Steny Hoyer

Mr. HOYER

Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman from Michigan for giving the gentlewoman a minute to yield to me. I thank Representative Sewell for her leadership in making sure Congress honors those who shook the conscience of our Nation through their courageous actions in Selma 50 years ago and in so many other places--where many fought, some were badly injured, and, yes, some died--to redeem the promise of America that all of us are created equal, endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights. And certainly in a democracy, one of the most important--if not the most important--rights that we have is to vote, to select our representatives, to select the policies under which we will live. I thank the Speaker and the majority leader for getting behind this effort. And, again, I thank the gentlelady from Selma. How proud she must be of her hometown and of the history that was made there, not just for African Americans but for all Americans.

Mr. HOYER

Mr. HOYER. I appreciate the gentleman's comments, Mr. Speaker, but, frankly, the American people ought not to be confused. There is a bipartisan agreement. We did not send, however, the bipartisan-agreed bill to the Senate. We did, as we so often do, add to a bipartisan agreement something that does not have agreement, and that undermines the ability of this Congress to work on behalf of the American people in an effective way. Very frankly, Mr. Speaker, the majority leader knows that. He knows it because I have had discussions with him. He knows it because, publicly, the President has said, Democrats have said: We don't agree with the provision you're adding to something that has been agreed upon in a bipartisan fashion by the Senate and by the House. The majority leader knows full well that if we sent a clean bill that has already been agreed upon by the Appropriations Committee in the House, by the Appropriations Committee in the Senate, by Republicans and Democrats on the Appropriations Committee in the House and by Republicans and Democrats on the Appropriations Committee in the United States Senate, already agreed to--now, let me, Mr. Speaker, read you some comments by someone who I had a great opportunity to serve with in this Congress. Secretary Tom Ridge--the first Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, a Republican--and Michael Chertoff, who was also a Republican Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, joined with Secretary--now president--Napolitano. The president wanted great educational institutions in our country; she was then Secretary and former Governor of Arizona. All three of them said: Funding for the entire agency should not be put in jeopardy by the debate about immigration. Again, I remind you that this is Secretary Ridge, former Republican Governor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the former Republican Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security; and Michael Chertoff, former Republican Secretary of the Homeland Security Department; as well as Secretary Napolitano. They said: It is imperative that we ensure that the Department of Homeland Security is ready, willing, and able to protect the American people. To that end, we urge you not to risk funding for the operations that protect every American and pass a clean Department of Homeland Security funding bill. I agree with Secretary Ridge. I agree with Secretary Chertoff. When my friend says, ``Oh, it's the Senate,'' I disagree with my friend. It is the Senate who has not passed a bill. Of course, complaining about the 60-vote requirement after having required the most number of cloture votes in history in the last Congress by the current majority leader of the United States Senate when he was minority leader is a little difficult to understand. I choose my words carefully on that. The fact of the matter is we are putting at risk the security of the American people. We have seen in Canada, we have seen in France, and we have seen in the Middle East horrific terrorist acts. This Department was created to prevent such acts. By God's grace and their work, America has been very fortunate since September 11, 2001. The Secretaries are saying don't put that at risk. So, Mr. Speaker, I would urge once again not only the majority leader but the majority party in this House to accept the fact that we do not have agreement on immigration. I accept the fact that they believe the President has acted incorrectly. What I do not accept, Mr. Speaker, is that they are holding hostage the budget for the Department of Homeland Security in order to make their point on immigration. I would hope that the majority leader would urge his side of the aisle to not do that. I close on this particular issue with this quote. When asked what was going to happen when time ran out on February 27 on this funding of the Department of Homeland Security, John McCain, former Presidential candidate on the Republican side of the aisle, former Republican Member of this body and now the Republican chairman of the Armed Services Committee in the United States Senate, said this when asked what was going to happen on February 27. He said: ``Your guess is as good as mine.'' What do you think our adversaries think when, on the Department of Homeland Security, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee says: ``Your guess is as good as mine''? He goes on and says this: ``I believe in one fundamental principle; that is, we cannot shut down the Department of Homeland Security.'' Unfortunately, the Republican whip, my friend, observed that, well, we maybe just can do that. Now, the theory is, Mr. Speaker, that because it is funded out of fees and because they are critically important employees, that we won't shut down the Department in one sense. But in another sense, we will preclude it from being empowered by the bipartisan bill passed out of the House Appropriations Committee and the Senate Appropriations Committee, and which we considered in December, to perform its duties. I will yield to my friend, Mr. Speaker, if he wants to make an additional comment. If not, I will go on to some of the other legislation that needs discussion.

Mr. HOYER. I appreciate it.

Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman for that information, but I would observe that we have spent the first 4 weeks considering an awful lot of legislation that didn't go to committee at all--no hearings, came right to the floor through the Rules Committee. Mr. Speaker, I am confounded by the representative of the majority party complaining about what the Senate Democrats have done and saying we are not for this bill when, more than at any other time in history, his party did that in the last Congress. Mr. Speaker, there are other pieces of legislation I am concerned about. Let me ask the leader, if I can, with respect to the apparently seven bills which the Ways and Means Committee has considered, are those bills going to be considered, Mr. Leader, seriatim, one by one? Or is the expectation, as apparently I think I am reading in the comments you made, going to be packaged? And if so, does the gentleman know how many bills are going to be in which package and how many packages there are going to be? I yield to my friend.

Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman for that comment and the information. There are six or seven bills. Does that mean we will consider each one of those individually? I yield to my friend.

Mr. HOYER. In the two packages. I know that it is usually the practice in both bodies, or in both parties, not to have open to amendment. Is that your expectation, that neither of the packages will be open to an amendment? I yield to my friend.

Mr. HOYER. Same question, same answer

Mr. HOYER. When I get an answer, I will stop asking. How about that, Mr. Speaker? In terms of the deficit, I know your side is very concerned about the deficit. My side is very concerned about the deficit, and I certainly am very concerned about the deficit, as the gentleman knows. I have worked in a lot of ways to try to bring this down. One of my propositions is that we need to pay for things. Whether we spend money or reduce revenues, we need to offset that. Does the gentleman know whether there is any intention to offset that so we do not exacerbate, make the deficit worse? I yield to my friend.

Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman. Just so that the American people are clear on the record, Mr. Speaker, Ronald Reagan, about whom the gentleman spoke, didn't get to 5.6 percent unemployment until his eighth year as President of the United States. And he did not confront nearly as deep a recession as this President inherited from his predecessor, in which 4 million people had lost their job in 2008 and 878,000 people lost their job when he took office in 2009. So it has been a tough time. But the good news is--not the bad news--that we have increased our economy faster, better, and more sustainably than any other country on Earth. That is good news, and we ought to tell the American people that is good news. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I rise for the purpose of inquiring of the majority leader, the gentleman from California (Mr. McCarthy), the schedule for the week to come, and I yield to my friend, Mr. McCarthy.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for the information he has given us. I have some questions on that information, but before getting to the bills that we are going to consider next week, I note the absence of the Homeland Security bill. That continues to, unfortunately, be mired in controversy, Mr. Speaker. It is a bill that I would remind our Members, Mr. Speaker--and I know the majority leader knows this--has been agreed to, essentially. There really is no controversy with respect to the funding of the Homeland Security Department. There are no amendments being offered to change the numbers or anything of that nature. There is, however, the holding hostage, Mr. Speaker, of this bill for the purposes of overturning the President's actions which, in our view, he was forced to take because of the inaction of this body after over a year of even considering the comprehensive immigration reform bill that the Senate passed by over 60 votes, with almost two-thirds of the Senate, Republicans and Democrats, voting for that bill. Mr. Speaker, I am very concerned and the American people are concerned that a bill which is so critically important for the defense of our borders, for the security of our country, and the security of our people is languishing, notwithstanding the fact that we have agreement on the underlying bill. There is no disagreement in my view. The Homeland Security bill, Mr. Speaker, in my opinion, would pass with over 400 votes if it were brought to this floor, but for the fact that it is being held hostage to force the President to do something that the Senate clearly has indicated they are not going to approve. Mr. Speaker, I would urge the majority leader to bring to the floor a clean bill. By clean, I mean the Republican-reported bill--not our bill, but a compromise bill--a Republican-reported bill in December, conferenced--conference may overstate it because it was the four leaders, Republicans and Democrats meeting--and they brought out of that meeting to this floor a Homeland Security bill that could pass overwhelmingly. Every day that we delay puts us closer to the February 27 deadline that was set in December for the funding of this bill, taken out of the omnibus appropriation bill that we passed, put on a short-term leash, putting our homeland security at risk. Mr. Speaker and Mr. Majority Leader, I would ask you: Is there any plan at some point in time to say we are not going to snatch defeat from the jaws of compromise? The leader knows. The leader is very astute. He understands this body very well and knows full well that the underlying bill has consensus. If there is anything that is frustrating the American people, it is that when we have something that we agree upon, we turn it into something that we can't agree on. I yield to my friend, Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of telling me what his view is as to when we are going to be able to pass an appropriation bill to ensure that the Homeland Security Department can operate in an effective, efficient manner to protect America and Americans. I yield to my friend.

Mr. HOYER. I am glad to hear the majority leader will not stand for it. Over a year ago, the United States Senate passed, overwhelmingly, a comprehensive immigration reform bill. The reason they are holding hostage the Department of Homeland Security, Mr. Speaker, is because they don't agree. But the majority leader has just said, Bring it to the floor. Let us vote. Let us offer amendments. We have asked that the Senate bill on immigration reform--which the House Republicans apparently don't agree with but on which the overwhelming majority of Americans in polling are saying yes, they agree with it. So the majority leader complains about a bill not being brought to the floor. The minimum wage bill is a very, very important bill that the overwhelming majority of Americans support. In five States on which it was on the ballot, it was passed, in some red States and, yes, some blue States, mostly red States, by the way, and there is a refusal to bring it to the floor. So, Mr. Speaker, when I hear the majority leader complain about not letting that bill come to the floor, the majority leader knows, and everybody in this body knows, that if that bill should squeak by the Senate, it would be vetoed by the President. And I guarantee the majority leader, that veto would be sustained here. I would remind him the reason the Secretaries say bring a clean bill to the floor, your Secretaries, as well as one of mine on our side of the aisle, the reason they say that is because they know that what I say is absolutely correct. So, Mr. Speaker, I tell the majority leader, who is my friend and whom I have great respect for, that complaining about not bringing bills to the floor, we all need to look in the mirror, because if the issue is comprehensive immigration reform and you don't like what the President is doing, bring a bill to the floor. Show us what you want to do. Let us vote on it. Send it to the Senate, see what they do, and then if they pass it, send it to the President. But don't hold hostage the Department of Homeland Security. Don't put Americans at risk. Don't turn a bipartisan consensus agreement into partisan gridlock, which the Americans hate, and which puts them at risk. I will go on to other matters, unless the majority leader would like me to yield to him one more time.

Mr. HOYER. I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman. Is the gentleman prepared to bring a comprehensive immigration bill to the floor? I yield to my friend.

Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman. I can't help but observe, however, that this President inherited the deepest recession that you and I have experienced in our lifetime and, as a result, we had to respond to that. We responded to it vigorously. Unfortunately, it made the debt worse, but what it also did was grow our economy better and faster than any other economy on Earth. We now have an economy that is growing, creating jobs, 58 months solid. We have increased, however, the debt by about 70 percent--too much. I will tell my friend, he may not know this. That is a percentage of GDP that--under Ronald Reagan, who could have vetoed every spending bill, the debt increased by 189 percent, almost three times as much. Now, in real dollar figures, it is easy to say that, like saying $7.25 is much higher than the minimum wage of 1968, when actually it is reduced to 46 percent of its purchasing power. So the numbers, per se, but as a percentage of our wealth, as a country, this President has increased the debt, having to respond to the deepest recession since the Depression, almost about a third of what Ronald Reagan saw in his Presidency, the increase of our debt as a percentage of the GDP. I would tell my friend, Mr. Speaker, that we ought to come together, work together to make sure that this country is on and remains on a fiscally sustainable path, and I look forward to working with him toward that end. But if we pass tax bills, as we did in 1981, 2001, and 2003, and pretend they are going to pay for themselves, it doesn't happen. We know it doesn't happen. And we look at it, and it doesn't happen. Frankly, many of us on this side are for a number of the bills that are going to be in these packages. Some of us will be constrained to vote ``no'' because we don't want to make the deficit worse. If the gentleman has a comment, I will yield to him.

Mr. HOYER

Mr. HOYER. This bill is about restoring choice not to have insurance, not to have the assurance that if you get sick, you are going to be able to not go bankrupt. That is what this bill is about. Mr. Speaker, this House is about to hold its 56th vote to undermine or repeal the Affordable Care Act, which came to us, by the way, by route of The Heritage Foundation, as I think probably most of you recall. But this vote is different than the previously full repeal votes for one significant reason. Since the last repeal vote, the health insurance marketplace has opened and is working. Over 9\1/2\ million Americans have signed up through these marketplaces for health care coverage for 2015 so far. That means that with today's vote, Republicans are choosing to take away health care coverage from millions of Americans. This vote will also remove patient protections and cost savings reforms. To make matters worse, today's vote would also defund the bipartisan popular CHIP program that helps States cover uninsured children. So it abandons children as well. In 2011, when House Republicans voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act, they included language that said they would replace it with something else; and I say to my friend, Mr. Pitts, Mr. Speaker, notwithstanding that, they have not done so. However, they still have failed to give us an alternative. I urge my colleagues to vote ``no.''

Mr. HOYER

Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman for yielding. The reason I wanted him to yield is because I want to thank him. I don't know that there is any Member of this body or, frankly, the other body who has spent more time talking with the American public to let them know how focused we are on making sure that Americans can Make It In America. And the middle class, of course, is critically important. I will tell the gentleman from California, he and I have both traveled outside this country--I think I have been to probably 60 nations--and every nation has its rich people, and every nation has its poor people. America's genius and success was posited, however, on the broad middle class that we had, that made America. They are the ones whose work and intellect and creativity and innovative spirit and entrepreneurial energy made America what it is and what it has been. I want to congratulate the gentleman from California (Mr. Garamendi) for the fidelity that he has shown over the years to this critically important objective of making sure that the middle class, working Americans have the ability to make it and to increase their standard of living over that of their parents. That has always been the genius of our country. It needs to continue to be. And the President, of course, has offered, as the gentleman points out, an agenda that is focused on working men and women in this country, making sure that they have the ability to live quality lives and have their children pursue education and do even better than their parents; and as they do so, their country, this great country of ours, will do better as well. So I wanted to rise to thank the gentleman for his, as I say, fidelity to this objective, which is, after all, the critical agenda for our country.

Mr. HOYER

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I would find it shocking if a bill ever came to this floor that precluded all debate. The gentleman is telling me it is going to come up and there will be time for debate. I don't know that I have ever been here where a bill came up that had no time for debate, so I assume that, Mr. Speaker, to be the case. The question is: Will there be an opportunity for Members to offer amendments so that perhaps we can get back to the bipartisan bill that was reported out of the committee and leave the partisan parts of that bill for further discussion, debate, and amendment? We would like to have the opportunity to vote on such an amendment. I ask my friend again, there is no doubt, Mr. Speaker, that I believe there will be time for debate. It won't be very much time, I presume, but I presume there will be time for debate. But will there be time to offer alternative views and provisions to that bill as it is debated? I yield to my friend.

Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman--I don't know the answer, but I thank the gentleman for his observation. I would observe, though, he mentioned a heroes bill. That was obviously overwhelmingly a bipartisan bill. You didn't hear me complain about that or anybody else complain about it.

Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman. I don't want to be very cynical, but talk is fine. Performance--as Ronald Reagan said: ``Trust, but verify.'' We can read the talk, we can read the assertions, we can read the promises, but if it is not carried out, the American people are going to be--and continue to be, as they were when the gentleman appealed to them in his book--they are going to be cynical about our actions. I think Mr. Dent observed it correctly. For the first 3 weeks, we have gone through a partisan practice. Hopefully, we can, Mr. Speaker, skew that in the future, give notice, make sure everybody has the opportunity to participate, make sure that we have the ideas from both parties and the American people, given opportunity to be expressed and, yes, to be included. Next week, we will bring to the floor, as we have in the past, a bill that skews and abandons bipartisanship, which was achieved in the last Congress through the same committee for a partisan bill on which there will not be agreement. That is unfortunate for the security of our country. It is unfortunate for the due process of this institution. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. McCarthy), the majority leader, for the purpose of inquiring about the schedule for the week to come.

Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman for his information. The last bill he says will be on the floor, I presume that it will be on the floor on Wednesday. Is that accurate? I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman for that information. As the gentleman knows, in the last Congress the Homeland Security Committee, chaired by Mr. McCaul, passed out of the committee a bipartisan bill that was supported--as a matter of fact, I think it was reported out by voice vote, and it was supported by Chairman McCaul and Ranking Member Thompson, as well as Republicans and Democrats from the committee. As you know, so far this month in January we have spent time, frankly, recycling what we perceive to be partisan bills from the last Congress. Unfortunately, it appears that we are going to do the same thing next week, and I ask the majority leader, Mr. Speaker, we have a bipartisan bill that just months ago was supported by Democrats and Republicans, reported out of committee, not brought to the floor, unfortunately, but reported out of committee I think unanimously, or at least without voiced opposition, and now instead of taking that bill up, which we know has broad bipartisan support, we have a bill that is now going to be reported to the floor without going to committee, without being marked up--excuse me, it was marked up yesterday. I am corrected. It was filed and marked up within hours of one another, no considered judgment, no hearings. It may have been marked up, but no hearings, no notice to the public that the bill was pending, no opportunity for the public or Members to look at it. As I understand it, the committee was organized yesterday at 10 a.m., and this bill was considered at 2 p.m. or some time in that timeframe. But my concern, Mr. Leader, is that we continue to go down the path of having bipartisan agreements worked out in committee, and now at the beginning of this Congress we are simply seeing partisan bill after partisan bill. I understand that your side had a victory in the election and expanded your membership. However, the President, as he pointed out, is still in office, and in order to get something done--we are all for border security. That is why the committee reported out the bill in the last Congress. We had agreement on it. I lament the fact that we didn't bring the bipartisan bill, which would have gotten overwhelming support, in my opinion. Substituting that on Wednesday, where we are going to come in at 9 and go out at 12, we will have a rule on that, maybe the rule the day before. There will be a very short time to consider this. We are bringing a partisan bill that is going to engender a lot of opposition on our side. It is going to be opposed by Mr. Thompson. It is so unfortunate, Mr. Speaker, that having achieved bipartisan agreement on a priority item, that is, border security, that within hours yesterday we turned that into a partisan bill on which there is neither consensus nor widespread agreement. I am sure the gentleman had the opportunity to hear a quote about the first 3 weeks of this session from one of his Republican Members, Mr. Dent, who talked about week one being, of course, the Speakership election. Then week two, we got into a big fight over deporting children under DREAMers, which I thought we had a consensus on, but we got into a big fight about that. And week three, we talked about rape and incest and, frankly, a partisan bill on a very, very important subject which did not have significant consideration and was substituted at 9 p.m. last night, no committee hearing, no committee input, no testimony available for that bill. I would say, Mr. Speaker, we understand there are going to be differences between the Republican side and the Democratic side on issues, but repeatedly, Mr. Speaker, I hear the Speaker and the majority leader and others talk about a transparent Congress. I hear them talk about regular order and how they are going to return to that, and how they are going to have consideration of bills. The majority leader himself was quoted a number of times saying we are going to have 72 hours. The bill that we just considered on this floor had less, frankly, than 12 hours before it was brought to this floor out of the Rules Committee. I would hope, Mr. Leader, that if you are going to go through with this border security bill--we will have an argument about it, and it will be largely a partisan vote on it. That is unfortunate, because we ought to be coming together, working together, creating consensus on making sure our borders are secure, as happened in the last Congress but is not repeated here. I will be glad to yield to my friend. I don't know whether this is going to be a closed rule or not. If I were betting, though, based upon the first 3 weeks of this session, I would bet it is going to be a closed rule or a structured rule with very, very few amendments, given the timeframe available to us. I would say that we are very concerned on this side of the aisle, Mr. Leader, I will tell the Speaker that we are concerned about the closed processes that we are going through, the partisan processes that we are going through, and the lack of transparency and consideration that is being given to the bills that are coming to this floor. I yield to my friend.

Mr. HOYER. I am sorry, Mr. Speaker. I am not sure I heard. Do you think it is going to come up on a closed rule or a structured rule? I am sorry. Did you mention that?

Mr. HOYER. I yield to the gentleman.