Legislative Progam

LEGISLATIVE PROGRAM -- (House of Representatives - February 04, 2004)

(Mr. HOYER asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I rise for the purpose of inquiring of the majority leader the schedule for the House next week.

Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. HOYER. I yield to the gentleman from Texas.

Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Speaker, the House will convene on Tuesday at 12:30 p.m. for morning hour debates and 2 p.m. for legislative business. We will consider several measures under suspension of the rules. A final list of those bills will be sent to Members' offices by the end of this week. Any votes called on these measures will be rolled until 6:30 p.m.
On Wednesday, the House will convene at 10 a.m. We plan to consider the Senate amendment to H.R. 743, the Social Security Protection Act. In addition, we plan to consider H.R. 1561, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Fee Modernization Act and a short extension of the highway program as well. The current extension expires at the end of February, so we must consider a short-term extension while we are working actively on TEA-LU.

Finally, I would like to remind all Members that we do not plan to have votes on Friday, February 13. I will be happy to answer any questions.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for the information he has given to the Members and for the schedule.

Mr. Leader, you indicate there will be a short-term extension of the highway reauthorization bill scheduled for next week. Can you tell us as to when the full reauthorization, the permanent reauthorization, will be ready for consideration on the floor?

Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Speaker, I think that the committee should be prepared to mark up this very important legislation very shortly after the Presidents' Day district work period. The 4-month extension that we are talking about doing next week should not in any way indicate that we want to postpone the completion of this very important bill until June. The 4-month extension that we are talking about is simply to give highway administrators, especially in the northern States, the predictability that they need to let contracts for the spring and summer construction season.

In discussions with the chairman of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, he informs me that he is working as hard as he can to get the TEA-LU bill up as quickly as possible. And once they get it marked up, it goes through the Committee on Ways and Means. After that, we will bring it to the floor as quickly as possible.

[Time: 18:15]

Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman for those comments. To reiterate, the extension will be until May 30 or 31?

Mr. DeLAY. I have not seen the actual language. That is being consulted with your side. The last I was advised, it would probably be June 30.

Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman for that information.

For Members' planning purposes, does the gentleman expect to have votes next Thursday? I know we have it on the schedule, but I am wondering whether or not the leader has any insight into whether or not we will need next Thursday or not.

Mr. DeLAY. We do not have a busy week on the floor for next week, but at this point we are inclined to work through Thursday, not through Thursday but at least Thursday morning to early afternoon. This will give committees an opportunity to hold hearings and get some markups completed so we will have legislation ready for the end of February and through March. But I do not expect to have a long day Thursday.

Mr. HOYER. Unemployment insurance, as the gentleman knows, has been a real concern, I think, of all of ours but particularly we have raised this issue in terms of the extension. When Congress adjourned last year, it failed to extend, as the gentleman knows, the emergency unemployment compensation program which left 90,000 American workers and their families every week, which now is approximately 375,000 workers by the end of last month, in the lurch, off of unemployment benefits.

We have just passed, in my perspective at least, a very significant amendment which will give some hope and relief to these folks whose families have lost at least some type of floor for their maintenance of their families, the purchase of food and payment of rent and mortgages and things of that nature. I know we just passed it, but I would be very interested in whether the leader has any thoughts as to whether or not it would be possible to accelerate this matter so that we could get it back here so that we could give relief to these families that we have been talking about for many months.

Mr. DeLAY. My friend considers that amendment a very significant amendment. I have a different point of view. As the gentleman is surely aware, the provision that he refers to that just passed is a completely new, unfunded program in a new agency with no experience or competence to handle this issue. Frankly, it was a very clever political stunt and I have to hand it to the gentleman, but if you look at the substance of this, I cannot imagine any member of the conference committee actually voting to allow that to come out of conference.

I would remind the gentleman that the unemployment rate today is lower than it was when President Clinton and a Democrat-controlled Congress cut off extended unemployment benefits, and in my opinion the way to help the working class is not to grow the government but to grow the economy and create jobs.

Mr. HOYER. Reclaiming my time, and I appreciate the leader's observation of my cleverness or the cleverness at least of the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller) and our side of the aisle. The most clever thing, though, that we did was to get 229 people in the House of Representatives to say, we need to give relief to these folks who have lost their unemployment insurance. That was the most clever. The gentleman did not vote on that side of the proposition, I understand that, but 229 Members did, Republicans and Democrats. I would respectfully suggest to the leader that his observation may be correct, that the way in which this was done, because the rules required us to do it this way, may not be the best way to do it. There is a best way to do it and it can be done immediately, hopefully even by unanimous consent; simply extend, as we have been requesting for the last 4 months, to extend unemployment benefits so that these folks, these 375,000 who have lost their unemployment benefits, would be covered. The gentleman and I may agree. This may not be the best way to do it. It may have been a clever way, as the gentleman observes, for us to get this issue up, but as I say, the more clever thing was to get 229 Members of the House, a majority of the House, to say that we ought to be doing this.

Mr. DeLAY. If the gentleman will yield, he did not use all of my quote. I said it was a clever political stunt. Members do vote sometimes, without questioning anybody's motive, do vote for political reasons or whatever reason they may. But the truth still remains, and our side of the aisle feels very strongly that it is more important to provide jobs than unemployment. We understand the gentleman's point of view. We respect his point of view. We have a different point of view. If this was a substantive amendment that had real teeth in it, I do not think the vote would have been the same.

Mr. HOYER. Reclaiming my time, apparently the leader believes the 39 Republicans who voted for it voted for it as a political maneuver. I do not think that is the case. I do not think it was a political stunt.

Mr. DeLAY. That is not what I said.

Mr. HOYER. There were 39 Republicans who joined over 190 Democrats to say that we need to give unemployment insurance to those families who have lost it. To assert that that was a political stunt, with all due respect, Mr. Leader, is incorrect. It was a conviction, a belief, strongly held, long advocated, that we give relief to those who have lost their unemployment insurance benefits, just as it has been our belief for a long period of time that we give that child tax credit to those 6.5 million families, those 12 million children, those 200,000 service personnel who are not covered by the child tax credit.

Mr. DeLAY. If the gentleman will yield, I have to correct the gentleman. He says a long-held belief. I do not understand what the gentleman's definition of "long-held belief" is. When his party was in control in 1993 and the unemployment figures were higher than they are now, the economy was not as good as it is now, his party brought to this floor the cutting off of long-term unemployment benefits. Yet now when the economy is even better, when the unemployment rate is almost to full employment, the gentleman feels very strongly, and it is not for politics, I am sure, very strongly that now we have to extend. So long-held beliefs are in the eyes of the beholder.

Mr. HOYER. Reclaiming my time, surely the majority leader jests. Surely the majority leader knows that Secretary Snow said that the administration was going to create 200,000 jobs per month. Surely the gentleman knows that last month the economy created, in December, the last month we have figures for, 1,000 jobs. That is one-half of a percent of the performance that the Secretary of Treasury said was going to be accomplished, 1,000 out of 200,000. Surely the gentleman knows that during the time period in which he talks, the Clinton years, the 8 years, 22 million jobs were created. This administration has lost 2.5 million jobs over the last 3 ½ years.

Mr. Speaker, there is a commitment on this side of the aisle. There was the commitment in the Reagan recession, there was a commitment in the first Bush recession to extend. In fact, as the leader must know, we extended unemployment benefits more frequently with Democratic votes in the Reagan administration and in the first Bush administration than we have done in this recession, with Democratic not only support but leadership on those extensions. With all due respect, Mr. Leader, I would say that the assertion that somehow that Democrats are not for extending unemployment benefits when we have families in trouble is simply inaccurate.

I would be glad to yield to the gentleman.

Mr. DeLAY. I appreciate the gentleman yielding to me. It is not inaccurate to state that in 1993, before the Clinton administration took credit for an economy that was created by a Republican Congress, the Democrat-controlled House cut off extended benefits. The gentleman knows that we can use figures all over the place. The gentleman is right, only 1,000 jobs were created in December, but it was very interesting to note that 146,000 long-term unemployed went off the rolls and went to work in December alone. The trends are that jobs are going up, the trends are that unemployment is going down, that jobs are being available and the long-term unemployed will be able to find jobs.

Mr. HOYER. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Leader, I want to make this comment. I make it as an interesting comment, that during the Clinton years, the gentleman claims that it was the Republicans who created those jobs. Is it not ironic, Mr. Leader, that the Republicans cannot do that when they not only have the House, the Senate, but also the Presidency? Could it be that perhaps the difference was President Clinton? Because with total control, as your friend Dick Armey noticed last time, you own the town and have for the last 3 years. Is it not ironic that you claim credit for doing it before but you cannot do it now?

Mr. DeLAY. I lived this history. I very much remember that the Balanced Budget Act of 1996 and 1997 was vetoed twice by President Clinton and then signed by President Clinton with very little changes. The restraint on spending through the whole process, the Welfare Reform Act that was vetoed two or three times if I remember, all of the issues that actually got to the President's desk in those years were resisted by the President while he took credit after he signed it for everything, including the economy.

Then we find ourselves coming into a new administration when the recession started in the old administration, and this administration was saddled with a recession as it came in and did exactly what needed to be done, along with the Republican House and Senate and, that is, give the types of tax relief and economic policies that now we see are working and a growing economy that the American people are experiencing, not the economy described by the other side of the aisle. Unemployment is going down, jobs are going up, people are finding jobs. I see no reason to extend after 26 weeks unemployment benefits.

Mr. HOYER. Reclaiming my time, I know that the leader believes that. He has said it before. He has voted that way. We understand that. There is very little confusion.

I noted that by the President's own admission when he spoke to the House and the Senate, he was saddled with a $5.6 trillion surplus. He has successfully turned that into a $4 trillion deficit, an almost $10 trillion turnaround the wrong way. So in terms of being saddled, Mr. Leader, the recession, by the admission of the administration, was over some many months ago and we still find ourselves in a place where not only do we have 2.5 million people unemployed but we have some 3 million people who are discouraged and are no longer on the rolls because they are no longer seeking employment.

I guess we could go on all night on this. We have a different view. But I really believe and would hope, as we did in the child tax credit, that we could certainly pass an extension to take care of those 375,000 people who have lost their unemployment insurance over the last 3 months.

END