[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 20]
[House]
[Pages 27588-27589]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          LEGISLATIVE PROGRAM

  (Mr. BLUNT asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute.)
  Mr. BLUNT. I yield to my good friend, the gentleman from South 
Carolina, for the purpose of inquiring about next week's schedule.
  Mr. CLYBURN. I thank my friend for yielding to me.
  Mr. Speaker, on Monday the House will meet at 12:30 p.m. for morning-
hour business and 2 p.m. for legislative business, with votes rolled 
until 6:30 p.m. We will consider several bills under suspension of the 
rules. A list of those bills will be announced by the close of business 
tomorrow.
  On Tuesday, the House will meet at 9 a.m. for morning-hour business 
and 10 a.m. for legislative business. On Wednesday and Thursday, the 
House will meet at 10 a.m. for legislative business. We expect to 
consider H.R. 1483, the Omnibus Parks and Public Lands Act; H.R. 1011, 
Virginia Ridge and Valley Act; H.R. 505, Native Hawaiian Government 
Reorganization Act; H.R. 3685, Employment Nondiscrimination Act; and 
H.R. 3867, Small Business Contracting Act. On Friday, there will be no 
votes in the House.
  Mr. BLUNT. I thank the gentleman for that information. There are 
really a couple of bills I wanted to ask about that I wonder when and 
if they are going to be coming back. As the gentleman knows, we only 
have a few more weeks of legislation outside of what we might have to 
do on the appropriations bills.
  Yesterday, I spoke on the floor, and others did, in opposition to the 
FISA bill, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act bill, that was on 
the floor yesterday. We quit in the middle of that debate. I am 
wondering if the gentleman has any information on when that bill may 
come back to the floor or if you have any information that it wouldn't 
be coming back.
  I would yield.
  Mr. CLYBURN. I thank the gentleman for yielding. We do expect the 
bill to come back to the floor, and it is under discussion as to when 
that will be.
  Mr. BLUNT. I thank the gentleman for that. I would say that we would 
be interested in trying to continue to work to get a bill on the floor 
on this important issue that a broad base of Members of the House on 
both sides could support. And as we were able to talk about earlier 
today, I would hope that we would have a chance maybe to look at that 
bill one more time.
  The other bill that got a lot of attention this week was the bill 
that was reported out of the House Foreign Affairs Committee on 
Armenian genocide, and I wonder if my friend has any sense of the 
status of that bill.
  I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. CLYBURN. I thank the gentleman. We are still looking at that 
bill, and we expect next week to have some announcements about it.
  Mr. BLUNT. I thank the gentleman for that information. We are very 
interested in that bill.
  On the bill that we just voted on, a vote that would have been pretty 
easy to predict, I believe, 2 weeks ago, I noticed just this week that 
the Governor of New York said that he would be willing to accept new 
language in that bill that would eliminate his State's ability to cover 
families at over 400 percent of the poverty level. I would suggest that 
that is one of the compromises that would really be helpful, if we 
could eliminate that level that appears to only initially apply to the 
State of New York. Last week, when Mr. Hoyer and I discussed this, he 
suggested that if the veto was sustained, that his view was that we 
should have an opportunity to work together on a bill that could come 
to the House floor. And I am wondering if the gentleman has any 
information on how the majority intends to move forward now on that 
bill.
  I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. CLYBURN. I thank the gentleman. I can tell the gentleman that we 
are serious about extending coverage to 10 million children. I think 
that the issue you just raised is an issue that has been talked about 
quite a bit, especially in the media, for the last 2 or 3 days, and I 
suspect that that is one of the things that we would be taking a look 
at in order to try to bring some resolution to. I think, so long as we 
can maintain the intentions to cover 10 million children, everything 
else will be under discussion.
  Mr. BLUNT. I would particularly think that that would be the topic I 
just raised, where families of four could make up to $83,000 a year and 
still have their children insured by taxpayers, would be one of the 
areas that, if we could deal with that issue, that would be a 
significant step on the bill, maybe not the only step necessary. But if 
we could now get in a situation where we could do what the vast 
majority of the House said they wanted to do just a few weeks ago when 
we definitely went on record saying we don't want this State Child 
Insurance Program to go out of existence but we want to do what we can 
to be sure that it is meeting the real goals of the program.

                              {time}  1330

  That would be helpful. And any efforts that we can collectively make 
to where we work together on this would be, I think, helpful in 
reaching a conclusion. And I think this too: unfortunately, I don't 
think many minds were changed in the last 2 weeks, and we lost 2 weeks 
that we could have been talking. But that's behind us now, and I'm 
hoping we move forward.
  The other major topic that I wanted to ask a question about today to 
my friend was on appropriations. I've been asking every week since we 
started the new fiscal year, or approached the new fiscal year, when we 
were going to have some bills on the floor or to go to conference, 
rather, on bills. On the Military Quality of Life bill, the Senate 
Democrats have been named to the conference. The Senate Republicans 
have been named to the conference. The House Republicans have been 
named to the conference. And I'm wondering if the gentleman has any 
sense of when we might actually see something now begin to happen on 
these appropriations bills.
  I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. CLYBURN. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

[[Page 27589]]

  I wish I could give you some good sense of where we are with all of 
that. As you know, these discussions are taking place. The rules are a 
little bit different with the Senate than they are with us. We've done 
our work here on the House side. I would hope that those conference 
committees will get ready real soon. I'm sure that we'll take them up 
as soon as they are ready, and I hope that will be very soon. I have no 
sense as to when that will be. I'm very hopeful, like you are, I'm 
sure, that it will all be between now and November 16.
  Mr. BLUNT. Well, I appreciate the gentleman's view on that. I am 
hopeful. I think we've got a handful of bills that have been approved 
now by both the House and the Senate, bills reported over to the House 
from the Senate; and my view is that we're beyond the time when we 
should have been reaching some conclusions on these bills, and urge the 
majority to work with the minority and find a way to get these bills 
done.
  I think in the Mil Qual Veterans area there was a substantial 
increase. There's been an increase every year for the last dozen years. 
But a substantial increase to the tune of like $18.5 million a day in 
benefits to veterans and military families; and every day we let that 
go by just complicates the delivery of those services. And I hope we 
can move forward.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back my time.

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