[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 215 (Friday, December 18, 2020)]
[House]
[Page H7272]
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, the Republican whip and I have been 
discussing where we are and to bring Members up to speed on what status 
we have for today and the next few days.
  Mr. Speaker, as everybody in the House knows, and America knows, as 
of midnight tonight, the government will run out of authority to 
operate and run out of funds, authorization, to be spent. As a result, 
everybody is working very, very hard on both sides, the Senate and the 
House, to try to come to agreement not only with respect to funding of 
the government, but also with respect to the response to COVID-19 and 
the pandemic that afflicts our people and has afflicted our economy in 
a very negative way. So we are trying to get to an agreement, trying to 
get paper done.
  Mr. Speaker, I have told the Republican whip that we intend to ask 
for a recess until 5 o'clock this afternoon, which would give us 3 more 
hours to work on both the discussions. And I just got off the phone 
with the Speaker, who just got off the phone with Senator McConnell, 
and so we are hoping that, in the next 3 hours, we will have a clearer 
picture of where we are.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Scalise), 
my friend.
  Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  As the gentleman from Maryland pointed out, we know government 
funding expires at midnight. Clearly, we have been working for days in 
a very productive way to get close to an agreement on both funding of 
government as well as COVID relief. We are not quite there on all of 
these details, but we are eager to see if we can get this resolved.
  As the gentleman knows, everybody, Members on both sides are very 
interested in finding out what the schedule will be. I appreciate that 
update, and I imagine that means we will stay tuned and see if, between 
now and 5 p.m., we can get that resolved.
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman.
  For the general Membership, I would urge them, however, to keep 
tonight free, tomorrow free, Sunday free, and such days thereafter as 
we may need--and I hope we do not need any of those days--so that we 
can, A, pass funding for the balance of the fiscal year until September 
30 of next year, and that we can give the kind of relief that, frankly, 
Mr. Scalise and I have been talking about for the last 3 weeks, for 
small businesses, people on unemployment insurance, people who are 
having trouble putting food on their table, transportation systems that 
are about to shut down, and other relief that both sides are trying to 
come to an agreement on.
  Mr. Speaker, I urge every Member to keep their schedule free, 
essentially, for such days as it takes to accomplish those two 
objectives.
  Unless the gentleman wants to say something further, I yield back the 
balance of my time.

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