Legislative Program
Floor Speech
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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Louisiana for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, on Monday, the House will meet at 12 p.m. for morning hour and 2 p.m. for legislative business, and 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 12 p.m. for legislative business.
On Thursday, the House will meet at 9 a.m. for legislative business.
Next week, Mr. Speaker, the House will consider S. 1098, the Joint Consolidation Loan Separation Act, bipartisan legislation sponsored by Representative David Price and Senator Mark Warner to provide relief to borrowers who need to separate their joint consolidation student loans. This legislation would greatly benefit the individual borrowers who are most in need of relief, including victims of abuse.
The House may also consider a continuing resolution. As all of us know, on September 30, at midnight, the government's ability to fund and operate goes out of authorization; therefore, it is necessary for us to take action before September 30, and we may do that next week.
The House may also consider legislation to reform the Electoral Count Act from Representatives Zoe Lofgren and Liz Cheney.
The House will consider bills under suspension of the rules. The complete list of suspension bills will be announced by the close of business tomorrow.
As is usual, as we come very close to ending and then have a substantial period of time, October and the first and second week in November for the election, it is common that we may have other pieces of legislation, Mr. Speaker, available and necessary to pass. We will notify Members as soon as we have that information.
Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
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Mr. HOYER. Obviously, that is a good question and a good thing to have.
The appropriators are working through the administration's list of anomalies, which I know there are three or four items dealing with health and also dealing with Ukraine and a couple of other matters. I don't have that list in front of me, but the answer to my friend's question is that they are trying to get that together.
I think they are pretty close. I will talk to Chair DeLauro. I presume she is in conversation with and discussions with the ranking member, as well, but I am sure that that is the case.
There is also, I believe, money also being asked for for disaster relief that may well be in the CR.
The gentleman referred to the discussions that occurred in the Senate between Senator Manchin and Majority Leader Schumer. Obviously, we are going to see what the Senate does. I don't know what the Senate is going to do. It is one of the reasons there has been a discussion about the Senate moving first on that and discussions with the Senator about when they were going to move. I think that is under discussion.
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Mr. HOYER. If I might add, I want to make the gentleman aware--and I know he is--but I want to make the Members aware that we will need to be here for such time as it takes us to pass the continuing resolution so that government will continue to operate. It is essential for the economy, essential for our national security, and essential for the employees, but it is also essential for all those whom they serve on a daily basis.
I have told my Members in some discussions about what we are going to do the last week in September. I have told my Members, and we also would make clear to all of our Members, including the Members on my friend's side of the aisle, that they ought to be making sure that the last 3 weekdays of November and that Saturday they ought to keep clear so that if, in fact, we need to work during those periods of times--and my expectation is we are going to have to--that they not be canceling events that they scheduled. So, being on notice, I think, will be fair to them and fair to anybody that we are scheduling with.
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Mr. HOYER. I could not agree with the gentleman more. I think I am probably just as frustrated.
I know the members of the Appropriations Committee are as frustrated as anybody in this institution. As someone who served on the Appropriations Committee for 23 years, we ought to be passing bills in a timely fashion. We ought to be passing them one at a time. We ought not to have these gigantic omnibuses that nobody knows about.
Both sides have had to prepare two omnibuses at the end of the year to fund government because we haven't passed individual appropriation bills in a timely fashion either through the House or the Senate or through the House and the Senate to the President. So, I agree with the gentleman entirely.
I agree also that we ought to give everybody as much notice as we possibly can. I will tell the gentleman, frankly, I was hopeful that we would have passed the CR this week. For reasons that are, I think, obvious to everybody, we haven't done that. But I am hopeful that we can do it sooner rather than later and don't have some September 30 crisis that we seem to always create.
I thank the gentleman for yielding.
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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
I, obviously, anticipated that question. I thought about it, and I want to say to the Members my thoughts that I, frankly, talk about all over the country.
We passed a number of bills. Inflation is hurting our people. Inflation was not caused by President Biden or this Congress. Inflation was caused by the pandemic.
Inflation hurt businesses severely and hurt employees severely. In a bipartisan way, we voted as that pandemic started. As we saw the broad impacts of that, we, in a bipartisan fashion, stepped in to help. It made a very big difference.
I start that way because the representation of some is that somehow we, by passing legislation, have caused this inflation. The OECD nations, the economically developed countries of the world, have all had inflation. As a matter of fact, the average OECD nation has a 10.2 percent inflation rate. As the gentleman knows, ours is 8.3 percent.
Mexico didn't have any of the bills that we passed and had an 8.7 inflation rate. The Netherlands that didn't have an American Rescue Plan has a 13.6 percent rate of inflation. Sweden, a small and very successful country, didn't have an American Rescue Plan and has an inflation rate of 9.8 percent; Austria, another strong economic country, 9.3 percent; Denmark, the country of my father's birth, 8.9 percent.
And you say: So what? The ``so what'' is that we have seen a global inflation. I haven't mentioned some of the other countries in Asia who have inflation rates, as well. I simply say that so both parties and all Members understand the consequences and pain of inflation at the pump.
The gentleman in some of the discussions we have had has pointed out that prices have gone up. I have not heard him say that the President has taken certain action, and it has come down about 35-plus percent over the last 6, 7 weeks from $5.02 as an average down to somewhere around $3.60.
Is that low enough? It is not. It has been much higher. It was higher in 2008 under George Bush. But it needs to come down further. We will continue to work on that.
We passed a number of pieces of legislation. I mentioned the American Rescue Plan took 48 percent of America's children out of poverty who were in poverty; not 48 percent of America's children, but 48 percent of America's children who were in poverty were taken out by the American Rescue Plan.
None of us are wearing masks on this floor or around the country when we gather together and get in rooms close to one another. Why? Because we got 250 million shots in arms.
We also have people struggling for a variety of economic reasons primarily brought upon them by the pandemic, so we put money in their pockets.
We have one of the fastest growing economies. We have one of the lowest unemployment rates in the world. We have a country that is doing well.
The gentleman mentions the stock market declining. It did. Why did it decline? Because we had the pandemic. Inflation resulted from that, and the Federal Reserve--as was true under Ronald Reagan when unemployment went to 10.5, 6, 7, 8 percent because Paul Volcker was slowing down the economy to defeat inflation.
Inflation is harmful, particularly to people who are elderly and on fixed incomes. So, I want the gentleman to know that we empathize with that, and, therefore, we are distressed.
When we passed a bill, the Inflation Reduction Act, not a single Republican voted for it.
And there is absolutely no denial on the reality that is going to bring Americans' costs down. Not only that, it kept 13 million people who were going to fall off insurance on the Affordable Care Act--which I know the gentleman's party does not support--but 13 million Americans who had healthcare insurance as a result of the American Rescue Plan, it was going to stop on December 31, and we continued that.
We put on legislation that would bring down prescription drug costs and allow companies to sell drugs to Medicare in a negotiated way. We negotiate, as the gentleman knows, and I don't know whether the gentleman thinks that policy ought to be stopped, but we negotiated for prices with veterans' healthcare. Now we are going to do it with Medicare. We wanted to do it for everybody, but the Senate Republicans would not agree to that.
We believe that the infrastructure bill is going to really help bring down inflation, create jobs, and expand our economy. We believe the CHIPS and Science bill is going to do the same. Only 13 on the Republican side voted for the infrastructure bill, which was, I think, a bill that would have helped inflation by making supplies better. The energy portion of the Inflation Reduction Act is going to bring down the cost of energy. It is going to create competition on energy, and fight climate change. I lament the fact that not a single Republican voted for the Inflation Reduction Act.
Even if you reject the fact that it is going to reduce inflation--as I think you probably do, I don't want to anticipate what you do, but that is my guess. There are literally scores of economists who believe it is going to bring down inflation.
As importantly, the committee who looks closely at this--scores of economists say it is going to bring it down. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget say they believe it is going to bring down inflation. I don't want to project that it is going to bring it down a half a point, a point, 2 points, 3 points, 4 points--I hope it does. I think it was certainly worth a try.
None of your colleagues either in this House or in the Senate--down the aisle--gave it a chance. We passed it anyway under a process, obviously, that allows just Democrats in the Senate to pass something under a process called reconciliation.
I want to tell the gentleman that I have apprised the committee chairmen of the bills that you have talked to me about. I have asked them to look at them. Frankly, I cannot tell you I have gotten a response from each one of them, but we are giving them attention.
Obviously, we want to know what our committees think about not only your legislation, our legislation--our legislation, that is, bipartisan legislation. We lament the fact, I will tell you, very frankly, Mr. Speaker--we lament the fact that our Republican colleagues in all four of the bills I have just mentioned, which are designed to grow the economy--the CHIPS bill, the bipartisan infrastructure--19 Senators voted for the infrastructure bill and helped put it together with President Biden and Senate Democrats. Lamentably, only 13 of your colleagues chose to vote for it. I am glad they did, but it was over the advice and counsel of their leadership. That bill clearly was embraced by the American people and incorporated policies, essentially, that President Trump said in 2016 he was going to recommend and have the Congress adopt. It didn't happen in 2017. It didn't happen in 2018. It didn't happen in 2019, and it didn't happen in 2020.
I say to my friend, we think all four of those bills are going to have a very positive impact on our economy, on growing our economy, ensuring supplies of basic goods, and bringing down inflation.
Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I can't see the chart. Could you tell me what it says so I know what the gentleman is talking about?
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Mr. HOYER. Here?
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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
First, let me say, the gentleman dismisses what other countries are doing or he says they are doing bad things and therefore they have inflation.
Every country has inflation. Why? Because the pandemic shut down the world. It shut down the markets. It shut down the production of supplies. That is why. People had to stay home and they weren't out producing and making things.
We kept a lot of people employed. We spent trillions of dollars doing it, which were bipartisan bills signed by Donald Trump. Trillions. As soon as Donald Trump left, all of a sudden the other party--his party, the Trump party, decided it is over. It wasn't over for the American people.
Kids were not in schools. People hadn't been given shots in arms yet. People were really hurting. Those 48 percent of the children in poverty were still in poverty, but it was over. No more bipartisanship. It is another President, so we are going to blame him.
That is politics over people. What we did is people over politics because we knew people were hurting. We passed legislation to give them help. Every Republican, Mr. Speaker, voted no.
We voted to help them gets shots in arms. Every Republican voted no.
We voted to get their kids back in school to make their schools safe and healthy. Every Republican voted no because they wanted to bleat about inflation.
The reason they don't like these figures is because these are the economically successful nations of the world, many of whom have inflation higher than we.
The gentleman is absolutely right. We need to get inflation down. There are 126 economists that say that the Inflation Reduction Act will reduce inflation, reduce healthcare costs, and reduce energy costs.
Now, the gentleman and I have had this discussion about his energy bills, which they think will be the salvation. They always think: Drill more, life will be better. I get it. Louisiana is a State that wants to drill. I get that. We use that product. It is an important product, and we are going to continue to use it. That is why I have no criticism of that.
In the last bill that we passed, which is really going to fight the climate challenge that we face--there were four 1,000-year floods in four different communities in America within 30 days of one another.
The West is on fire, literally and figuratively. Climate challenge is real. Every Republican voted ``no'' to invest in meeting that challenge head-on; every Republican, House and Senate, Mr. Speaker.
I can't read the chart, but 13 percent inflation is too high. I go to the grocery store almost every weekend. I live alone. I don't buy a lot of food at any one time because I am traveling a lot and here a lot; don't want it to go bad.
So I get it on the prices. I get it on gasoline prices. They are tough. That is why we passed a food and fuel bill. The gentleman from Louisiana voted ``no.'' The leader of the Republican Party, Mr. McCarthy, in the House, voted ``no'', and the overwhelming majority of Republicans voted ``no.''
They wanted to make sure that we had competition. That is the free market system. That is what brings prices down. If you have a monopoly, you can charge anything you want if people need the product.
Now, I won't go through the statistics because the statistics are we are producing more energy today than we produced 2 years ago. I read those statistics. I am not going to bore the gentleman, Mr. Speaker, with them again.
They don't bore me because it shows that--when the argument is the reason we have inflation is because we are not producing energy, the reason we don't have as much energy is because companies made a rational decision. What was that rational decision?
In March and April of 2020, people started staying in their homes. They stopped buying gas and other products, petroleum products, and, as a result, corporations made a reasonable judgment. We are not going to produce more capacity.
So, when we got out of the inflation, we are still not doing that. But we are doing more than we did some years ago, as those statistics that I read to the gentleman three or four times, so I won't read them again.
But the industry, as I have also told the gentleman, owns 9,000 unused permits to drill onshore; 37 million acres offshore; which can be permitted, ready to go.
So when you simply ignore and pretend that somehow Joe Biden, the President of the United States, is responsible for worldwide inflation, and dismiss the pandemic--I don't think I have heard one time, Mr. Speaker, the Republican whip mention the pandemic as a cause of the inflation. It is all about energy.
I beg to differ with the gentleman, Mr. Speaker. I think, honestly, the American people need to know that.
Yes, the stock market had a rough tumble. Why did it have a rough tumble? Because the Federal Reserve, the chairman of which was appointed by President Trump, responsibly, along with his board of governors, responded to try to get this inflation under control and bring it down.
I don't know whether the gentleman supports that action or not. Ronald Reagan supported that action; although he did not appoint the chairman of the Federal Reserve that did it.
So, Mr. Speaker, we are going to continue to fight for the people and put them above our politics, or even our own personal economic interests, by passing the American Rescue Plan; by passing the bipartisan infrastructure bill; by making sure that America can be seen as a country that makes it in America; chips, investing in science for the future, for the people and, yes, the Inflation Reduction Act, which the gentleman and his party has misrepresented over and over and over again with something they know is not the truth.
They project 80,000 new people going after average Americans. They know that is not true, Mr. Speaker.
After years of trying to defund the people who collect the revenues from our people so everybody pays their fair share, and those of us-- and I say of us--who are doing well, pay our fair share, and the people who make billions, who pay less of a percentage, in many respects, as Warren Buffett said, than those who work for them.
Yes, we want taxes fairly enforced, Mr. Speaker. We don't want anybody paying an unfair share because somebody is not paying at all.
The IRS will, after those 10 years of accretion of employees, have as many employees as it had back in the 1990s; trying to make sure it can, in fact, enforce a fair system that provides the revenues that the Federal Government needs to protect, preserve our people's welfare, economy, and national security.
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Mr. HOYER. I don't think I made that comment.
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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
First of all, to your last statement, the unions. What were the unions trying to do? They were trying to keep teachers healthy. They were trying to keep kids healthy. Because we were telling people, don't congregate. Don't get all together.
They were trying to keep kids out of school whose HVAC systems, heating, ventilating systems were not up to date and couldn't transfer the air in a clean, healthy way.
So we gave them billions of dollars. Yes, we spent a lot of money to make our people safe, to get people back to work, to get kids back in school, and it worked. They are back in school.
None of us are wearing a mask. We congregate now. We all get together. Hardly anybody, if anybody, some people who have particular vulnerabilities are wearing masks. God bless them. It worked, and the Republicans voted ``no.''
Now, I want to go to this energy issue because they are Johnny-one- note. Inflation is caused by administration policy on inflation, gas prices, and energy production. But the fact of the matter is he ignores that inflation is happening in a lot of places.
Mr. Speaker, in Denmark, they are pretty energy independent with renewable energies and not relying on supply chains per se. Their inflation is higher than ours because it was a global phenomenon. Their economies were assaulted. Ours came back faster and better.
Why? Because we invested in our people.
Now, let me go to a simple fact. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, average production--that means over 4 years for Trump--for Donald Trump was 10,968,000 barrels per day; for Joe Biden it was 11,185,000 barrels a day. That is more, not less, than the average under Donald Trump. But it serves their political interest, Mr. Speaker, to somehow project to the American people that Biden has shut down the energy industry which is why you are paying more.
I explained that the energy companies did, in fact, cut production. It was a rational business judgment. People were driving less and buying less petroleum.
There is still concern. Most of them are seeing that there is going to be an alternative energy that is going to be required if we are going to make sure that this globe does not burn up with the people with it.
He also says--I don't have the report in front of me, so I am going to wing it--that no one earning under $400,000 per year got a tax increase as a result of the bill the gentleman alludes to.
If CBO says--and I will read the report--that $20 billion is going to be received from that category, it will be because somebody, whether they are making $100,000, $200,000, $300,000, or $400,000, is not paying their fair share pursuant to laws that we adopt--not because we put new taxes on them but because they are not paying the taxes that are due.
I don't have the CBO report in front of me, so I am opining because it certainly wasn't because we have new enforcement officers, unless those enforcement officers find that the people to which the gentleman refers are not paying their fair share.
By the way, it will also apply to the people who are making billions and not paying any taxes, much less their fair share.
Let me repeat that energy figure again because I think he will probably go back to energy because that is what we do almost every colloquy. More energy is being produced under Joe Biden than was produced under Donald Trump.
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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. I think we are probably pretty close to closing.
I would say this, Mr. Speaker. I think the American people are in the process of making a judgment. On our side, we see things as pretty positive in terms of the response to the policies that we have been adopting without any significant help from our Republican colleagues, but they will have a chance to vote and decide.
We have passed legislation, as we said we would do, for the people-- not for the sake of politics but for the sake of children, families, the young and old, and, yes, even the rich and poor.
I want to comment because I urge my Republican friends to be precise in their conversations with the American public. There are not 80,000 revenue auditors or agents included in this bill that we talked about on bringing inflation down and which economists say will bring inflation down.
Our Republican friends say they want to do that, but they vote against bills that will bring down demonstrably, and without possibility of denial, costs for people, health costs for people, prescription drug costs for people, insulin, which costs about--it is single figures, and we capped it at $35. That is about 400 percent profit, but they are now paying $300 or $400 or $500.
Now, luckily, because we could pass it with Democrats, seniors won't be paying that. They will be capped at $35. But millions of other Americans, because the Republicans would not support it in the United States Senate--we passed it here--will not get the benefit of that cap. They will be paying far above justifiable prices for insulin.
We are producing energy. The argument is specious that somehow this inflation is caused by our cutting back on energy supply when I just read a figure, subject to dispute. Maybe next week I will hear, no, that figure is wrong. Maybe. We are producing more energy than Trump did--not Trump himself, but the country--during Trump's Presidency.
I urge, Mr. Speaker, my Republican friends to tell the American people the truth. Yes, there are some more agents because there are people not paying their fair share. If you have an audit, and they say you are not paying your fair share, and you pay more, isn't that what we expect when we pass tax bills, that people will pay pursuant to what the law says, whether they make $100,000 or $100 million or $100 billion? I don't guess anybody makes $100 billion in a year.
We ought to be honest with the American people. Give them the facts, and then they will make a decision, but tell them the truth.
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Mr. HOYER. Will the gentleman yield?
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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, there are 80,000-plus additional, which will get back to the 20 years ago level of employment in the IRS. The IRS has been reduced in personnel in all categories, not just enforcement agents, but in all categories, which will undermine their ability to serve the public and collect taxes so that we all pay our fair share and so people who don't have accountants and who don't have ways and means to avoid taxes are treated fairly themselves.
Everybody ought to be treated fairly. If we don't think they are being treated fairly because of the law then we ought to change the law, but we ought to tell the American people the truth.
There are not that many enforcement agents. They are in so many different categories in the IRS to make sure that the IRS can successfully do its job and answer people's questions about what, when, where, and why they have to do things pursuant to law. That is what I meant, not that the 80,000 people are enforcement agents. They are not. They are not. It is a far lower number than that.
But we know that there is over $100 billion--I think it is a much larger figure than that--in taxes that are owed under the law that are not being paid, which means that the tax rates need to be higher on others than they ought to be.
That is what this bill gets at. In other words, this bill, the inflation reduction bill, is more than reducing inflation. I am sorry that my Republican friends made a determination it was not a bill they could support to help bring down inflation, but that was the judgment they made.
I think they want to bring down inflation. We want to bring down inflation, but when we present a bill to the floor which does it, we would hope we would get support on a bipartisan basis.
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