[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 163 (Wednesday, November 17, 1999)]
[House]
[Pages H12148-H12149]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          LEGISLATIVE PROGRAM

  (Mr. BONIOR asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute.)
  Mr. BONIOR. Mr. Speaker, I would like to inquire from the majority 
leader the schedule for the day and perhaps the remainder of the week.
  Mr. ARMEY. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. BONIOR. I yield to the gentleman from Texas.
  Mr. ARMEY. Mr. Speaker, let me advise Members that they may have 
received an errant, incorrect message over the House beeper system. 
This vote is not necessarily the last vote of the day.
  The House and Senate leadership are working together to try to find 
ways to work around a couple of particular parliamentary problems that 
the Senate has. At this time of the year, as Members know, in order to 
do the final work of the year, the two bodies must coordinate and must 
be able to move together. They have some difficulties over on the other 
side of the building that we are trying to work around.
  So that I would say to the Members, if, in fact, we are able to work 
through some agreements, we might be able to have one additional vote 
of big consequence to all of our membership later in the day, and we 
should also be prepared to vote again tomorrow. All of this is 
contingent upon how well we can negotiate agreements between leadership 
on both sides of the aisle in both bodies, and then get sort of key, 
what should I say, agreements by individual Members here and there 
regarding possible UCs that might be necessary to implement what it is 
we can agree to.
  So we have 435 House Members, 100 Members of the other body that must 
be copasetic with whatever we can work out. We are working hard on 
this. We would not want any Member to feel like they lost their 
opportunity to be here at that magic moment when we could come to the 
floor with all of these people in agreement with one another.
  So I would ask Members to stay close to their best information 
source, their beepers or whatever, and prepare yourself for the 
possibility of additional votes today and additional votes tomorrow.
  Mr. BONIOR. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his information, 
although it is a little cryptic.
  Mr. ARMEY. It is.
  Mr. BONIOR. To say the least.
  Mr. ARMEY. Mr. Speaker, I would give my colleagues the details if I 
understood them.
  Mr. BONIOR. Mr. Speaker, let me try to guess then, okay?
  Mr. ARMEY. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, I could name 
names too, but it would be of no avail. I think the body pretty well 
knows the circumstances.
  Mr. BONIOR. Mr. Leader, are we talking about today doing the extender 
bill, the tax extender bill?
  Mr. ARMEY. I am sorry?
  Mr. BONIOR. Is the gentleman alluding to the tax extender bill in his 
comments?
  Mr. ARMEY. Mr. Speaker, it is possible that the tax extender bill and 
attendant items could be brought to the floor later today.
  Mr. BONIOR. Mr. Speaker, when the gentleman says attendant items, is 
he talking about perhaps not having it clean and having it come back 
with some other issues?
  Mr. ARMEY. If the gentleman from Michigan will yield, he will have to 
pull every inch of this out of me.
  Mr. BONIOR. That is what I am trying to do, Mr. Speaker.
  Mr. ARMEY. I know that.
  Mr. BONIOR. Mr. Speaker, let me ask, is it possible that we could see 
the dairy piece on the extender bill?
  Mr. ARMEY. We do not know.
  Mr. BONIOR. Well, obviously, Mr. Speaker, it would be helpful if we 
had some anticipation of what we are going to be seeing so Members can 
be prepared; and to the extent you can provide that to us, it would be 
generally I think helpful to Members on both sides of the aisle. I 
assume that what we are talking about is a tax extender bill, and the 
question of whether it is going to be clean or not, and we would like 
to know that, because obviously those who come from dairy States have a 
great interest in this, and dairy districts; and those who care about 
the extender bill have an interest in it.
  Mr. ARMEY. Mr. Speaker, again, if the gentleman will yield, I do 
appreciate your concern, but I think the gentleman from Michigan would 
understand that what we have is problems, problems where we try to 
devise a plan with respect to which we can get agreements and work out 
an opportunity to move the legislation. We are all interested, whether 
it be the work incentives bill or the tax extenders, any number of 
things.
  In the process of working out these possible agreements, it has been 
proven in the past to be generally prudent to not make any public 
revelations about what our expectations, hopes and dreams might be 
while these Members, who have such heart-felt feelings, have a chance 
to look at the proposals, consider them, and decide whether or not they 
can come to agreement.

  I can only tell the Members at large, we are making every effort to 
get by some of the difficult, what should I say, delays that are 
pending out there and get back to this floor with the legislation the 
Members are all interested in as quickly as possible; and we will do 
everything we can to give Members timely notification so that they will 
have a clear understanding of what it is they are being asked to come 
back for.
  In the meantime, if I may, Mr. Speaker, we will have the floor 
available to take up special orders; and pursuant to that, we may even, 
in fact, recess subject to the call of the Chair. I again would 
encourage all of the Members to understand that they will be noticed 
later.
  Mr. BONIOR. Mr. Speaker, can the gentleman from Texas give us a sense 
of timing? Are we looking at late afternoon, early evening, midnight? 
Where are we in terms of people planning for the rest of the day?
  Mr. ARMEY. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield further, I do 
understand that, and I understand the frustration. The ability of 
working out agreements, as the gentleman knows, sometimes can be done 
fairly quickly, sometimes it takes more time. As soon

[[Page H12149]]

as we know that we have a course of action that can command the 
attention of the body at large, we will make that information 
available.
  But it is possible, as long as Members want to continue working, that 
on into the evening we may find ourselves holding the opportunity 
available to continue the work this evening. As it proceeds, if it ever 
comes to a point where we can give Members sort of a definitive notion 
that the votes will be at this time or another, we will make every 
effort to quickly get the information to the Members.
  Mr. BONIOR. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I would just say in 
conclusion to my friend from Texas, we obviously would like to 
cooperate. As well, I think it is in everyone's interest to finish the 
business of this session of this Congress. To the extent that we can be 
included in understanding what we will be doing and when we will be 
doing it, it will expedite that process. The majority will need 
unanimous consent from this side of the aisle to bring the extender 
bill up; and I am not going to speak for everybody on our side of the 
aisle, but we would be inclined to do that if we are part of the 
process. If we are not, if it is sprung on us without any notice and 
with provisions that we are not comfortable with, then we are going to 
run into difficulty later on.
  That is why I am trying to, as the gentleman from Texas aptly 
described it, pull from him as much information as I can this 
afternoon.
  Mr. ARMEY. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, throughout this 
day, last evening, this morning, yesterday, and as we continue to work 
on this, we will continue to contact the minority leadership as we have 
been doing, including as many long-distance phone calls as are 
necessary to California and other places and as many fund-raising 
events that we may have to interrupt, we will keep our colleagues 
informed.
  Mr. BONIOR. Mr. Speaker, I do not think that was necessarily 
necessary. That is the kind of thing that is going to keep us here 
longer than any of us would want.
  So I would hope that we could refrain from those types of references. 
I did not get up here this afternoon and make reference to the comments 
of the gentleman before we left here for Veterans' Day that we would be 
here that weekend and Members had to change their schedule on both 
sides of the aisle. I refrained from doing that, and I would hope in 
the future that the gentleman from Texas would refrain from comments 
that he just made.
  Mr. ARMEY. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman.

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