[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

[[Page H2088]]

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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