[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 6]
[House]
[Pages 8535-8537]
[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. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. 
McCarthy), the majority leader, for the purpose of inquiring of the 
schedule of the week to come.
  Mr. McCARTHY. I thank the gentleman 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.
  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. 
Members are advised that later votes than normal are possible on 
Thursday and to keep their travel plans flexible.
  No votes are expected in the House on Friday.

                              {time}  1300

  Madam Speaker, the House will consider a number of suspensions next 
week, a complete list of which will be announced by close of business 
today.
  The House will consider H.R. 5053, the Preventing the IRS Abuse and 
Protecting Free Speech Act, sponsored by Representative Roskam. This 
commonsense bill prohibits the IRS from collecting donor information, 
which has been used by the IRS to improperly target tax-exempt 
organizations.
  Finally, Madam Speaker, the House will consider H.R. 5293, the FY17 
Defense appropriations bill, sponsored by Representative Rodney 
Frelinghuysen. We expect a large number of amendments to be considered 
on this bill. So, again, Members are reminded to keep their travel 
schedules flexible at the end of next week.
  Mr. HOYER. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for that information.
  Today, we considered a third appropriations bill. It was a structured 
rule, which is not uncommon on both sides of the aisle to have a 
structured rule.
  But next week, the gentleman has announced the Defense appropriations 
bill, and I am wondering whether or not that will be an open rule so 
that amendments will be able to be offered by Members without 
constraint of being limited?
  I yield to the gentleman from California.
  Mr. McCARTHY. Madam Speaker, to answer the gentleman's question, yes, 
that will come under a structured rule. So Members will be able to 
offer amendments but before the Rules Committee and then have the 
debate on the floor prior to passage of the bill.
  Mr. HOYER. Madam Speaker, does the gentleman mean by ``structured 
rule'' that we will simply require amendments to be filed as of a 
certain time, but that there will be no restriction on amendments that 
will be in order?
  I yield to the gentleman from California.
  Mr. McCARTHY. Madam Speaker, it will be a structured rule exactly the 
same as we have used a structured rule before. Amendments will be 
presented to the Rules Committee, be debated, and then brought to the 
floor for a vote.
  Mr. HOYER. Madam Speaker, to further clarify, my understanding, 
therefore, is that the majority leader expects the Rules Committee to 
choose which amendments will be made in order on the bill. Is that 
accurate?
  I yield to the gentleman from California.
  Mr. McCARTHY. Madam Speaker, yes, it will be a very fair, wide open 
process in the Rules Committee looking at amendments--those that have 
not been able to be offered already in committee, where these bills 
have gone through subcommittee and full committee with amendments being 
offered, and then they will be brought to the floor so we can get the 
work done and move the bill forward.
  Mr. HOYER. Madam Speaker, I understand what the gentleman is saying.
  And it appears to me that it is an abandonment of the Speaker and 
others' representations that when appropriations bills are brought to 
the floor that they will be brought to the floor with an open rule or a 
rule that will allow any and all amendments that seek to be offered by 
Members on both sides of the aisle to be offered.
  From the gentleman's explanation, I believe that is not the case and 
a deviation from the announced policy at the beginning of the year. It 
seems to me, Madam Speaker, that it is a pragmatic judgment that some 
amendments are making it difficult on the gentleman's side of the 
aisle.
  As someone who has been here for some period of time, that has been 
my experience when we were in the majority that the gentleman's side, 
under open rules, offered a lot of very difficult amendments that we 
had to confront. The Maloney amendment obviously was a difficult 
amendment for Members to confront on the gentleman's side and led to 
the defeat of apparently one of the bills, the Energy and Water bill, 
which failed on this floor.

[[Page 8536]]

  Would I not be correct in saying that this is a policy that is now 
being pursued that is different from that which was represented at the 
beginning of the year where the floor would be open to any and all 
amendments and would be considered by the House on their merits?
  I yield to the gentleman from California.
  Mr. McCARTHY. Madam Speaker, the gentleman has sat in this position 
that I have today as majority leader in the past, and the gentleman 
knows the history of bills he brought to the floor and the manner in 
which they did.
  But if I could be frank with my friend, I am a little disappointed. 
This is not a place to play politics. This is not about one amendment. 
We have a process for amendments for Members that are serious about 
making a passionate argument for a bill, not to kill a bill and not to 
have an amendment pass and then an entire side of the aisle vote 
against it.
  What we are bringing forth is a process that the American people want 
to see. They want to see ideas get brought here, debated, and moved 
forward. If we look at the appropriations process in the Senate, they 
have amendments that go through. If the gentleman wants to go back and 
recite a history of the number of bills that were open here under his 
leadership, I more than welcome him to do that.
  But we should be honest with one another. If Members want to offer an 
amendment and want to debate the amendment and want to make the bill, 
in their view, better, I would suspect that, if they win an amendment, 
they would vote for the bill. The gentleman has a long history here, 
and that is really probably the history that he remembers as well.
  I want to see the work get done. So any ideas that get brought forth 
in committee, they are debated, they are offered, and they are voted 
on. Ideas will get brought forth further as the bill comes forward. If 
it is an amendment and someone wants to move it to the floor, so be it. 
But we are not going to sit back with the idea of people who want to 
play politics on the outside and play politics on the inside. I just 
expect more.
  Mr. HOYER. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his comments. Of 
course, 130 of his Members voted against that bill; 130 of his Members 
rejected that bill. I am hard pressed to think that the majority leader 
believes that our ``no'' votes were political and his ``no'' votes were 
principled. That defies logic from my standpoint. The fact of the 
matter is that bill lost because the gentleman's Members didn't support 
it. The gentleman has 247 Members.
  I do remember being majority leader. Very frankly, I remember getting 
218 Democrats for almost every bill we brought to the floor. So we 
passed them with our votes.
  If 130 of the gentleman's Members had not voted against their own 
bill, it would have passed. And there should be no, Madam Speaker, 
misrepresentation or misinformation about how seriously Mr. Maloney 
cared about his amendment. There should be none whatsoever. In point of 
fact, it enjoyed ultimately the majority of support here on this floor.
  I will tell the gentleman, I have been here for sometime. He is 
correct on that, and I do offer amendments from time to time to improve 
bills that, even as improved, I don't like. So, in the final analysis, 
although I have improved them and been successful in adopting an 
amendment, I still do not think the bills are appropriate to pass and 
go into law.
  This conversation started with the fact that we need to be able to 
offer ideas. Very frankly, I understand the gentleman's position.
  Today, we just voted on two bills that aren't going anywhere, a sense 
of Congress that you are not going to bring to the floor. They have no 
chance of passage. What did you want to do? You wanted to play 
politics. I don't mean you personally, Madam Speaker, but it was a 
political effort solely to bring two bills to the floor to express some 
sense of Congress, both of which I voted against because I thought they 
were playing politics.
  So the accusation somehow that we are playing politics because we 
offer amendments that we care deeply about, that we want to see no 
discrimination allowed in our bills and that we want to defeat those 
constraints on an executive order that says to people who do business 
with the Federal Government, you can't discriminate against people, I 
will tell my friend, yes, we are going to continue to try to do that. 
Now, of course, on this last bill, we were not allowed to do that. We 
were shut down and shut up and precluded from voting on that particular 
piece of legislation.
  So, when I tell my friend that this session started with a pledge for 
open rules on appropriations bills, I understand the gentleman's 
problem. Frankly, we had structured rules when we were in charge as 
well. We had not made any great representation about open rules; 
therefore, we, too, wanted to get the business of the House done.
  Yes, I remember well 2007 when we were confronted with a filibuster 
by amendment. At some point in time, after 10 bills had been very 
difficult to pass, on the last two bills, we did have structured rules.
  I tell my friend that I hope that he will accord to Mr. Maloney or 
others the sincerity of their objectives, notwithstanding the fact that 
their amendment is adopted and articulates what I think is proper 
policy for our country, that is, not to discriminate. Everybody in our 
country apparently doesn't believe that, but Mr. Maloney does. And I 
want to make it very clear that he was very sincere in that amendment. 
Those of us who voted for it were very sincere in that amendment. It 
was not politics; it was values.
  Moving on, I want to congratulate the majority leader on his work on 
Puerto Rico. That was a difficult issue for us both, a difficult issue 
for our caucuses, a difficult issue for the executive department. We 
worked together. We got a bill done that certainly was not our 
favorite.
  The bill included a lot of stuff in there that we didn't like, but I 
will tell the gentleman that we didn't play politics on that. We only 
lost 24 votes on a bill that was largely constructed by the gentleman's 
side of the aisle in terms of some of the issues unrelated, per se, to 
restructuring of the debt, which was the intent of the bill.
  So I want the majority leader to know--he and I have a good 
relationship. I have great respect for him--we are going to intend to 
try to work together on issues like that that are difficult but are 
necessary for the American people.
  Toward that end, can the gentleman tell me what the status of the 
Zika issue is with reference to getting resources as quickly as 
possible to confront this challenge to our country's health?
  I yield to the gentleman from California.
  Mr. McCARTHY. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his work on 
the Puerto Rico crisis. It is something that we worked on together very 
early from all leaders' sides, making sure that we protected the 
taxpayers from a bailout, and I think we met all the criteria for 
helping Puerto Rico move forward and protecting the taxpayer.
  The gentleman is correct on Zika. We want to make sure the funding is 
there. As the gentleman knows, there is currently funding, and, as the 
gentleman knows, we have passed a bill on Zika and we have named our 
conferees. It is my understanding that the Senate is just now naming 
their conferees, so I am very hopeful that we can get that conference 
done very quickly and a bill brought back to the floor.
  As of now, I had met with the Director of the CDC the week when we 
departed before the district work period. There are enough resources 
currently, but we need to get our work done as rapidly as possible.
  Mr. HOYER. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his comments. 
Obviously, this is an emergency confronting our country. Dr. Frieden of 
the CDC, Dr. Fauci of the NIH, and so many others have raised this as a 
critically important issue for us to confront and confront now.
  So I would join the majority leader in whatever efforts are necessary 
to accelerate this process and give to the

[[Page 8537]]

administration and our health officials the resources they need to 
protect the American people.
  Madam Speaker, in closing, I rise to say that we have lost a great 
American, perhaps one of the most famous Americans in the world in 
Muhammad Ali.
  Muhammad Ali was, for a portion of his life, reviled for the 
decisions he took. But through his life, he reflected a commitment to 
principle that all of us could well follow, an example of even in the 
light of extraordinary opprobrium from his fellow citizens who said, 
This is what I believe, this is where I stand, and I am prepared to 
take the consequences.
  Many of us believe he was probably the greatest fighter that ever 
lived. As he fought so successfully in the ring, he fought successfully 
for his principles and his convictions.

                              {time}  1315

  I know that the American people and the House of Representatives 
would reflect the respect and affection for a great athlete and a great 
human being and a great American. If my friend wanted to make a 
comment, I will yield to him.
  Mr. McCARTHY. I thank the gentleman for yielding,
  I thank him for recognizing the life of Muhammad Ali. He touched so 
many of those who met him and those who did not, and there are so many 
stories out there of what he was able to do even privately on helping 
change people's lives and actually stand up for what he believed. I 
think so many times when you look at his life from where he rose and 
where he stayed rooted in his belief in this country, his belief in the 
courage to fight for what he believed in.
  There was a quote he made. I just read it today. It was put up by 
Forbes as the quote of the week, but Muhammad Ali once said: ``He who 
is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in 
life.''
  I know they are going to honor his life today. He was one who took 
risks and had the courage to stand up when others didn't believe the 
same as he did.
  One great foundation of this country provides the individuals the 
right to do that, to challenge others and to live a life that is very 
full. He lived his life to the fullest and reached many. In the 
athletic world, he reached the heights, and in reaching others, he did 
the same in his personal life as well.
  Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman for his comments.
  Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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