[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 3]
[House]
[Pages 3770-3773]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          LEGISLATIVE PROGRAM

  (Mr. HOYER asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute.)
  Mr. HOYER. I yield to my friend, the majority leader, Mr. Cantor of 
Virginia.
  Mr. CANTOR. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Maryland, the 
Democratic whip, for yielding.
  Mr. Speaker, on Monday the House will meet at noon for morning-hour 
and 2 p.m. for legislative business. Votes will be postponed until 6:30 
p.m.

[[Page 3771]]

On Tuesday and Wednesday, the House will meet at 10 a.m. for morning-
hour and noon for legislative business. On Thursday, the House will 
meet at 9 a.m. for legislative business. Last votes of the week are 
expected no later than 3 p.m. On Friday, no votes are expected.
  Mr. Speaker, the House will consider a few suspensions on Monday, a 
complete list of which will be announced by close of business today. In 
addition, we'll take up an expected Senate amendment to the House's 
continuing resolution, ensuring that the Federal Government remains 
funded beyond March 27. We'll also consider a resolution providing for 
the funding of the House's committees. This is a responsible resolution 
that makes tough choices and abides by sequestration.
  Finally, Mr. Speaker, the Republican House will consider and pass a 
budget resolution on time for a third consecutive year. The Republican 
plan, put forward by Chairman Paul Ryan in the Budget Committee, will 
increase economic growth and job creation, cut wasteful government 
spending, and strengthen our entitlement programs. And for the first 
time in recent memory, the House budget will balance in 10 years.
  Before I yield back, I would like to acknowledge the launch of the 
House Historian's new Web site, ``The House and Selma: Bridging History 
and Memory.'' This important historical record is now available for the 
public to explore at History.House.gov. It will soon include oral 
testimonies from Members of Congress, like John Lewis, describing their 
role and contributions to the civil rights movement.
  I was proud to have joined Congressman John Lewis, Congresswomen 
Terri Sewell and Martha Roby, the gentleman from Maryland, as well as 
others, in that trip to Selma and Montgomery this year. But to those in 
particular who were actively involved in the unveiling of this project, 
I look forward to its growth in the years to come.
  Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman for his comments, and I would remark 
that I was pleased that he had the opportunity to go to Selma with John 
Lewis and others of us who had the opportunity to go to the birthplace 
of our colleague, Terri Sewell. Congresswoman Sewell is on the floor.
  The March to Selma, of course, which was interdicted by members of 
the Alabama State Police at the direction of the Governor, was one of 
the advances, the gentleman knows, that led to the introduction, 
passage, and signing by President Johnson of the Voting Rights Act. We 
are privileged to serve with someone whose contribution to this country 
and to the realization of its promise of equality to all was so 
enhanced by the life and commitment and courage of John Lewis, our 
colleague. And I was glad that the gentleman participated with us on 
that. I also am very pleased to hear about the Web site. I think that's 
a very positive step. I want to thank the gentleman also for the 
information about next week.
  Mr. Leader, I would first like to ask about the budget resolution 
that you referenced that will be coming next week. I wondered if 
there's any plan on the floor to replace the sequester, which all of us 
seem to think is irrational--at least I think it's irrational and most 
of the colleagues I talk to think that it is irrational in that it is a 
meat-ax approach, and we have offered a number of times to get to the 
same budget savings--but notwithstanding that, whether there was any 
thought of replacing the sequester with its cuts to high priority and 
low priority by the same percentage to replace that. Is there any plan 
to do that, as far as you know?
  Mr. CANTOR. Mr. Speaker, as the gentleman knows, the CR, and the 
amendments that the Senate is working on, contains within it measures 
dealing with certain sectors of government that prescribe for spending 
plans that avoid that very blunt, indiscriminate approach that the 
gentleman speaks about in the across-the-board sequestration formula. 
The gentleman knows I agree with him. These kinds of cuts are not 
smart. They are indiscriminate. They cut good programs just like they 
cut bad programs.
  I don't think any of us would choose to do things that way. I look 
forward to working with him to see what we can do to even expand the 
prescription to go beyond that which is in the sequester.
  Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman for his comments, and that would be 
a positive effort, I think, towards that. Of course, if we could adopt 
a budget and if we could adopt appropriation bills and Ways and Means 
recommendations pursuant to such a budget, that would be a very much 
appreciated option to the sequester. Having said that, the Budget 
Committee did a markup this week on Wednesday, and I know members of 
the committee worked well into the night, both Republicans and 
Democrats. And I wanted to ask the gentleman, I know that normally when 
we bring a budget--both sides have brought a budget--which does in fact 
allow for substitutes, but for the most part it does not allow 
individual amendments.
  Now I say that because so many amendments were rejected in the 
committee. Mr. Cardenas from California offered an amendment to protect 
the mortgage interest deduction for the middle class. That amendment 
was voted for unanimously by Democrats and unanimously opposed by 
Republican members of the committee. Mr. Cicilline offered an amendment 
to protect workers from privatizing Social Security. Again, on a 
partisan vote, with Democrats supporting the Cicilline amendment and 
Republicans opposing it, it was rejected.
  Mr. Jeffries from New York offered an amendment to prevent the 
student loan interest rate from doubling, which as the gentleman knows 
is set to occur on June 30 without our action. Again, unfortunately, on 
the same partisan vote--the Democrats voting for the Jeffries amendment 
and Republicans voting against it--it failed. Mr. Pocan of Wisconsin 
offered an amendment to protect middle class Americans from tax 
increases. It seems to me that we have agreement on that; but, 
nevertheless, that amendment was rejected, again, on a partisan vote, 
with Democrats voting for it and Republicans voting against it.

                              {time}  1240

  Mr. Leader--which I don't understand--Kurt Schrader from Oregon 
offered a sense of Congress amendment on the need for long-term, 
balanced deficit reduction. That was also rejected on a party-line 
basis. And I could go on and mention other amendments--there were 
approximately 28 of them.
  My question to you is, Mr. Leader, is it possible that any of those 
amendments would be made in order so that the House might work its will 
on those propositions? And I yield to my friend.
  Mr. CANTOR. I thank the gentleman, Mr. Speaker.
  What I would say in response, as the gentleman knows, it has been the 
tradition of the House, both with Republican and Democratic majorities, 
that when the budget comes to the floor, there are substitutes that are 
offered. As the gentleman knows, the budget is a very complex and large 
document, and there are easy ways to perhaps distort one's intent by 
offering amendments. I believe--and I would just venture to guess--
that's why the tradition is as it is, both under Democratic majority 
and Republican, which is to allow for substitutes, and anticipate a 
very robust debate around the offering of substitutes, as well as the 
passage of our budget next week.
  Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman for his comments.
  I would suggest that the amendments put forward do in fact express 
policy, which of course is what the budget does. Those policies are 
pretty straightforward in terms of not raising taxes on the middle 
class, on making sure that students don't have to pay higher interest 
for their loans, and making sure that we do in fact proceed with a 
comprehensive agreement not only to replace the sequester, but to, in a 
bipartisan way, get us on a road to fiscal sustainability.
  Regrettably--as I think the gentleman probably knows--most budgets

[[Page 3772]]

are usually partisan documents, whether they're offered by Democrats or 
Republicans. I understand that. Rarely have we been in the position 
that we now find ourselves in, however. Rarely have I experienced, in 
the 32 years I've been here--if ever--the fiscal crises that occur on 
such a regular basis here. The public, I think the economy, and I think 
the business community, and indeed the international community, is 
hoping that we get on a solid path.
  The gentleman mentioned that the budget was a complex document. I 
think that's a fair statement. But, unfortunately, the budget that has 
been proposed--which the gentleman is very pleased to say balances 
within 10 years--unfortunately doesn't tell us how it's going to do so. 
It is in fact filled with conclusions, but not with policies to get us 
to that end.
  In fact, Dana Milbank of The Washington Post--I think you probably 
read this--said there are so many blanks in the Ryan budget that it 
could be a Mad Libs exercise, which I understand is a children's book 
that sort of has a couple of sentences and the rest is fill in the 
blanks.
  This, of course, is not a game; it's black budgeting, in my opinion, 
an expression of lofty aims--that is, that we balance within 12 years, 
which I think, frankly is--if there were no Democrats in the Congress 
of the United States, I tell my friend with all due respect, if there 
were no Democrats in the Congress of the United States, in my view you 
could not implement the Ryan budget. You couldn't get appropriation 
bills passed, and you could not pass a Ways and Means tax provision 
that would meet the requirements of the Ryan budget.
  In addition to that, Mr. Leader, you and I both know we voted over 30 
times to repeal the Affordable Care Act. It's not going to happen. If 
we want to do something in a bipartisan fashion, if we want to get to 
an end here, we ought to stop pretending that we're going to repeal the 
Affordable Care Act. We had an election about that. We won. The 
President won. Very frankly, even in the House there were more people 
who voted for Democrats than voted for Republicans for the House of 
Representatives.
  Having said that, you're in charge. That's the law, and you won fair 
and square. But having said that, we're going to need to get to an 
agreement. I would hope that as we deal with the budget--and I will 
oppose the Ryan budget. I think the Ryan budget is unrealistic. I think 
the Ryan budget will not possibly be able to balance within 10 years. I 
wish we could. But if we do that, we're going to badly damage the 
economy that the gentleman talks about. We're going to undermine the 
creation of jobs. I don't say that; CBO says that. CBO says the 
sequester itself is going to cost us 750,000 to 1 million jobs. The 
Ryan budget, if adopted, would cost us over 2 million jobs.
  So I'm hopeful that as we consider the budget--and my expectation is 
your budget will probably pass this House, but my hope is, and urging, 
Mr. Leader, is that we deal with this budget--and I don't know whether 
the Murray budget is going to pass or not through the Senate. I hope 
they pass some alternative, not because the budget-for-pay bill 
passed--which I think was a terrible bill to put on this floor and a 
terrible bill to pass. I think it sets a terrible precedent about 
you've got to pass something or you don't get paid. That's not what our 
democracy is about. People voting their conscience is what our 
democracy ought to be about, not about whether they get paid.
  But in any event, Mr. Leader, I'm hopeful that in fact we can get to, 
in some form or fashion of another, a budget and appropriation bills 
and a Ways and Means bill that can be signed by the President, passed 
by the Senate, passed by this House so we can put our country on a 
fiscally sustainable path.
  I yield to my friend.
  Mr. CANTOR. Well, I appreciate the gentleman and his sentiments in 
wanting to try and work together.
  As he knows, I have always held the position that there are going to 
be differences in this House. I hear the gentleman saying he doesn't 
want to support the Ryan budget; that's why we're going to have debate 
on his party's alternative budget. But I agree with the gentleman, we 
ought to try and reach some type of resolution. The best way forward to 
do that, Mr. Speaker, in my mind, is to be able to set the differences 
aside.
  We have big differences on health care. We believe that ObamaCare is 
not good for this country, not good for health care, and we're going to 
continue to advocate that position. Because, unfortunately, what we're 
going to see is a continuing increase in cost, rate shock that will 
come into play over the next year, where more and more of the American 
people are going to realize this is going to be a very expensive 
endeavor, with a big question mark as to whether the quality of health 
care is going to stay the same, improve, or whether it will stagnate 
and become worse. That question is still unanswered.
  We believe very strongly in our position that it ought to be patient-
centered care. We ought not have this board of 15 unelected bureaucrats 
empowered to cut or deny care for seniors. As the gentleman knows, we 
disagree strongly on health care.
  We disagree strongly on taxes. We don't want to raise taxes. We just 
had a huge tax increase in the beginning of the year. We don't think 
you ought to be raising taxes in this town every quarter. But every 
time we hear from the President--because we heard, and he was nice 
enough to come and visit our conference this week, we heard yet again 
the cry for more taxes.
  We saw an introduction of the Murray budget in the Senate--$1 
trillion of more taxes. To try and say that the American people are 
going to be benefited by that kind of tax levy I think is something we 
take strong exception with.
  But the gentleman's right: we can agree on some things. Let's go find 
where we can agree. And I look forward to doing the things that we can 
do together, like extending the welfare reforms that we did this week, 
like making sure that we also do the things we did today on the floor--
without much help from the other side--and that is, Mr. Speaker, try 
and put some good government practices into place.
  That SKILLS Act came from a recommendation of the GAO. It said you've 
got 50 programs, a maze of bureaucracy. Unemployed people have a very 
difficult time of even beginning to navigate that maze if they want 
skills to get back to work.

                              {time}  1250

  That was the essence behind the bill.
  We also said you need some flexibility. Take people and put them back 
to work. So get the community colleges and the other training forces in 
place to respond to the marketplace where there are job openings, not 
some micromanaged idea of what that should be from Washington. I think 
we can agree on some kind of commonsense principles like that.
  So, again, I appreciate the sentiment of the gentleman and look 
forward to working with him on some of the very big challenges we face, 
as well as those issues that working families face every single day.
  Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman for his comments.
  Mr. Speaker, the majority leader says that his side is against the 
Affordable Care Act. He's said that regularly since it was first 
considered. He's said they're against revenues. Mr. Speaker, he's said 
that repeatedly, and the majority party has said that repeatedly. Of 
course, pursuant to the Republican tax bill of '01 and '03, rates went 
up on January 1. They went up substantially.
  You could look at it half full or half empty, and the gentleman looks 
at it, as we increase $600 billion in taxes--actually, taxes would have 
proposed $4 trillion had the tax law that was in effect at that time 
stayed in effect. The gentleman knows that, so you can look at it as a 
tax increase or a tax decrease, ensuring that middle class taxpayers 
didn't get an increase.
  The American people, of course, 80 percent of them say what we did is 
the right thing. Now, we had an election, and the gentleman's position 
did not prevail in that election. But we are

[[Page 3773]]

still hoist on the petard of saying, We disagree; do it our way or the 
highway.
  The gentleman mentions the SKILLS Act. I wish we'd had an 
opportunity. We need to make the programs more focused and more 
effective, and the gentleman is absolutely right on that. 
Unfortunately, the majority gave no ability to have bipartisan input 
into that bill, and so its prospects for passage are almost minimal, 
maybe nil, so that the gentleman's party continues to, in my view, keep 
us in this gridlock. We understand your position. You understand our 
position. We've both got to come off our positions.
  The American public elected a House of Representatives that's led by 
Republicans and a Senate run by Democrats. The only way democracy is 
going to work is if we come to an agreement. And simply restating what 
I know to be your position or my restating what I know my position is, 
we've already come, I think, a pretty far way towards your position in 
trying to reduce spending, about $1 trillion worth, which, by the way, 
your budget takes credit for.
  We have a baseline that's been reduced because of the revenues that 
are in the Affordable Care Act, which you take credit for. You take 
credit for the $715 billion in your budget while repealing the 
Affordable Care Act, but you take credit for the $750 billion that 
reduced the baseline. So that on the one hand, you want to say, I'm 
against this; on the other hand, you want to use the revenue that it 
produced or the baseline that it reduced.
  We have this same debate every week. It doesn't get us anywhere. The 
American public is pretty upset with all of us. They ought to be. I 
tell the press that 10 percent of the people think we're doing okay. 
They're wrong. We're not doing okay, and our country, as a result, is 
not having the kind of success in growing jobs that it ought to have.
  Now, let me ask you, because I don't think you're going to change my 
mind or I'm going to change yours right now----
  Mr. CANTOR. If the gentleman would yield.
  Mr. HOYER. I'd be glad to yield.
  Mr. CANTOR. Just to respond to the gentleman's allegations that 
somehow there wasn't an open process in the passage of the SKILLS Act, 
if I recall, this week there were reports that the gentleman's members, 
the members of the minority, walked out on the committee markup. Now, 
if you can't show up for work, how are you going to participate in the 
markup and shaping of a bill? The committee process was fair; it was 
open. There were hearings. There was a markup, and the gentleman's 
members on the minority side chose not to participate.
  Now, if you're asking what the American people expect, I think they 
expect that there's going to be disagreement, but I think they expect 
everybody to show up for work, and that didn't happen.
  So I say to the gentleman, we continue--and he has my commitment, and 
he knows that--to work together and to have an open process. Our 
Speaker has continued to uphold that as a goal. So I hope we can sort 
of resolve that lingering question, especially around this bill. The 
SKILLS Act is something we should have all agreed on.
  Mr. HOYER. I wish I had the figures in front of me, and I don't. It's 
my understanding the SKILLS Act was introduced February 25 and marked 
up shortly thereafter. There may have been hearings in the last year 
when the SKILLS Act was passed in a partisan vote, but the reason the 
members walked out was because they didn't believe they were given an 
opportunity to interface. I don't have the facts as strongly as I ought 
to have them, but I believe that the proximity of introduction and 
markup was very, very close, and therefore the opportunity and the 
inclination of the committee to engage in a bipartisan discussion of 
what the bill ought to look like--what should have been a bipartisan 
bill--was not there. But let me get my facts straighter so we can 
discuss that perhaps a little further at some point.
  April's schedule, Mr. Leader, Mr. Speaker, if the majority leader 
could give us some information on the April schedule as we go forward.
  Mr. CANTOR. Mr. Speaker, I would be glad to respond to the 
gentleman's request. Just to give a general idea of the kinds of things 
that we'll be considering upcoming, we'll look to do and consider some 
cybersecurity legislation that will result from the work of multiple 
committees. The gentleman knows, as well as I, that we face a very 
serious threat in the cybersecurity arena, and we want to take action 
as a House. We want to take bipartisan action, and I look forward to 
working with him on that.
  We're also going to be taking up the Working Families Flexibility 
Act. This will be a bill designed to provide working moms and dads with 
some flexibility as they try and manage their obligations at work and 
at home.
  We also are going to be looking at taking up some measures in the 
area of health care and innovation and in pursuit of an agenda that 
focuses on medical research. I know the gentleman has been a big 
champion of that, and we, as well, believe it's very important for us 
to maintain the American leadership in innovation which is premised 
upon the devotion of resources to medical research, to curing disease, 
and to developing therapies that increase and enhance the quality of 
life for so many Americans who are afflicted by disease. We'll be 
working on that.
  We'll also be looking at some legislation in the area of domestic 
energy production that will lead to more jobs, that will lead to more 
energy independence for America.
  These are the kinds of things that we look to in April, Mr. Speaker, 
and I would tell the gentleman, again, I look forward to working with 
him in an open process, in a bipartisan fashion.
  Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman.
  We're ending now, but I know you have an extraordinarily able 
assistant sitting to your right who advises you on issues of great 
importance to our country. The gentleman to my right does the same 
thing for me.
  The gentleman to my right went to Wake Forest. Maryland played Wake 
Forest last night, and I hope as we play Duke tonight that we are 
equally successful. Mr. Nevins, who is a graduate of Duke, it's going 
to be a little tougher game than Wake Forest. I understand that. But we 
look forward to trying to be successful in that effort.
  Kyle Nevins is a wonderful member of the majority leader's staff. He 
worked for my dear and close friend, Roy Blunt, for some period of 
time, and he began working for Mr. Cantor in 2008 as his floor 
director. He's been a real delight to work with, and I know Mr. Burnes 
and my floor staff all appreciate all the work he has done.
  While I want to be very effusive today, I want him to know that I 
will be rooting very vigorously against Duke tonight when they play 
Maryland.
  I yield back the balance of my time.

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