Legislative Program

LEGISLATIVE PROGRAM -- (House of Representatives - July 09, 2004)

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

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I take this time, as much as may be required, to inquire of the gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier), chairman of the Committee on Rules, of the schedule for next week.

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

Mr. HOYER. I yield to the chairman of the Committee on Rules.

Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend for yielding to me, and as we have just observed, we have completed our business for the day and for the week.

The House will convene on Monday at 12:30 for morning hour and 2 p.m. for legislative business. We plan to 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 day. Any votes called for on those measures will be rolled until 6:30 p.m.

Members should be aware we also plan to consider the rule for the fiscal year 2005 agriculture appropriation bill, as well as H.R. 4755, the fiscal 2005 Legislative Branch appropriation bill on Monday.

On Tuesday, and the balance of the week, we expect to consider additional legislation under suspension of the rules. We plan to complete consideration of the agriculture appropriation bill, as well as consider additional bills under a rule:

S. 15, the Project Bioshield Act; H.R. 4759, the U.S.-Australia Free Trade Agreement; and the fiscal year 2005 foreign operations appropriation bill.

Finally, and I know this will be pleasant news to all of our colleagues after a long Friday, we would like Members to know that a week from today, on Friday, July 16, we do not expect any votes on the floor.

And I would be happy to accept any questions that my friend from Maryland, the distinguished minority whip, might like to proffer.

Mr. HOYER. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for the information and appreciate his being open to additional questions.

To clarify the schedule for the appropriation bills the gentleman has listed for next week, does the gentleman anticipate on Monday that we will complete the Legislative Branch bill?

Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield further, yes, the Legislative Branch appropriation bill, we hope.
Then, as I say, we will be bringing up the rule on the agriculture appropriation bill. And I doubt that that will be completed at that time. It will go over.

Mr. HOYER. So on Tuesday the gentleman expects we will complete the Ag bill?

Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will continue to yield, yes, the agriculture appropriation bill will be our work primarily on Tuesday.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, does the gentleman have a feel for when we will consider the Foreign Ops appropriation bill?

Mr. DREIER. Probably on Thursday of next week we would most likely consider the Foreign Ops bill.

Mr. HOYER. Will we consider the BioShield bill on that day as well?

Mr. DREIER. No, our plan is to, on Wednesday, deal with both the BioShield Act as well as the U.S.-Australia Free Trade Agreement.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. Now, on the Australia Free Trade Agreement, or any other trade bill, what day does the gentleman anticipate we will be considering the Australia Free Trade bill?

Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, as I said, along with the BioShield Act on Wednesday we also anticipate considering the U.S.-Australia Free Trade Agreement.

Mr. HOYER. All right. I thank the gentleman. On the appropriation bills that we will consider, will they be considered under the usual rule? I understand perhaps the legislative rule may be a restrictive rule.

And I yield to the gentleman, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. DREIER. Yes, if the gentleman will continue to yield, Mr. Speaker, as the gentleman knows, we have already addressed the issue of the rule for the legislative branch appropriation bill, and that is in fact a structured rule. It is our intention on the other measures that are before us to consider them under the standard open amendment process, just as we have this week on the appropriation issues that we have addressed.

Mr. HOYER. I thank my friend for the information.

Mr. DREIER. I thank my friend for yielding.

Mr. HOYER. In closing, Mr. Speaker, and I do not want to get deeply into this, but can we anticipate votes on any of these? And if we can anticipate votes on them, will they be in the approximate range of 15 to 20 to 25 minutes? Or does the gentleman have any idea what our plan is?

Mr. DREIER. If the gentleman will continue to yield, I would simply say that it is our intention, as is always the case, to have the majority comply with rule XX, clause 2(a), which states that all votes should be held within a minimum of 15 minutes. And then, if my friend would further yield, I would say it is also quite possible that some Members, either still coming to the chamber or who are in the Chamber, who might either have not voted if they are coming to the Chamber or if they are here, may want to consider changing their votes.

As has often been the case, as I said in my closing remarks on the rule today, when I served in the minority, during those wonderful 14 years that my friend was in the majority before 1994, and also since we have been in the majority, we have clearly done that.

So I thank my friend for yielding, and it is our intention to simply comply with clause 2(a), rule XX, when it comes to dealing with votes.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for that explanation, I suppose is the kindest adjective to apply. I appreciate the gentleman's observation. I will say that the gentleman treats gingerly the changing of opinions. That is, obviously, as the gentleman noted in his closing argument, the subject of debate and also subject to discussion that goes on on this floor, which is clearly appropriate.

But I will tell the gentleman that his party believed that the keeping of the votes open for an extended period of time, i.e. in excess of 20 minutes, was corrupt, and the Vice President said it was corrupt. The Vice President said it undermines civility. The Vice President, when he then had my job, minority whip, said that it was undemocratic.

The gentleman has indicated that we did, in fact, from time to time, keep the vote open for longer than 20 minutes. The gentleman is absolutely accurate. But we did not claim it was undemocratic, undermining civility or corrupt. It was the gentleman's side that claimed that.

Mr. DREIER. If the gentleman would yield.

Mr. HOYER. In just one second.

Mr. Speaker, I suppose, then, the question becomes, in the context of situational ethics, has something changed that has brought about this recognition of it as a lack of corruption, lack of undermining the democratic process, and a lack of undermining civility? And I yield to my friend.

Mr. DREIER. Well, Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend for yielding, and I think he raises a very good point.

I have said on a number of occasions that the year I was born was the last time that my party was elected to serve in the majority here in the House of Representatives, until we won our majority in 1994. In fact, the gentleman referenced the now Vice President of the United States, the former minority whip, Mr. Cheney. And Mr. Cheney never served as a member of the majority here in the House of Representatives.

I have admitted that there are a number of things that we have learned, with not a single Member having served in the majority once we emerged to that status following the election of 1994. So it is true we understand that leadership does entail making tough decisions, and, occasionally, as I said in my closing remarks on the rule earlier today, involve extending an invitation to Members to deliberate and, in fact, on occasion, change their mind. That is part of the democratic process.

So I will admit that the process which we observed on numerous occasions when the gentleman's party was in the majority is something which did provide an opportunity for us to learn from.

One thing I will say, when we look at the issue of slowing up a process or creating challenges, I think about the other body which as we all know has this very unique ability to allow one Member to hold up an entire process and delay the opportunity to move forward on a number of issues, including confirmations. So I think we, having a 38-minute vote here, it is not unprecedented. I will say we did in fact see the democratic process work.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, was the Vice President, acting as the minority whip, wrong when he said this was a corrupt practice?

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

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

Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, what I will say is there was no one in the minority at that time who had the experience that many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have had up to that point in 1994 when we won the majority.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I heard the assertion of the lack of experience in the majority, but my question was: Was the Vice President wrong?

Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, I am not going to characterize rightness or wrongness. What I am saying is when we on this side of the aisle have extended the invitation to Members to consider changing a vote, we saw that done many times on the other side of the aisle. I can only speak for myself, but I am a Member who has learned that process is a very important part of the legislative process itself, and the process of democratic governance.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I want to say very seriously I have served along with the gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier) for over 2 decades in this institution. I care a great deal about this institution, and the attacks made on this institution for the 14 years that I was in the majority and the assertions that were made and the characterization which I did not fully express on the floor that the minority whip made of Mr. Wright, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and the names or the epithets that were used against him, there has never been an apology for that, notwithstanding this new information and new perspective that the Republican Party has gained now that they are in the majority and perhaps see the necessity to take actions that at some point in time they thought were corrupt, undemocratic, and undermining of civility.

We are not going to resolve this, but I will state that the gentleman and I have had discussions about comments the gentleman made about open rules, about amendments, about motions to recommit, about time for debate, about time for consideration prior to the Committee on Rules meeting and reporting out bills, and that perspective, as has been noted in our discussions in the Committee on Rules, has somewhat changed.

Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would continue to yield, I am happy that in that litany of issues raised, the gentleman raised the issue of motions to recommit.

As the gentleman knows very well, when we were in the minority, we were often denied motions to recommit. Yet when we won the majority in 1994, because of the expertise that so many of us had had serving in the minority for so many years, we made a determination at that time that we would change the rules to in fact provide the minority with at least one bite at the apple, meaning an opportunity to vote on that motion to recommit; and in most instances, not every, I will acknowledge, but in most instances, two opportunities for the minority to have a chance to modify and change a piece of legislation by providing a substitute at the end of a bill itself.

I will acknowledge when it came to the issue of the amendment process itself, we are here Friday afternoon having gone through a long and drawn out appropriations process, which we are in the midst of right now, most of these bills are being considered under an open amendment process. We have a very narrow majority in the House. When the gentleman's party was in the majority, they had a 70-vote margin. We have a responsibility to move our agenda, so we have often done it under a structured amendment process. But at the end of the day, we still have provided something that did not exist when we were in the minority, that being the right to offer a recommittal motion.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, prolonging this will not be very educational for Members or others who might be interested, but I will observe that oftentimes the offering of a motion to recommit without the provision for the waivers that are given to the majority in terms of the germaneness of those motions to recommit with instructions essentially precludes the minority party from offering the alternative which they believe is the best alternative.

Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield on that point, I would just remind the gentleman when we were debating an issue which is very important to this institution, that is the continuity of Congress, we had a recommittal motion offered by the gentleman from North Carolina. And as the gentleman knows, that was accepted on this side as we were moving ahead with that very important quest to try to bring about a bipartisan solution to the challenge of dealing with a potential catastrophe to this institution.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I would ask the gentleman, is that the same bill on which the committee refused to have a hearing on that very critically important issue, the alternative offered by the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Baird)?

Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will continue to yield, the last Congress did hold a hearing on that legislation, and when the request was made to deal with the proposals of the constitutional amendment, they were not even offered by Members of the Committee on the Judiciary when they did proceed with the markup in that committee.

Mr. HOYER. My question was for this year. There was no hearing, am I correct?

Mr. DREIER. The gentleman is correct, although I recall testifying on this issue before the Committee on House Administration this year as we dealt with this issue.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his observations.