Legislative Program

Floor Speech

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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding and thank him for his remarks. I will say some other words at a later time, so we don't prolong this colloquy.

I will say to the gentleman, I have enjoyed being majority leader. I have enjoyed working with the gentleman, and I look forward to working in the next Congress in a constructive way to try to solve the challenges confronting our country and giving our people the opportunities that we want them to have.

I know the gentleman is going to be the majority leader. I will tell him, I have been the minority whip, and being majority leader is a lot better. So he is going to enjoy this job. I look forward to working with him.

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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, let's hope we have just one more colloquy, maybe not three more colloquies.

On Monday, Mr. Speaker, the House will meet at 12 p.m. for morning hour and 2 p.m. for legislative business. Members are advised that no votes are expected in the House on Monday.

On Tuesday, the House will meet at 9 a.m. for legislative business. Votes will occur as early as 9:30 a.m. on Tuesday.

The House will recess for the Congressional Gold Medal ceremony to honor the extraordinary courage and fidelity of the U.S. Capitol Police and others who protected the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and allowed us to return to this Chamber to confirm the constitutional duty of electing the President of the United States.

On Wednesday, the House will meet at 2 p.m. for legislative business. The 2 p.m. convening time, I want to remind people, is because of the funeral of our beloved Don McEachin from Virginia, who sadly died after a long illness. His funeral will be at 11 a.m. in Virginia, and there will be arrangements for those who want to leave from here to go to the funeral in Virginia.

On Thursday, the House will meet at 9 a.m. for legislative business.

Next week, the House will consider the Senate amendments to H.R. 8404, the Respect for Marriage Act, which will allow millions of interracial and same-sex couples to be able to live with greater certainty knowing their right to equal marriage is enshrined in Federal law.

The House will also consider Senate amendments to H.R. 7776, the James M. Inhofe National Defense Authorization Act for 2023.

Additionally, the House will consider two important immigration bills: H.R. 3648, the EAGLE Act, sponsored by Representative Zoe Lofgren, to phase out the per country cap on employment-based immigrant visas, with no increase in the total number, and Representative Takano's H.R. 7946, the Veteran Service Recognition Act.

The House will consider bills under suspension of the rules. The complete list of suspension bills will be announced by the close of business today.

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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I think the gentleman raises an important point, how much time do people have to read the final product of a negotiation.

I was hopeful, frankly, that the bill would have been filed today. It is not ready for filing today because there are still some outstanding issues. But I have talked to Mr. Smith, the chairman of the committee, who indicates they are making progress and they are hopeful they can get this done.

So the Committee on Rules notice is subject obviously to the completion of negotiations and the filing.

It is not done, not filed today. We need to have it filed as soon as possible. The conferees are working on getting that.

As the gentleman points out, this bill tends to be, historically on both sides of the aisle, where we add a lot of things to it, which are not necessarily directly related but are because this bill is something that we want to pass and that we do pass--and we will pass this one. It garners riders, if you will, on the bill.

That is still going on, but I am cognizant, and the gentleman is correct, we want to have sufficient time for Members to see the bill.

We would like to do this bill next week, if we can, because, as the gentleman points out, this is about the national security of our country and our participation in international stabilization efforts around the world, not the least, of course, is the unprovoked, illegal war initiated by Mr. Putin in Ukraine. So we are hopeful we can get this done as soon as possible.

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Mr. HOYER. Yes, I think that is a good point, and we will try to make sure that happens.

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Mr. HOYER. My expectation is that there would be four-corners discussion, as we have referred to it, with the Republican and Democrat House and Senate leaders included in those discussions.

Unfortunately, as you know, the Senate has not passed any appropriations bills, and there was no agreement on a top line. That has been the discussion.

The difference, as the gentleman probably knows, is discussions about what is the top line for defense discretionary and what is the top line for nondefense discretionary.

As I understand it, the parties have started talking in the Senate on that issue. We are waiting for, I think, agreement, and hopefully that agreement will be reached soon, hopefully as soon as perhaps the beginning of next week because the gentleman is absolutely correct, on December 16, the authority to fund the government ends, and we are either going to have to pass a short-term CR, a longer-term CR or, more preferably, the omnibus.

I will say, as the gentleman knows--he indicated I was returning to the Appropriations Committee--we talk about a CR adversely affects the defense, and it does. You can't plan if you are a manager of any of the programs in the Defense Department. But I would also bring to the attention of Members, it harms every agency and department of government because it makes them unable to plan on what resources they have available to do the work we have asked them to do by law.

A CR is a very clumsy, frankly, admission of failure to get our job done on time, which I have been very unhappy about for a very, very long period of time. It is an affliction that affects both sides in terms of delay. As I say, the Senate, when the Republicans were in charge, and when the Democrats were in charge, haven't really gotten a bill to the floor and gotten it passed.

But we are not going to shut down the government, so we will propose some action which will preclude shutting down the government at whatever time that action is needed, but I am very, very hopeful that we will do an omnibus because an omnibus at least gives the government and its agencies a year's worth of notice as to what resources they have to use to accomplish the objectives we have asked them to.

I wish I had a more specific answer for you, but, as you know, the negotiations are going on about the top line, and hopefully that will be resolved relatively soon.

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Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman for yielding. The gentleman is absolutely correct. There is a shot clock. It is September 30 at midnight. That is the shot clock. That is when government no longer is funded if we do not take some additional action.

I said to somebody this morning, there are 535 of us. Presumably we are all adults, presumably we are all rational people. Neither side would agree that everybody is that. But the fact of the matter is, we don't do what we know we have to do. You may want to do a lot of things, and we passed from our perspective very good legislation through this Congress, but the only thing you have to do is pass the 12 appropriations bills so you can fund the operations of government or make a decision that you are not going to fund a department, a program, an activity, whatever. But we don't do that.

We have, unfortunately, the sense that the delay is an acceptable process, as the gentleman points out. Then you get to the last minute, a crisis, and then you get a big bill we call the omnibus bill, that really it is so large and so few people have been participating in the formulation of that bill that it is unfair to the Members of Congress, and it is unfair to the American people.

I couldn't agree with the gentleman more that the appropriation process should be done, my own view is each bill should be considered individually. The Republicans started the practice, we followed the same practice of bundling them so we could save time. I look forward to working with the gentleman. I am going back to the Appropriations Committee, working with Chair DeLauro and Ranking Member DeLauro on doing that. But to her credit, all 12 bills were reported out of committee in a timely fashion, and this is gratuitous--you didn't ask for this advice--but what I would suggest we should have done if we could have done it is start the markups in May, pass the bills in June, send them to the Senate, and have July and August and September to resolve differences between the two, and pass the bills by September 30. That is what we ought to do, I agree with the gentleman. It is an objective that we ought to try to attain.

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Mr. HOYER. One of the things--I have been on the Appropriations Committee; I was on it for 23 years before I took leave--we had actual conferences, Senators and House Members on the two subcommittees came together, discussed differences, tried to resolve those differences. That essentially does not exist any longer, and it is not healthy, I think, for the institution.

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