[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 187 (Friday, December 2, 2022)]
[House]
[Pages H8721-H8723]
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 rise for the purpose of inquiring of the 
House majority leader the schedule for next week.
  But before I yield, I will just say that I know the gentleman from 
Maryland, the distinguished majority leader, has recently decided that 
he would not seek election to House Democrat leadership.
  I know he will be staying in Congress, but I thank the gentleman for 
all of his years of service in leadership, which, of course, takes a 
lot of extra time, in addition to the general duties of being a Member 
of Congress from Maryland, to help run the institution of Congress. He 
has served as majority leader, served as whip, served as chair and vice 
chair of the Democrat Caucus, and served in many different capacities. 
I recognize and thank the gentleman for that service.
  I am sure the Appropriations Committee eagerly anticipates his return 
there. As I yield, I thank the gentleman for his years of service and 
leadership.
  I yield to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer).
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding and thank 
him for his remarks. I will say some other words at a later time, so we 
don't prolong this colloquy.
  I will say to the gentleman, I have enjoyed being majority leader. I 
have enjoyed working with the gentleman, and I look forward to working 
in the

[[Page H8722]]

next Congress in a constructive way to try to solve the challenges 
confronting our country and giving our people the opportunities that we 
want them to have.
  I know the gentleman is going to be the majority leader. I will tell 
him, I have been the minority whip, and being majority leader is a lot 
better. So he is going to enjoy this job. I look forward to working 
with him.
  Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman.
  As we look toward next week, we will still have continued colloquies, 
at least one more colloquy. I have enjoyed these as well, and we will 
have time to talk about that later.
  If I could ask about the schedule for next week to the majority 
leader.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, let's hope we have just one more colloquy, 
maybe not three more colloquies.
  On Monday, Mr. Speaker, the House will meet at 12 p.m. for morning 
hour and 2 p.m. for legislative business. Members are advised that no 
votes are expected in the House on Monday.
  On Tuesday, the House will meet at 9 a.m. for legislative business. 
Votes will occur as early as 9:30 a.m. on Tuesday.
  The House will recess for the Congressional Gold Medal ceremony to 
honor the extraordinary courage and fidelity of the U.S. Capitol Police 
and others who protected the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and allowed us 
to return to this Chamber to confirm the constitutional duty of 
electing the President of the United States.
  On Wednesday, the House will meet at 2 p.m. for legislative business. 
The 2 p.m. convening time, I want to remind people, is because of the 
funeral of our beloved Don McEachin from Virginia, who sadly died after 
a long illness. His funeral will be at 11 a.m. in Virginia, and there 
will be arrangements for those who want to leave from here to go to the 
funeral in Virginia.
  On Thursday, the House will meet at 9 a.m. for legislative business.
  Next week, the House will consider the Senate amendments to H.R. 
8404, the Respect for Marriage Act, which will allow millions of 
interracial and same-sex couples to be able to live with greater 
certainty knowing their right to equal marriage is enshrined in Federal 
law.
  The House will also consider Senate amendments to H.R. 7776, the 
James M. Inhofe National Defense Authorization Act for 2023.
  Additionally, the House will consider two important immigration 
bills: H.R. 3648, the EAGLE Act, sponsored by Representative Zoe 
Lofgren, to phase out the per country cap on employment-based immigrant 
visas, with no increase in the total number, and Representative 
Takano's H.R. 7946, the Veteran Service Recognition Act.
  The House will consider bills under suspension of the rules. The 
complete list of suspension bills will be announced by the close of 
business today.
  Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, we noticed the Committee on Rules has 
scheduled a hearing on Monday for the National Defense Authorization 
Act. We still don't have any text for that bill. Obviously, the NDAA is 
a very important bill to laying out the priorities for our Nation's 
defense, and there has always been a lot of negotiation as it is 
leaving the House, as it goes to the Senate, as it has been in this 
conference. There are some issues that are well known that have been 
debated that, hopefully, will get resolved in that bill, but there is 
also talk that there may be non-related issues.

  What I would ask is when will we be able to get text on this bill?
  The bill is very important to our Nation's defense, but if Members 
are going to be asked to vote, maybe early next week on the bill, we 
surely wouldn't want a situation where they don't even see the text 
until early next week to then be asked to vote on that bill.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I think the gentleman raises an important 
point, how much time do people have to read the final product of a 
negotiation.
  I was hopeful, frankly, that the bill would have been filed today. It 
is not ready for filing today because there are still some outstanding 
issues. But I have talked to Mr. Smith, the chairman of the committee, 
who indicates they are making progress and they are hopeful they can 
get this done.
  So the Committee on Rules notice is subject obviously to the 
completion of negotiations and the filing.
  It is not done, not filed today. We need to have it filed as soon as 
possible. The conferees are working on getting that.
  As the gentleman points out, this bill tends to be, historically on 
both sides of the aisle, where we add a lot of things to it, which are 
not necessarily directly related but are because this bill is something 
that we want to pass and that we do pass--and we will pass this one. It 
garners riders, if you will, on the bill.
  That is still going on, but I am cognizant, and the gentleman is 
correct, we want to have sufficient time for Members to see the bill.
  We would like to do this bill next week, if we can, because, as the 
gentleman points out, this is about the national security of our 
country and our participation in international stabilization efforts 
around the world, not the least, of course, is the unprovoked, illegal 
war initiated by Mr. Putin in Ukraine. So we are hopeful we can get 
this done as soon as possible.
  Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, I just would strongly encourage that as the 
text gets filed, if it is not some time in the next few hours, that 
when the gentleman is scheduling the floor vote on that bill, that 
there is enough time between when it goes to the Committee on Rules, 
when the text is filed, to when the actual vote happens, so Members 
have ample time to review the final product.
  I yield to the gentleman.

                              {time}  1100

  Mr. HOYER. Yes, I think that is a good point, and we will try to make 
sure that happens.
  Mr. SCALISE. The final question would be on government funding. We 
are hearing there are negotiations. When we talk to appropriators on 
our side, they haven't indicated that they have been included in those 
negotiations.
  Do we know where those negotiations are? Are all sides going to be 
included on a final negotiation on how government would be funded for 
the remainder of the fiscal year?
  I yield.
  Mr. HOYER. My expectation is that there would be four-corners 
discussion, as we have referred to it, with the Republican and Democrat 
House and Senate leaders included in those discussions.
  Unfortunately, as you know, the Senate has not passed any 
appropriations bills, and there was no agreement on a top line. That 
has been the discussion.
  The difference, as the gentleman probably knows, is discussions about 
what is the top line for defense discretionary and what is the top line 
for nondefense discretionary.
  As I understand it, the parties have started talking in the Senate on 
that issue. We are waiting for, I think, agreement, and hopefully that 
agreement will be reached soon, hopefully as soon as perhaps the 
beginning of next week because the gentleman is absolutely correct, on 
December 16, the authority to fund the government ends, and we are 
either going to have to pass a short-term CR, a longer-term CR or, more 
preferably, the omnibus.
  I will say, as the gentleman knows--he indicated I was returning to 
the Appropriations Committee--we talk about a CR adversely affects the 
defense, and it does. You can't plan if you are a manager of any of the 
programs in the Defense Department. But I would also bring to the 
attention of Members, it harms every agency and department of 
government because it makes them unable to plan on what resources they 
have available to do the work we have asked them to do by law.
  A CR is a very clumsy, frankly, admission of failure to get our job 
done on time, which I have been very unhappy about for a very, very 
long period of time. It is an affliction that affects both sides in 
terms of delay. As I say, the Senate, when the Republicans were in 
charge, and when the Democrats were in charge, haven't really gotten a 
bill to the floor and gotten it passed.
  But we are not going to shut down the government, so we will propose 
some action which will preclude shutting down the government at 
whatever time that action is needed, but I am

[[Page H8723]]

very, very hopeful that we will do an omnibus because an omnibus at 
least gives the government and its agencies a year's worth of notice as 
to what resources they have to use to accomplish the objectives we have 
asked them to.
  I wish I had a more specific answer for you, but, as you know, the 
negotiations are going on about the top line, and hopefully that will 
be resolved relatively soon.
  Mr. SCALISE. A broader discussion for another day. Clearly, as we 
look at next year, we would hope to pass all 12 appropriations bills 
out of the House, but as the gentleman points out, at some point the 
Senate is going to have to start moving appropriations bills, too. It 
can't just be this game of chicken where the clock is going to strike 
midnight and the Senate waits to start doing their job until it is 
already the midnight hour as opposed to it would be nice if there was 
some kind of shot clock they had after we send them a bill where they 
would actually act on that bill so it is not just an onus on the House 
to do our job, whether it is a partisan or bipartisan bill, and we have 
seen both that come out of the House.
  At some point, the Senate has also got to do their job in a 
legislative body where you have a House and a Senate, if we are going 
to be able to conduct business that is not always waiting until the 
midnight hour to finally get a resolution on something as important as 
this. I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman for yielding. The gentleman is 
absolutely correct. There is a shot clock. It is September 30 at 
midnight. That is the shot clock. That is when government no longer is 
funded if we do not take some additional action.
  I said to somebody this morning, there are 535 of us. Presumably we 
are all adults, presumably we are all rational people. Neither side 
would agree that everybody is that. But the fact of the matter is, we 
don't do what we know we have to do. You may want to do a lot of 
things, and we passed from our perspective very good legislation 
through this Congress, but the only thing you have to do is pass the 12 
appropriations bills so you can fund the operations of government or 
make a decision that you are not going to fund a department, a program, 
an activity, whatever. But we don't do that.
  We have, unfortunately, the sense that the delay is an acceptable 
process, as the gentleman points out. Then you get to the last minute, 
a crisis, and then you get a big bill we call the omnibus bill, that 
really it is so large and so few people have been participating in the 
formulation of that bill that it is unfair to the Members of Congress, 
and it is unfair to the American people.
  I couldn't agree with the gentleman more that the appropriation 
process should be done, my own view is each bill should be considered 
individually. The Republicans started the practice, we followed the 
same practice of bundling them so we could save time. I look forward to 
working with the gentleman. I am going back to the Appropriations 
Committee, working with Chair DeLauro and Ranking Member DeLauro on 
doing that. But to her credit, all 12 bills were reported out of 
committee in a timely fashion, and this is gratuitous--you didn't ask 
for this advice--but what I would suggest we should have done if we 
could have done it is start the markups in May, pass the bills in June, 
send them to the Senate, and have July and August and September to 
resolve differences between the two, and pass the bills by September 
30. That is what we ought to do, I agree with the gentleman. It is an 
objective that we ought to try to attain.

  Mr. SCALISE. I share the gentleman's concerns there. One of the 
reasons we put the calendar out for next year this early and built time 
in during those months before the summer so that there is ample time to 
get all 12 appropriations bills through the House, give the Senate time 
to do the work well in advance of the deadline, and then at some point 
the onus has to be on them to do the job they have to do before the 
midnight hour. I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. HOYER. One of the things--I have been on the Appropriations 
Committee; I was on it for 23 years before I took leave--we had actual 
conferences, Senators and House Members on the two subcommittees came 
together, discussed differences, tried to resolve those differences. 
That essentially does not exist any longer, and it is not healthy, I 
think, for the institution.
  Mr. SCALISE. It is a good suggestion and something we can get back 
to, hopefully, in the new year, try to make this process work better. I 
appreciate the suggestion.
  Again, we will have this conversation more next week. Mr. Speaker, I 
yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________