COMMERCE, JUSTICE, SCIENCE, AGRICULTURE, RURAL DEVELOPMENT, FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION, INTERIOR, ENVIRONMENT, MILITARY CONSTRUCTION, VETERANS AFFAIRS, TRANSPORTATION, AND HOUSING AND URBAN...
Steny H. Hoyer (Democrat, MD) \u2014 2019-11-19

I thank the gentlewoman for yielding. prgtoken I want to thank Mrs. Lowey and Ms. Granger for their leadership on this committee. I want them to know that I appreciate their commitment to doing the appropriations process the way we are supposed to do it. prgtoken But this day is a recognition of failure, a failure to do our work as those who adopted the Budget Committee report in 1974, as those of us who have served on the Appropriations Committee since 1983, 23 years active on the Appropriations Committee, but still on it but under a waiver. prgtoken This is an admission of failure. It is a recognition of failure. It is a recognition that the Senate did not do its job. It is a recognition that the White House would not cooperate in getting to 302(b) allocations. prgtoken I talked to Senator McConnell in January of this year. Leader McConnell and I agreed that we wanted to get the appropriations work done in a fashion that it was intended to be done, considering discretely and individually appropriation bills, considering them on the floor. prgtoken Now, frankly, we did not do that. We did not do it for time's sake, so that we could do things in a timely fashion. And we considered three omnibus bills, minibuses as we called them, and we sent them to the Senate prior to June 26 of this year, which gave the Senate more time. They had all the time they needed. And because the White House, and, in particular, the acting chief of staff, Mr. Mulvaney--who has been one of the most negative people I have dealt with in terms of fiscal responsibility and doing the work of the House on time, and the person who would say ``amen'' would be John Boehner. Paul Ryan would be not too far behind. prgtoken But Mr. Mulvaney wanted to go to sequester. That was his original play. And when that didn't fly some months into the sequester gambit, he went to a CR for the whole year. prgtoken But then he found the Pentagon rightfully was very concerned about that proposal that would damage our national security, so he continued to delay. I don't know whether the President was involved in it or not, frankly. So we did not get to a 302(a) allocation. prgtoken For those, , watching all this jargon that we are using, that means how much discretionary money we are going to spend in total. By the way, our citizens, , ought to know that it is only about one-third, maybe a little less, that is discretionary. The other is Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, things of that nature. prgtoken We needed to come to an agreement on how much we were going to spend. After all, we understand the President has to sign the bills. But it was not the committees that made that agreement. It was not the Budget Committee that was involved in that agreement. It was Pelosi and Secretary Mnuchin meeting together. The Senate wasn't really involved. prgtoken We got to a number, and that was good, in July, which meant that the Senate had another 2 months to pass i