[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 4]
[House]
[Pages 5129-5132]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1220
                          LEGISLATIVE PROGRAM

  (Mr. HOYER asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute.)
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I yield to my friend from Virginia, the 
majority leader, for the purpose of inquiring about the schedule for 
the week to come.
  Mr. CANTOR. I thank the gentleman from Maryland, the Democratic whip, 
for yielding.
  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.
  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 for 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 next week, a 
complete list of which will be announced by close of business today.
  In addition, we expect a robust debate next week on the importance of 
our Nation's cybersecurity. The House will consider a number of 
bipartisan bills to reduce the obstacles to voluntary information-
sharing between the private sector and government, secure our Nation's 
infrastructure, better protect government systems, and combat foreign 
threats.
  A number of committees will bring bills to the floor next week, Mr. 
Speaker, including the Intelligence, Oversight and Government Reform, 
and Science Committees. In the coming months, I expect to continue to 
address cybersecurity legislation from additional committees, including 
Homeland Security and Judiciary.
  Of the bills coming to the floor, we will consider H.R. 624, the 
Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, under a rule. This 
important legislation is authored by Chairman Mike Rogers and 
cosponsored by Ranking Member Dutch Ruppersberger.
  Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman for that information. I want to 
share his view that the cybersecurity legislation is critically 
important legislation. I know that there are still continuing 
differences with reference to the protection of individual citizens' 
privacy on this legislation, but I also know, as the gentleman has 
indicated, the critical nature of providing access and exchange of 
information so that we can

[[Page 5130]]

protect Americans, protect our country, and protect our intellectual 
property and commercial property. So I would hope and expect that we 
would be working together in a bipartisan way to make sure that we can 
reach consensus so that we can see a bill signed.
  I want to say that I know that both you and I are pleased that 
Chairman Rogers and Ranking Member Ruppersberger have been working so 
closely together in a bipartisan fashion to accomplish this objective.
  Mr. Leader, I hope you've noticed that earlier this week I gave a 
speech with reference to Make It In America. In that speech, I want you 
to know, if you missed it, I mentioned the jobs bill. I made a little 
fun of the jobs bill, as you recall, when you put it on the floor, but 
we all voted for it because it was a good bill. We put together five or 
six bills that had bipartisan support as they passed the House and 
Senate.

                              {time}  1230

  We put them together, the President signed that bill, they were a 
step forward, they were part of our Make It In America agenda on our 
side and your jobs expansion, growth expansion on your side.
  What I said in my speech on Make it in America, which refers to 
manufacturing in America, growing things in America, selling them here 
and around the world, and doing what Americans are hopeful that we are 
focused on, and that is creating jobs, in that speech, Mr. Leader, I 
said that we needed to focus on four particular priorities.
  Number one, adopting and pursuing a national manufacturing strategy. 
As I'm sure you know, Mr. Leader, last Congress we passed the Lipinski 
bill, which came out of committee in a bipartisan fashion and passed 
this House in a bipartisan fashion. Unfortunately, it did not pass the 
Senate.
  You and I both know that if you're going to win, if you're going to 
succeed, you're going to have to have a plan to do so. This speaks to 
the coming together of business, labor, entrepreneurs, investors, as 
well as government, in terms of the partnership that we can play in 
ensuring that we are making things in America and that goods around the 
world have on them ``Made in America.''
  Secondly, we want to promote U.S. exports. You and I, Mr. Leader, 
have worked on that. We worked on that in a bipartisan fashion. This 
was another part of what we call Make It In America, the Export-Import 
Act. Your staff and my staff worked very diligently together to get 
that done, and we passed it in a bipartisan fashion.
  The third part of the Make It In America agenda focus would be 
encouraging manufacturers to bring jobs home. I think we have, Mr. 
Leader, an excellent opportunity, given the context of where we find 
ourselves, where salaries are going up overseas, where it is more 
expensive now to ship goods back to the United States because of 
transportation costs, the largest market in the world.
  And, fourthly, as the gentleman knows, while there have been some 
differences, the President has expressed, you've expressed, I've 
expressed, our need to expand our energy supply, and particularly as we 
see the natural gas technology advancing, that the United States of 
America is going to be one of the least expensive energy venues in the 
world and have one of the best supplies in the world, which perhaps no 
one would have predicted 20 years ago but is a fact, all of which ought 
to go to helping us reinvigorate, expand manufacturing, and create 
middle class jobs, paying good wages and providing good benefits.
  Lastly, we want to ensure that we invest. And I notice the gentleman 
sent out a memo to your Members. I don't think we purloined a copy, but 
we did get a copy. You talked about investing and making sure that the 
quality of life and jobs were available for working Americans. We need 
to make sure that we invest, as you pointed out, as we believe 
strongly, in education and infrastructure and innovation, to make sure 
that we have the training necessary for people to be able to perform 
the jobs that are going to be required in the growing economy and the 
global marketplace.
  I say all that, Mr. Leader, to suggest that I would like to sit down 
with you so that we can talk together about how we mutually can move 
forward on what, as I say, we call a Make It In America agenda, but a 
jobs agenda, a growing the American economy agenda. I know you've been 
focused on that, we're focused on that. I'm hopeful we can do that, I 
think it will be positive for our country, and I think Americans will 
feel good about it.
  I yield to my friend.
  Mr. CANTOR. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman, and really appreciate 
his remarks and willingness to sit down and see where we can find areas 
of agreement. Because as the gentleman and I have both expressed on 
this floor on many occasions, there is plenty of disagreement and no 
shortage of supply in this town of that.
  On the bigger issues of the fiscal situation of the country, we still 
struggle, Mr. Speaker, as the gentleman knows, on trying to come 
together. But I listened to the gentleman, and I know he's very 
committed, and has been to his agenda, Make It In America. As the 
gentleman knows, I gave a talk earlier this year at the American 
Enterprise Institute, which I spoke of an agenda of trying to make life 
work for more working people in this country.
  There is a lot in common that we have in these two programs, if you 
will. Because we talk about the kinds of things that will help working 
families, that will help working people get a job again. The 
gentleman's intention in a national manufacturing strategy, I'm sure, 
is to increase job availability; make sure that we have more American 
jobs.
  We also have a skills problem. We passed the SKILLS Act on the floor 
a couple of weeks ago. My hope is we can increase bipartisan support 
for things like that, because it was simply an attempt to respond to a 
GAO recommendation where there are 50 different job-training programs 
at the Federal level. Certainly we can do better than that. Certainly 
we can streamline and still protect the kinds of individuals that the 
statute asks us to, or requires protection of--the veterans, the folks 
who are on limited income that we can help put in place for employment. 
Because, after all, all of us believe that we are a society built on 
hard work, built on playing by the rules and getting ahead. So, I 
welcome the gentleman's commitment to those type of things.
  He mentions the need for us to invest and to look to the future. In 
fact, I have not only a budget and a spending plan of the future, but a 
real mentality on this floor of how we can work together for all 
Americans. I have talked a lot about this in this making life work for 
people and for families. Really, the priority that we place in this 
country on medical research, on research and development, because it is 
the seed corn of the future.
  While we are constrained by the current fiscal situation, it does 
bring to life setting priorities. We're not going to be able to fund 
everything, but certainly we can agree on trying to find medical cures, 
trying to understand how we can better discover therapies, treatments, 
so people can live longer and have a better quality of life. These are 
the kinds of things I look forward to working on with the gentleman as 
well, and I accept his invitation and look forward to being able to sit 
down.
  Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman for that.
  Following on his observation, clearly what he says is we need to 
focus on priorities. I think he's absolutely right on that. I think one 
of the sad things is we have passed a fiscal posture in this country 
presently that does not focus on priorities, unfortunately, and that's 
called sequester, which, in effect, looks across the board at cutting 
both the highest priorities and the lowest priorities in similar ways.
  I would hope that we could obviate the sequester. I think it's bad 
for the country, I think it's bad for our future, I think it's bad for 
the growth in our economy. I would hope that we could also work on 
that.
  And towards that end I would say, Mr. Leader, you have talked about,

[[Page 5131]]

and, in fact, we passed legislation that was designed to encourage and 
to require the passage of a budget by the Senate. The Senate has now 
passed a budget, we have passed a budget, the President has now 
presented a budget, so that we have three alternatives on the table 
now.
  I would hope that as soon as the Senate passes its bill to us, which 
I expect to be shortly, that we would go to conference in pursuance of 
an agreement which will give us a fiscally sustainable path for this 
country, give us confidence in this country that Congress can work, 
that the Nation's board of directors can work, in coming to a balanced 
compromise with respect to how we move forward with the finances of 
America. Now that we have, as I say, a Senate-passed budget, a House-
passed budget, a budget presented by the President of the United 
States, obviously, there are things that each person in the country can 
disagree with and agree with presumably on each one of those budgets.

                              {time}  1240

  I would hope that we would be going to conference as soon as possible 
so that we could address this critically important objective.
  I ask the gentleman if he has any information with respect to the 
intention to go to conference as soon as we receive the Senate bill, 
which, as I say, I think will be shortly.
  I yield to my friend.
  Mr. CANTOR. I would say to the gentlemen, Mr. Speaker, I, too, am 
glad that we have finally seen the Senate act and pass a budget. That 
is an accomplishment in and of itself. And the President also has 
finally proposed his budget. So the gentleman is right that we've got 
some things on the table that maybe we can start to discuss.
  I know that Chairman Ryan and Chairman Murray are already in 
discussions about a path forward, and I look forward to the results of 
those discussions. And in concert with the gentleman's point earlier 
about setting priorities, it just seems to me, Mr. Speaker, that the 
best way forward is to find areas where we agree and let's go make some 
progress on those things. Again, this town is full of division and 
disagreement, but there are things we have in common, in agreement in 
these three documents that I believe we can work on together.
  Mr. HOYER. I would simply observe--and he knows this as well as I 
do--that there will be an agreement on things that he perhaps does not 
agree with and there will be things in the agreement that perhaps I 
will not agree with. The secret, in my view, of getting agreement is 
going to be to have a comprehensive agreement that accomplishes the 
objective of bringing our finances to a fiscally sustainable path 
that's credible and believed by not only the economy, by investors, by 
the American people, but also by the international community.
  We've talked a lot about confidence, as I've indicated, in the past. 
You've talked a lot about confidence in the past. I think we all agree 
that our economy needs confidence to grow as robustly as we want it to 
create the kinds of jobs we want.
  Toward that end, can the gentleman tell me what plans we have at this 
point in time for the debt limit extension? I know there's some 
discussion of bringing a bill to the floor which will deal with that 
issue. Can the gentleman perhaps elaborate on what the plans are with 
respect to the debt limit that confronts us that will hit sometime 
around May 19?
  And I yield to my friend.
  Mr. CANTOR. I thank the gentleman.
  Mr. Speaker, as the gentleman has indicated, Mr. Speaker, the 
majority has committed itself to a budget that balances in 10 years. It 
is our desire that we can come to some agreement on how to do that. 
This is where the difficulty, again, comes in, where the President's 
proposal and budget raises a lot of new revenues. Some estimates have 
indicated it will create a trillion dollars in new taxes and won't ever 
balance.
  So we've certainly got a gulf between us, but it is our intention to 
work together to avoid the situation of default; and we are and do 
intend to consider a bill that will ensure we meet our legal 
obligations and do not default on our debt, which I'm sure the 
gentleman agrees with me, Mr. Speaker, is the responsible thing to do.
  Mr. HOYER. I certainly agree that defaulting on the debt is an 
extraordinarily irresponsible thing to do, and, in fact, we shouldn't 
do it. In fact, we shouldn't use it as a leverage point, in my view, to 
pretend that somehow going over the debt limit without extension is an 
acceptable political leverage point for either side.
  Both sides have sort of blamed the other for the deficits as we've 
confronted these debt limits. We've never come close, except in August 
of 2011, to defaulting, which was the first time, as the gentleman 
knows, when we were downgraded by 1 point by S&P. That's an 
irresponsible policy. I agree with the gentleman.
  Let me say that the advantage of a conference on this issue will be 
that transparently the American public will see the debate. The 
gentleman indicates a 10-year objective of balancing the budget without 
revenues. I personally believe that's impossible.
  I've said on this floor that if there were no Democrats in the 
Congress of the United States, either in the Senate or the House, that, 
frankly, your side of the aisle could not pass either the appropriation 
bills or the revenue bills or tax cuts that are suggested in Mr. Ryan's 
budget, which would accomplish your objective. I think we'll never know 
that, which is, I think, a happy circumstance on your side that that 
will never be put to the test.
  Having said that, I would hope that we could get to a place where we 
say the debt limit is not going to be subject to political maneuvering.
  Furthermore, let me say that the bill that we've been hearing about--
in The Wall Street Journal there was an article that appeared just 
yesterday, I think:

       Fitch Ratings, a credit-rating firm, said Tuesday it wasn't 
     clear whether the Treasury legally could prioritize bond 
     payments over other government obligations.

  And it went on to say:

       If it did so, Fitch added, it was very likely the firm 
     would downgrade its AAA rating of the U.S. debt.

  In other words, even if we say we're going to pay the debts or, as 
some people have said, even if we say we're going to pay the Chinese 
first and not invest in those things such as basic biomedical 
research--to which the gentleman referred, and I share his view of that 
being a priority of our country--and cut those as we pay the Chinese or 
other creditor nations back for what we borrowed, that would not be in 
the best interest of the United States.
  I would say that in both instances, either pretending that we're 
going to go over the debt limit and avoid it by simply paying the debt 
first and then cutting other things in some sort of order, neither of 
those policies is consistent, I think, with our responsibilities as 
Members of Congress.
  I will tell you that we will do it on a bipartisan basis, Mr. Leader. 
I use a very simple example for my constituents. You go to Macy's. You 
take out your Macy's credit card and you buy $200 worth of goods. You 
go home. Next week, you and your wife are sitting around the table or 
you and your husband are sitting around the table, and you say, You 
know, we're really in debt too much. We're going to limit it to $100. 
So Macy's sends you the bill for 200 bucks. You send them back a check 
for $100 and say, Sorry, we have a debt limit of $100. Macy's writes 
you back and says, We're sorry, too. We're not going to give you any 
additional credit and we're going to sue you. That's our debt limit.
  The debt limit, you and I both know, is not realistic. It's much more 
a political and demagoguing way of dealing with one another and dealing 
with the finances of this country.
  I would hope that you and the Speaker--both of whom I know have said 
not extending the debt limit is not a viable or a responsible option. I 
would hope that we could make that clear, that we're not going to do 
that and, in a bipartisan way, extend it, and perhaps extend it early 
enough so that it

[[Page 5132]]

doesn't become even an item of consideration by any of the rating 
agencies or the international community.
  I yield to my friend.
  Mr. CANTOR. I would just respond to the gentlemen by saying this in 
terms of the family he talked about going to Macy's and making the 
charge of $200. I think most families would also think it's prudent to 
figure out how they're going to pay that bill before they go about 
incurring it, and that is the spirit in which I think the majority 
approaches the debt ceiling to say, How are we going to tell the people 
that we're going to pay off the debt that we've now gone ahead and 
incurred?
  I think a little bit of forethought here, planning into the future 
how we are going to pay the bills, is the emphasis. I've always agreed, 
as the gentleman said, the debt ceiling is something that is necessary 
for the operations of government. We'll bring a bill forward that will 
ensure that we don't go into default. But I do think that we should be 
mindful of how we're going to tell the public we're going to go into 
the future and pay off these debts. Because, as the gentleman, who has 
many children and grandchildren, he doesn't want his kids, nor do I 
want mine, to be shouldering the debts and paying our bills.

                              {time}  1250

  We should be really committing ourselves not to just borrowing more, 
not to just taking more from taxpayer dollars, because we've done a lot 
of that this year already. When the gentleman talks about the need to 
proceed with revenues, we already have close to $650 billion of 
additional static revenues--taxes that are accounted for because of the 
fiscal cliff deal. So it's not that there are no revenues in the mix 
here.
  Again, I look forward to working with the gentleman. I appreciate his 
commitment to longevity in this country, to sustaining economic growth 
or to at least restarting it again so we can sustain it, and look 
forward to joining him in that effort.
  Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman.
  The way to do that plan of how to amortize our debt and invest in the 
priorities of this country--education, innovation, infrastructure, 
other basic biomedical research to which the gentleman referred--is to 
have a budget. That's the plan that the gentleman refers to. The way to 
get to a budget is to go to conference and come to an agreement.
  However, I will tell my friend what the problem we've had is: 
reaching compromise, and it's going to be necessary to compromise. As 
the gentleman observed and as I know, we have very substantial 
differences, but if the differences continue to create gridlock and no 
action, those children of which you spoke and I speak are going to 
suffer, so I would hope that we could move forward.
  The President's budget, I will tell the gentleman and as he probably 
knows, has about an almost 3-1 ratio between cuts and additional 
revenues, which is essentially, approximately, what most on the 
bipartisan commission--some have been 2-1, some 2.5-1--have 
recommended. I know the gentleman disagrees with that ratio, but it is 
certainly the President's view, which I share, that he has made a very 
positive proposal whether you agree with it or not, and a number of 
your Members have observed that it's a useful document.
  Given that context, hopefully, we can go to conference. Hopefully, we 
can come to agreement. Hopefully, we can see compromise reached, and 
hopefully put our country on the fiscally sustainable path that it 
needs to be.
  I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________