[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 20 (Thursday, February 16, 2006)]
[House]
[Page H353]
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, the first thing I want to say is to my good 
friend, John Boehner, congratulations on his election as majority 
leader. It is a great honor to be selected by your colleagues in the 
House, of course, but of your own party to be one of its leaders.
  John Boehner has, of course, been a leader in his party for many 
years now, chairman of a major committee, sponsor of one of the 
hallmark pieces of legislation the Bush administration points to as a 
great success. He worked in a bipartisan fashion on that bill.
  I look forward to working with him. I know our side of the aisle 
looks forward to working with him. I want to congratulate him on his 
election.
  Mr. Leader, let me ask you about a couple of things, and I will 
mention the PATRIOT Act. I know you are not sure what that status is. 
There are a couple of pieces of legislation, three pieces of 
legislation, that we do anticipate in the relatively near future. I 
wonder if you might comment on them.
  I know we are not meeting next week and will not be back until the 
28th of February. The tax reconciliation conference report, I talked to 
Mr. Rangel about that this morning. His understanding is the conference 
is ongoing. Might you have any idea of when the tax reconciliation 
conference report, assuming it is approved, might come to the floor?
  I yield to my friend.
  Mr. BOEHNER. I want to thank my colleague for yielding, and I thank 
you for your kind words of success. It is an honor to have been chosen 
as the new majority leader. Some of you can recall some words that I 
said earlier. When I won, I felt like the dog who caught the car. I 
have my teeth on the bumper. Maybe they are just around the bumper 
today.
  I want to thank my colleague for his kind words. The House will have 
a district work period next week. But when we come back and in the 
weeks following, up to the Easter recess, I would expect that the House 
will deal with the concurrent resolution on the budget. I believe that 
the House and Senate will receive today a supplemental spending request 
from the White House for the ongoing efforts in Iraq.
  We expect the supplemental will include money for the ongoing efforts 
in Iraq and the war on terror. We also believe that the request will 
include money for the ongoing efforts in Katrina and Rita, in the 
cleanup efforts in the gulf area. Sometime over the next month or so, 6 
weeks, we expect that we will be taking that up.
  We also believe that when we get back, maybe in the first week that 
we are back, a possible motion to go to conference on the pension bill.
  The tax reconciliation conference is under way. It is hard to predict 
when they will come to an agreement, but I would be surprised if it 
were the week that we came back.
  Mr. HOYER. Thank you for that information. Mr. Leader, in terms of 
the budget itself, the budget resolution for 2007, when is your 
expectation that that might be on the floor? We understand that it 
might be marked up in committee the first week in March. Would it be 
your expectation that it would be on the floor the second week in 
March?
  I yield to my friend.
  Mr. BOEHNER. That is a bit unclear as of yet. It would be nice if we 
could do it that second week in March, but I think it is a little too 
early to predict exactly when it will be on the floor.
  Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman for that. You mentioned the 
supplemental appropriation. We understand it may be coming down today. 
Has it come down? It is supposed to arrive today. Do you have any 
information as to how quickly we would attempt to consider and move the 
supplemental appropriation bill?

                              {time}  1200

  Mr. BOEHNER. Clearly, sometime in the coming weeks, but I think the 
Appropriations Committee will have their hands full looking at the 
request, going through all of the items in the request. I think we 
would like to have it through the House before the Easter recess, but, 
again, they have got an awful lot of work to do in the Appropriations 
Committee.
  Mr. HOYER. I thank the leader for those comments.
  I would say, Mr. Leader, not as a question but as an observation, as 
you know, there has been a great deal of concern on both sides of the 
aisle with reference to the PATRIOT Act, the provisions in the PATRIOT 
Act and to the extension of the PATRIOT Act. Obviously, the majority of 
the PATRIOT Act is in permanent law, but there are some portions that 
needed to be reauthorized.
  I do not ask you a question because I know that this is still up in 
the air, but we are hopeful that as soon as the majority may have a 
better view of the scheduling of the PATRIOT Act, the sooner you could 
inform us of that would be better.
  Mr. BOEHNER. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. HOYER. I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.
  Mr. BOEHNER. As the gentleman knows, the Senate has taken up the 
reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act. When the Senate completes their 
work it will come here, and I think those of us in the House never want 
to predict the speed at which the Senate may or may not move this bill.
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time. I will tell the majority 
leader that I will not ask you the question trying to predict the 
actions of the other House in the future. I thank him for his comments, 
and again congratulate the leader on his election.

                          ____________________