[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 8]
[House]
[Pages 11956-11959]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1130
                          LEGISLATIVE PROGRAM

  (Mr. HOYER asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute.)
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I rise for the purposes of inquiring of the 
majority leader the schedule for the week to come, and I yield to my 
friend, the majority leader, Mr. Cantor.
  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.
  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 next week, a 
complete list of which will be announced by close of business today.
  In addition, the House will consider H.R. 2397, the Department of 
Defense appropriations bill, authored by Representative Bill Young. 
This bill provides the resources necessary for our men and women in the 
armed services to carry out their vital mission.
  There are also a number of bills the Appropriations Committee has 
reported which may come to the floor in the near future.
  Furthermore, the House may consider two energy bills out of the 
Energy and Commerce Committee. The first bill, H.R. 2218, the Coal 
Residuals Reuse and Management Act, authored by Representative David 
McKinley, would create an enforceable minimum standard for the 
regulation of coal ash by the States, allowing their use in a safe 
manner that protects jobs.
  The second bill, H.R. 1582, the Energy Consumers Relief Act, 
sponsored by Representative Bill Cassidy, will require the EPA, before 
finalizing any energy-related rule costing more than $1 billion, to 
report to Congress on specific energy price and job impacts.
  Both of these bills, Mr. Speaker, foster an environment of economic 
growth and lower energy costs for American families and businesses.
  Finally, Mr. Speaker, as you know, the House acted last month to 
prevent the doubling of the student loan interest rate. Should the 
Senate send us legislation, the House may act as soon as next week.
  Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman for his information with respect to 
the legislation for next week.
  I note that there was not on the notice for next week--the Senate has 
now voted to go to conference on the farm bill. Clearly, that is a 
matter that I think both sides, or certainly our side, I think your 
side as well, feels is a priority item. Does the gentleman have any 
plans to move to go to conference now that the Senate has asked for a 
conference next week on the farm bill?
  I yield to my friend.
  Mr. CANTOR. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  I'd respond to the gentleman by saying that we are committed to 
acting with urgency to bring to the floor a bill under the nutrition 
title of what was formerly the farm bill, which that title married up 
with the agricultural provisions.
  It is our hope that we can get a nutrition bill to the floor, because 
we believe strongly that the programs under those titles, providing a 
safety net to the country's most vulnerable, are something important 
that we maintain and we implement the kind of reforms to those programs 
that have long been called for by the GAO and others so that we can 
make sure of the efficient flow of dollars to those beneficiaries who 
most need it.
  Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman for that comment; however, I'm 
somewhat perplexed, Mr. Leader.
  You and I had a relatively animated colloquy some, I think, 2 or 3 
weeks ago, at which point in time you said that we passed the farm bill 
that, of course, we didn't like and none of us voted for, that we 
passed the farm bill so that, in fact, we could follow regular order 
and go to conference. We passed that farm bill.
  The Senate has now voted to go to conference, but what I hear the 
gentleman saying is, like the budget bill, we're not going to go to 
conference unless something else happens; in the case of the budget, 
until Mr. Ryan apparently gets Ms. Murray to agree on--I don't want to 
characterize it too heavily, but to agreeing with him as opposed to 
compromise.
  But I'm a little, as I said, perplexed, because a few weeks ago you 
told me that the reason we passed that farm bill without the provision 
for nutrition, which had been in there for half a century, was so that 
we could go to conference. Well, now we're there, but there's no motion 
to go to conference. I'm perplexed, and I would appreciate if the 
gentleman--because we now have the opportunity to follow regular order. 
We now have the Senate who has voted to go to conference, acted on our 
bill that we sent there, substituted their bill for ours, and now have 
asked for a conference on the same. That is regular order.
  Can the gentleman tell me: Are we now making a condition, as we 
lawyers say, precedent--that is, something's got to happen--before we 
go to conference? Because, very frankly, Mr. Leader, you and I both 
know that the nutrition bill is what made the farm bill apparently fall 
on the rocks, which is why you dropped it in order to pass the farm 
bill. It was a totally partisan bill, but now we need to get to 
agreement.
  I tell you, we're running out of time, Mr. Leader, and I think we 
need to get this farm bill done; and I would hope that we could go to 
conference, as the gentleman said we were going to do, with the Senate 
on the House-passed bill.
  I yield to my friend.
  Mr. CANTOR. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

[[Page 11957]]

  And I know that the gentleman, in his call for regular order, also 
knows that the House has its prerogatives, as does the other body. We 
believe strongly that marriage of the two constituencies of the old 
farm bill was a marriage that began some 40 years ago. And, frankly, it 
is the sense of the majority in the House that that marriage makes 
little sense and that, instead, if we could, as a House, opt to be 
transparent and look at the policies on the agricultural side the way 
that we did and then look at the policies under the nutrition title in 
the same deliberative fashion, that we can actually make for a better 
product.
  Now, the gentleman says that the farm bill that was passed was a 
partisan bill. Certainly, no member of the minority voted for the bill, 
but I would, and not to rehash colloquy from several weeks ago, say 
that the same attitude was taken with the old farm bill by the minority 
saying it was too partisan.
  We intend to proceed deliberately, looking at policies that make 
sense in reforming these programs in the vein of trying to get to those 
most vulnerable the relief they need, at the same time paying 
cognizance to the fact that we have fiscal challenges we must deal 
with.
  We're trying to be about truth in legislating, Mr. Speaker, and that 
is making sure that the purpose of agricultural policy is adequately 
addressed, as well as the purpose of the nutrition title and providing 
relief to our country's most vulnerable.
  Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman for his observation.
  The truth in legislating is that we are not legislating. We are 
putting forth the positions of your party in this House, not shared by 
the Senate, not shared by the President of the United States, also 
elected by the people of the United States; and absent agreement by 
those two entities, coequal branches of the Congress and a coequal 
branch of the government, the executive, absent their agreeing with 
your party's perspective, we're not legislating. That's the problem, 
Mr. Leader.
  And again, I express to you, you said--and I don't have the words in 
front of me exactly, but we can pull them out. But I am perplexed 
because you said, when we passed the farm bill without the nutrition 
program in it--which had been done for a half a century. They had been 
paired by Republican Congresses and Democratic Congresses, signed by 
Republican Presidents and Democratic Presidents. It's only this last 2 
years that we have been unable to come to grips with bipartisan 
agreement on the farm bill. It's only in the past 2 years that we've 
been unable to get a bill that was bipartisan in fashion to the floor 
and, ultimately, voted on final passage.
  The bipartisan bills that came out of committee both in the last 
Congress and this Congress were turned into--the first one, of course, 
in the last Congress didn't come to the floor, as the gentleman knows. 
He didn't bring it to the floor at all, notwithstanding the fact it had 
bipartisan support in the committee. And notwithstanding the fact that 
the bill that was brought to the floor had bipartisan support and the 
support of the ranking member, Mr. Peterson, notwithstanding he didn't 
agree with some portions that were adopted, for instance, on milk, he 
was, nevertheless, prepared to adopt it until three very partisan, we 
thought very harmful, amendments to people without means were adopted.
  You knew that was the case. You then had told me--and I repeat, I 
know, and reiterate. But the simple representation you made was that we 
did that--and Mr. Sessions made that and said, by the way, that the 
nutrition part of the program, getting support for people who needed 
food, was extraneous to the bill. That's not our perspective over here, 
but that was the perspective that the chairman of the Rules Committee 
laid out when we considered the rule.
  But you then said, in that colloquy, that the reason we did that was 
because you wanted to get a bill through. And, frankly, that's the only 
way you could pick up the overwhelming majority of the 62 of your 
Republicans who voted against it. I can only conclude that because you 
got the majority to do it, failing the first time because 62 
Republicans decided they didn't like, apparently, the nutrition part of 
the bill and they voted against it. When you dropped the nutrition part 
of the bill, which had been in there for 50 years, then you got the 
majority on your side. That's when you got zero of us. You had 24 the 
first time.
  So I'm perplexed that now that we have done what you said we were 
going to do, not about budgets, not about--you and I agree we need to 
get a handle on it. That's not what this issue is about. This issue is 
about whether or not we're going to have a farm bill and whether we're 
going to have such in a timely way. I'm going to talk a little bit 
about the CR.
  But we have 17 days left to go between now and September 30, and we 
think it's timely to move. I don't know. Your nutrition bill is not on 
the program here. We'll have 1 week after next week.

                              {time}  1145

  We're not sure because we haven't seen a nutrition bill that you 
have. We don't know what's going to be in that. But we have passed a 
farm bill. The Senate wants to go to conference. The Senate wants to go 
to conference--at least the Democrats do--on the budget. And we're not 
doing it, Mr. Leader. And we need to do it.
  Mr. CANTOR. Again, not to belabor the point but just to correct the 
facts and make sure that the record reflects what I did say before and 
what I represented, I said it was our intention to act with dispatch to 
bring to the floor a bill dealing with the SNAP program, that portion 
of which was traditionally the farm bill, and that we intend to be 
bringing that vehicle to the floor at some time in the near future. I 
did not say, Mr. Speaker, what it was the gentleman indicated.
  We would like to say to all of our colleagues that we want to work 
together on a nutrition title. The gentleman heard what I said before. 
The marriage of those two bills and policies was done in an arbitrary 
fashion 50 years ago, as he indicated. There is no policy reason for 
that to be done. And we're trying to get down to what policy works and 
the reform of making sure that we pay attention to the efficacy of the 
programs, getting the dollars to the people who need it, and doing so 
in an efficient manner takes some deliberative approach. That is why 
Members on the majority side of the aisle felt very strongly that we 
should act in the way we did. And we intend to bring a nutrition title 
to the floor. We're working with the chairman of the Agriculture 
Committee to get that policy right.
  So I hope that the gentleman, in his spirit of bipartisanship, will 
work with us to do that.
  Mr. HOYER. It takes two to be bipartisan, Mr. Leader. You know that 
and I know that. I've got a pretty long record of working in a 
bipartisan fashion. But I will tell you, I disagree with the majority 
leader, respectfully, that there aren't the votes on this floor to pass 
the SNAP program and the agriculture program.
  We agree on this side that there's a relationship between those who 
produce food and those who eat food. We think there's a direct 
relationship, which is why for half a century these have been related, 
so that the folks in the city would understand that those on the farm 
are very important people and we need to make sure that we have a 
partnership with them. Very frankly, it's worked for half a century. 
Unfortunately, it didn't work this year.
  I will say to my friend, you are accurate in saying there are a 
majority of people on this floor--not in our party--but a majority on 
this floor, including Mr. Lucas, who twice has reported out a bill with 
bipartisan support and argued for it on the floor. He argued for it and 
pleaded with your party to support the farm bill, even though from both 
parties' standpoint it wasn't a perfect bill. But 62 of your Members 
rejected his plea. And my view is Mr. Lucas is still in that position 
of where he sees the rationale of having those together. He's the 
Republican chairman of the committee. I respect Mr. Lucas for his 
comments both times the bill was considered on the floor.
  I will move on. But allowing the farm bill to languish is dangerous 
for this

[[Page 11958]]

country, for the farm community, and for others. It undermines our 
economy. Moving with dispatch is in the best interest of our country.
  Now, let me ask you something. As I said, we have 17 days left to go 
until September 30. This Congress has not passed an appropriation bill. 
We've passed three appropriation bills. The Senate is going to consider 
one, apparently, next week. We won't be here on September 30. We're 
only here 2 weeks in September. There are holidays and Labor Day. So 
we're only going to be here 2 weeks.
  I want to ask my friend if he or the majority or the Budget Committee 
or the Appropriations Committee and the leadership in concert has a 
plan for what we might do to assure stability in government and in our 
country's confidence that the government will be operating on October 
1.
  Mr. CANTOR. I would say to the gentleman, Mr. Speaker, that, yes, we 
are looking forward to the legislative activity for the remainder of 
this month, as I said earlier, to include appropriations bills. We also 
look towards the prospect of the other body perhaps beginning to act, 
as the gentleman indicated, at all on appropriations bills.
  It does take two to be bicameral. We need that body to act as well. I 
look forward to seeing how we resolve differences on spending levels 
and policy differences as we approach the end of the fiscal year, very 
well aware that we have challenges ahead, and look to find resolution 
to those, yes, in a bipartisan way and necessarily in a bicameral way.
  Mr. HOYER. There's a way to do that, of course. It is called regular 
order, as we've discussed. The conference committee is where you do 
that. But not withstanding that fact, we have for over 100 days now 
seen languishing the Senate-passed budget and our budget, and an 
attempt by the leader in the Senate, Mr. Reid, to go to conference, but 
no effort to go to conference to, as you say, in a bicameral, 
bipartisan way to resolve differences. They're very substantial. But 
everybody is sitting in their corner.
  Patty Murray wants to come to the midpoint to have a conference. I've 
talked to her. She's the chairman of the Budget Committee. But we have 
not moved, unlike the Senate--and they haven't succeeded because of 
Republican opposition--but they have tried to go to conference. We have 
not made any effort to go to conference, Mr. Leader, and you can't have 
a bicameral resolution and compromise and bipartisanship if you don't 
sit down and talk to one another in conference.
  Mr. Ryan asking Senator Murray, Do it my way, is not going to get us 
there. A conference may. I don't think it's guaranteed, but it may. And 
I would hope we could go to conference and follow regular order on the 
budget. We should have adopted a budget 4 months ago. We need to adopt 
a funding resolution by September 30 in some form or fashion. The 
failure to go to conference is undermining our ability to do that.
  Mr. CANTOR. The gentleman knows that he speaks of two different 
things when it comes to spending and when it comes to the budget 
blueprint.
  The gentleman and I, Mr. Speaker, have had this discussion several 
times in these colloquies about why it is that Chairman Ryan has taken 
the position he has, as has our Speaker and our leadership, in that we 
don't want to go into a discussion if the prerequisite is you have to 
raise taxes. That's the bottom line. It's not process. It's substance. 
It is one of those issues that continues to make the divide between the 
parties.
  Frankly, if one thinks that Washington spends tax dollars well, that 
we should go ahead and ask the hardworking taxpayers to pay more. Our 
side doesn't believe in that approach. Until we get beyond that, I'm 
not so sure there's going to be resolution as to a budget conference.
  It does not mean that we cannot continue the work that we are doing 
on the appropriations bills and on the other policy measures that are 
coming to this floor in hopes of finding areas we can agree on. But 
there is a strong one we disagree on--and that is the issue of 
additional revenues in an environment where Washington doesn't spend 
what it does spend well.
  We're trying to get to the bottom of that, effect good policy, act in 
a deliberative manner, and are willing to work with the Senate. The 
problem is the Senate hasn't even begun their appropriations process on 
the floor there. And that was my point about bicameral and, hopefully, 
in a bipartisan way.
  Mr. HOYER. I'm surprised to hear the majority leader say budget has 
no relationship to the appropriations process or the continuing 
resolution.
  Mr. CANTOR. I didn't say no relationship. I said the gentleman knows 
that we're talking about two different things when we're talking about 
a budget blueprint and the spending bills. Two different things.
  Mr. HOYER. I've been on the Appropriations Committee, as the 
gentleman knows, for 23 years. I'm not on it now. And you've adopted a 
budget, not because the budget passed but because you deemed the budget 
passed, you've pretended it passed. We did that ourselves to get a 
number. Why is that important? Because that's the spending number. Ours 
is $967 billion. The Senate's is $1.058 trillion. It's some $91 billion 
more.
  So there's a very substantial difference between the two Houses. It 
has to be resolved. Maybe the gentleman can tell me, since we don't 
have a resolution of what the number is going to be, which is what a 
budget conference does, and what I hear the gentleman saying is, unless 
the Senate agrees with your perception of revenues--and I know that you 
repeat that all the time. I get it. I know your position. I know the 
position of your party. My position, of course, is we need to pay for 
what we buy. You're right. If we don't buy it, we don't have to pay for 
it. And we have to make that judgment on behalf of the American people. 
That's what they sent us here to do.
  But the fact of the matter is, if your position is that unless they 
agree with your perception--they have a different point of view. They 
were elected by the American people. By the way, this side was elected 
by the American people, 1.4 million more of whom voted for us than 
voted for your side of the aisle. You have the majority. Redistricting 
provided for that, God bless you. I wish I were in your position, not 
in mine, from that standpoint. But the fact of the matter is more of 
the American people voted for us than they voted on your side. But you 
have the majority.
  You ought not to be in the position, I suggest, respectfully, Mr. 
Leader, of saying unless the Senate will accede to our position, we're 
not going to go to conference. I don't understand saying you want a 
bicameral, bipartisan agreement without going to conference.
  Let me ask you about immigration. There's nothing on here about 
immigration. The Senate has passed a bipartisan bill. Does the 
gentleman have any reason to believe that we're going to move ahead on 
immigration? President Bush said just the other day the system is not 
working. The system is broken. Your chairman of the Budget Committee, 
talking about the budget, said we have a broken immigration system that 
needs to be fixed.
  Can the gentleman tell me whether there's any action contemplated on 
immigration?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Members are reminded to address their 
remarks to the Chair.
  Mr. CANTOR. Mr. Speaker, I say to the gentleman that, as he correctly 
indicated, our chairman of the Judiciary Committee, the gentleman from 
Virginia (Mr. Goodlatte), has said that our system of immigration is 
broken and that he and the members of that committee are fast about 
trying to look at the complex issues of our immigration system and 
trying to deal with them in a fashion that is discrete on each issue, 
with a solution thereto. And in that committee we are in the process, 
as the gentleman knows, of looking at all of that and intend on making 
sure we get it right. The chairman has said rather than just doing it, 
we want to do it right. And we intend to do so.

[[Page 11959]]


  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Leader, the last question. You said the defense 
authorization bill is coming to the floor. Can the gentleman tell me 
whether that will be coming to the floor under an open rule or a rule 
other than open?
  Mr. CANTOR. Mr. Speaker, I would say to the gentleman that the DOD 
approps bill will be coming to the floor, and the Rules Committee will 
decide on the structure and how that debate will occur. We will 
announce that, obviously, upon the Rules Committee meeting.
  Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman, and I yield back the balance of my 
time.

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