[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 20]
[House]
[Pages 28368-28370]
[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. Mr. Speaker, I yield to my friend from Maryland, the 
majority leader, for information about the schedule next week.
  Mr. HOYER. I thank my friend for yielding.
  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 end of business 
tomorrow.

[[Page 28369]]

  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. 3867, the Small Business Contracting Improvements Act; 
H.R. 2262, the Hardrock Mining and Reclamation Act; and H.R. 3920, the 
Trade and Globalization Assistance Act. On Friday, there will be no 
votes, as I announced earlier today.
  Mr. BLUNT. I thank the gentleman for the information. Two bills we 
thought we might deal with this week I notice are still not on the 
schedule: the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and the Foreign 
Intelligence Surveillance Act. I wonder if my friend has any 
information about either of those bills?
  Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman for the question, and I will tell 
him that both of those bills are under consideration for addition to 
the calendar. They have not been added at this point in time, but they 
are both possibilities.
  Mr. BLUNT. I thank you for that. On the question I have asked now for 
the last few weeks about conferences on appropriations bills, I believe 
1987 was the last year that the Congress hadn't passed a single 
appropriations bill by this time in October 1987, particularly on the 
Military Quality of Life bill that has been ready for some time. I am 
wondering if there is any chance that we could go to conference on that 
bill or any other appropriations bill in the near future.
  Mr. HOYER. We passed the Military Construction bill here handily 
through the House. It has passed the Senate. We want to get a 
conference finished. We know the staff is working on that. We hope to 
go to conference very soon. We certainly want to pass that bill in the 
near term, and other appropriations bills are being preconferenced as 
well as getting ready to go to conference.
  I say to the gentleman, as you know, we passed bills here in a 
relatively timely fashion, all by August, and I want to see those bills 
moved and sent to the President. We hope to do that as soon as we can. 
We are working on it.
  Mr. BLUNT. I am pretty familiar with that equation, where the House 
passes its bills and then we don't have the bills done. I don't recall 
ever getting a lot of credit for that, but I will suggest I appreciate 
the gentleman's position, and I appreciate the fact the House got its 
bills done.
  It still has been 20 years since we failed to get any bills done by 
October 25. Of these bills that are ready, I do hope we can figure out 
a way to move them, again, particularly on the Military Quality of Life 
bill for veterans and for the families of people serving today, and for 
military retirees, I think it's about $18.5 million a day of additional 
benefits that could have been going as of October 1, and I know I 
brought this up before, I don't mean to be offensive about it, but I 
really strongly feel that this is a bill that we could get on the 
President's desk and get started quickly.
  Mr. HOYER. We want to pass that bill. The bill that passed out of the 
House is the best bill that's passed out of the House for veterans 
since 77 years ago when the Veterans' Administration was formed. We are 
very proud of that bill. It had overwhelming bipartisan support. We 
think it is an excellent bill. We want to see it signed by the 
President.
  I will observe, though, Mr. Blunt, that I can't remember a time that 
I have served here over the last 26 years where a President said, if 
you are not exactly at my number, I will veto all of your bills. That 
has put a real crimp in the appropriations process of trying to figure 
out how to get this process done on bills that, for the most part, have 
been very strongly supported.
  In the Senate, there hasn't been under, I think, 71 votes or 72 votes 
for any of the appropriations bills they have passed. We have had an 
average of 285 votes for the bills we have passed, some less, some 
more, so that the Congress has passed its bills and with relative ease 
that it's considered on the floor, but the President continues to say 
he is going to veto bills if we go anything over what he has told us to 
do.
  Very frankly, we think under article I of the Constitution, it's our 
prerogative to fund the priorities that we believe are important for 
our country. We have done that, and we are hopeful. I have had 
discussions with the White House about the possibility of compromise. 
Mr. Obey has had conversations, and we do not have compromise yet on 
that position. So I tell my friend that that has made it somewhat more 
difficult for us to do.
  If it's unprecedented that we haven't passed one before October, I 
tell the gentleman, without having checked the records, I can't 
remember a President, certainly not this President, ever saying that to 
previous Congresses, which, by the way, as you know, for at least 4 
years cut defense spending below what the President asked for and 
increased domestic spending above what he asked for. We have not done 
that. As a matter of fact, we have enhanced the President's request on 
the Defense appropriation bill, as you know, for MRAPs and for 
Afghanistan and for other items that we thought were necessary. So we 
are over the President's number.

                              {time}  1715

  But we're working on it. We hope to get those to the President as 
soon as possible, and we're certainly hopeful that he will sign the 
bills that we send him.
  Thank you for yielding.
  Mr. BLUNT. I thank the gentleman for that. Again, I'd suggest on the 
Military Quality of Life bill, I think the President said he's ready to 
sign that bill, even though it exceeds his request. And of course it 
would drive the average up dramatically of the passage of the other 
bill, since every Member of the House voted for it. But the other bills 
did get bipartisan support at some level. I do understand that.
  I also understand that I think all the other bills, but one, probably 
had enough people voting against them to sustain a veto. But as the 
actions today would have been evidence of, the very fact the President 
says he's going to veto is not the ultimate impediment to us getting 
our work done and challenging him with that.
  One of the announcements you made today was on the Trade Adjustment 
Assistance Act. I wonder, could we begin to expect a vote then on the 
Peru Free Trade Agreement after Trade Adjustment Assistance is on the 
floor next week?
  Mr. HOYER. It is my hope and expectation that we will schedule Peru 
for the week of the 5th, the vote on the Peru Trade Agreement the week 
of the 5th, which would be not next week, but the week after.
  Mr. BLUNT. But the following week, the week after we do Trade 
Adjustment Assistance is what the gentleman is saying.
  Mr. HOYER. Yes.
  Mr. BLUNT. I appreciate that.
  On the calendar generally, I actually received a document this week 
that one of your chairmen had sent around town that suggested, actually 
it didn't suggest, it said here's going to be the schedule for 
December. I wonder if that's accurate, or if the gentleman could share 
his plans for December, if we are in, this would be assuming, my 
friend, that we haven't finished our work yet on November 16, we'll be 
working in December. Are we to the point yet, as this chairman 
suggested we were, that there is a rough Members' outline of how you 
could schedule other activities if we're still working in December?
  Mr. HOYER. I don't know the paper to which you refer. However, I know 
what I've told the chairmen so I would be glad to relate it to our 
Members for their planning purposes.
  The Senate decided to be out the last 2 weeks of November, obviously 
the last week being Thanksgiving or I guess it's the next to last week 
being Thanksgiving, and we will be out that week because the Senate 
won't be in. And frankly, after the 16th, what I've told the committee 
chairmen is that the only business that I will schedule time for will 
be the finishing of business that we've already initiated and that we 
are getting back from the Senate, whether it's appropriations bills or 
other conference reports on authorization bills, Energy being one. We 
might

[[Page 28370]]

be able to do that prior to the 16th. But if not, Energy would 
certainly be one of those bills. There would be others that would fall 
in that category, but there would be no initiated legislation out of 
the House after the 16th of November.
  I have then told Members, as you refer to, and the chairman has 
referred to, that it will be my intention in December to schedule us 
the first Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, that's the 4th, 5th and 6th 
of December. And then, if necessary, Members ought to keep their 
calendars flexible for the Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of the next 
week.
  Now, the Speaker and I both have talked to the leader in the Senate, 
hopeful that by the 6th of December we can finish our business. But, as 
you well know, and I'm more empathetic with your pain every day that 
you experienced, we need to make plans for contingencies because we 
meet contingencies on a regular basis. So that's the second week.
  But the point, for planning, is that I do not intend to schedule 
Mondays or Fridays in December.
  Mr. BLUNT. Okay. That's very helpful.
  I know our planned adjournment day was tomorrow, and we've known for 
some time we wouldn't make that; but I believe your information here is 
very helpful, that Members, if we are working in December, those first 
two weeks, would anticipate that Monday and Friday of those two weeks 
would not likely be scheduled work days, and they could schedule other 
things in their districts.
  Mr. HOYER. The gentleman is correct. Obviously, there are 
contingencies on which, particularly I think a Friday, not so much on a 
Monday, on a Friday. We have not yet decided when, for instance, if we 
need a CR, as is quite likely, when that CR will end. And, obviously, 
we're not going to, we have no intention, and I know I talked to the 
President, the President has no intention of shutting down the 
government. So we need some flexibility for those days for that 
contingency. We have no intention of being certainly at home and having 
the government shut down. We need to reach accommodation on that.
  But, generally speaking, those would be the six days that I want to 
have us try to be available. The first three I'm sure we're going to be 
here. The second three I hope we're not here, but I don't want Members 
to schedule themselves.
  I might make one additional announcement that might be helpful to 
Members. We have decided that we will be coming back after the 
Christmas/New Year's break on the 15th of January; that's a Tuesday at 
6:30 p.m. on the 15th.
  Mr. BLUNT. I thank the gentleman. That's very helpful information for 
our Members on the time we will be working and the information for next 
week.
  And I yield back.

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