sure that these tests are available, because we know that testing will make a difference. If you find out you are sick, you quarantine.
I suggest to the gentleman that the Biden administration has made an extraordinary difference. Is the situation where we want it to be? Absolutely, it is not.
Do we have a new variant that apparently came out of South Africa or was first identified in South Africa that spiked up?
I talked to Dr. Monahan yesterday, and apparently, just in recent days, we have had a fall-off in disease recognized. I hope that is the case. I hope it keeps going down because we are perhaps now using the KN-95 or N-95 masks and keeping our distance a little more conscientiously. Let's hope all of that works for the people, for the country, and for the globe.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. HOYER. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
Madam Speaker, this has been a calm discussion so far. Let me remind the gentleman that the previous President said in February or March of 2020 that this is going to go away in about 30 days: Don't worry about it. It will go away.
A lot of your Members said we don't need a mask; we don't need to keep distance; we don't need to wash our hands; this is going to go away. It is here today and gone tomorrow. That was the previous administration's plan.
I agree with you. The science community, the private-sector community, and government on Operation Warp Speed did a good job-- extraordinary work in the private sector, extraordinary work around the world. Because of the computer age in which we live, they were able to share information instantaneously, in real time, and say that this alternative doesn't work, which accelerated greatly the ability to get, within a year, an extraordinary accomplishment, largely from our scientific and medical community but facilitated by Warp Speed. No doubt about that. Give credit where credit is due.
Very frankly, the leader--unlike President Biden, who said this is a problem; we have to be careful; we have to pursue it; we have to invest--said no problem. The gentleman conveniently forgets that.
He also ignores the statistics I just gave where we have had a tenfold, eightfold increase in the availability of testing and pharmaceutical access for literally millions of people. This is per day that we are talking about, 11.7 million people per day.
It doesn't take too long at that rate that the whole country, all 330 million people, in about a month and a few days has been taken care of. When you say we have to make progress, we have made extraordinary progress.
Our view is--and I know we differ on this--we have made investments in the American Rescue Plan Act to deal with the pandemic crisis; in the infrastructure bill to create jobs, additional manufacturing capacity, and training and apprenticeships for our people; in the Build Back Better bill to make sure that our families can keep their heads above water and can, in fact, have childcare that they can rely on and feel their children are safe so they can take a job, be productive citizens, and add to the growth of our economy.
We believe we are doing that. Are we doing it perfectly? None of us do it perfectly. Perhaps we need to do more, as the gentleman implies, and have hearings.
The gentleman says he was in a hearing. Private or public, I presume the gentleman had an opportunity to ask questions. I don't know who the witnesses were, so I don't know what expertise they have.
I can't believe that if you requested of Mr. Clyburn that you have relevant witnesses to come by and that you want to question about the progress that either has been made or you think ought to be made or further things that could be done, I can't believe that he wouldn't agree to do that.
In any event, great progress is being made, but the entire world--not the Biden world, not America--the entire world is confronting a crisis and is having a tough time getting ahold of it. We have done it better than anybody else in terms of growing our economy and keeping our people's heads above water. That is to be applauded.
Do we still have a challenge? We do. Are we still working on it? We are. Do we need to continue? Yes.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. HOYER. For a long time, the former President of the United States--apparently, he changed his view now and criticized DeSantis for not pursuing mask wearing, et cetera, et cetera. The fact of the matter is, of course, the former President discouraged wearing masks early on. He discouraged it: Oh, no, you don't need to wear a mask.
He had events that were spreader events, as we call them.
The gentleman heard me say that I think the President followed good advice and made a decision on Warp Speed that was helpful. As the gentleman noted, it was the scientists at NIH and scientists in the private sector and scientists throughout the world, but mainly our people, who did an extraordinary thing in an extraordinarily short timeframe--never been done before--to develop this kind of vaccine.
You talk about the three vaccines. The three manufacturers, it had never been done before. It was a wonderful event. Unfortunately, too many people are advising: Don't take the vaccine. You don't have to take the vaccine. Don't sweat it.
The government tells people they have to vaccinate their children to send them to school. Why? So other children don't get sick.
I told you I had those great-grandchildren, three of whom are in school. They have a child that sits in front of them, a child that sits to the right, a child that sits to the left, and a child that sits behind them. I want all of them well because I don't want my great- grandchild getting sick.
I don't think there was a very successful effort either by the former President or by many on your side of the aisle to say--you talk about science--do what the scientists tell you to do. Now, I notice most of your Members are doing so now, but still some wear it as a badge of courage and raise money off of it. I think that is harmful to our communities.
I think you sort of just set aside no plan. Well, no plan has resulted going from 1.7 million to 11.7 million tests per day. That is the plan. We invested in March, in the American Rescue Plan Act, in making sure that health services could respond properly. A lot of money went into health and testing in the American Rescue Plan.
You keep saying there is no plan. We have adopted plans, and we think they are positive plans. We think, hopefully, that we are going to get better soon.
Neither President Trump nor President Biden was responsible for this extraordinary virus. Our view is President Trump laid back for a long, long time before he really engaged heavily in this, and now he has changed his tune to a much more positive ``listen to the scientists'' kind of attitude, which we welcome.
I disagree with the gentleman that there is not a plan. We adopted together in 2020 five major pieces of legislation to address this challenge, and we have adopted in a partisan way, unfortunately, bills that continue to fight that fight, and I think it is fighting it, not as successfully because we have a new variant, much more transmissible, a different type. It has metastasized into a more communicable disease. That has caused us a challenge, we are addressing that, and we are accelerating the availability of resources to do so.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. HOYER. I just want to say in terms of where we are today, the overwhelming percentage--I am talking about 90 percent--of people who are getting really sick are people who are not vaccinated. And for the government to say: You need to be vaccinated because we don't want you coming to the office, we don't want you coming with other people who are being careful, who have been vaccinated, and who have done the responsible thing and getting them sick. Because what we have seen, unfortunately, even with vaccination, is that people who are vaccinated, of our own Members on both sides of the aisle who have been vaccinated, have gotten--thankfully--mild cases of COVID.
But when we talk about the President wanting people to get vaccinated--and my friend indicates that he and I both are advocates of that, and/or requiring them to get vaccinated--the reason you require people to get vaccinated, the more people you have unvaccinated, the more hosts this virus has to metastasize and to grow into a different type of virus that can attack in different ways. That is why you do that. That is why they talk 70 percent. Now we just have about 70 percent in America now. Very frankly, if we had a higher percentage we would be better off. So let's hope that we can work together to make sure that we give encouragement to people to do what the scientists advise.
My friend talks about the reason we were so successful in that year under Warp Speed of getting those three vaccines is because the scientists knew what had to be done. They found out and they had quick discoveries and eliminated a lot of dead-ends relatively quickly because of our computer capability and transformation of information around the world and dead-ends.
If we listen to them, we would be better off. But an awful lot of people are saying: Don't listen to them. Don't do it.
When the gentleman says for health reasons, there are hundreds, probably billions, I don't know what the billions are, people who have been vaccinated with a miniscule and almost undetectable adverse reaction. So I don't know what the gentleman talks about for health reasons. I know Djokovic is saying he is doing it for health reasons. I don't know what those are. Maybe my friend does. I am not an expert enough to know what that is. But all the doctors I talk to--and certainly our own doctor here whom we consult with on a regular basis, I know both of us have done that--say get the vaccine.
So I would hope that all of us would ask our constituents to get the vaccine. It is good for you, it saves your lives, it saves your families, and it saves others. Get it.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source