Steny Hoyer

Mr. HOYER

Mr. HOYER. Better trick or treating at home than here.

Mr. HOYER. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for that information, and for his optimism. The gentleman indicated that Members should expect there will be votes in the House next Friday. That is Halloween. How certain is the gentleman that we are going to have votes on that day?

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Leader, I think I am correct that every tax bill that we have passed over the last 3 years has been sunsetted. Therefore, pursuant to your rationale on child tax credit, in effect those bills would be raising taxes, sometimes in 2010, sometimes a little before, and sometimes a little after, 2006, 2007 some sunset. How does that rationale differ from the rationale being applied to the child tax credit?

Mr. HOYER. Reclaiming my time, again on the Labor-Health bill, I am a conferee and I have not been either invited to nor have I attended any conferences on that bill. So if it is reported next week, I am not sure when the conferees are going to meet and consider it. But it is, again, indicative of the fact that on our side, we do not get notice of, or we are not being included in, conferences. That is not, we believe, the way the process ought to work.

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

Mr. HOYER. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay) for the purpose of informing us of the schedule, and it seems to me we did this just yesterday.

Mr. HOYER

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the ranking member of the Committee on Rules for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, we are all going to vote for this CR; but I think as we consider it, it is appropriate for us to reflect on the allegations of mismanagement that were made over the years about how Democrats ran this House, to reflect on that and relate it to present performance and look at how well the appropriations process has been managed since the Republicans took over in 1995. I want to look at the facts here. It is now October 21, 21 days since the start of the fiscal year, 2004, and this Congress has passed and President Bush has signed only three of the 13 annual spending bills into law: defense, homeland security, and the legislative branch appropriation bill. The Members will notice in addition that the military construction bill, one of the least controversial bills considered by this House every single year, is still mired in conference, although I would observe it is going to have maybe the distinction of being the only real conference that we have had in some period of time. If that is not indicative of this Congress's mismanagement, then I am not sure what is. The fact of the matter is since the majority party regained the House majority, this Congress has had to pass an omnibus appropriation bill in 7 out of 9 years. That is right. In only 2 years since consideration of the fiscal 1996 spending bill did this Congress pass stand-alone legislation for all 13 appropriation bills. By comparison, and I hope everybody on my side of the aisle will note this, and the other side of the aisle, of course, will discount it and not believe it, by comparison in fiscal year 1994, that is 1993, and fiscal year 1995, that is 1994, when we had a Democratic President, Bill Clinton, and a Democratic Congress, we passed every single spending bill as a stand- alone piece of legislation, every one, which meant that we could fully debate and not hide anything in those bills. Mr. Speaker, the Members of our side of the aisle can hardly wait to hear what excuse is now used by our colleagues on the majority side for failing to complete the appropriation work on time. It is going to be tough to blame poor Senator Daschle who was the scapegoat last year when not only did we not pass the fiscal year in the year in which we were supposed to, we had to go to the next year and did not pass most appropriation bills until January of the following year. They certainly cannot blame the Democrats on this side because we do not make many decisions on this side. So what is their excuse? We all know what the truth is, and it is not that the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young), the chairman of our committee, or anybody on the committee has mismanaged the appropriation process. It is the direct result of the majority party's inability to agree with itself. It is an affliction that is not just holding up the appropriations process. It is also preventing us from passing an energy bill, from extending the child tax credit to 6.5 million working American families, and from giving our seniors a real prescription drug benefit that is not designed to destroy Medicare. The truth is we have not completed our work on time and the majority party is the only group that is responsible for this failure. Mr. Speaker, we will vote for this continuing resolution, which is an admission and a perfect example of not getting the work done that the American people expect us to get done on time and for their benefit and for the benefit of this country.

Mr. HOYER

Mr. HOYER. Reclaiming my time, I will certainly not ask you which party is in charge of the other body. That might not be an appropriate question on the floor of the House. But having said that, Mr. Leader, the chairman, again, being on the floor, I am on the Labor-HHS committee, and I have not attended any meeting of any conference committee on the Labor-HHS bill. You say it is in conference. Where?

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I do not want to be very confrontational, and I do not think these colloquies ought to be confrontational; I think it is a good discussion, but I think the gentleman needs to know honestly our view on this. Let me remind the gentleman of the Patients' Bill of Rights. It passed the 106th Congress of this House with some 60-plus Republicans. However, the gentleman indicates that conferences are being held with people who want to pass a bill. The Speaker, as the gentleman knows, appointed over two-thirds of the Republican conferees who voted against the bill, and that bill never came out of conference. We were not surprised. In the 107th Congress, we were precluded from having a bipartisan bill because the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Norwood) concluded that he was going to withdraw from discussions with the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell) on that. So with all due respect, Mr. Leader, if you make a judgment that you are not going to include people that you think do not have the same view that you have or that your chairmen have or that your Chairs of subcommittees have, then calling them conferences, we believe, is not appropriate. They may be meetings; they may be meetings of the Members of your side of the aisle who have responsibilities for the bills, but they are not conferences in any classic sense of bringing together the two Houses and all of the conferees who were appointed by the Speaker, not by us. Conferees are appointed by the Speaker. We are not given any notice of hearings, we do not attend any hearings. And for the gentleman to say that people are meeting, we do not doubt that. We think the gentleman is absolutely right. We hear about those meetings. We read about those meetings. We read about the large conference on the energy bill when the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Tauzin) and Mr. Domenici get together and talk. We think that is appropriate. They ought to do that. They need to do that. It is their responsibility. But it is not a conference from our perspective. And there is not an opportunity for us to sit down and represent the point of view that we bring to the table, that we have been elected to put forth.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman for his observation; and, obviously, he and I disagree as to how this process occurred when we were in charge and how it is occurring now. But the gentleman and I have both had the privilege of being on the Committee on Appropriations for many years.

Mr. HOYER. I am glad to yield to my friend.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I take this time for the purpose of inquiring about the schedule. Mr. Speaker, at this time I yield to my friend the distinguished majority leader for the purpose of discussing the schedule for the coming week and perhaps the weeks thereafter.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I thank the majority leader for his information. Just to reiterate for the Members, am I correct that we will have votes starting at 6:30 on Monday?

Mr. HOYER. Then we will be going in at 9 a.m. on Tuesday?

Mr. HOYER. Which is different, a little earlier. I thank the gentleman for that. The continuing resolution, Mr. Leader, you point out there will be a continuing resolution that, perhaps, will be considered next week. The current one goes to October 31. Can you tell the Members what date you contemplate the continuing resolution going to?

Mr. HOYER. So am I correct then that the contemplation would be that the CR that we would consider next week would go until November 7? I know that is not firm, but is that your current thought, that that would be the objective? I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. HOYER. Reclaiming my time, with respect to the appropriations conferences, I know the chairman is on the floor, but could the leader tell us which conference reports are most likely to be on the floor and will those be, I take it, single in nature, that is to say, a conference report on one of the appropriations bills, as opposed to an omnibus bill or a multiappropriation bill piece of legislation?

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I am sure if it is up to the chairman of the Committee on Appropriations I will be; but in a nonhumorous, but still friendly way, we are very concerned on this side, Mr. Leader, when we hear you announce that there are conferences going on, that conference reports may come out and, to our knowledge, we have not been invited to any conferences. We have not sat down to try to resolve differences in the bills. As the gentleman knows, the labor-health bill in particular was very controversial on this side of the aisle. We want obviously to participate and try to resolve those differences and try to address those deficiencies that we see. Therefore, in light of the fact that we are going to be leaving tonight, tonight is Friday, not coming back until Monday night, and if we have a conference report, presumably that has to come out and the staff work is going to be done, because we cannot have a conference Tuesday morning or Monday night; no conference has been called as far as I know on the labor-health bill, and we cannot have the committee staff do its work between Tuesday morning if we had a conference and Tuesday afternoon, that just will not work, for us to consider the conference report. So we have a concern on our side of the aisle, Mr. Leader, in terms of how conferences are being carried out and, frankly, the definition of what a conference is now-a-days. A conference seems to be the appointment of conferees on either side of the aisle, and then the ranking Republican, either of the committee or subcommittee, meeting with the ranking Republican or Chair of the committee or subcommittee in the other body; and that is now called a conference. That may be a meeting of your side of the aisle, but it is not our perception that that is a conference as we have historically known it. When we were in charge, frankly, I did attend on a regular basis conferences with both sides of the aisle, with my ranking member when I chaired the Subcommittee on Transportation, Treasury and Independent agencies, and where the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell) and his ranking member attended when they had conferences. I do not mean that they did not discuss things, but I think it is appropriate for us to voice that concern. Next, on the Iraq supplemental which we have just passed, do you expect a motion to go to conference next week on that? I yield to the leader.

Mr. HOYER. The gentleman mentioned also, Mr. Leader, reclaiming my time, the energy conference report. How likely is it that we will have that on the floor next week? Is the gentleman pretty confident that that will be here? I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman for that information. I would reiterate, having discussed with the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell), who is, of course, the dean of this House and has 50 years of experience in this House, his concern that he is not sure what is going on in the conference on the energy bill. He is not sure what the schedule is on the energy bill. Neither his staff nor he know what product is going to be reported out. Again, we are meeting next week for maybe, if we go late into the night, maybe 10 hours, 15 hours next week, and without really having had the opportunity to be fully involved in that conference. As a result, if that happens, our conferees on our side are not going to have any time to consider that substantively, not to mention the Members who will not have time to consider it in a very substantive way. So I do not think there is any way to solve it now, because as far as we know, there have been no meetings of the conference scheduled. We have not been noted for conferences either Saturday, Sunday, or Monday. So that if something is going to happen, it apparently is going to happen without a formal meeting of the conference if that conference report comes to the floor on Tuesday. I do not know whether the gentleman wants to comment on that. That is just our concern, Mr. Leader.

Mr. HOYER. I am glad to yield.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I am not sure how that is going to happen, Mr. Leader. I hope it happens. I hope the gentleman's representation is carried out, but it is hard to see in the next 72 hours how that can be effected, not counting the balance of today. In any event, can the gentleman tell me if the gentleman expects the conference report to include the Clear Skies initiative? Does the gentleman have knowledge?

Mr. HOYER. Yes, sir. Does the gentleman know that?

Mr. HOYER. I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. HOYER

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas for yielding me this time. My friend who just spoke and I are going to vote together on final passage of this bill, but my friend and I disagree on the process that we are pursuing to accomplish the objectives of which he speaks. He speaks of the objectives and not the process because he feels comfortable defending the end result, but obviously not comfortable discussing the process. Why? This bill that we are considering is larger than 10 of the 13 appropriation bills. As a matter of fact, it is almost 100 times larger than the District of Columbia appropriation bill which we spent in debate in committee and in hearings 10 times longer to consider. Hear me. The District of Columbia bill is 1/100ths of the dollars that we are appropriating in this bill, yet we spent 10 times the time of Congress and Members and allowing the public to have input as we have on this bill. Now, we passed a bill, I tell the gentleman from Missouri, just a few months ago, almost $70 billion. It tragically has not made our men and women safe, as the gentleman says this bill will. I hope the gentleman is right. But we have over 100 amendments and a number particularly that are very substantive in nature that ought to be considered on their merits, because it may make the bill better. It may make the men and women in our armed services safer. It may more cheaply accomplish the objective of reconstruction in Iraq that will pursue our progress and make our success more probable. So I say to my colleagues that we ought to reject this rule, this gag rule that shuts down the consideration on one of the largest bills we will pass this year for just a few more hours to give Members, elected by 600,000 Americans, the opportunity to offer their alternatives. Now, in committee, we considered some of those alternatives; but that committee is but a portion of the House of Representatives. In particular, I say to my colleagues, the ranking member who would be the chairman of this committee if his party, my party, were in control, so he is not just a back-bencher, has a very substantive alternative that got a lot of votes in committee. And what it says is, yes, we need to take responsibility. And, yes, we need to sacrifice. But guess what? We who are here at home, safe in our sanctuary, ought to make a little sacrifice too, and we ought to pay for this bill and not pass it along to our children and to our grandchildren. That is responsible. That is fair. That is the moral position, in my opinion, we ought to be taking. But the gentleman from Wisconsin who has that amendment is being precluded from offering that amendment, along with 30 or 40 other Members who have substantive, important proposals to bring before this House, the people's House, the people's representatives, to consider the alternatives available. Is that not sad? Does it not undermine our democracy and our product? Let us reject this rule. Let us vote against the previous question. Let us consider in full the proposals made by the Members elected to this House by the American public.