[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 94 (Friday, July 9, 2004)]
[House]
[Pages H5462-H5464]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          LEGISLATIVE PROGRAM

  (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.

[[Page H5463]]

  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.

                              {time}  1615

  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

[[Page H5464]]

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.

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