Continuing Appropriations and Other Matters Act, 2025

Floor Speech

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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, Americans know that it is crazy to do something you know will not have any effect. That is what is crazy.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this bill.

As majority leader in the last Congress, I put 365 pieces of legislation on the floor that became law.

Under the Republican majority this Congress, our House has only passed 78 pieces of legislation that have become law, and they have the majority. That is fewer than any of the 22 previous Congresses in which I have served.

It is because the Speaker wastes our time on blatantly partisan legislation, including the bill before us today that has no chance of becoming law and risks shutting down the government and which Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, says makes no sense. He didn't say that it was crazy, but I might add that.

The Senate, including several Senate Republicans, made it clear that this bill's impact on military readiness, veterans' healthcare, and disaster response will make it dead on arrival. It is crazy to send it as dead on arrival.

Furthermore, the President has said that he would not sign it.

Mr. Speaker, this House's most basic constitutional responsibility is to fund the government, not to appease a handful of far-right Members.

We know how this situation ends. It will end the same way as the fight for supplemental aid for Ukraine and Israel. It will end the same way as the battle to raise the debt ceiling. It will end the same way as the effort to fund the government at the start of this year and, very frankly, throughout the year. It will end with this partisan appeasement failing. A period of finger pointing will follow.

Finally, after much hand-wringing and some strongly worded tweets, the Speaker will ask Democrats for our votes to pass a bipartisan alternative that avoids shutting down the government of the American people.

Everyone knows how this ends because this deeply divided and dysfunctional majority hasn't accomplished anything of substance without Democratic support.

There were compromises, compromises that Democrats agreed to so that our government could function effectively for the American people, not because we agreed on everything that was in the bill any more than you will agree on the Republican side with everything in the bill. We did it because it was the responsible thing to do. It was the right thing to do.

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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, we have seen this film before. Let's just skip to the ending today. Put a CR on the floor.

I don't like CRs. We should have done our work. We should have passed 12 bills, sent them to the President, and had him sign it.

Let's skip this pretense that we have been involved in. Let's get to the nub of the issue. We haven't done our work, and therefore we need a short-term solution. Let's do it.

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