[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 108 (Friday, July 17, 2009)]
[House]
[Pages H8342-H8344]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          LEGISLATIVE PROGRAM

  (Mr. CANTOR asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute.)
  Mr. CANTOR. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Maryland, the 
minority leader, for the purpose of announcing next week's schedule.
  Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  Mr. Speaker, on Monday, the House will meet at 12:30 p.m. for 
morning-hour debate and 2 p.m. for legislative business, with votes 
postponed until 6:30 p.m. On Tuesday, the House will meet at 10:30 a.m. 
for morning-hour debate and noon for legislative business. On Wednesday 
and Thursday, the House will meet at 10 a.m. On Friday, the House will 
meet at 9 a.m. for legislative business.
  We will consider several bills under suspension of the rules. The 
complete list, Mr. Speaker, will be, as usual, disclosed by the end of 
business today.
  In addition, we will consider H.R. 2920, the Statutory Pay-As-You-Go 
Act of 2009; the 2010 Transportation, Housing, and Urban Development 
Appropriations Act; the 2010 Labor, Health and Human Services, and 
Education Appropriations Act; and possibly the Food Safety Enforcement 
Act of 2009.
  In addition, Members ought to be advised that on Tuesday, July 21, we 
will take the official photograph for the 111th Congress. We don't have 
a time on that, but we will try to give Members time for that as soon 
as possible. I imagine it will be sometime after the first votes.
  Mr. CANTOR. Mr. Speaker, I would ask the gentleman if he could give 
me some indication of the progress on the offer of compromise to move 
forward on appropriations bills to get us back closer to what has been 
the precedent of this House in terms of open rules in consideration of 
expending taxpayer moneys.
  Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman for the question.
  As the gentleman knows--he and I discussed this issue--it's my 
understanding that Mr. Boehner and the Speaker are having ongoing 
discussions with respect to that. I know the Speaker is having ongoing 
discussions with the committee as well. Hopefully, whatever happens 
between Mr. Boehner and the Speaker will be disclosed to you as well as 
to me.
  Mr. CANTOR. I would note, as we are almost nearing the end of the 
July session and with three appropriations bills left, there is yet 
limited opportunity, but still some, and the minority stands ready and 
willing to work with the gentleman, with him and his desire, as

[[Page H8343]]

is mine, to return to an open process in appropriations rules.

                              {time}  1500

  Mr. HOYER. If the gentleman will yield just briefly.
  Mr. CANTOR. I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. HOYER. I want to say to the gentleman that I want to continue to 
work with him towards--whether it's on these appropriations bills or 
other bills--so that we can try to effect a degree of comity that I 
know both you and I would like to reach.
  Mr. CANTOR. I thank the gentleman for that. I would ask the gentleman 
if he could give us some sense of where we are in terms of the health 
care reform bill working its way through the committee process right 
now. As the gentleman knows, I'm on the Ways and Means Committee; and 
we completed our markup on the bill last night or in the early hours 
this morning. The other two committees I know are hard at work in terms 
of delivering their products. But I did note that the gentleman was 
reported as having said in the press--I believe it was this morning in 
his response to a question about the Congressional Budget Office's 
commentary and analysis of the health care proposal. Mr. Speaker, if I 
could loosely paraphrase the gentleman's remarks, I believe he said, We 
need to go back to the drawing board as far as the scoring of the bill 
is concerned. I would like to inquire about what the gentleman had in 
mind as far as that's concerned.
  Mr. HOYER. As you know, the President, the Speaker and I and others 
have indicated that we expect this bill to be fully paid for. Obviously 
scoring will be the litmus test by which we determine whether it is 
paid for. When Mr. Elmendorf made the statement before the Budget 
Committee in the Senate, he was speaking more of the bending of the 
curve, which is going to be longer term than whether or not we 
determine whether the bill is paid for. But in my view, we need to do 
both. Of course the bill he was talking about was the Senate bill. The 
House bill has not yet been fully scored. But if, in fact, that score 
shows that it is not fully paid for, what I meant by ``going back to 
the drawing board,'' we will then have to assess how we can get the 
bill to a place where it is scored as a fully-paid-for bill, consistent 
with PAYGO. That's our pledge. That's my intent, that's the Speaker's 
intent, and we will work towards that objective.
  Mr. CANTOR. I thank the gentleman. I know the gentleman does share 
all of our concerns as well as, I'm sure, the President's concern that 
we actually do something to bring down health care costs while at the 
same time preserving the quality of care that the Americans who do have 
health care coverage right now receive. I would like to ask the 
gentleman, Mr. Speaker, does he expect the House and the American 
public to have 72 hours to read the entire bill once the committee 
process has concluded and prior to the bill's coming to the floor for a 
vote?
  Mr. HOYER. I would think the Members and the public would have more 
than 72 hours to read the bill. Now obviously there may well be changes 
as it moves along. I served in the State legislature. I'm not sure if 
the gentleman served in the State legislature.
  Mr. CANTOR. Yes, I did.
  Mr. HOYER. In our State legislature, the process was a little 
different. You got the bills on your desk, and the amendments were 
either highlighted or in italics or underlined, depending upon what the 
stage of consideration of the bills was so that Members could well have 
read the bills before they got there weeks ahead of time and then see 
what amendments are made in the bills as it went through second reader 
and third reader. We have that here, but it's not as transparent a 
process because it's a much more quick process as we go from the second 
to third reader.
  The fact is that I think, as I said, Members and the public have now 
got the draft of the bill, as introduced. The gentleman referenced that 
the Ways and Means Committee, a committee on which he serves, completed 
its work I think about 2 a.m. this morning. Education and Labor 
completed its work at 6 a.m. this morning. Energy and Commerce, which 
has a greater portion of the bill, will probably complete its portion 
of the markup, we hope, on Wednesday of next week. They'll be marking 
it up on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. We expect there to be a 
substantial number of amendments offered. I don't know how many will be 
adopted or what changes will be made to the bill.
  The point I want to make, therefore, is that when we say that this 
bill, however many pages it is, 500, 1,000, 1,500 pages, however long 
it is, essentially most of that bill is ready for review as we speak. 
There will be changes. There will be amendments as the process goes 
forward. But the public really ought to have an understanding, as I'm 
sure you would want them to have, that the bill is largely on the table 
now so that what you're really going to be giving notice of is 
amendments as they occur, which are much shorter and will be able to be 
read much more quickly.
  Now having said that, the gentleman mentioned 72 hours. I certainly 
have indicated that we're going to have it in place, as a final draft, 
48 hours in place. That's our intent. That's what I intend to do. 
That's why the committees have worked so hard this week and why the 
Energy and Commerce Committee is going to be working so hard and is 
hoping to complete its work by Wednesday so that we will not be 
considering the bill itself until at least a week after that. So my 
expectation is that there will be substantial time available for review 
of the bill.
  Mr. CANTOR. I thank the gentleman for that. I know the gentleman 
shares my concern with the reality that took place around the stimulus 
bill and around the 300-some-odd page amendment to the cap-and-trade 
bill that was rushed to the floor, having come out of the Rules 
Committee with an extensive manager's amendment without the ability for 
anyone in this House to read the manager's amendment and the bill in 
its entirety. I do think--and I think the gentleman would agree with 
me--that it is in the interest of the American public, and it is their 
right to know that we do give adequate time for the Members to read the 
bill as well as for the American public.
  Mr. HOYER. There has been much talk about the 300-page amendment. And 
very frankly, I think that process was not one which was optimal. I 
would prefer not to repeat that process. Obviously we were driven by 
the fact that we were at the end of the session. We wanted to complete 
the bill so that people would have an opportunity, as we moved forward, 
to have plenty of time to work on the health care bill, which we knew 
was coming. But I must say that about half of that manager's amendment 
was the so-called GREEN Act which had been introduced literally I think 
months before but certainly weeks before and was available for review.
  But the gentleman has a good point. I want him to know that the 
Speaker and I both are committed to making sure that we have at least a 
couple of days--we think it will be more--but a minimum of 2 days, a 
full 2 days to review both the bill and any amendments that might be 
attached to a manager's amendment. Obviously that may not be the case. 
Other amendments might be offered on the floor.
  Mr. CANTOR. Well, I thank the gentleman for that commitment.
  Mr. Speaker, I will then turn to the issue surrounding the stimulus 
debate and really a related issue to what the gentleman had referred to 
as far as the scoring on the health care bill and that is the 
continuing concern over the exploding debt and what we are doing in 
this Congress and the impact that expanding the debt load of this 
country will have on America's families. I do know the gentleman has 
indicated a notice for a PAYGO bill for next week. I would like to ask 
the gentleman whether this bill will be identical to that which has 
been introduced by the members of the Blue Dog Coalition. I think the 
chief sponsor on that bill might be the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. 
Hill).

  Mr. HOYER. I was a cosponsor of that. As a matter of fact, I 
introduced the bill. Mr. Hill was a sponsor, along with a number of 
others. Your colleague from Virginia (Mr. Scott) was a cosponsor of 
that bill, Mr. Miller from California was a cosponsor of that bill and 
Mr. Welch from Vermont was also a cosponsor. So it is a pretty broad 
spectrum of our membership, indicating that there is a real commitment 
to paying as you go. We believe that's an important principle.

[[Page H8344]]

  As I'm sure the gentleman knows, PAYGO was first adopted in 1990 as a 
result of a conference that was held out at Andrews Air Force Base. Mr. 
Darman was representing President Bush. He was then the head of OMB, 
and there was a bipartisan agreement to adopt the statutory PAYGO. In 
fact, we did that. In 1997 Mr. Gingrich and Mr. Clinton entered into an 
agreement on statutory PAYGO that we passed in a bipartisan way in 
1997. When it was to be reauthorized in 2002 and 2003, it was allowed 
to lapse. I think that was unfortunate. My premise is it was allowed to 
lapse because making the tax cuts that you wanted to propose in '03; 
and indeed in '01--you waived it in '01--would have been impossible, 
from your perspective, to pay for those cuts. So statutory PAYGO did 
not apply over the last 6 years. I think that, to some degree, has led 
us to the deficits.
  Of course in the last administration Vice President Cheney made the 
observation that Ronald Reagan had taught us that deficits don't 
matter. I think the Vice President's observation was certainly not 
right in terms of that Ronald Reagan taught us that deficits don't 
matter; but Ronald Reagan certainly taught us that deficits add up and 
create large debt. As you know I like to say so often, we went from a 
$5.6 trillion surplus in January of 2001, which President Bush observed 
was the estimate in March of '01, to what is now an $11 trillion debt. 
Unfortunately because of the status of the economy, we've added to 
that. I believe, and I think my colleagues believe, that this is a 
critical problem that we have to address. And I know you agree with 
that as well. We believe that this is one way to do so. It was helpful 
in 1990 when it was adopted in a bipartisan way. It was helpful in 1997 
when it was adopted in a bipartisan way. I am very hopeful that it can 
be adopted in a bipartisan way this coming week.
  Mr. CANTOR. I thank the gentleman. Without delving into a rehash, 
perhaps, of past fiscal practices or whether Vice President Cheney's 
remarks may have been taken out of context, I would ask the gentleman 
again, is the bill that will be brought to the floor identical to that 
which he indicates he signed on to and that which is being sponsored by 
the chief sponsor, the gentleman from Indiana?
  Mr. HOYER. I know exactly what it is. It's not identical. There have 
been some changes which will be included in a manager's amendment. I 
will make sure that that manager's amendment is available no later than 
Monday. Essentially what it does is it ensures that it is consistent 
with the PAYGO rule that we have here in the House and it does somewhat 
modify it as to the tax cuts that will be effected, that will mirror 
the budget that was adopted by this House earlier this year. It also 
directs that CBO scoring be controlling so that we have a neutral 
arbiter, not an administration, whether it's a Democratic or Republican 
arbiter, as to what the costs are. Those are the major changes that I 
think make it more consistent with what the House's position has been 
in the past.
  Mr. CANTOR. I will just end my comments by indicating that I have 
read some reports which say--perhaps inaccurately reported or not--that 
the bill that you expect to come to the floor will not include the 
discretionary spending cap. The cap certainly would be a necessary 
thing to limit the double-digit increases that we're seeing in spending 
this Congress and the appropriations bills that have been coming to the 
floor. So I will indicate to the gentleman that we certainly will be 
supportive of those types of commonsense spending caps.
  Mr. HOYER. That's very interesting. They weren't in in 1990, they 
weren't in in 1997, and they weren't in in any proposal you've made to 
date.
  Mr. CANTOR. The gentleman knows we are in extraordinary economic 
times, and we have got tremendous job loss, and we've got a debt burden 
that continues to amass that may very well impact the ability for an 
investment-led recovery.

                              {time}  1515

  I would indicate to the gentleman we stand ready to work with him in 
trying to return to some sense of fiscal sanity in this body.
  With that, Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman very much.

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