[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 34 (Friday, February 28, 2014)]
[House]
[Pages H2086-H2088]
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 rise for the purpose of inquiring of the
majority leader the schedule for the week to come, and I yield to my
friend, the majority leader, Mr. Cantor.
Mr. CANTOR. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Maryland, the
Democratic whip, for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, 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. The last votes of 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 the close of business
today. Of note, I expect one of those suspensions to be the bipartisan
flood insurance bill.
In addition, the House will consider a number of bills to address the
middle class squeeze brought on by the increase in home heating costs.
This winter has been one of the coldest in recent memory, and people
are running their heaters longer to keep their families warm. Last
fall, the Energy Information Administration predicted that 90 percent
of U.S. households would see higher home heating costs this year, and
low-income families already spend 12 percent of their household budget
on energy costs.
America does not work if middle class families are taking home less.
To lower the cost of heating a home, to increase paychecks for middle
class Americans, and to build an America that works, the House will
consider the following bills:
H.R. 4076, the HHEATT Act, authored by Chairman Bill Shuster, to make
it easier to transport propane to areas with shortages;
H.R. 2641, the RAPID Act, sponsored by Representative Tom Marino, to
expedite Federal permitting for energy construction projects;
H.R. 2824, Preventing Government Waste and Protecting Coal Mining
Jobs in America, authored by Representative Bill Johnson, to protect
coal mining from excessive and unnecessary Federal regulation; and
H.R. 3826, the Electricity Security and Affordability Act, sponsored
by Representative Ed Whitfield, to protect electric utility plants from
excessive and overly burdensome EPA regulation.
Finally, Mr. Speaker, given all the problems Americans are facing
with the rollout of ObamaCare, the House will consider the Simple
Fairness Act. This bill will provide relief and fairness to
individuals, just as the administration has done for business, by
making the individual mandate penalty zero dollars for the remainder of
the year.
Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman for the information he has given to
me.
I want to comment on one of the statements he made, with which I
agree, in which, Mr. Speaker, you just told us--again, I agree--America
doesn't work if middle class families are taking home less. I would
urge him, consistent with that statement, in recognition of the fact
that America works better when working families are making better
wages, that we would hope the minimum wage could be brought to the
floor.
As the gentleman I am sure knows, in 2013 dollars, the minimum wage
would now be $10.57 if it were at the same level it was over 40 years
ago in 1968. The minimum wage has eroded very substantially in its
purchasing power and its ability to give middle class families, as you
say, and America a decent take-home pay. We believe both the minimum
wage and unemployment insurance extension for the 1.8 to 2 million
people who have lost that safety net is both hurting the economy and
obviously hurting families. So we agree very strongly with the
gentleman's statement.
Obviously, the bills he refers to he believes will also have an
effect on this issue, but I would hope that you would seriously
consider bringing the minimum wage and unemployment insurance to the
floor. We believe--although, frankly, I don't have a precise count on
your side of the aisle, which I am sure does not shock you--that both
of those bills would have the votes on this floor, as the Speaker has
indicated, to work its will and to pass those pieces of legislation. So
I would hope the gentleman would consider that.
Secondly, Mr. Leader, we are pleased that flood insurance is moving
ahead, we hope, and we want to thank you for your efforts that you have
made on behalf of this. I know that Ms. Waters from the Financial
Services Committee has been working very hard on our side. We very much
want to see the relief extended to those who have been confronted with
these extraordinary increases in premiums which are unsustainable,
particularly for middle class families, but for almost everybody; and
we appreciate the work that you have done with Ms. Waters to try to
make sure that the protections that are extended are sufficient,
certainly in the short term, but hopefully also in the long term, to
meet both the objective of making it sustainable for families, but
also, over the long term, fiscally sustainable for the Nation.
So I want to thank you for that. We look forward to considering that
next week and hope that will be on the floor next week.
If the gentleman wants to comment further, I yield to him.
Mr. CANTOR. I thank the gentleman for his comments about the issue of
flood insurance and the need to sustain the effort to return to
actuarial soundness in that program, at the same time to have
affordable and sustainable increases in premiums, which is important
for the actuarial soundness of the program. So I appreciate that and
look forward to the bipartisan effort next week on the floor with that.
As to the gentleman's comments, Mr. Speaker, about the minimum wage
and unemployment insurance extension, it is interesting, if you look at
the constituents that we need to focus on, those individuals who
struggle to get through the month to pay the bills, those struggling at
their job each week with wages that have not increased in real terms in
a decade, we could do something on the floor of this House that would
be as beneficial, if not more so, to the economy and would address the
concerns that we have about decreasing wages, and that is we could roll
back the 30-hour workweek rule under ObamaCare. If we were to do that
and return it to the 40-hour workweek again--that is a 25 percent
increase in wages--we could do that, and
[[Page H2087]]
the wage earner at minimum wage would be about $2 off from where that
wage earner would be if you followed what the gentleman is suggesting
in raising the minimum wage, as the President wants, to $10.10. But the
added benefit is, as CBO has warned, you don't have to go about harming
job creation prospects at the same time, which means, an increase in
minimum wage, as CBO suggested, could very likely result in less jobs
being created.
So we can do this without harming the prospects for job creation and
help those constituents right now who have been struggling for so long.
That is how we can make America work again. Let's get America back to
work, more Americans working.
So as far as the gentleman's suggestions about UI, at the end of the
day, what we need to do--and I think what most of our constituents who
are out of work would like, is they would like a job. And what we know
today is there is a mismatch in terms of the job openings and the
skills that those who are unemployed have.
We passed a bill on the floor of this House called the SKILLS Act,
and it is something I have spoken to the President about and I have
spoken to the Vice President about. I would like to work with the
gentleman, Mr. Speaker, to see if we can resolve the differences on
that bill that has passed this House to get the Senate to act so we can
finally get the chronically unemployed in this country back on a path
to productivity and give them a hope so they can get a job again. They
need the skills.
Mr. HOYER. I thank my friend for yielding.
Let me say to him that I will ask my staff--and they usually do what
I ask them to do--next week to sit down with your staff and to talk
about the SKILLS Act. We have significant differences. It was passed on
a largely partisan vote, as the gentleman knows, but I agree with him.
As you know, I have an agenda that we call Make It In America, and it
deals with skills, and it deals with a 21st century workforce
education, and so the objective we agree upon. I will certainly look
forward to working with him on the specifics to see if we can get an
agreement, a consensus, so that we can pass a bill which accomplishes
those objectives, because we share those objectives.
{time} 1145
Let me say, Mr. Speaker, it is interesting, I talk about the minimum
wage. The majority leader answers, Mr. Speaker, that yes, the value of
wages has decreased, but if we increased the Affordable Care Act to a
40-hour criteria, and less than that, 39 hours, no health care would
necessarily be available to those workers, but you would increase their
salary by 25 percent. Now on that theory, Mr. Speaker, perhaps if we
increased the work to 80 hours a week, we would double their pay. Or
perhaps we could triple their pay if you increased it to 120 hours a
week. But, very frankly, it has eroded. The minimum wage is not worth
what it was, and, very frankly, in 1969, the economy was not going
bust. We weren't hemorrhaging jobs. We were doing pretty well.
Very frankly, CBO has said that some 25 million Americans, some
directly and some indirectly, would be advantaged by increasing the
minimum wage and paying a wage that did not leave a worker in the
richest country on the face of the Earth in poverty working 40 hours a
week. That is not an acceptable alternative in America, and we have
raised the minimum wage periodically. We raised it last, of course,
when Democrats were in charge in 2007. We raised it to $7.25 over time,
now $7.25, but it is substantially less and it replaces 36 percent of
average wage, as opposed to in 1968, replacing 54 percent of average
wage.
So, Mr. Speaker, I would hope that yes, we can take other steps that
the majority leader has pointed out that I think we perhaps can reach
agreement on, but that we ought to recognize that we expect people who
can and are able to do so work in America, but they also expect us to
pay them a wage on which they can have some degree of financial ability
to support themselves, a family, and to live decently in America. So I
would hope that we could do that.
Lastly, Mr. Speaker, let me discuss a bill that we believe will help
the economy greatly. The Chamber of Commerce believes it will help the
economy greatly. Farm owners believe it will help the economy, and it
is the broadest coalition that I have seen in the country on an issue
in many respects: evangelicals, Roman Catholics, Jews, other faiths,
all have said, 70-plus percent of America says we ought to pass
comprehensive immigration reform.
Mr. Speaker, Speaker Boehner came forward with some principles in my
State just a few weeks ago for moving forward on comprehensive
immigration reform. We were very positively impressed with those
principles. We may not have agreed on every jot and tittle of the
suggestions, but we thought it was a very good basis to move forward on
which to have a discussion and bring comprehensive immigration reform
to the floor.
As Tom Donohue, the president of the Chamber of Commerce of the
United States of America, said it was absolutely essential, I would
hope, Mr. Speaker, that we could bring that to the floor, have a debate
and have consideration of it. My view is it has the votes in the
people's House to pass if it were brought to the floor. I would hope
that could be done.
With that, I yield to my friend, the majority leader.
Mr. CANTOR. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I
would like to underscore and respond to that, that I don't believe
there is the requisite number of votes in the House to pass the
Senate's comprehensive immigration bill. We have taken the position on
our side of the aisle that we are not for that bill. The gentleman
rightfully points out that the Speaker and our leadership put out some
standards to provide a path for discussion about how we go about
addressing a very broken immigration system.
The problem is, Mr. Speaker, we don't have a lot of trust on our side
about how this administration will implement the laws we pass; nor do I
think, Mr. Speaker, one can blame us given the track record of this
administration in seemingly unilaterally making decisions on how to
implement a health care law when it doesn't work. This is the
frustration and lack of trust that has resulted from those kinds of
actions.
We do need to restore the trust in our government for the people that
put us here. We do need to address a very broken system, but the
administration or anyone's insistence that somehow everything has to be
addressed right now our way is not something that is going to sit well,
especially given the fact that there is not a lot of trust given the
lack of what we believe would be full and faithful execution of the
laws as to what is going on with the health care law and others on the
part of the administration.
So I don't in any way accept the status quo, I would say to the
gentleman on immigration, but we have got to work to see a way forward
that can provide a better way.
Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman.
Mr. Speaker, frankly, I have heard this trust argument before. That
would be an argument for not doing anything because you don't trust the
administration to execute the laws and, therefore, don't pass any laws.
I think that is a make-wait argument, Mr. Speaker. And, very frankly,
there is a way to see who is right on this, I tell my friend, the
majority leader. The majority leader says he doesn't believe that it
has the votes on the floor. There is a wonderful way to test that--
bring it to the floor, and we will see who is right.
The American people, over 70 percent of them, believe that we ought
to pass comprehensive immigration reform. Polls on their side of the
aisle and polls on our side of the aisle and independent polls largely
agree: over 7 out of 10 Americans believe we ought to pass this bill.
In fact, seven, or very close to 7 out of 10 of their representatives
in the other body voted for comprehensive immigration reform. They had
a vote. They brought it to the floor. It passed overwhelmingly. It has
sat here for months, unattended, but maybe that is our alternative.
Very frankly, there have been alternatives passed out of the
Judiciary Committee and out of the Homeland Security Committee by the
Republicans, and they are not on the floor either, Mr. Speaker. So no
immigration alternatives have been offered for a vote on this floor,
the people's House, a
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House in which the Speaker said when he took the gavel here, the
people's will will be reflected because they would bring things to the
floor. They accused us of not doing that. That was their right to do
so, but now I suggest they are following a policy that they have
severely criticized and said was wrong. So if they were sincere then,
we would simply ask the majority leader to bring the bill to the floor
and see if he is right or if I am right; to see whether we have the
votes or we don't. The American people deserve that vote because they
are overwhelmingly for that vote, and then they can take their own view
from there as to who they agree with and who they don't agree with.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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