[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 49 (Friday, April 12, 2013)]
[House]
[Pages H1976-H1978]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
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LEGISLATIVE PROGRAM
(Mr. HOYER asked and was given permission to address the House for 1
minute.)
Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I yield to my friend from Virginia, the
majority leader, for the purpose of inquiring about the schedule for
the week to come.
Mr. CANTOR. I thank the gentleman from Maryland, the Democratic whip,
for yielding.
On Monday, the House will meet at noon for morning hour and 2 p.m.
for legislative business. Votes will be postponed until 6:30 p.m.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, the House will meet at 10 a.m. for morning
hour and noon for legislative business.
On Thursday, the House will meet at 9 a.m. for legislative business.
Last votes for the week are expected no later than 3 p.m.
On Friday, no votes are expected.
Mr. Speaker, the House will consider a few suspensions next week, a
complete list of which will be announced by close of business today.
In addition, we expect a robust debate next week on the importance of
our Nation's cybersecurity. The House will consider a number of
bipartisan bills to reduce the obstacles to voluntary information-
sharing between the private sector and government, secure our Nation's
infrastructure, better protect government systems, and combat foreign
threats.
A number of committees will bring bills to the floor next week, Mr.
Speaker, including the Intelligence, Oversight and Government Reform,
and Science Committees. In the coming months, I expect to continue to
address cybersecurity legislation from additional committees, including
Homeland Security and Judiciary.
Of the bills coming to the floor, we will consider H.R. 624, the
Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, under a rule. This
important legislation is authored by Chairman Mike Rogers and
cosponsored by Ranking Member Dutch Ruppersberger.
Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman for that information. I want to
share his view that the cybersecurity legislation is critically
important legislation. I know that there are still continuing
differences with reference to the protection of individual citizens'
privacy on this legislation, but I also know, as the gentleman has
indicated, the critical nature of providing access and exchange of
information so that we can protect Americans, protect our country, and
protect our intellectual property and commercial property. So I would
hope and expect that we would be working together in a bipartisan way
to make sure that we can reach consensus so that we can see a bill
signed.
I want to say that I know that both you and I are pleased that
Chairman Rogers and Ranking Member Ruppersberger have been working so
closely together in a bipartisan fashion to accomplish this objective.
Mr. Leader, I hope you've noticed that earlier this week I gave a
speech with reference to Make It In America. In that speech, I want you
to know, if you missed it, I mentioned the jobs bill. I made a little
fun of the jobs bill, as you recall, when you put it on the floor, but
we all voted for it because it was a good bill. We put together five or
six bills that had bipartisan support as they passed the House and
Senate.
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We put them together, the President signed that bill, they were a
step forward, they were part of our Make It In America agenda on our
side and your jobs expansion, growth expansion on your side.
What I said in my speech on Make it in America, which refers to
manufacturing in America, growing things in America, selling them here
and around the world, and doing what Americans are hopeful that we are
focused on, and that is creating jobs, in that speech, Mr. Leader, I
said that we needed to focus on four particular priorities.
Number one, adopting and pursuing a national manufacturing strategy.
As I'm sure you know, Mr. Leader, last Congress we passed the Lipinski
bill, which came out of committee in a bipartisan fashion and passed
this House in a bipartisan fashion. Unfortunately, it did not pass the
Senate.
You and I both know that if you're going to win, if you're going to
succeed, you're going to have to have a plan to do so. This speaks to
the coming together of business, labor, entrepreneurs, investors, as
well as government, in terms of the partnership that we can play in
ensuring that we are making things in America and that goods around the
world have on them ``Made in America.''
Secondly, we want to promote U.S. exports. You and I, Mr. Leader,
have worked on that. We worked on that in a bipartisan fashion. This
was another part of what we call Make It In America, the Export-Import
Act. Your staff and my staff worked very diligently together to get
that done, and we passed it in a bipartisan fashion.
The third part of the Make It In America agenda focus would be
encouraging manufacturers to bring jobs home. I think we have, Mr.
Leader, an excellent opportunity, given the context of where we find
ourselves, where salaries are going up overseas, where it is more
expensive now to ship goods back to the United States because of
transportation costs, the largest market in the world.
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And, fourthly, as the gentleman knows, while there have been some
differences, the President has expressed, you've expressed, I've
expressed, our need to expand our energy supply, and particularly as we
see the natural gas technology advancing, that the United States of
America is going to be one of the least expensive energy venues in the
world and have one of the best supplies in the world, which perhaps no
one would have predicted 20 years ago but is a fact, all of which ought
to go to helping us reinvigorate, expand manufacturing, and create
middle class jobs, paying good wages and providing good benefits.
Lastly, we want to ensure that we invest. And I notice the gentleman
sent out a memo to your Members. I don't think we purloined a copy, but
we did get a copy. You talked about investing and making sure that the
quality of life and jobs were available for working Americans. We need
to make sure that we invest, as you pointed out, as we believe
strongly, in education and infrastructure and innovation, to make sure
that we have the training necessary for people to be able to perform
the jobs that are going to be required in the growing economy and the
global marketplace.
I say all that, Mr. Leader, to suggest that I would like to sit down
with you so that we can talk together about how we mutually can move
forward on what, as I say, we call a Make It In America agenda, but a
jobs agenda, a growing the American economy agenda. I know you've been
focused on that, we're focused on that. I'm hopeful we can do that, I
think it will be positive for our country, and I think Americans will
feel good about it.
I yield to my friend.
Mr. CANTOR. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman, and really appreciate
his remarks and willingness to sit down and see where we can find areas
of agreement. Because as the gentleman and I have both expressed on
this floor on many occasions, there is plenty of disagreement and no
shortage of supply in this town of that.
On the bigger issues of the fiscal situation of the country, we still
struggle, Mr. Speaker, as the gentleman knows, on trying to come
together. But I listened to the gentleman, and I know he's very
committed, and has been to his agenda, Make It In America. As the
gentleman knows, I gave a talk earlier this year at the American
Enterprise Institute, which I spoke of an agenda of trying to make life
work for more working people in this country.
There is a lot in common that we have in these two programs, if you
will. Because we talk about the kinds of things that will help working
families, that will help working people get a job again. The
gentleman's intention in a national manufacturing strategy, I'm sure,
is to increase job availability; make sure that we have more American
jobs.
We also have a skills problem. We passed the SKILLS Act on the floor
a couple of weeks ago. My hope is we can increase bipartisan support
for things like that, because it was simply an attempt to respond to a
GAO recommendation where there are 50 different job-training programs
at the Federal level. Certainly we can do better than that. Certainly
we can streamline and still protect the kinds of individuals that the
statute asks us to, or requires protection of--the veterans, the folks
who are on limited income that we can help put in place for employment.
Because, after all, all of us believe that we are a society built on
hard work, built on playing by the rules and getting ahead. So, I
welcome the gentleman's commitment to those type of things.
He mentions the need for us to invest and to look to the future. In
fact, I have not only a budget and a spending plan of the future, but a
real mentality on this floor of how we can work together for all
Americans. I have talked a lot about this in this making life work for
people and for families. Really, the priority that we place in this
country on medical research, on research and development, because it is
the seed corn of the future.
While we are constrained by the current fiscal situation, it does
bring to life setting priorities. We're not going to be able to fund
everything, but certainly we can agree on trying to find medical cures,
trying to understand how we can better discover therapies, treatments,
so people can live longer and have a better quality of life. These are
the kinds of things I look forward to working on with the gentleman as
well, and I accept his invitation and look forward to being able to sit
down.
Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman for that.
Following on his observation, clearly what he says is we need to
focus on priorities. I think he's absolutely right on that. I think one
of the sad things is we have passed a fiscal posture in this country
presently that does not focus on priorities, unfortunately, and that's
called sequester, which, in effect, looks across the board at cutting
both the highest priorities and the lowest priorities in similar ways.
I would hope that we could obviate the sequester. I think it's bad
for the country, I think it's bad for our future, I think it's bad for
the growth in our economy. I would hope that we could also work on
that.
And towards that end I would say, Mr. Leader, you have talked about,
and, in fact, we passed legislation that was designed to encourage and
to require the passage of a budget by the Senate. The Senate has now
passed a budget, we have passed a budget, the President has now
presented a budget, so that we have three alternatives on the table
now.
I would hope that as soon as the Senate passes its bill to us, which
I expect to be shortly, that we would go to conference in pursuance of
an agreement which will give us a fiscally sustainable path for this
country, give us confidence in this country that Congress can work,
that the Nation's board of directors can work, in coming to a balanced
compromise with respect to how we move forward with the finances of
America. Now that we have, as I say, a Senate-passed budget, a House-
passed budget, a budget presented by the President of the United
States, obviously, there are things that each person in the country can
disagree with and agree with presumably on each one of those budgets.
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I would hope that we would be going to conference as soon as possible
so that we could address this critically important objective.
I ask the gentleman if he has any information with respect to the
intention to go to conference as soon as we receive the Senate bill,
which, as I say, I think will be shortly.
I yield to my friend.
Mr. CANTOR. I would say to the gentlemen, Mr. Speaker, I, too, am
glad that we have finally seen the Senate act and pass a budget. That
is an accomplishment in and of itself. And the President also has
finally proposed his budget. So the gentleman is right that we've got
some things on the table that maybe we can start to discuss.
I know that Chairman Ryan and Chairman Murray are already in
discussions about a path forward, and I look forward to the results of
those discussions. And in concert with the gentleman's point earlier
about setting priorities, it just seems to me, Mr. Speaker, that the
best way forward is to find areas where we agree and let's go make some
progress on those things. Again, this town is full of division and
disagreement, but there are things we have in common, in agreement in
these three documents that I believe we can work on together.
Mr. HOYER. I would simply observe--and he knows this as well as I
do--that there will be an agreement on things that he perhaps does not
agree with and there will be things in the agreement that perhaps I
will not agree with. The secret, in my view, of getting agreement is
going to be to have a comprehensive agreement that accomplishes the
objective of bringing our finances to a fiscally sustainable path
that's credible and believed by not only the economy, by investors, by
the American people, but also by the international community.
We've talked a lot about confidence, as I've indicated, in the past.
You've talked a lot about confidence in the past. I think we all agree
that our economy needs confidence to grow as robustly as we want it to
create the kinds of jobs we want.
Toward that end, can the gentleman tell me what plans we have at this
point in time for the debt limit extension? I know there's some
discussion of bringing a bill to the floor which will deal with that
issue. Can the gentleman perhaps elaborate on what the
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plans are with respect to the debt limit that confronts us that will
hit sometime around May 19?
And I yield to my friend.
Mr. CANTOR. I thank the gentleman.
Mr. Speaker, as the gentleman has indicated, Mr. Speaker, the
majority has committed itself to a budget that balances in 10 years. It
is our desire that we can come to some agreement on how to do that.
This is where the difficulty, again, comes in, where the President's
proposal and budget raises a lot of new revenues. Some estimates have
indicated it will create a trillion dollars in new taxes and won't ever
balance.
So we've certainly got a gulf between us, but it is our intention to
work together to avoid the situation of default; and we are and do
intend to consider a bill that will ensure we meet our legal
obligations and do not default on our debt, which I'm sure the
gentleman agrees with me, Mr. Speaker, is the responsible thing to do.
Mr. HOYER. I certainly agree that defaulting on the debt is an
extraordinarily irresponsible thing to do, and, in fact, we shouldn't
do it. In fact, we shouldn't use it as a leverage point, in my view, to
pretend that somehow going over the debt limit without extension is an
acceptable political leverage point for either side.
Both sides have sort of blamed the other for the deficits as we've
confronted these debt limits. We've never come close, except in August
of 2011, to defaulting, which was the first time, as the gentleman
knows, when we were downgraded by 1 point by S&P. That's an
irresponsible policy. I agree with the gentleman.
Let me say that the advantage of a conference on this issue will be
that transparently the American public will see the debate. The
gentleman indicates a 10-year objective of balancing the budget without
revenues. I personally believe that's impossible.
I've said on this floor that if there were no Democrats in the
Congress of the United States, either in the Senate or the House, that,
frankly, your side of the aisle could not pass either the appropriation
bills or the revenue bills or tax cuts that are suggested in Mr. Ryan's
budget, which would accomplish your objective. I think we'll never know
that, which is, I think, a happy circumstance on your side that that
will never be put to the test.
Having said that, I would hope that we could get to a place where we
say the debt limit is not going to be subject to political maneuvering.
Furthermore, let me say that the bill that we've been hearing about--
in The Wall Street Journal there was an article that appeared just
yesterday, I think:
Fitch Ratings, a credit-rating firm, said Tuesday it wasn't
clear whether the Treasury legally could prioritize bond
payments over other government obligations.
And it went on to say:
If it did so, Fitch added, it was very likely the firm
would downgrade its AAA rating of the U.S. debt.
In other words, even if we say we're going to pay the debts or, as
some people have said, even if we say we're going to pay the Chinese
first and not invest in those things such as basic biomedical
research--to which the gentleman referred, and I share his view of that
being a priority of our country--and cut those as we pay the Chinese or
other creditor nations back for what we borrowed, that would not be in
the best interest of the United States.
I would say that in both instances, either pretending that we're
going to go over the debt limit and avoid it by simply paying the debt
first and then cutting other things in some sort of order, neither of
those policies is consistent, I think, with our responsibilities as
Members of Congress.
I will tell you that we will do it on a bipartisan basis, Mr. Leader.
I use a very simple example for my constituents. You go to Macy's. You
take out your Macy's credit card and you buy $200 worth of goods. You
go home. Next week, you and your wife are sitting around the table or
you and your husband are sitting around the table, and you say, You
know, we're really in debt too much. We're going to limit it to $100.
So Macy's sends you the bill for 200 bucks. You send them back a check
for $100 and say, Sorry, we have a debt limit of $100. Macy's writes
you back and says, We're sorry, too. We're not going to give you any
additional credit and we're going to sue you. That's our debt limit.
The debt limit, you and I both know, is not realistic. It's much more
a political and demagoguing way of dealing with one another and dealing
with the finances of this country.
I would hope that you and the Speaker--both of whom I know have said
not extending the debt limit is not a viable or a responsible option. I
would hope that we could make that clear, that we're not going to do
that and, in a bipartisan way, extend it, and perhaps extend it early
enough so that it doesn't become even an item of consideration by any
of the rating agencies or the international community.
I yield to my friend.
Mr. CANTOR. I would just respond to the gentlemen by saying this in
terms of the family he talked about going to Macy's and making the
charge of $200. I think most families would also think it's prudent to
figure out how they're going to pay that bill before they go about
incurring it, and that is the spirit in which I think the majority
approaches the debt ceiling to say, How are we going to tell the people
that we're going to pay off the debt that we've now gone ahead and
incurred?
I think a little bit of forethought here, planning into the future
how we are going to pay the bills, is the emphasis. I've always agreed,
as the gentleman said, the debt ceiling is something that is necessary
for the operations of government. We'll bring a bill forward that will
ensure that we don't go into default. But I do think that we should be
mindful of how we're going to tell the public we're going to go into
the future and pay off these debts. Because, as the gentleman, who has
many children and grandchildren, he doesn't want his kids, nor do I
want mine, to be shouldering the debts and paying our bills.
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We should be really committing ourselves not to just borrowing more,
not to just taking more from taxpayer dollars, because we've done a lot
of that this year already. When the gentleman talks about the need to
proceed with revenues, we already have close to $650 billion of
additional static revenues--taxes that are accounted for because of the
fiscal cliff deal. So it's not that there are no revenues in the mix
here.
Again, I look forward to working with the gentleman. I appreciate his
commitment to longevity in this country, to sustaining economic growth
or to at least restarting it again so we can sustain it, and look
forward to joining him in that effort.
Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman.
The way to do that plan of how to amortize our debt and invest in the
priorities of this country--education, innovation, infrastructure,
other basic biomedical research to which the gentleman referred--is to
have a budget. That's the plan that the gentleman refers to. The way to
get to a budget is to go to conference and come to an agreement.
However, I will tell my friend what the problem we've had is:
reaching compromise, and it's going to be necessary to compromise. As
the gentleman observed and as I know, we have very substantial
differences, but if the differences continue to create gridlock and no
action, those children of which you spoke and I speak are going to
suffer, so I would hope that we could move forward.
The President's budget, I will tell the gentleman and as he probably
knows, has about an almost 3-1 ratio between cuts and additional
revenues, which is essentially, approximately, what most on the
bipartisan commission--some have been 2-1, some 2.5-1--have
recommended. I know the gentleman disagrees with that ratio, but it is
certainly the President's view, which I share, that he has made a very
positive proposal whether you agree with it or not, and a number of
your Members have observed that it's a useful document.
Given that context, hopefully, we can go to conference. Hopefully, we
can come to agreement. Hopefully, we can see compromise reached, and
hopefully put our country on the fiscally sustainable path that it
needs to be.
I yield back the balance of my time.
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