[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 186 (Friday, October 22, 2021)]
[House]
[Pages H5816-H5823]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          LEGISLATIVE PROGRAM

  (Mr. SCALISE asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. SCALISE. Madam Speaker, I rise for the purpose of inquiring of 
the majority leader the schedule for next week.
  Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), my 
friend, the majority leader.
  Mr. HOYER. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  On Monday, the House will meet at 12 p.m. for morning hour and 2 p.m. 
for legislative business with votes postponed, as usual, until 6:30 
p.m.
  On Tuesday, the House will meet at 10 a.m. for morning hour and 12 
p.m. for legislative business.
  And on Wednesday, the House will meet at 12 p.m. for legislative 
business.
  On Thursday, the House will meet at 9 a.m. for legislative business.
  Madam Speaker, the House will consider several bills under suspension 
of the rules. The complete list of suspension bills will be announced 
by the close of business today.
  With the short-term extension of the Surface Transportation Program 
through October 31, the House will aim to consider the bipartisan 
Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Build Back Better Act 
this work period.
  In addition, the House will consider H.R. 2119, the Family Violence 
Prevention and Services Improvement Act of 2021, sponsored by Lucy 
McBath of Georgia. That bill modifies and expands and reauthorizes, 
through fiscal year 2026, the Family Violence Prevention and Services 
Program, which funds emergency shelters and supports related assistance 
for victims of domestic violence.
  Madam Speaker, if time allows, the House may also consider H.R. 3992, 
the Protecting Older Jobs Applicants Act, which allows applicants to 
bring disparate impact claims under the Age Discrimination in 
Employment Act of 1967 when they experience discrimination while 
seeking a job.
  Lastly, additional legislative items may be possible when and if they 
are ready.
  Mr. SCALISE. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman. As we go through 
the bills that may come up next week--of course, we just finished a 
week bringing some bills to the floor, but as we look around the 
country, clearly the main concern we are hearing from families are all 
of the various crises that are facing American families.
  You have an inflation crises with goods of all kinds costing 
dramatically more when people go to buy things at the grocery store. If 
they try to get a new appliance, they are waiting longer, they are 
paying more money.
  You think about the energy crisis with families paying 50 percent 
more for gasoline, in some cases, with dramatic increases at the pump 
and the pain that it causes, especially lower income families.
  The border crisis, where every day we see stories of thousands of 
people coming across our border illegally. The Attorney General was 
before the Committee on the Judiciary and he couldn't even give a 
number of how many people have illegally crossed or plan to address it.
  The supply chain crisis that we see getting worse and worse with 
ships backed up, maybe almost all the way to China, because that crisis 
is not being addressed.
  So when you think about all these crises that families are angry 
about--it is hurting hardworking families, it is costing them, it is 
taking money out of their paychecks--there has not been a single bill 
brought to this floor last week. It doesn't sound like any is being 
brought to the floor next week to address any of those crises.
  I would ask the gentleman, would he be open to bringing actual 
legislation to the floor to address the various, serious crises that 
families are facing today?
  Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Maryland.
  Mr. HOYER. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his comments and 
question.
  Let me say that I mentioned two bills that will have a very, very 
substantial impact on the welfare of Americans, of their families, of 
their health, and yes, even of their environmental security in the 
Build Back Better plan and the BIP plan, which is a bipartisan bill on 
the Senate side.
  I hope to bring both of those bills to the floor next week, if they 
are ready. Unfortunately, we don't have help from your side on either 
of those bills so it is more difficult to get unanimity on our side of 
the aisle.
  Madam Speaker, I will tell my friend, all those problems that you 
mentioned, would be extraordinarily worse if we hadn't passed the 
American Rescue Plan in March of this year, which helped families 
extraordinarily and generously to stay above water. Not a single person 
on your side of the aisle voted for those.
  So when the gentleman asked me, are we going to bring legislation to 
the floor, we brought it to the floor. You all opposed it, however--
unfortunately--that helped families, helped childcare, helped 
healthcare, helped health workers, helped States all to meet the 
pandemic that this administration inherited.
  The pandemic was not the previous administration's fault, obviously, 
but the failure to deal with it effectively was their fault.
  So I tell the gentleman that 5 million jobs have been created since 
this administration took office. Some people lamented the 233,000 jobs 
last month, how awful that was.
  In the best year that Donald Trump had, that was his average 
production of jobs--in the best year he had, which was from January 
2018 to January 2019.
  So I will tell my friend, we hope to be able to bring these bills to 
the floor. We think they will have a very substantial, positive impact. 
We inherited, of course, because of the pandemic--again, not the fault 
of any--well, we don't know whether it was the fault of somebody 
purposely, but in any event, for whatever reasons, extraordinary 
amounts of people were laid off around the world.

                              {time}  1145

  Then, because of the American Rescue Plan, we finally gave some 
people the resources that they could buy things that they had needed 
and wanted for them and their families, and now we have a supply 
shortage.
  The President acted through executive order, as the gentleman knows, 
to make sure that we had a 24/7 operation at the ports off Long Beach, 
off other ports in our country, to try to make sure that we, A, got 
goods on those ships that you say are to China--I don't know whether 
they are to China, but there are a lot of them; you are absolutely 
right on that--to get them offloaded, to get them on trucks, and to get 
them to where they could be distributed and available for businesses.
  Then, of course, we have a substantial shortage of chips, which the 
gentleman knows, which was caused by a lockdown for major producers--
Singapore being one--of chips.
  So, we are dealing with that. The executive is dealing with that as 
well.
  I very much hope the gentleman will help us get that legislation 
passed, which will make a major difference. Who says? Fourteen or 17 
laureates who wrote to the White House and said if these bills passed, 
it is not only going to help jobs, it is not only going to help 
climate, it is not only going to help health, but it is also going to 
help bring down inflation, which is a problem.
  Why do we have inflation? Because we have too many dollars chasing 
too few goods, so prices go up. That is true of employment as well, 
which probably is good news in terms of salaries going up for people 
around the country.
  I tell my friend that we do have some very substantial, important 
legislation

[[Page H5817]]

that we are trying to get done. It would be a lot easier to get it done 
if we had help from your side of the aisle. And your answer will be, 
well, it would be very helpful if you would take some of our ideas. I 
get that.
  I will also tell you, if the gentleman is concerned about all of 
those issues, if we don't protect the full faith and credit of the 
United States of America, they will all get disastrously worse. And not 
one of you is prepared, in a debt that we all created, all of us, not 
all on the same thing--it may have been cutting revenues, increasing 
spending, this, that, and the other.
  We all essentially voted for very substantial spending last year to 
meet the crisis of the pandemic. All of us did. The CARES Act, the 
largest of those, $2 trillion, was unanimously passed by a voice vote 
in one instance.
  The only thing I would say to the gentleman is that we are very, very 
concerned about what is happening. We are very glad that we created 5 
million jobs. Nine million jobs were lost the year before under Mr. 
Trump. He had a net loss of 2 million jobs over his 4 years--a net loss 
of 2 million jobs. This President has a net gain, and we are going to 
try to continue that. I hope we get some help from your side of the 
aisle.
  Mr. SCALISE. Madam Speaker, clearly, we stand ready to help on all of 
those issues. But had Washington spending and borrowing money solved 
the problem, we would not have any of these crises because trillions of 
dollars have been borrowed and spent under this administration.
  In the previous administration, we worked together on those budget 
deals, every one of them. The Paycheck Protection Program and the CARES 
Act were all very bipartisan, and it included addressing the debt that 
went along with it.
  There has been nothing bipartisan in any of the debt that has been 
racked up under this administration. So if the gentleman is concerned 
about the full faith and credit of the United States, which we all are, 
then stop borrowing and spending trillions more dollars.
  Families get this, by the way. Families know that if spending 
trillions was going to solve the problem, there wouldn't be a problem 
because trillions have been borrowed and spent just from January to 
October. What they know is it is the very borrowing and spending of 
trillions of dollars in Washington that has exacerbated these problems.
  The inflation crisis would not exist if you didn't have Washington 
borrowing and spending trillions more dollars, making it harder for 
people to get back into the workforce, making it harder for the supply 
chain to be addressed.
  What was inherited? I think we know what was inherited by the Biden 
administration. We had energy dominance the day President Biden took 
the oath of office. Not only were we producing enough energy for our 
needs, but gas was less than $2 a gallon all across America. We were 
exporting oil and natural gas to our friends around the world. We were 
undermining our enemies around the world.
  Instead of President Biden begging OPEC and Russia to produce more 
oil, we were actually shipping oil and gas to our friends because we 
could produce enough for ourselves. We created great American jobs here 
at home. We had low-cost energy.
  By the way, the technological advances we made here in this country, 
if there is anywhere in the world where fossil fuel production is going 
to be done, you want it done here because we have actually lowered 
carbon emissions. We were lowering carbon emissions in America while 
producing more energy. Now we have become more reliant on OPEC nations, 
on Russia.
  Not only is that bad for American families, but they are paying more 
at the pump because of that crisis created by President Biden's 
actions. He inherited an energy-dominant Nation. Now you have the 
President of the United States begging OPEC and Russia to produce more 
oil, which they are not going to do because they want oil to be over 
$80 a barrel, but they actually emit more carbon to produce the same 
oil.
  Oil is going to be needed to run an economy, any economy anywhere in 
the world. You want to make it here because we do it better than 
anybody else. But that is not what is being done. We have an answer for 
it.
  I know, last night, President Biden was asked specifically about this 
crisis that he created. His response was, ``I don't have a near-term 
answer'' for high gas prices.

  Well, President Biden might not have an answer, but we do. We have a 
number of bills, and I know the gentleman has pointed it out. We have a 
number of answers.
  Here is one. H.R. 684 green-lights the Keystone pipeline. You want to 
talk about creating thousands of good jobs, private-sector money, more 
energy independence for America; this bill would do just that, and it 
would do it today.
  If pipelines were a problem--I know President Biden doesn't want 
American pipelines, but he green-lighted the Russian pipeline, the Nord 
Stream II. So, clearly, it is not pipelines; it is American pipelines 
he doesn't want.
  Why don't we bring up H.R. 684 to create jobs and lower energy costs? 
H.R. 543 and H.R. 859 would both green-light more production in America 
that President Biden shut down. There was production going on all 
across America, really good, safe, environmentally sound production. 
Again, our standards are the best in the world.
  For people who want to bash America, go find a country that produces 
energy that does it better than America. We do it best. Yet, President 
Biden, through executive action, shut a lot of that production down. 
These bills would open that back up again. These bills would lower gas 
prices.
  I know President Biden isn't interested in that because, in his own 
budget, he specifically blocks the Corps of Engineers from doing 
infrastructure projects that would lower energy production. President 
Biden blocks that. You would think OPEC would have come up with that 
idea or maybe Russia would have come up with that idea. No, that was 
President Biden in his own budget who said you can't even do 
infrastructure projects if it lowers energy production. Who would come 
up with that? Yet, that is in his budget.
  Then you go to the border crisis, again, self-created. President 
Biden inherited a secure border. A wall was being built. You had 
agreements with South American and Central American countries.
  Remain in Mexico was a great policy that President Biden reversed; he 
blocked it. Did he block it because it was bad policy? No, it was 
working really well. It was an agreement between two neighboring 
countries. He just blocked it because President Trump did it. It was 
working, yet he got rid of it. He could go and reinstate that tomorrow.
  We have bills that would solve the border crisis. I will read a few 
of them off.
  H.R. 4828 is a bill I brought to the majority leader's attention back 
a month ago, in September. This is a bill that deals with a number of 
problems facing our border today, and it would give more tools to our 
Border Patrol agents to secure our border.
  H.R. 471 is another bill I brought to the gentleman's attention a 
month ago that would help secure America's border, dealing with the 
crisis.
  None of these bills seem to draw the interest of the majority even 
though every one of them would address these very real crises facing 
families that were not around a year ago.
  President Biden inherited a secure border; he inherited energy 
dominance; and he inherited an economy that was recovering from the 
worst pandemic we have seen in lifetimes. Then, on top of that, there 
is a proposal to raise trillions more in taxes, more in Soviet-style 
spending coming out of Washington that would make inflation worse.
  The gentleman is correct. We don't support those ideas that would 
make inflation worse, that would raise gas prices even higher. But we 
bring a lot of good ideas that would address these crises. We just want 
to see these ideas brought to the floor.
  When you look at the floor schedule and there is nothing last week, 
next week, a month ago to address any of these crises, these are the 
things that families are having the hardest time with, and they are 
struggling.
  Inflation is the biggest tax on lower and middle-income families. 
President Biden promised he wouldn't raise taxes on anybody making less 
than $400,000.

[[Page H5818]]

Yet, in the tax proposal that President Biden wants to bring forward by 
next week so that he can go fly to Europe and talk about other 
proposals that would make it impossible to produce energy in America, 
they include, among other things, a natural gas tax. That tax would 
fall the hardest on lower income families, not the millionaires and the 
billionaires. It would be people making less than $60,000 that would be 
hit the hardest by a natural gas tax. Yet, it is in the bill.
  You talk about adding 83,000 IRS agents. Maybe some people in 
Washington think that is job creation. Most people in America have 
shivers running down their spines at the thought of the Federal 
Government, which now wants to track every transaction if they make 
more than $10,000 a year, to track all their transactions with 83,000 
new IRS agents. Again, maybe to some that is called infrastructure, but 
to most people, it is called a nightmare right before Halloween.
  Why don't we bring bills to the floor to address these crises? If 
these aren't the bills that the majority likes, let's work on some 
other ones. All of these would address these problems, and many of them 
would get us back to the point where we were, where we had a secure 
border, where we had energy dominance, where we had jobs being created.
  Each of these last few months you have seen jobs created dramatically 
lower than what the projections were because there are all of these 
self-created crises by the administration that are making it harder on 
hardworking families. It is the lowest income families that are being 
hit the hardest by these failed policies and all the Big Government 
socialist spending coming out of Washington. We don't need more. We 
need to actually go and confront the problem that is creating a debt 
crisis and all the other crises that families are facing.
  It is not going to be by spending more money and taxing people more. 
It is going to be by working to address each of them, starting at the 
root of the problem and what created them. I yield to the gentleman.

  Mr. HOYER. I don't think I can respond, nor do I intend to respond, 
to each one of those assertions. I noticed that the gentleman totally 
ignored the facts.
  The presentation the gentleman made, Madam Speaker, was as if the 
Republican policies were in place, we would be in high cotton.
  Let me remind the gentleman, Donald Trump was President; the 
Republicans were in the majority, Madam Speaker; and over those 4 
years, we lost a net 2.876 million people from jobs. The last 12 months 
of the Trump administration, 9,416,000 jobs were lost. Let me remind 
you, the best year you had, you had 2,820,000 new jobs. That is about 
an average of 235,000 jobs a month. Last month, when we were all 
wringing our hands because it came down substantially from 
expectations, it was 233,000.
  In other words, the wringing of the hands over the poor job 
performance you seem to reflect was the average of Mr. Trump's best 
year. In fact, under this administration, helped by a bill, the 
American Rescue Plan, that every Republican voted against--what was the 
difference between the first five bills that were passed and the bill 
of 2021 that every Republican voted against? Donald Trump was 
President, and then Joe Biden was President.
  It is like the debt limit, Madam Speaker. They know the debt limit 
has to be raised, or all the things that the gentleman just referenced 
are going to be hurt very, very badly.
  Before you start criticizing people for not doing things to help, why 
don't you stop hurting the ability of the United States to present a 
balanced fiscal posture to our own economy and to the rest of the world 
and have some certitude that America is going to remain fiscally 
responsible and viable and pay its bills? I don't know the answer to 
that question. Perhaps, Madam Speaker, the gentleman from Louisiana 
knows.

                              {time}  1200

  The gentleman from Louisiana comes from a very important and critical 
energy producing State of our Nation. I don't blame him for being 
concerned about energy. He ought to be. We all ought to be. But, very 
frankly, we ought to also be very concerned about global warming, which 
the national security apparatus of the United States of America, even 
during the Trump administration, said was one of the biggest 
existential threats to the welfare of our people and the global 
community.
  So, yes, we are very concerned about reaching an environment which is 
not dangerous for life on this planet. That is a very big issue for us. 
My friend is right, and we are going to deal with that in the Build 
Back Better plan. We are dealing with it, and we are dealing with it in 
the BIP plan.
  Now, the BIP plan is a plan to spend $1.2 trillion on infrastructure 
investment over the next 10 years which will make our country more 
competitive, will increase our ability to produce goods here in 
America, Make It in America, which will make us more independent and 
self-sufficient. We found during the pandemic we weren't as self-
sufficient as we should be and wanted to be.
  These bills that we are considering will do that.
  I don't expect many Republicans to vote for it. Even the 
transportation bill that I think they ought to be for--Donald Trump 
said he was going to spend $1 trillion, have a $1 trillion 
infrastructure program during his campaign, and then we went down to 
the White House, we had a meeting with him, and he said: No, $1 
trillion is not enough, we ought to do $2 trillion.
  He did zero, Madam Speaker, zero when the Republicans were in charge. 
Zero.
  We are going to pass this infrastructure bill, and it is going to 
make a real difference. It is going to make a real difference on jobs, 
it is going to make a real difference on inflation, and it is going to 
make a real difference because we can increase the supply chain. It is 
going to make a real difference on the health of our globe.
  So I tell the gentleman that he raises a lot of issues, and I would 
hope his party would start returning to a sense of bipartisanship in 
dealing with legitimate problems that the gentleman raises which we did 
in 2020.
  Now, we did. We were in the minority. We voted with President Trump. 
Actually, we were in the majority, but President Trump was President, 
and we helped support his and the Treasury Secretary's objectives and 
our own objectives, and we came to an agreement, a bipartisan 
agreement.
  Very frankly, it is unbelievable to me, Madam Speaker, that in the 
debt limit the minority leader of the United States Senate--and, very 
frankly, the gentleman just said that we all understand we don't want 
to--I presume he doesn't believe we ought to not raise our debt limit. 
I believe he wants us to pay our bills because he knows the 
catastrophic impact if we don't. But I don't understand why they won't 
support this. That is not an issue of Democrat or Republican. We all 
created that debt in one form or another. Certainly, last year we did a 
big number because we thought we needed to meet the pandemic. We did, 
and we saved millions of jobs in the process.
  So my friend has these bills, we have bills, we are prepared to talk 
about proposals, as I have told my friend in the past. But, very 
frankly, there needs to be on some issues--that ought not to be 
political at all, like the debt limit--a statement that we are loyal to 
our country, not to Democrats. I said this the other day to the 
gentleman, the loyal opposition, not to Democrats, not to me as the 
majority leader, not to any of us, but to the country.
  I would implore my friend, because we are going to have to do the 
debt, we are going to have to do the omnibus, we are going to have to 
do the debt limit, we want to do Build Back Better, and we want to do 
the infrastructure bill, those are four pieces of big legislation we 
want to do before December 30, I am hopeful that we can get some 
cooperation from the Republicans.
  I mentioned the debt limit because that is an issue that the 
gentleman came to us under the Trump administration and asked us to 
help with. We knew it was critical for the interests of the country, 
and on three different occasions we voted with the President at the 
Secretary of the Treasury under the Trump administration's request and 
voted to make sure that America did not default on its bills.
  Can I ask if the gentleman will at least, Madam Speaker, indicate 
that

[[Page H5819]]

they will support making sure that America continues to pay its bills?
  Mr. SCALISE. Madam Speaker, I sure hope that the gentleman is 
concerned not just about making sure the credit card bill is paid but 
making sure that the spending that maxed out the credit card is being 
done responsibly.
  There are some key facts the gentleman left out in his conversation 
about how we got here. We got here because in January, one party, the 
Democratic Party--who is in the majority in the House, is in the 
majority in the Senate, and has control in the White House--made a 
decision--I don't agree with the decision--but made a decision that 
they were going to go it alone on the spending side. They decided that 
they were going to go max out the credit card. We urged them not to do 
it. We still to this day are urging not to go and just spend trillions 
and trillions more dollars.
  If my friend wants to work with us on what the responsible decision 
should be, we are right here. We have been here from the beginning.
  Madam Speaker, do you know, to this day President Biden has not met--
we are in October, late October. President Biden has not met with the 
House Republican leadership on any of these issues--any of them.
  The gentleman referenced a number of opportunities where it was 
described we were there to help President Trump. The majority wasn't 
just there to help President Trump, the majority was in the meetings 
when the decisions were being made.
  The Paycheck Protection Program was not a partisan exercise. In fact, 
it was one of the most successful bipartisan exercises I have seen 
Congress come together and do. Everybody was in the room making those 
decisions. They were all very important decisions and big decisions 
that involved a lot of money, and we all made those decisions together. 
We all voted for those bills together, and then, ultimately, the 
spending that went along with it, the debt that went along with it was 
part of that negotiation and we voted for it together.
  There has not been a decision made this year where the majority has 
negotiated with the minority to figure out if we could come to an 
agreement, so the majority did it on their own and look, the majority 
had the votes to do it.
  But when the majority maxes out the credit card on their own, don't 
come and chide our side and say: Well, you need to be there to pay the 
bill when we weren't included in the decision to max out the credit 
card. And now that the credit card is maxed out, it is not as if there 
is an effort to slow down, in fact, it seems like it is full steam 
ahead, damn the torpedoes, spend trillions of dollars more on 
additional things like, again, 83,000 more IRS agents.
  Madam Speaker, do you think anybody on this side supports that?
  That is not something we support. It will rack up more debt, by the 
way. We don't support it, but I guess the gentleman expects we should 
pay for it even if we don't support it. Maybe if there was a 
negotiation where both sides were part of it.
  Sam Graves, who is the ranking member of the Transportation and 
Infrastructure Committee, has not been included in any of these 
decisions on infrastructure. Yet, I am sure the gentleman would expect 
him to vote for whatever comes out of a partisan exercise. That is not 
how things work, and I know the gentleman knows that.
  Again, if the President wants to work with us--
  Mr. HOYER. The gentleman continues to say facts that are not true.
  Mr. SCALISE. Of course, those are true.
  Mr. HOYER. They are not true.
  Mr. SCALISE. We all negotiated on the three different debt ceiling 
increases that happened under the Trump administration, including CARES 
and the Paycheck Protection Program. They were very bipartisan.
  Does the gentleman disagree with that?
  Mr. HOYER. I do not disagree with it.
  Mr. SCALISE. Those are the facts. And so when the gentleman looked at 
those facts, the gentleman talked about jobs and COVID. Before COVID 
happened, we had the hottest economy maybe in the history of our 
country. Wages were up for every demographic group. Those are facts. 
The gentleman saw small businesses up and women-owned small businesses 
were up over 20 percent. African-American unemployment was at its 
lowest level, Hispanic unemployment was at its lowest level, and then 
COVID came along.
  Maybe there is a reason why the majority won't hold a hearing on the 
origin of COVID, but if the gentleman wants to just say because of 
COVID all of that is Donald Trump's fault, clearly the economy shut 
down, and we worked to get it back going again, and it is coming back. 
Frankly, some of the efforts to pay people not to work--and it is not 
just enhanced unemployment, it is a whole list of things--are hurting 
the recovery.
  But those things were happening before COVID hit a year and a half 
ago, and it was because of good, sound policies that got us a secure 
border and that got us energy dominance, and, frankly, it was things 
like that that helped us get the economy going again because it was 
creating good jobs.
  Keystone pipeline was moving forward. Those are good union jobs, by 
the way, and that was ended by President Biden unilaterally. He never 
even tried to have a meeting and a conversation with us to see if we 
could come to an agreement.
  Again, I guess it is the prerogative of the majority. If the 
gentleman is in the majority, then the majority doesn't have to talk to 
the minority. But just because the majority didn't talk to the minority 
and they made decisions on their own about what they wanted to do, they 
didn't try to reach an agreement with us, to come to us after the fact 
when the majority has spent trillions of dollars, it has wreaked havoc 
through our economy, it has led to inflation we haven't seen in 
generations and gas prices we haven't seen in decades, then the 
majority wants to come and not ask us how to fix it--we have got ideas 
on how to fix it--the majority asks us to pay the bill.
  Why don't we work together on the front end and not rack up trillions 
more in spending?
  Because the things the gentleman talked about would rack up trillions 
more in spending which created these problems, and we were not a part 
of those conversations. I wish we were a part of the conversations and 
it was done in a bipartisan way. But, again, President Biden, 10 months 
into his administration, has yet to sit down and meet with House 
Republican leadership to talk about any of these ideas and solutions we 
could come up with together which is how it should be done.
  Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. HOYER. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  The reason I said he was misstating the facts is we have a bipartisan 
bill. It wasn't done by the Democratic leadership. It, frankly, wasn't 
done by the Republican leadership. It was done by Members of the United 
States Senate on the Republican side and on the Democratic side.
  That bill was sent over here with almost half of the Republicans in 
the United States Senate voting for it, and my friend's leadership is 
lobbying against that infrastructure bill which would help all the 
issues the gentleman raised.
  My friend is urging a ``no'' vote on that, and he is threatening 
Members who are going to vote for it--maybe not very many--because they 
know it is a bipartisan bill.
  Mr. SCALISE. No one is being threatened.
  Mr. HOYER. Madam Speaker, the whip is talking about bipartisanship. 
There has been so little bipartisanship, and when there is 
bipartisanship, their Members are disciplined. When there is 
bipartisanship on saying that it wasn't a protest, it was an 
insurrection, there was no bipartisanship on that.

  It was a: ``We don't care what it was. We don't care that some people 
were killed. We don't really care that they were trying to stop the 
counting of votes for the President of the United States of America. It 
was just a protest.''
  That is what former President Trump said the other day. What a bunch 
of hooey. There clearly has been a conscious decision made by the 
leadership on the other side of the aisle, Madam Speaker, against a 
bill that had 69 votes in the United States Senate. We only have 50.

[[Page H5820]]

  And it is being lobbied against. Why?
  To hurt Joe Biden.
  Yes, they voted, Madam Speaker, for the five bills.
  Why?
  Because ultimately Donald Trump was for them. Not everybody voted for 
them, but the majority. And as I said, CARES, $2 trillion, absolutely 
essential, was passed. But the gentleman refuses to answer the question 
except to say: Well, the credit card was maxed out.
  The credit card was maxed out by date in a couple of those votes 
which we helped as the responsible opposition, as we did with John 
Boehner and Paul Ryan when they couldn't get votes to pass bills to 
keep government open or to keep the United States from defaulting. Yes, 
we cast the responsible vote.
  It is not a popular vote because it is demagogued, Madam Speaker. It 
has nothing to do with the debt. The debt happens when you pass 
spending or pass revenue cuts. That is what affects the debt, and that 
is what all of us do one way or the other.
  So we are all responsible and we ought to all be responsible. But the 
Senate leader on the Republican side of the aisle has said he is not 
going to do anything.
  Not only will he not do anything, Madam Speaker, he will not allow 
the majority to do it on their own because he is going to filibuster so 
it requires 60 votes. We don't have 60 votes. We have 51.

                              {time}  1215

  Not only will they not do the responsible thing on debt, which would 
adversely affect, if we do not extend it, all the things that the 
minority whip lamented were wrong; it would all be adversely affected 
if, for the first time in history, Madam Speaker, we fail to extend the 
debt limit, which, by the way, very few countries have--one or two--
because it is a phony issue. The debt is not phony, but the limit is 
controlled by what budgets we pass, what tax cuts we pass, what 
policies we pass.
  Once we do that, we go in the store, or as  Jim McGovern, the chair 
of the Rules Committee said, we go in the restaurant and buy the steak. 
You need to pay for the steak. The argument, Madam Speaker, of, oh, 
well, you are proposing a lot of spending in the future, is totally 
unrelated. The debt limit is caused by the debt that we already 
incurred. The two bills that we had, they don't affect the debt limit. 
We have met it now, not when we passed these bills, not after we make 
that commitment.
  We have a debt limit coming up now on December 3, which was totally 
irresponsible in and of itself, for political reasons only, coterminous 
with the funding of government. In 2019, when we took over, the 
government was shut down. We spent a lot of time opening it up. That 
hurt the economy. That hurt jobs. Now, at that point in time, it didn't 
hurt inflation. And I have been amazed over the years, over the last 10 
years, that we haven't had more inflation for a number of reasons.
  But he didn't answer the question, whether he would help on that. 
That is not for us. It is not for Democrats, not for Republicans. It is 
for our country. It is for our economy. It is for global fiscal 
stability.
  So I would hope at least in that area--not for us. I am not asking 
you to do it for me, Madam Speaker. I am not asking anybody to do it 
for me or for my party or for the President of the United States. Mitch 
McConnell says it is the country and the global community that could 
not afford default, and that is true.
  Let me tell you, I think that is the first step to showing bipartisan 
responsibility together; not for one another, but for our country, 
Madam Speaker. And I hope that at some point in time we can show that 
kind of good faith.
  I included this morning the remarks that President George W. Bush 
made in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, on the kind of America that he 
wanted to see. I would hope all of my Republican colleagues would read 
what George W. Bush had to say. It is so different from the rhetoric of 
the current leader of the Republican Party, Donald Trump, in terms of 
bringing us together as a country.
  Mr. SCALISE. Madam Speaker, I would be happy to answer the question. 
It might not be the answer the gentleman wants, but I would be happy to 
be part of an actual bipartisan negotiation on how to solve our 
country's debt. That has not happened.
  But if you look at the bill that the gentleman brought to this floor 
to deal with the debt over a month ago, it absolutely dealt with 
spending, not that already happened, but that will happen in the 
future, including the trillions of dollars of debt-laden bills that 
spend more money in Washington.
  It picked a date, and the date that the gentleman put in the bill 
that was brought to this House floor was December 31, 2022. That is not 
spending we have already done. That is spending that the majority plans 
to do in a very partisan way, not just through this year but through 
all of next year.
  When we are not even included in those decisions, then you come and 
say, well, you should just be expected to pay for whatever we want to 
spend, trillions more, between now and the end of a year, over a year 
from now, that is not a negotiation. That is not even an attempt to 
want to work with the other side.
  Now, again, the gentleman is in the majority. In the Senate, they are 
in the majority, and the gentleman very well knows that both sides have 
the ability, if you want to do the spending on your own, to address the 
debt that would be created by all of that spending on your own. It 
doesn't take 60 votes. The gentleman is well aware that there is a 
legislative instrument that if all the spending wants to be done in a 
partisan way--and I am talking about the trillions that are still 
laying in front of us that the gentleman said may come to the floor 
next week, not necessarily will, might come to the floor, might come to 
the floor a month from now, might come to the floor a year from now. 
And we won't even be included in those negotiations, but we ought to be 
expected to vote for the debt that would be racked up by it?
  If the other side were being asked to do that, you know your majority 
wouldn't go for that. But we wouldn't do it. We would at least include 
you in a negotiation. If we didn't want to, then we would be 
responsible for doing it on our own if we did the spending on our own. 
And the tools are there to do just that.
  Threatening to default on the Nation's debt when legislative 
instruments are included in this majority to not have default is 
irresponsible. That threat keeps being thrown out there by the 
majority, even though the majority knows they could, with a majority 
vote in the House and a majority vote in the Senate, address the debt 
that wants to be racked up between now and next December.
  Again, I would urge that all of that new spending doesn't happen, 
that we come together and negotiate what budget limits should be like 
we have done in the past under Republican and Democrat Presidents. 
Those were bipartisan deals. There has been no bipartisan attempt to do 
that this year.
  Why is there opposition to infrastructure? Well, first of all, if 
there was a desire to do bipartisan infrastructure, you are going to 
find a lot of takers over here. I know the gentleman made an 
assertion--probably not realizing it--but there would have been no 
threats, no threats made on our side of the aisle on a bill.
  Now, I see people being followed into bathrooms on the other side and 
all kinds of other things being done. There are no threats on this 
side. What we said is, we want an infrastructure negotiation. But the 
day that the deal was reached in the Senate with the President, he 
turned around about an hour later and undermined that deal by tying it, 
linking it, to the tax-and-spend bill.

  That is when it became a problem because taxing and spending 
trillions more dollars would be a problem to this country. It would 
hurt middle-class families and lower income families to have that 
natural gas tax, to have all the additional inflation on top of the 
inflation they already see. It became a problem for all of those 
reasons, that package, not the individual bill.
  As the President himself has said multiple times, as the Speaker 
herself has said multiple times, it is not a standalone bill. It is not 
two standalone bills. It is a package. They are married together at the 
hip.
  That is where the opposition comes from. By the way, there is a 
really

[[Page H5821]]

good bipartisan infrastructure bill that is out there. S. 3011 came 
over from the Senate unanimously. $500 billion of infrastructure is 
authorized in this bill. If the gentleman would bring this up for a 
vote, it would probably fly overwhelmingly. It would allow for, again, 
about $500 billion immediately that could be spent on infrastructure 
all across this country, plus an additional large sum next year--maybe 
$100 billion next year--on top of the $500 billion.
  It just passed out of the Senate unanimously; every Republican, every 
Democrat supported this bill. This is real infrastructure. This is not 
tied to some tax-and-spend bill that maybe the gentleman might think is 
a good idea. We surely don't. We know how damaging it would be to our 
country and to our economy and to middle and lower income families.
  This is a very bipartisan bill that could be bipartisan here, where 
we could be a part of a negotiation on something really good, where 
States wouldn't have to wait months. They have the money ready to go 
today. This gives them the flexibility to make their own decisions on 
what is best for the infrastructure in each of these States.
  Maryland would be able to control their own destiny on over $1 
billion. Louisiana would be able to control their own destiny on over 
$1 billion today if this bill passed.
  So, absolutely, we support real infrastructure. If it is tied 
together and married to something that would be devastating to the 
economy, of course not. Maybe if the majority would look at delinking 
those two and abandoning the bill that would raise taxes--and even 
internally in the Democrat Caucus those discussions have been going on. 
That is not just Republicans asking for that. There are a number of 
Democrats asking for that, too. That would be a bipartisan initiative 
to say we are jettisoning this idea that we are going to raise hundreds 
of billions, if not multiple trillions--whatever the number--if it is 
$1 trillion, $5 trillion it would be devastating to our economy and 
middle-class families.
  Let's abandon that and go work on something that would actually be 
real infrastructure that we could all rally behind. It would pass 
overwhelmingly. It would be good for the country. President Biden would 
get to sign it into law. We would support that.
  I ask the gentleman to look at S. 3011, and if he is not a supporter 
of that plan that passed with 100 Senators, maybe there is a better 
idea. But this one is a really good one that got every Republican and 
every Democrat in the Senate earlier this week to say yes. We would be 
happy to say yes to it as well if we are given that opportunity. I 
yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. HOYER. Madam Speaker, I think that bill passed the Senate 
Wednesday, so we will look at it, but we haven't had a chance to look 
at it at this point in time.
  I want to get back--and I know this sounds like a broken record on 
the debt limit, but the gentleman makes the point, Madam Speaker, that 
somehow we have raised the debt to accommodate spending. That is what 
you always do because if you reach the debt limit, you are done. You 
stop Social Security. You stop veterans' payments. You stop any support 
payments. You stop paying the armed services of the United States. That 
is the spending you stop when you can no longer incur debt. Why? 
Because we spent a lot of money. We put it on the credit card, and it 
is coming due. It comes due on a regular basis, and we have to pay it 
on a regular basis.
  The gentleman has voted for bills that do exactly what the bill he 
lamented, and none of his colleagues voted for, Madam Speaker, exactly 
what he asked us to do, extend it by a date, not a number, by a date. 
Then he hypothesizes, well, in that timeframe, you are going to incur 
additional expenses. He is absolutely right.
  So, he is lamenting and giving as a reason for his not voting for it 
is because there are some proposals to spend money in the future. There 
are lots of them from all sides.
  Then he brings up this ``tied together.'' Let me tell you who has 
tied it together. The Republican leadership has tied these together. 
Yes, the President talked about it. He said, no, they are not tied 
together. He said, first of all, they are tied together, and then he 
said, no, I negotiated this bill; don't do it.
  But I will tell the gentleman, as the majority leader who brings 
bills to the floor, their infrastructure bill passed overwhelmingly in 
a bipartisan vote and put together in a bipartisan vote Republicans, 
Democrats, and the President of the United States.
  Now, he is the President of the United States. I know the gentleman 
voted against certifying his election in a bipartisan move, I suppose.
  But, Madam Speaker, that bill will be brought up separately, and you 
vote for that bill on its merits and vote against it on its merits. Do 
not hide behind the fact that you don't like some other bill.
  Donald Trump said he was going to do a trillion dollars on 
infrastructure to help our economy. He didn't do it. Then he said it 
was going to be $2 trillion. He didn't do it. Republicans were in the 
majority. They controlled the House and the Senate. They didn't do it.
  We have a bill they can vote for. I would urge them to vote for 
extending the debt limit so our country meets its full faith and credit 
obligations and for the infrastructure bill because I think it is a 
bipartisan bill negotiated by Republicans, by Democrats, and by the 
President of the United States which will help our economy and, as I 
said and will reiterate, every issue that the gentleman raised, Madam 
Speaker, in his opening remarks.

  Mr. SCALISE. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman again for his 
comments.
  There is clearly a bipartisan bill on infrastructure that we would be 
happy to support, S. 3011. Nobody in the House on the Republican side 
was included in any of those negotiations, including the ranking member 
of the Transportation Committee who he himself has been urging a large 
bill. $450 billion was put on the table, which, by the way, if that 
were passed, it would be the largest infrastructure bill in the history 
of the United States. He was pushed out of the negotiations.
  Again, the majority has that ability because they are in the 
majority, but they surely never tried a bipartisan negotiation, as well 
the gentleman knows, on those prior budget agreements.
  It wasn't just voted for or against because of who was in the White 
House. It was voted for by both parties because the negotiation on what 
that spending limit was was agreed upon by the leadership of both 
sides.
  Mr. HOYER. That is not accurate, and you know it.
  Mr. SCALISE. The House, Senate, Republican, Democrat, we came to 
agreement on those budgets, and that is why the gentleman voted for it. 
That is why I voted for it, because it was a negotiated agreement. 
There was give and take on a number of items but ultimately agreed by a 
date certain but under a budget agreement.

                              {time}  1230

  There is a date certain of December 31 of 2022 that has no bipartisan 
agreement. We know what a lot of the spending will be, because 
trillions have already been spent that we were not included in and we 
strongly opposed. The gentleman knew that when he brought the bills to 
the floor, but he wanted to bring them to the floor anyway because you 
had the votes. I get it. That is the way majorities work.
  But if you decide to exclude one party from negotiations and go spend 
the money anyway and then have a whole list of trillions more in 
spending down the road and include that in a bill, I don't really think 
anybody expects the people who were pushed to the curb to vote for the 
credit card limit being increased with all the spending that is going 
to continue to be racked up--not that has already been racked up--that 
will be racked up between now and December 31 of 2022 is going to be 
done in a partisan way. That is what the record has been so far this 
year on the trillions that have already been added by bills passed by 
this majority. They weren't bipartisan. Again, that is the prerogative 
of the majority.
  We have stood here ready. We have listed bill after bill to address 
crisis after crisis, none of which have been brought to the floor. We 
are still ready to go to solve these problems. We have

[[Page H5822]]

talked about a bipartisan bill on infrastructure that we can support. 
Ultimately, the majority makes that decision.
  I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. HOYER. Madam Speaker, if this Congress had never met this year, 
we would have to extend the debt limit at some point in time this year. 
That is a fact.
  Mr. McConnell has said it is inconceivable that we would not extend 
the debt limit of the United States of America and fail our obligation 
under full faith and credit. As a matter of fact, the Constitution, in 
the 14th Amendment, says it shall not be questioned, but we have to 
take some legislative action.
  The issue is what is our responsibility to the United States of 
America, not all this argument that pretends that somehow some bills 
that are proposed on spending or some that may have been passed this 
year, if they hadn't been passed, somehow we wouldn't have to do this. 
If anybody on either side of the aisle believes that to be the case, 
they ought to be defeated by their constituents because they don't know 
what is going on here, on either side of the aisle.
  This is a very serious issue with respect to jobs, infrastructure, 
inflation, healthcare, and environment. All of those will be adversely 
affected, and the global community itself, if we do not extend this 
debt. We can argue about the other issues, but there is no argument 
about this issue.
  Every Republican President has asked that this be done. Every 
Republican Secretary of the Treasury, since I have been in this 
Congress, 41 years, has asked that we extend the debt limit; every one 
of them, without fail. Every one of them has said--President Reagan 
on--that if we did not do it, the country's economy, reputation, and 
well-being would be put disastrously at risk.
  I don't want bipartisanship. I want patriotism. I want people 
committed to their country and their country's well-being to stand up 
and say: I am not going to demagogue an issue that is so critically 
important to the welfare of my Nation.
  I say to the gentleman again: Exactly what they passed when they were 
in the majority, and we voted for it, setting a future date--not a 
number, a future date. Exactly. We didn't ask them to do anything more 
than we did.
  In terms of bipartisanship, I will again say: You have got a 
bipartisan bill negotiated in a bipartisan way that will be coming to 
this floor at some point in time, I hope earlier rather than later, 
separately--not tied to I don't like this bill, I don't like that bill, 
I won't do this, I won't do that, I won't do the other--which will 
substantially grow jobs in our country and deal with the climate crisis 
in our country.
  I would ask you to support both of those propositions when they come 
to the floor in a show of bipartisan support for our country, not for 
each other, but for our country.
  Mr. SCALISE. Madam Speaker, we need to do this in a bipartisan way, 
which hasn't happened. But partisanship is not patriotism, and we have 
seen a lot of partisanship.
  I have served in leadership under three different Presidents now. 
When we had to negotiate how to come together on the priorities of our 
government, how to properly fund things and deal with our debt, under 
President Obama, we had those bipartisan meetings in the White House. 
When President Trump came in, we had those bipartisan meetings in the 
White House. Still to this day, late October, 10 months into his 
Presidency, there has not been a single time where President Biden has 
brought a bipartisan group of our leadership together.
  I understand he has met with Democrat leadership many times in the 
White House. Again, that is his prerogative. He is the President; you 
are in the majority. If you want to do all of this in a partisan way, I 
don't suggest it is healthy and I don't suggest it is the right way. 
Every President I have served under in leadership has had bipartisan 
meetings to have these conversations and come to an agreement. That has 
not happened under this President.
  He ought to go and live by the words that he promised during the 
campaign, that he would work with both parties in a bipartisan way. To 
not have met with House Republican leadership once during his 
Presidency, 10 months in, is not an acceptable way to run this 
government.
  Then all of a sudden, things end up partisan, and everybody throws 
their hands up and goes: How did this happen? Just reach out. He is the 
President of the United States. If he says let's go tomorrow, we will 
be there tomorrow. But he won't do that. We have asked for meetings. At 
some point they have to have them.
  Again, if he doesn't want them to happen, that is his prerogative, 
because the same party controls all levers of government. But if the 
same party controls all levers of government and wants to just toss 
aside the other party in either Chamber--oh, we worked with Senators. 
Even some of those Senators that were mentioned are not supporting what 
is happening with debt, because there has been no negotiation with both 
parties on the debt, on the spending that gets us to the debt. So there 
can be proposals for trillions more in spending. If we oppose it, we 
have been very clear why we have that opposition.

  It wasn't us that married those bills together. President Biden came 
here just two weeks ago. They said he was going to be closing the deal. 
He was going to be the closer. We were going to have a vote on the 
House floor. The Speaker promised there would be a vote on the House 
floor.
  Instead, at that meeting, it has been reported that he said the two 
bills are tied together. Since then, he said: I want both of them 
coming to me. He has tied them together. I wish he wouldn't. That is 
the President's prerogative. He has made it very clear. The Speaker has 
made it very clear. It has not been our side that has done that. We 
want to separate those as a package, but they have been kept together 
as a package. Until then, at least we have been looking for other 
opportunities, and we found one in S. 3011 that passed the Senate 
unanimously. That would be $500 billion in real infrastructure today. 
Every Governor of every State would have the ability to start doing 
$500 billion in new infrastructure projects. We think that would be 
really good for our country. We support it. We are ready to negotiate.
  Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. HOYER. Madam Speaker, this needs to come to an end, obviously, 
but I will tell you this, as I stand here, as somebody who sat on this 
floor on January 6 and the question was would the House perform its 
function of accepting the electoral college vote to elect this 
President--it wasn't that there hadn't been voices in the past who had 
raised questions. But there was no effort by Ms. Clinton, who received 
the majority of the votes, or Mr. Gore, who received the majority of 
the votes, to raise a question about the legitimacy of the election.
  But we had an insurrection incited by, invited by, and deployed by 
the President of the United States. So we didn't start on a very good 
bipartisan basis, again, not because Republicans should have been happy 
that their candidate was not elected or any more than we were happy 
that our candidate was not elected in the Clinton and Gore campaigns.
  It was, at least, that we ought to uphold the constitutional 
principles. Vice President Pence did, and there were people in this 
Capitol on that night who wanted to see him, apparently, eliminated. 
That wasn't a good bipartisan start, Madam Speaker. The majority of 
Republicans voted against certifying the electoral college results in 
State after State. But we ought to put that behind us. That is done. 
What we are doing now is we are acting on behalf of the country.
  The two issues that I dwelt on, because I think we have agreement on 
that, rhetorically and intellectually but not electorally, not in terms 
of voting, is the debt limit should never be breached and that we need 
to invest in infrastructure, two simple propositions.
  The Senate minority leader says: We should never breach the full 
faith and credit of the United States of America, but I won't help you 
do it. I don't get that. Frankly, it seems to be kind of irrational.
  And then an infrastructure bill passed overwhelmingly by the United

[[Page H5823]]

States Senate, which we are putting on the floor unchanged, as it was, 
not coupled--as it is and was--and saying let's vote for that.
  Mr. SCALISE. Madam Speaker, we stand ready to work, if there is 
bipartisan efforts made. We will see if that develops.
  Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________