Legislative Program

Floor Speech

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Mr. HOYER. Madam Speaker, before I start on the colloquy and go through the schedule, I was just talking to the Republican whip, my friend, Mr. Scalise. We were talking about a friend of ours, his name is John Bresnahan; he is a reporter. He has covered Capitol Hill since 1994, I believe, is the note I had. He is an excellent reporter.

He reports the facts. He reports the truth. As I know Mr. Scalise agrees, reporters who do that not only serve us, but more importantly, their major purpose is to serve the American people because we know that a free press telling the facts and the truth to the American people give them the opportunity to make solid decisions for our democracy.

I wish John Bresnahan a happy 60th birthday, and hope that he has many, many more. I have had 23 more than that, so I appreciate the fact that he is still going strong.

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Mr. HOYER. Madam Speaker, I want to tell Mr. Bresnahan that he made the same promise to me, which is why we did this. If he was going to sing it, I was a little reluctant to do this, and he didn't. I join the whip in wishing John Bresnahan, a friend, a very careful and honest reporter, the very best 60th birthday and many more to come.

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 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.

Madam Speaker, on Friday, the House will meet at 9 a.m. for legislative business.

On Monday, we will be celebrating Juneteenth as a Federal holiday for the second time in American history. Juneteenth is the day on which the last slaves who were in Texas learned of their new status as free Americans, an extraordinary day in the history of our country, eliminating one of the great blights on the history of America. As de Tocqueville pointed out, we tried to heal our wounds and tried to heal our wrongs, and we are still working on that.

Last year, the Congress took the historic step of enacting legislation to recognize Juneteenth as a Federal holiday, at long last. I look forward to celebrating as we pay tribute to freedom to all men and women being created equal in the image of God. We celebrate the history of the African-American perseverance and triumph over injustice and adversity.

I say triumph--it has been a triumph--but there are battles yet to be won. Juneteenth not only looks back but it looks forward to winning those battles.

Madam Speaker, I see Mr. Green on the floor, who has a resolution on the recognition of the blight of slavery. I thank him for that resolution and look forward to having that considered.

On Monday, we will be celebrating that holiday, but we will be celebrating it as we do Martin Luther King's birthday, as we ought to be in celebrating Washington and Lincoln's birthday, and committing ourselves to the realization of the principles for which they stood.

Madam Speaker, the House will consider bills under suspension of the rules. The complete list of those suspension bills will be announced at the close of business tomorrow.

Next week, Madam Speaker, the House will consider H.R. 7666, which is titled Restoring Hope for Mental Health and Well-Being Act, a bipartisan package of bills led by Chairman Pallone and Ranking Member McMorris Rodgers, to address the mental health and opioid abuse crisis.

The legislation expands access to treatment for opioid use disorders, promotes behavioral health integration, and reauthorizes critical programs to support mental health and substance use disorder, prevention, treatment, and recovery, including in our children.

Madam Speaker, the House will also consider legislation under suspension from Chairman Bobby Scott and members of the Education and Labor Committee to address the mental health, addiction, and suicide on college campuses, which is far, far too prevalent.

Our young people have faced stresses by the pandemic, stresses within our Nation, the divisions on which prey on their minds, so this is a very important piece of legislation. I hope it will be--and I believe it is going to be--bipartisan.

The House will also take up H.R. 6411, the Veterans Affairs' Committee Chairman Mark Takano's STRONG Veterans Act, again, bipartisan legislation to combat veterans' suicide and address mental health, and help our Nation meet its commitment to those who risk their lives and safety for our country.

Additionally, Madam Speaker, the House will consider H.R. 5585, Representatives Eshoo's ARPA-H Act. This legislation would establish the Advanced Research Project Agency for Health, an independent agency tasked with accelerating biomedical innovation and making transformative breakthroughs in the fight against the most challenging diseases confronting our people.

This agency will oversee the next steps in the Cancer Moonshot program and help meet the President's goal of cutting the cancer death rate by at least 50 percent over the next 25 years, and hopefully sooner.

Madam Speaker, as we celebrate Pride Month, the House will consider H.R. 4176, the LGBTQ Data Inclusion Act.

Madam Speaker, I anticipate that the House will vote on a compromised, bipartisan Sergeant First Class Heath Robinson Honoring Our PACT Act, after the Senate takes action on the version agreed upon in May. As the whip knows, that Act was a bipartisan act that dealt with those who were exposed to burn pits and other toxic substances of which they did not know while they were serving on bases, both here and around the world.

This bill, we believe the Senate will take action on, a version agreed upon in May, which preserves much of the House-passed legislation to care for veterans exposed to burn pits and other toxic chemicals during their service.

In addition, the House will consider other bills under suspension of the rules, the complete list of suspension bills will be announced by the close of business tomorrow. Additional legislative items are possible.

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Mr. HOYER. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

I would simply observe, as I observed the other day, that we all want to make sure that our Justices are safe.

Let me say, Madam Speaker, there is a very important reason for that. We want to keep all our people safe. But nine Justices of our Supreme Court represent that we are a nation of laws. They are one of the three branches of our government. Just as I was extraordinarily and remain extraordinarily concerned about the attack on this institution, the Congress of the United States, as we were preparing to elect a President of the United States, an attack on the Supreme Court and the lives of the Supreme Court Justices are an attack on our democracy, on a separate branch of government that is charged with continuing to make us a nation of laws.

So, very frankly, the Supreme Court Justices, under existing law, were protected. There were security people there. Luckily, there were security people there. But the gentleman is absolutely right. We want to make sure whether we agree or disagree with the individuals, whether we agree or disagree with the opinions or the judgements that Congress makes, we are a nation of laws, and the way to resolve our differences is not through violence but through the democratic process.

I thank the gentleman for his observation.

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Mr. HOYER. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

We continue to talk about this as if this were the President's fault. First of all, in a much wider range, this is a result of the pandemic.

Why is it the result of the pandemic?

Not solely the pandemic but let me take the pandemic first. Everybody stayed home--this body and businesses across America.

What did that mean that they stayed home?

They stopped buying gas.

What did the oil companies do?

They shut down some of their production, a very substantial reduction in production. But then as the prices went up, they were making as much money or much more money. So in making much more money, they didn't increase production, as the gentleman says will be an answer to the question, in a country that does, in fact, have regulations and does have rules, and because of those regulations and rules the production of our energy is, in fact, as the gentleman asserts, more efficient and more environmentally considerate.

The oil companies--acting from what they thought was good business practice, demand was down, but prices were going up--were making profits. They bought back stock, which, of course, increased the value of the stock that remained. They increased dividends, which, of course, encouraged people to invest in them. It made people happy about their investments.

But they didn't increase production. They didn't have to increase production. They were making good profits and making, from their standpoint, good business decisions.

As I indicated in the last colloquy that we dealt with this problem, there were millions of leases put on the market by this administration, as I recall, some 80 million acres. Approximately 2 percent of the leases were bid on, and then the Court said that this was not a legal process.

But it is interesting how small was the interest in additional production at that time irrespective of what happened subsequently.

The gentleman mentions a bill, as he has done in the past, H.R. 6858, the American Energy Independence from Russia Act.

But before I say that, let me say, I hope the President is going to Saudi Arabia to talk privately, not publicly trying to embarrass or harangue, and certainly not to beg. The United States of America doesn't need to beg any nation in the world, and this President is not begging anybody.

This President should say, however, Madam Speaker: Saudis, stop controlling the supply unreasonably and driving the prices up of your product.

Yes, they are making more money, and they have a cartel. That is called a monopoly. That cartel has made sure that the lack of supply drove up the international market price. And then Russia went to war.

Now, Russia going to war has affected to some degree the supply of oil, but, very frankly, buying Russian oil supports their criminal war effort, their vicious and murderous war effort. We are all against that. So we agreed that we would not take any oil, and we urged our European allies not to rely on it either.

Now, what did that create?

It created a lack of confidence in the stability of the market.

What happens when you have lack of confidence in the stability of a market?

Prices go up because it is a bet on what is going to happen with the price of that product in the future that the market really reflects.

Now, the reason I say it that way is because these are not Biden prices. Even if tomorrow we snapped a finger and said: ``Okay, go ahead,'' nothing would happen tomorrow, nothing would happen next week, and nothing would happen next month. It would take a substantial period of time because the oil companies, based upon the lack of demand, shut down, nor did they pursue further production.

Now, let me say something about the price of oil. The national price of oil now does not reflect the increase as part of the market response to what is called the West Texas Intermediary, which I am sure the gentleman from Louisiana, an oil-producing State, knows much more about than I do.

But let me say this: In 2008, that benchmark for crude oil peaked at $147.02 in July of 2008. Adjusted for inflation, that is $199.57 today.

In that time, 2008, the average U.S. gasoline peaked at $4.14 per gallon. Adjusted for inflation, that would be $5.62 today.

So, in other words, in 2008, otherwise known as the last year of the Bush administration, gasoline prices were higher than they are today notwithstanding the fact that the world price was $31 less.

Excuse me, yesterday, June 15, that West Texas Intermediary oil--the benchmark for crude oil prices--was $116 a barrel, $31 less, without accounting for inflation, which would make it greater than it was in 2008. That wasn't George Bush's fault. It was the international market's fault and also this cartel that controls a large part of the supply of the oil in our country.

Now, my point--I still have to deal with H.R. 6858. One of its tenets is to approve the Keystone pipeline. The problem with that is, for whatever reason--and I understand my friend will have a response, Madam Speaker, as to well, because you disapproved it, meaning the Obama administration. They want to open the Keystone pipeline. The problem is the company that had the Keystone pipeline has abandoned it. Even if it were approved, they would have to get back in business and we would be well over a year--well over a year.

Now, I happen to have agreed that we should have approved that pipeline. I have said that publicly. I said that to the press. That didn't happen. But it would not solve the problem. And particularly, when you look at the figures that I just gave with respect to the world market price, we are paying a lot more now than we did in 2008 when it was higher.

So I would say to my friend, he also had a provision that expedites the LNG facility approval process. One of the problems we had is 20 percent of the LNG export capacity is now shut down.

It was shut down because the regulations that the gentleman speaks of, correctly, were not followed, and the LNG plant had an explosion. It shut down because it violated regulations that were imposed upon it.

What I would say to my friend--I have talked to the committee about his bill. The LNG process is working. As I told him, I have an LNG export plant in my district, which has changed from substantial exports to the Pacific region, and now, 80 percent is going to Europe to try to bridge that gap as the Europeans retreat from being dependent upon Russian oil.

I tell my friend, with all due respect--and I am not going to plead with him, but I am going to suggest to him--we are going to Saudi Arabia, I hope, to tell them in private: Look, this is not a game you want to be playing. You are making our consumers pay far more.

We have acted. We acted, and we passed, some time ago, a bill that said you cannot have gas prices that are set at unreasonable levels, which we know as gouging. It is like you have a flood in your city and 80 percent of the grocery stores are wiped out, and the grocery stores that remain triple their prices. That is called gouging. We passed that bill.

We also passed a bill today which, unfortunately, most Republicans voted against--``most,'' I say, not all--which will, again, seek to bring the price down at the pump. How? By utilizing American products to supplement and expand the supply of gas and, we believe, bring the price of a gallon down some 40 cents--that is what the experts say--if we continue to use a mix of fuel.

But let me say in closing, on these remarks, which I know have been relatively lengthy, we are in this together, Republicans and Democrats.

FOX News criticized me for saying we are at war. We just sent a billion dollars for a war we are not in because we believe in freedom. We believe in international law.

We believe that we have a dictator, a dangerous dictator, who is committing war crimes through his men and women in eastern Ukraine in particular and did it in western Ukraine as they came into Kyiv.

We are in this together, one Nation, one America, on behalf of freedom. We have taken tough action. As part of that, we are paying the price at the pump because of that invasion.

The pandemic shut down production and shut down the purchase of gasoline by people because they didn't go to work. They didn't need to get in their cars. They didn't need to commute.

I would simply say to my friend that we are on the same team. Our President is leading our effort to defeat this despot, to stop this war, to ensure the freedom not only of the Ukrainian people but of all people, and to ensure that we respect international law.

I looked at the gentleman's bill. I would be glad to talk about other ways, including maybe some of the things that are in his bill. But I will tell the gentleman, the first couple that I looked at, the Keystone pipeline is not going to be reopened. The gentleman and I may lament that as a policy because I was publicly, during the Obama administration, for the approval of that pipeline. So, I am prepared to work with the gentleman to see what we can do.

But we have done today's bill. It may not be perfect. It may not work. But it is certainly worth a try, to try to bring these awful prices down at the pump because I know all of our constituents, whether they live in Louisiana or Maryland, are struggling because they have to use their cars. They have to use that gasoline. They don't have an alternative. And they don't have an alternative to buying food.

Both of those are tough, and we need to act together to try to see if we can solve that problem in the context of an extraordinary pandemic, a historic pandemic that shut down the world, and we are just trying to get back.

We are trying to get supply chains going, including gasoline pipelines, which is why the President is going to Saudi Arabia, not to beg, but to assert the economic fact of the ramifications of the cartels stifling supply.

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Mr. HOYER. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for all of that information.

It continues to befuddle me why our Republican friends would much prefer to blame President Biden and so avoid placing blame on Mr. Trump's friend, Mr. Putin. I don't understand that, Madam Speaker. It is not a nation indivisible.

Now, Madam Speaker, I used a statistic some weeks ago that I have heard not at all disputed. The Biden administration has approved more drilling permits on public land in 2021, in 1 year, than the Trump administration did each year during its first 3 years in office.

Not compared to the combined 3 years, just compared to each individual year. Number one.

Number two: Domestic oil production is greater today than it was under Trump. Not a whole big difference, 10,968 versus 11,185, but nevertheless, it speaks to the fact that the representation that somehow Biden has shut down the industry, and therefore, he is to blame.

We don't want to talk about the pandemic that shut down oil production. In Trump's last year--in Trump's last year--refineries in the U.S. reduced their capacity by more than 800,000 barrels. So, under the Trump administration, production was decreased.

Maybe they will look at the records and see whether or not that representation is accurate, and if it is not, I stand to be corrected. But those are the figures I have.

I notice that my friend did not respond to my representation that prices were higher under George Bush in 2008 than they are today. Now, because of inflation, the number is different, and compared to the world price, prices are higher.

So, I will say to my friend, we had at least 80 million acres, 2.5 million taken. As the gentleman pointed out before, the court said, No, that wasn't legal, so it was never effected. But we have those 800,000 that are not back online.

Don't blame them, though. Don't blame Putin. Don't blame the pandemic. Politically, let's blame Biden.

Now, I'm not sure why Bush had the higher price. Maybe it was that he was shutting down the oil business, the President from Texas. Maybe.

But there is more today being produced. Not by enough. Still, there are 800,000 barrels shut down. That is per day, by the way; not just 800,000--per day.

So we can argue back and forth on this. We are passing legislation. Our Republican friends, for the most part, voted against it. It won't work. It won't do.

I don't know whether they are right or wrong, but it is worth trying. It is worth trying because our consumers are hurting.

People at the grocery store--I go to the grocery store every weekend, Madam Speaker. I live alone. I don't buy a lot of groceries because they will go bad, so I go every weekend.

I see the shelves that are empty. I see the price of bacon has gone up now over $10. I see the price of the eggs I get, the price of the half and half I buy, or the orange juice I buy. It is going up.

I am in the fortunate position where I can pay for it without it binding me someplace else. But I know that a whole lot of people that I see shopping, they have got that list out, and they are very worried about their costs.

I don't know whether this bill we just passed is going to solve that--certainly, not overnight. I don't know whether a month from now it will help somewhat, 5 cents or 10 cents on a pound of bacon or a dozen eggs.

I don't know that, but it was worth a try, and we passed this bill. We got some Republican support, including, I think, the ranking member of the committee that reported the bill out.

We are not technically at war, but we are spending a lot of money on behalf of freedom, and we ought to be together. We ought not to be carping about our President who is doing everything he can think of to try to get a handle on this, both on inflation, on the cost to consumers, and on the supply of a product that we all need.

So, I would simply make a request that let's work together to try to get this problem solved. Saudi Arabia is not the answer, but it is part of the answer. The cartel is part of the answer. The Russians are part of the answer.

Maybe none of them are the entire answer. But when you understand that this administration has given more leases on public land than the prior administration did in its first 3 years, it is hard to say that this administration is the reason for this. Other than politically, it is a very salient argument, but that is all it is.

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Mr. HOYER. Oh, okay. Sorry.

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Mr. HOYER. Would the gentleman yield?

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Mr. HOYER. What I said was, in Trump's last year, refineries in the U.S. reduced their capacity by more than 800,000 barrels. That didn't have anything to do about leases.

That had to do with an economic decision, which probably made sense because what happened is the economy was contracting.

Madam Speaker, 2.8 million net jobs were lost during the 4 years of Trump, and 8.7 million have been gained.

As they have been gaining, people are getting back in their cars. They are getting back and driving. They are spending on the economy. But what happened?

The pandemic had shut down supply lines. And the oil companies, rationally, when demand went down, they reduced capacity. They don't need a new lease to go back up to the 800,000. They were doing it under the present authorization that they have.

That was my point. It continues to be my point. The companies have made a decision and they are not moving ahead rapidly to try to get more production.

One of the reasons is--I get it--they are making a lot of money. Some oil companies have got 300 percent greater profits now than they had some years ago. 300 percent.

So, why do we need to do more product? We are making great money. Chevron says it had the most successful year in 2021 than it has ever had. It may be another oil company. I may be wrong on that.

Was it Chevron? I am asking somebody who probably knows the answer better than me. One of the oil companies reported that.

I am not criticizing them for that. What I am saying is, this is a multifaceted challenge that confronts us, and we ought to address it in a way that it deserves, and that is in a bipartisan way that will have effect.

I am going to work with the gentleman. As I said, I was for Keystone. I was not for shutting Keystone down. I was approving it to go ahead. I thought it made sense. Our friends in Canada have an extraordinary supply.

As the gentleman observes, though--interestingly, because I think many of your colleagues oppose those rules and regulations--it is cleaner. It is better for the environment to produce it here.

Why? Because we adopted regulations--either the administration adopted or we passed them in legislation, and very frankly, I think that many of those were opposed by--I don't know whether you, but many in your party, so it is better to do it here.

So I don't want to dispute that, but it is also necessary to have production, particularly among the cartel countries, and Russia has no interest--Russia has an interest in additional production.

Why? Because that is how they are funding this war. But we ought to spend time on criticizing Putin and his war and the crimes that are being committed in his name in Ukraine, and our determination to make sure the Ukrainian people who have displayed extraordinary courage, and Zelenskyy, who has displayed extraordinary leadership, make sure they know that we are focused on them. And we are focused against Putin, not our own President, any more than I did when, you know, George Bush was President.

Very frankly, I supported, as the gentleman probably knows, the trade bills. I thought it was good to do business. A lot of our people didn't support him on that. I supported him on that.

So I think we need to be not so critical of our President. We have one President at a time. We had a pandemic. It wasn't on his watch we got a pandemic. It was on his watch that we got a handle on the pandemic.

On his watch, he has been giving more access to public lands than his predecessor did. We can debate the nuances of differences, but we ought to focus on why we have this crisis.

The gentleman knows these prices in many ways reflect the confidence and the stability, or the lack of confidence and the lack of stability in the market, and the war directly relates to that issue.

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