[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 121 (Thursday, July 21, 2022)]
[House]
[Pages H6942-H6945]
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. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. 
Hoyer), my friend, the majority leader of the House.
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Scalise for yielding.
  Mr. Speaker, on Tuesday, the House will meet at 12 p.m. for morning 
hour and 2 p.m. for legislative business with votes postponed, as 
usual, to 6:30 p.m.
  On Wednesday and Thursday, the House will meet at 10 a.m. I reiterate 
that because that's 2 hours earlier than the usual meeting, but we have 
a lot of business to do. So the House on Wednesday and Thursday will 
meet at 10 a.m. for legislative business.
  On Friday, the scheduled last day of the session before the August 
break, the House will meet at 9 a.m. for legislative business.
  Next week, pending action of the Senate, hopefully, the House will 
consider the CHIPS Plus legislation to

[[Page H6943]]

combat inflation by easing supply chain bottlenecks and semiconductors 
that are critical components in everything from cars to dishwashers to 
small electronics.

  Essentially, all of that, so many things that we use, rely on having 
chip presence. That will help lower costs for Americans and increase 
supplies.
  This bill also will authorize a generational shift in research and 
innovation in America, helping ensure the next big ideas will start 
here, and, importantly, stay here.
  The House will also consider H.R. 5118, the Wildfire Response and 
Drought Resiliency Act. All of us have seen the awful drought and 
wildfires that are occurring in the West and in other parts of the 
country, actually.
  A package of bills aimed at helping those living in Western States 
meet the challenges of fire and drought exacerbated by the climate 
crisis will be in that legislation. It would save lives, property, 
farms, and businesses from damage and destruction from fire and extreme 
drought.
  The House will also consider, Mr. Speaker, Representative Kildee's 
bill, the Susan Muffley Act, to restore retirement benefits for over 
20,000 hardworking Delphi salaried employees. That is a bipartisan 
bill.
  We will also consider Representative Quigley's H.R. 263, the Big Cat 
Public Safety Act, which would ban the private ownership of big cats 
and bring an end to the harmful cub petting industry in an effort to 
enhance the safety of our communities.
  You may not think about this, but law enforcement has indicated this 
is a significant issue for them because they are the ones that are 
called in to handle it. This is an effort to enhance the safety of our 
communities and protect first responders and safeguard these wild 
animals.
  The other reason it is on is because the Senate has asked, and I 
think there is a possibility that they will pass this through their 
unanimous consent process.
  Representative Jayapal's bill, H.R. 3771, the South Asian Heart 
Health Awareness and Research Act, will also be on the floor to raise 
awareness regarding the alarming rate of heart disease in the South 
Asian community and invest in reversing this trend.
  Lastly, I would say that we are going to have Representative Liz 
Cheney's H.R. 4040, the advancing telehealth beyond COVID-19 Act, which 
would further extend critical telehealth policies implemented during 
the pandemic, while also making it easier for seniors, especially those 
in rural areas, to access emergency healthcare technology.
  Additionally, Mr. Speaker, the House may consider public safety 
legislation, including legislation marked up yesterday by the House 
Judiciary Committee with a focus, as well, on accountability in terms 
of enforcement.
  The House will consider bills under suspension of the rules, of 
course. The complete list of suspension bills will be announced by the 
close of business today. As always, additional legislative items are 
possible, particularly in this last week for us of our planned session 
prior to the August break.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank the Republican whip for yielding the time.
  Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, there are a few bills that we have been 
hearing might come that weren't discussed, and I know the gentleman 
alluded to the CHIPS Act. I know the Senate still hasn't finalized 
anything there. We are hearing they may.
  There are some other bills we have been hearing might come over. Of 
course, it seems like we keep hearing talk that something on Build Back 
Better may come back over on budget reconciliation, whether it is the 
trillion plus, whether it is something different, whether we would come 
back in August to deal with that.
  I don't know if the gentleman can touch on what he might be hearing 
from the Senate, and if there would be any plans beyond next week to 
come back in August where it is currently not scheduled to be a 
legislative period that we would be in session. I am not sure if the 
gentleman is willing to share that, but I will yield.
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlemen for his question.
  Of course, we are hearing rumors all the time and press reports all 
the time about what may happen. I think most of us don't know actually 
what will happen. But to speculate, we clearly on our side of the 
aisle, and, obviously, there is discussion that continues in the Senate 
about taking some parts of the reconciliation bill that can be agreed 
upon by sufficient numbers to pass it through reconciliation.
  If something does happen, and it doesn't happen next week and it 
happens the following week when we will not be here, then we may well 
have to come back.
  I tell the gentleman the reason for that is it may well deal with the 
Affordable Care Act and the premium subsidies that were included in the 
American Recovery Plan and then further extended in the Build Back 
Better Act.
  The reason that is important is because the insurance companies will 
be setting prices in September and maybe as late as October. In order 
to price their product properly, they will need to know what we are 
going to do.
  Now, with respect to the gentleman's--and everybody's interested in 
this, of course. The gentleman asked the question, I think, that 
everybody wants to know: Are we going to come back in August?
  I don't know the answer to that, but I will tell you this--and you 
and I have discussed this before--one of the reasons we are leaving 
next week and the week thereafter is because we have a lot of people 
with young children. We see them on the floor all the time.
  Of course, schools now are going back earlier than they used to. When 
I was in school in the 1800s, schools went back after Labor Day. Now, 
as you know, we have schools going back as early as the middle of 
August. Therefore, what we have tried to do is have 2 weeks that 
Members will have to be with their families on vacation.
  So my expectation is if we have to come back that we will not come 
back during the first 2 weeks. That would be from my perspective, and I 
don't want to guarantee that, but I feel pretty strongly about that.
  I am telling our Members that, and I want to respond publicly, but we 
may have to come back in August, again, because if the Senate passes 
language, if it has an impact on ACA, then we need to let the insurance 
companies know, not as a favor to them but as a favor to our 
constituents, so the pricing of their product will be more affordable.
  Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman, and I appreciate 
especially the concern about that first 2 weeks because as with my 
family and a lot of families, those first few weeks where the families 
are still together before everybody goes back to school, you know, a 
lot of plans are made.
  We have a lot of work to do. We also have families, and you don't 
want to, you know, lose that element of having people be able to spend 
the time back in their districts and back with their families. If 
schedules have to change, at least give some lead time. I know Members 
on both sides appreciate that.
  Clearly, a lot of this depends on what the Senate does or doesn't do. 
For those of us that would prefer the Senate work in a bipartisan way 
or especially work in a way that focused on addressing and being aware 
of the inflationary problems in the country, and, of course, we just 
saw last week, 9.1 percent inflation, 40-year high, a lot of that 
driven by the spending in Washington.

                              {time}  1215

  There is still talk that the Senate is trying to reach some agreement 
that would lead to a potential large amount of tax increases. A 
trillion dollars is a number that keeps being thrown around. It seems 
like trillions of dollars keep getting thrown around to the point where 
inflation has gotten out of control from the spending.
  We all know how much families are paying for so many things: gas 
prices, when they go to the grocery stores, all the things that they 
buy, if they can afford to buy them, those things are dramatically 
higher.
  Hopefully, the Senate doesn't keep adding to that inflation by coming 
up with more ways to spend money that we don't have. We will see.
  There is also talk that as part of the ObamaCare subsidies--you know, 
that is an entirely different conversation--that bill still needs heavy 
subsidies that are not affordable, but they are talking about drug 
price controls that would be paired with that.

[[Page H6944]]

  Again, more a message to our friends on the other side of the Chamber 
in the Senate, just for situational awareness when countries do price 
controls, there is a cost in terms of lifesaving drugs that are not 
available in countries where they have done price controls. When you 
look at the United States, clearly a leader in innovation--we have seen 
it with Operation Warp Speed where we were able to get three different 
vaccines approved in less than a year because we encourage innovation 
in this country, we don't penalize that innovation.
  But there are countries that do try to fix prices. While it might 
sound populist to do it, the cost for those countries is that many 
lifesaving drugs are not available in those countries. We all hear 
about Canada. Canada clearly is a country that fixes prices. France is 
a country that fixes prices. You can see here, almost half of the drugs 
that are available in America that save lives are not available in 
Canada and France.
  I know there is a temptation, as they are negotiating over in the 
Senate, to get into the price-fixing business. I am not sure which 
lifesaving drugs the Senate would like to remove off the shelves of the 
United States, but there will be lifesaving drugs removed off the 
shelves. Let's not do to drug manufacturing and lifesaving innovation 
in America what they have done to baby formula in America, where you 
can't even find it on the shelves. You will not be able to find many 
lifesaving drugs on the shelves in America if they go to price fixing.
  I know it is a heated negotiation over there. They haven't come to an 
agreement. Hopefully, they won't come to an agreement on something that 
would actually take lifesaving drugs off the shelves in this country.
  I would yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman for yielding. We are all very 
concerned about inflation, and one of the things that I talked about in 
the Affordable Care Act, a significant cost for Americans is their 
health insurance, and that bill is designed specifically to help them 
with the costs that they are incurring.
  But I would point out to the gentleman: Gas prices, which are a 
significant part of inflation, have come down 36 days in a row, have 
come down over half a dollar in most areas of the country, and so we 
are making some progress, but not enough.
  We passed a bill, of course, through this House which talked about 
price gouging. I don't know that anybody is for price gouging. 
Obviously, how to define price gouging is not simple, but having said 
that, I think certainly Americans want to make sure that they aren't 
gouged because they have to have a product.
  We have also passed the act related to food and fuel to help with 
supply lines, to help with competition and help consumers bring their 
food prices down and gasoline prices by, for instance, helping out in 
the Midwest with E-15 being available, which is a cheaper price.
  The gentleman is correct. We have and we are dealing with 
inflationary issues. In fact, hopefully, the CHIPS bill is going to 
pass the Senate. Hopefully, we are going to pass it here, and it will 
have other items involved in it, hopefully dealing with manufacturing.
  I have an agenda that I think the gentleman has heard me talk about 
probably ad nauseam, Make It In America. I believe we ought to make 
things in America, and in doing so, help bring prices down because we 
will have supply availability here. I don't know if the gentleman has 
heard me use a phrase, we need to stop relying on the unreliable. I 
think the gentleman has made some of those comments himself.
  I also want to say that there is a lot of, in my opinion, political 
assertion of the fact that this administration has caused inflation, 
which I think is completely without any factual support. In fact, 
although clearly inflation is unacceptably high at 9.1 percent in June, 
the OECD average of economically developed countries in the world is 
9.6 percent, so this is not something unique to America.
  It is a global inflation. It is not Biden policy inflation. It is 
global, largely caused by the pandemic, largely caused by the reduction 
in supply of goods and the reduction in demand for a period of time. 
And then with the American Rescue Plan we saw, not only in our country, 
but all over the world, there came a surge of demand, but because you 
had had the pandemic and you had sent workers home and they hadn't come 
in to produce goods, the supply was down, the demand went up, and 
unfortunately, inflation followed, which is very harmful to our people.
  As I say, the average OECD, however, is higher than we are. We are 
not an outlier. The G20 average is 8.8 percent, just about exactly what 
we are, and our closest peers--Germany, Canada, and the U.K.--are all 
around 8 percent inflation, so we are all in that place where inflation 
is causing our people a lot of pain, and we need to deal with it.
  The President has been trying to deal with it, and I think we have 
been trying to deal with it. As I said, we passed a lot of legislation. 
I think the CHIPS bill is going to have a really big impact.
  The car industry and related industries are one-third of inflation.
  Why is that? Because the chips shortage has caused literally millions 
of cars to be sitting on docks or sitting in parking lots somewhere 
unable to be sold because we can't get the chips. Used car prices have 
gone up because they are in greater demand. Again, when you have 
greater demand, prices go up.
  So I would say to my friend, you and I agree 100 percent that 
inflation needs to be dealt with. The Fed, obviously, is trying to do 
that as well because one way you deal with inflation is to increase 
interest rates and try to slow down the economy. When you slow down the 
economy what you are trying to do is reduce demand to meet supply and 
stabilize prices.
  So I say to my friend, we have been doing a lot of things to try to 
deal with inflation. I mentioned a number of those bills that we 
passed. A number of them are still in the Senate. But let us hope that 
gasoline prices keep coming down. There are some who expect they may go 
back up.
  They are not set by us. They are set on the international market, and 
clearly there is no doubt that the war has had an impact on those 
prices, a significant impact on those prices. That is not the only 
reason because, as I said in our colloquy a couple weeks ago, the oil 
companies reduced production by 800,000 barrels per day.
  Why? Because demand was down.
  Why? Not for a bad reason. The pandemic kept people in their homes, 
and they weren't driving, so demand went down, so the normal reaction 
of the supplier was to reduce their supply.
  This President believes that inflation is one of the top problems 
confronting the American people and the administration, and he is going 
to continue to work to try to bring that down.
  I am hoping the CHIPS bill comes over soon, the Senate gets that 
done. In whatever form it comes, I hope it is more robust than less 
robust. I think it will have a positive impact on bringing down 
inflation.
  Mr. SCALISE. I know there has been a lot of work by Members on both 
sides on the CHIPS Act. Mr. McCaul on our side, through the China Task 
Force, put out a number of recommendations. The CHIPS Act was one of 
them. Of course, one of the concerns we are seeing, as that bill 
continues to be negotiated in the Senate, it is not being negotiated 
more narrowly, it is being loaded up to the point where we are hearing 
numbers of well over $100 billion in unpaid-for new spending as part of 
that bill.
  As we talk about inflation, any economist will tell you, inflation is 
too much money chasing too few goods, and if we already acknowledge 
there are too few goods, to put another $100-plus billion, maybe $150 
billion--it keeps growing every day--of borrowed money, none of that--
they are not prioritizing existing money. Everything we are hearing is 
all of it would be completely borrowed money.
  Next week, we are hearing the Fed is going to raise interest rates 
maybe up to another point, and that is without $100-plus billion of 
additional debt being added on. If the Fed is telling us that the 
spending is leading to higher interest rates, which makes it harder for 
low-income families to buy their first home, for people to maybe expand 
their business where they can hire more people to go and meet the needs 
of the supply chain, they won't be able

[[Page H6945]]

to do that if interest rates keep going up.
  And yet, as interest rates are about to go up again next week, the 
Senate is trying to figure out how to keep adding and adding and adding 
on top of what is already probably well over $100 billion in borrowed 
money that they are going to send over here.
  I hope that we would keep that in mind as we are also trying to 
address these other problems like gas prices. I know we have talked 
about this many times. I shared it with the majority whip last week and 
would ask the majority leader again. We have identified a number of 
bills that have strong support that would address the many problems we 
are hearing that are leading to an inability to produce energy in 
America.
  We saw the President go hat in hand to Saudi Arabia last week. As I 
and many others predicted, we all knew that they were going to tell the 
President no, but I also suggested that if the President just saved the 
11,000-plus miles on Air Force One and stayed here and called places 
like Port Fourchon, Louisiana, they would say yes to producing more 
energy, not in Saudi Arabia where their carbon emissions are much 
higher, but here in the United States where nobody in the world does it 
better, does it cleaner, or more efficiently.
  That would create more jobs in our country, and it would give more 
energy security to our country. It would allow us to lower gas prices, 
not just for us but for our allies around the world. And yet, instead 
of working with us on these bills, the President chooses to go to 
foreign countries who have no interest in lowering gas prices, and so 
we still end up in this situation.
  I don't know if there is an opportunity to get any or all of these 
bills brought up where we could actually come to an agreement on some 
things that would move the needle and help families in America lower 
gas prices. Today, we are still over double what the price of gasoline 
was before President Biden took office.
  Wherever the price moves, up or down, when families are paying over 
$150 to fill up their car, it is taking a huge hit out of low- and 
middle-income families' budgets, and that is one of the driving factors 
behind the sluggish economy.
  I don't know if the gentleman wants to make an announcement of some 
of these bills coming to the floor. I would welcome that, and I would 
yield.
  Mr. HOYER. And it would surprise him.
  Mr. Speaker, we have had this discussion for over a month now about 
these bills, but also every time we have it, there is the plea that we 
produce, and if we would only produce. I bring this statistic up.
  As the gentleman knows, as a result of our going back and forth, my 
staff has prepared a paper--and they have done an excellent job--as to 
what actually is the fact. Fact one, U.S. rig count--that is what 
drills for oil--is at current levels of 733. That is up 272 from 1 year 
ago. That is a 59 percent increase from a year ago, so that there is no 
doubt that we are producing more.

                              {time}  1230

  Now, as a practical matter, those of us who believe in the private 
sector and the capitalist system understand that the reason production 
goes up is because demand goes up and, therefore, companies want to 
sell more. But there are also companies that have not chosen to produce 
more for reasons of their own business judgment as to whether they 
think producing more will cause them to have better profits or lower 
profits or stay even.
  This administration has presided over greater production in their 
first year than was true in the first 3 years individually--2017, 2018, 
and 2019, each one of those 3 years--under the Trump administration.
  We are producing oil, and we are producing product. We are going to 
continue to do that. I can give you statistic after statistic of how 
many applications have been approved, are ready to go, and are not 
being used.
  Rather than just rehash that, I will simply say, back to the issue of 
the gas prices, gas prices are lower today in real terms than they were 
at the end of the Bush administration in 2008. I pause for emphasis. In 
real dollars, the cost of gasoline at the pump at the end of 2008 was 
higher than it is today, and it is way too high today.
  I was out in Virginia, in a rural area, and I saw gas for $4.36. At 
home, it had been almost $4.95, and that was an extraordinary decrease. 
I said: Boy, look at that. Then I caught myself because it is still a 
burden on our consumers, middle-class, working families, when, as the 
whip says, they confront a price of two or three times what they were 
used to when filling up their car. So, we need to continue to work on 
that.
  I disagree with the whip in the sense, Mr. Speaker, that I think the 
President's visit overseas--there was some controversy to it. I get 
that. I think it was very positive vis-a-vis our close ally Israel, and 
Israel said it was a very productive visit. I am glad the President did 
that. I also think that it gave additional stability indicating that 
this President, although we are focused like a laser on Ukraine and 
focused like a laser on the Far East, we are still focused on the 
Middle East and trying to make that region of the world a stable region 
of the world.
  Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. This debate will 
continue. It would be great if we were debating these bills next week. 
I stand to be surprised and happily surprised if the announcement comes 
out over the weekend that some or all of these bills will be brought to 
the floor.
  I would give the gentleman a prediction that if the House were to 
take up and pass these bills, we would see a dramatic reduction in the 
price of gasoline. I will leave that out there for the gentleman to 
consider as one more reason why these would be good debates to have, 
where we could talk together in support of good policy.
  We are both blessed with good staff that help us identify really good 
pieces of legislation that we could bring to address these big, big 
problems that families are facing.
  Mr. Speaker, unless the gentleman has anything else, I yield back the 
balance of my time.

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