[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 9]
[House]
[Pages 13271-13273]
[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 good friend from Maryland, the 
majority leader, for information about next week's schedule.

[[Page 13272]]


  Mr. HOYER. I thank the Republican whip for yielding.
  On Monday, the House will meet at 12:30 p.m. for morning hour and 2 
p.m. for legislative business with votes postponed until 6:30 p.m.
  On Tuesday, Mr. Speaker, the House will meet at 9 a.m. for morning 
hour and 10 a.m. for legislative business.
  Mr. Speaker, we will consider several bills under suspension of the 
rules, including a bill to address cuts in Medicare physician rates. I 
will reiterate that. We will have a suspension bill on Medicare 
physician rates.
  The complete list of suspension bills will be announced by the close 
of business today.
  In addition, we will consider H.R. 5876, the Stop Child Abuse in 
Residential Programs for Teens Act; H.R. 6275, the Alternative Minimum 
Tax Relief Act of 2008; H.R. 3195, the Americans with Disabilities 
Restoration Act; two bills dealing with Michigan Indian Land Claim 
Settlements, H.R. 4415 and H.R. 2176.
  And we also anticipate considering important energy-related 
legislation including H.R. 6052, the Saving Energy Through Public 
Transportation Act of 2008.
  And I yield.
  Mr. BLUNT. I thank my friend for that information.
  I'm looking here at what we're going to be talking about. I will have 
some questions about that.
  Before I get to that, I would like to congratulate my friend on the 
great work he did on the legislation we passed both yesterday and 
today. Particularly the legislation today took a tremendous amount of 
effort on the majority leader's part to get that legislation to the 
floor. I'm hopeful that the Senate, before we leave for the Fourth of 
July, will pass this and get it to the President's desk.
  I'm convinced that the country will be significantly safer because of 
the tools we've given the intelligence community. But I'm also 
convinced that we have done a lot to structure this process in a way 
that not only protects individual rights, but also requires the 
government to be more forthcoming with its rules and regulations. And 
both the leader and his staff did a great job on this. And I know 
personally because we've worked together on it, and spent days, hours 
and weeks trying to get to a bill that would come to the floor that 
would have a significant vote from the majority side. And virtually 
every Republican at the end of the day was able to be there, as we have 
been on these bills generally.
  But I am grateful to you, and I will just point out that while we 
almost got a majority of the majority voting for this, there wasn't a 
majority of the majority. And that makes it harder for a leader. And 
that can be easily overlooked. But this is something where you had to 
work hard to do what you thought was the right thing for the country. 
And I'm grateful to you for it.
  Mr. HOYER. I want to thank you for your very generous remarks. I also 
want to thank you for not only working on this particular piece of 
legislation with me and with others, but also for the spirit that you 
bring to trying to work together if that's possible within the context 
of reaching a compromise, again, if that is possible. So I thank you 
very much.
  Also I want to say that while you and I worked very hard together, I 
think both of us would say that Mariah Sixkiller and Brian Diffell 
probably worked more together and longer and harder than we did. And I 
want to thank Brian on your staff for the work that he did, and of 
course, Mariah Sixkiller on my staff for the work they did, as we 
worked with all of the individuals and committees who are involved in 
the jurisdictional matters here.
  So I thank you for your kind words and I thank you for your efforts. 
I think that the product that we produced is a product that will be 
good for the country. And I'm hopeful, as you are, that the Senate will 
pass it next week and send it to the President for his signature.

                              {time}  1300

  Mr. BLUNT. Well, I thank the gentleman, and I certainly share his 
comments on our two principal staffers who have spent so much time on 
this.
  But one of the things in this process that I was deeply appreciative 
of, and that you mentioned in your remarks today, was how great the 
entire staff was in coming together on very technical issues where 
every single word mattered. The staff on both sides of the aisle were 
in those rooms you and I were in--and many times we were not in the 
room--when they were working out the last technicalities of which word 
was the best word. With all of those involved, it made a big difference 
here as they do so often, but this is one of those moments where 
exactly what is done makes a big difference in both how we secure our 
country and in how we secure our liberties. I'm grateful to the staff 
for that.
  On the Medicare bill that would come to the floor under suspension, 
as I believe I understood your announcement on Medicare physician 
rates, when would that bill be available? Will it be available?
  Mr. HOYER. If the gentleman will yield.
  The committee is working on that now. As the gentleman knows, we 
discuss this problem all the time. Of course, we had passed a Medicare 
physicians' reimbursement bill which precluded the 10 percent cut from 
going into effect, and it provided for a modest increase in the 
reimbursement rates to physicians. We passed that, of course, as you 
know, approximately, maybe, a little over a year ago. The Senate did 
not include it in the SCHIP bill, of which the SCHIP was a part of the 
CHAMP bill. The only thing they passed was SCHIP, and they indicated to 
us at that point in time that they would certainly pass the Medicare 
reimbursement. That has not yet happened.
  Unfortunately, the failure of that to happen has now put us in a 
position where we are facing the June 30 expiration date of the 
authorization and, therefore, the 10 percent reduction.
  Late yesterday, it was apparent that the Senate would not be able to 
reach a compromise or at least it had not with Chairman Rangel and 
Chairman Dingell after discussions--and I don't know how long those 
discussions took--yesterday with Chairman Bachus, and I don't know 
whether Senator Grassley was involved in those conversations.
  In any event, they determined that they needed to come up with 
legislation for the House to vote on to provide for reimbursement. 
They're working on that now. I expect it to be filed today, if 
possible.
  Mr. BLUNT. We've known that we were going to face this deadline for 
about 8 months now or for at least 6 months now.
  As to the process there of going through suspension, I would just 
tell my friend that I think, on a suspension bill, if this has Medicaid 
cuts that hurt rural communities or that hurt minority seniors, as we 
believe some of the cuts in the CHAMP bill did, I would be prepared for 
this bill to fail on suspension. It might pass with a rule. I wouldn't 
know about that, but I would give some prediction here that a 
suspension bill that does those things as pay-fors to appropriately see 
that physicians are reimbursed but then to have a big debate on the 
House floor as to whether or not seniors--minority seniors and rural 
seniors--are disproportionately impacted would, in my opinion, lead to 
at least a veto-sustaining number on our side.
  I'd yield.
  Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman.
  Obviously, we realize that there is that possibility. We hope that 
does not occur, but we are very interested in getting a bill in light 
of the fact this will not be until probably next Tuesday. I'm sure it 
will not be until next Tuesday that we vote on this. We need to get 
that bill to the Senate because we know they've had great difficulty 
passing a bill. I'm not sure whether they'll be in next Friday as well 
or on Saturday of next week, but we simply believe that it needs to 
pass as quickly as possible, but we do realize the risk.
  Mr. BLUNT. Well, to make the point, I'm not sure in my statement 
there that I mentioned a veto-sustaining majority. I'll just point out, 
if we had that

[[Page 13273]]

veto-sustaining number, rather, it would also mean that the bill 
wouldn't pass and that it would fail on suspension.
  Mr. HOYER. It would fail on suspension.
  Mr. BLUNT. So I'm certainly hoping that we deal with this important 
issue of physician reimbursement. I wish we could have done it with a 
bill that would have been developed sometime in the last 6 months, but 
we have some concern about that and, I think, appropriately so.
  We have a number of physicians on our side who understand this 
process much better than I do, and I think it's very important that we 
try to involve them in this process. We've actually got a number of 
proposals on our side, as you very well may have, too, none of which 
I've seen in any kind of legislative form.
  I'd yield.
  Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  We all agree that this should have been done earlier. At least all of 
us in this body agree that it should have been done earlier. Frankly, I 
presume that everybody in the other body agrees that it should have 
been done earlier.
  The problem has been, as you well know, the failure to get agreement 
and to get 60 votes in the Senate to allow almost any alternative to go 
forward. Obviously, we passed a bill that had pay-fors in it, which is 
what you're talking about, some of which were unacceptable to many on 
your side and to some on our side.
  Whatever we offer is going to be paid for. Mr. Dingell and Mr. 
Rangel, in particular, and his committee are working on that as we 
speak to see what they can fashion, and we hope that the two-thirds 
majority necessary to pass a suspension bill will be there--we'll see--
but we'll be working on this next week.
  Mr. BLUNT. My belief is that is largely not going to be dependent on 
the issue that solves the problem for physicians but on how that 
problem is solved. Of course, if two-thirds of the Members are not 
prepared to do it that way, that will not have gained any time. It will 
actually have lost time. We'll continue to talk, if you want to, on 
that.
  I notice there is also a bill on energy that is potentially to be 
considered, and I wonder if that bill would be considered under a rule, 
and I would hope that it would be.
  I'd yield.
  Mr. HOYER. The answer to your question is we do intend to consider 
that bill under a rule.
  Mr. BLUNT. I thank the gentleman for that.
  As for the ADA update on the Americans with Disabilities Act 
Restoration, I, personally, anticipate I'll be working with you to pass 
that, and I look forward to seeing that on the House floor.
  I'd yield.
  Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman for mentioning that.
  As you know, I was the sponsor and principal manager of the Americans 
with Disabilities Act when it passed. Some of your Members don't 
remember him, but he was a great Member of this body: Steve Bartlett, 
from Texas, who ended up being the Mayor of Dallas and who is a good 
friend of mine, has been working very hard on this as we attempt to 
restore it to what we thought it was when we passed it.
  The good news is we have worked very hard, and the disability 
community has worked very hard with the business community, and we have 
agreement now with employers and with the disability community on a 
bill that makes sense for both.
  I appreciate the distinguished Republican whip for cosponsoring this 
legislation, and I look forward to working with him to ensure the 
passage of this bill on Wednesday next.
  Mr. BLUNT. I thank the gentleman for that.
  Energy will continue to be an important focus of our discussion of 
what we think should be on the floor. We look forward to seeing an 
energy bill on the floor with a rule, and I would encourage the 
majority to bring every energy bill that we're trying to discharge 
right now to the floor as soon as possible.

                          ____________________