[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 35 (Thursday, March 1, 2007)]
[House]
[Pages H2091-H2093]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          LEGISLATIVE PROGRAM

  (Mr. BLUNT asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute.)
  Mr. BLUNT. Mr. Speaker, I yield to my good friend, the majority 
leader, for information about next week's schedule.
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend, Mr. Blunt, the minority 
whip, for yielding.
  On Monday the House will meet, Mr. Speaker, at 12:30 p.m. for morning 
hour business and 2 p.m. for legislative business. We will consider 
several bills under suspension of the rules. There will be no votes 
before 6:30 p.m.
  On Tuesday the House will meet at 10:30 a.m. for morning hour 
business

[[Page H2092]]

and noon for legislative business. We will consider additional bills 
under suspension of the rules. A complete list of those bills, Mr. 
Whip, will be available later this week.
  On Wednesday and Thursday, the House will meet at 10 a.m., and on 
Friday the House will meet at 9 a.m.
  On Wednesday King Abdullah of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan will 
address a joint meeting of the House and Senate.
  We will consider under a rule several important pieces of legislation 
from the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee that will help 
clean our environment and create jobs: H.R. 700, the Healthy 
Communities Water Supply Act; H.R. 720, the Water Quality Financing 
Act; and H.R. 569, the Water Quality Investment Act. We also will take 
up the committee funding resolution.
  Mr. BLUNT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for that information.
  Does the gentleman know, would we expect to see the supplemental in 
the Appropriations Committee next week and on the floor at some time 
after that?
  Mr. HOYER. I think that is our expectation.
  Mr. BLUNT. And do we know when the draft of that might be available?
  Mr. HOYER. I don't know. It is being worked on, and I don't know when 
that will be available.
  Mr. BLUNT. With the 3-day rule, I suppose it could be available as 
early as tomorrow for a Monday/Tuesday effort before the committee.
  Mr. HOYER. I don't want to make a representation because I don't know 
the answer to that and don't want to misrepresent it.
  Mr. BLUNT. Mr. Speaker, on the bills the gentleman mentioned, I know 
this week we had a second open rule of the Congress. It was an open 
rule for the second time on a bill that in the last Congress passed 
unanimously.
  I wonder if the gentleman has a sense of the rules on these upcoming 
bills and what they might look like.
  Mr. HOYER. I really don't. But I want to make two observations. First 
of all, we are 100 percent of the number of open rules that we had in 
the last Congress where we had one. We have now had two.
  With respect to open rules, I know that, in talking to Mr. Frank, he 
intends to bring some bills to the floor under an open rule. And we 
have been urging Members to have, if not open rules, structured rules. 
As you know, we have had some structured rules contemplated as well, 
offering amendments, allowing, obviously, amendments from your side as 
well as from our side.

                              {time}  1600

  And we want to make sure that we have the opportunity to consider 
views from both sides of the aisle. So we hope to do that. I cannot 
represent to you how many open rules there are going to be.
  And I understand what the gentleman is saying about the fact that 
these bills were supported by large numbers, and in the latter case by 
all Members, but that doesn't mean that they were necessarily perfect. 
And amendments were offered, as the gentleman knows, and we took 7 
hours, I believe, on the one that was of very little controversy 2\1/2\ 
or 3 weeks ago.
  Mr. BLUNT. I thank the gentleman for that observation. I would just 
say that we actually might have had more open rules in the last 
Congress if it occurred to us that we could use the suspension calendar 
as one of our opportunities to do that.
  Under the rules of the Congress in the Congressional Budget Act, the 
Budget Act calls for us to have adopted a budget by April 15. Do you 
have any sense of when the budget will be submitted by the Budget 
chairman, and whether or not we are working toward that statutory 
deadline and can possibly make that deadline.
  Mr. HOYER. Unfortunately, I don't have the record of the last 12 
years right in front of me.
  Mr. BLUNT. Actually, we made the deadline one time in 12 years, and 
two times in the 30 years of the budget rule.
  Mr. HOYER. I was thinking that was probably the case.
  Having said that, it is Mr. Spratt's hope, and he is working towards 
meeting those deadlines.
  Now, as you know from experience, the plans, as difficult a process 
as putting together a budget is, sometimes do not meet expectations. 
However, I will tell you that it is my intention and Mr. Spratt's 
intention to try to meet those deadlines. And at this point in time we 
are scheduled to meet those deadlines.
  Mr. BLUNT. And to meet that deadline, I assume Chairman Spratt must 
be working on a draft budget to be submitted in the next couple of 
weeks.
  Mr. HOYER. That is correct.
  Mr. BLUNT. That is helpful.
  On the issue of the rules of the House, Mr. Leader, as I understand 
the rule that sometimes we were able to frankly use and sometimes we 
weren't, on the rule that we always referred to as the Gephardt rule 
that was initially put in the rules by Mr. Gephardt when he was the 
majority leader, if there is a budget resolution adopted by both 
Houses, that budget resolution vote on the conference becomes the vote 
on raising the debt limit. I wonder what the majority's plan is on 
that. Do we intend for that to continue to be the case, or will we 
expect a vote on the debt limit at some time?
  Mr. HOYER. We, of course, on this side, call it the Hastert rule, 
because after you criticized it roundly for a long period of time, you 
adopted it.
  Let me say seriously; there is no alternative to increasing the debt 
limit. Both sides pretend that there is. There is not. The 
administration, if the debt limit is to be extended, is going to 
request a level to which they would like it increased. Frankly, your 
side of the aisle, you were not here at the time, I tell my friend, but 
regularly voted against increasing the debt limit, almost unanimously, 
in large numbers. It was obviously an effort to try to make it appear 
that our Members alone were responsible for raising the debt. That was 
not an honest representation, in my opinion, because we passed bills 
with Republican votes which resulted in that, whether they were 
appropriation bills, tax bills, whatever economic bills they were.
  So in answer to your question let me say this: We obviously adopted 
your rules, as you recall, at the beginning of this session. So rule 
XXVII was a rule that you had in place at the time that you were in the 
majority. We adopted your rules, and we are pursuing that under those 
rules.
  Mr. BLUNT. I thank the gentleman for that.
  Also, as we look back into the recent history of the House, I had 
actually never heard the rule referred to as anything before but the 
Gephardt rule. But the Gephardt rule, or the Hastert, whatever rule you 
want to call it, only applies if you actually have an agreed-to budget. 
And so on more than one occasion in the 12 years we were in the 
majority, we didn't have, and a couple of times, didn't produce an 
agreed-to budget by both bodies. And I don't remember anybody on your 
side of the aisle helping increase the debt limit either. So this is an 
area where both parties have played over the years a role of you didn't 
help us, we're not going to help you.
  Mr. HOYER. I think my friend is correct on that. And that is why I 
started my remarks with really the Congress, if it is going to be 
responsible on either side, Republican or Democrat, has a 
responsibility to set the debt limit so that the United States of 
America meets its obligations, whether it is to our own people on 
Social Security, whether it is meeting a payment on our debt to foreign 
countries, whether it is simply funding our government and keeping 
services to our veterans and everybody else that we vote to give 
services to, we need to do that.
  I agree with you. And I would hope at some point in time, frankly, 
both parties can get together and say look, this is something that we 
need to do. And frankly, whether it is the Gephardt rule or the Hastert 
rule, essentially that is what both sides were doing so that it could 
not be, I don't want to say demagogue, but misrepresented as agreeing 
that we ought to have that debt level.
  Now, I think almost everybody disagrees with the rate at which we 
have been going into debt, and the fact that we have borrowed 94 
percent of our operating funds that we have borrowed from foreign 
governments over the last 6 years. I think there is probably nobody 
that thinks that is a good policy.
  But the underlying policies that drive that are really what is at 
issue.

[[Page H2093]]

But I agree with the premise of the gentleman that both sides of the 
aisle have tried to hold the other responsible for the debt. On our 
side, frankly, we disagreed with the fiscal policies that were being 
pursued, which, as you know, we think took us from a $5.6 trillion 
surplus to now a $3 trillion deficit in the last 6 years. We tried to 
make that point through that vote. But the gentleman's basic premise I 
think is absolutely correct. There really isn't an option of when we 
get to the debt limit, we either ought to stop spending money, reduce 
very substantially our entitlement obligations, or we have no 
alternative but to raise the debt.
  Mr. BLUNT. Reclaiming my time, I would say that it is a challenge, 
the budget is a challenge. We look forward to the solutions that the 
chairman brings forward and having that debate on the budget, having 
that debate on the size of the debt. We hope we can get to a budget 
that is balanced in 5 years without a tax increase. I am sure that will 
be one of the many topics that we will be discussing over the next few 
weeks as the budget progresses.
  As I said earlier, the earliest possible access to at least a draft 
of the supplemental will be helpful to us. And we hope that the 
majority will work with us to get that supplemental draft to us as soon 
as possible so that we can begin that important debate that will be on 
the floor I don't think next week, because clearly, the time would not 
allow that, but hopefully as soon as the week after that, and we look 
forward to that debate.

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