Congress

I was proud to support Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee’s resolution today marking the observance of Juneteenth on June 19, 2020.  I applaud her efforts to recognize Juneteenth in the House and make it a federal holiday – an effort I support. 

The Speaker and I have agreed on that for a long period of time: that the District of Columbia citizens were not being treated fairly.

This Republican lawsuit is about one thing only: forcing the House to stop doing its job and prevent it from helping the American people get through this crisis. 

Madam Speaker, to date, more than 85,000 Americans have died from COVID-19, and that number continues to grow. More than 36 million Americans have applied for unemployment insurance over the past eight weeks, which is more than one in every five American workers.

Madam Speaker, I want to remind us today of President Lincoln’s words to Congress. He said: ‘the dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.’ So it is today.
 

House Democrats are committed to ensuring the House can legislate during this unprecedented crisis and worked to secure temporary changes to allow for remote voting and virtual committee proceedings on a bipartisan basis. For several weeks, Democrats worked in good faith to reach a bipartisan agreement. Here’s a look at the timeline:

Thank you, Chairman McGovern and Ranking Member Cole.  I appreciate the opportunity to testify today on house consideration of H. Res. 965, which I would like to bring to the Floor Alongside the Heroes Act.
 

Yesterday, House Democrats introduced a resolution to temporarily allow remote voting and virtual committee proceedings during the coronavirus pandemic. Just like other nations and states, the House must continue operating for the people. Here is a look press coverage on the resolution:
 

Wanted to be sure you saw this Washington Post editorial today in support of the House moving forward with a resolution to allow for remote voting and virtual committee proceedings.

House Democrats are proposing temporary changes to allow for remote voting on the House Floor and virtual committee proceedings during the coronavirus pandemic. The changes would enable Congress to continue legislating by:

"And then there’s the US Congress, which hasn’t officially gone to full video hearings, though some senators joined their colleagues via video for hearings this week. But lawmakers in the House and the Senate haven’t yet budged on the question of remote voting."

WASHINGTON, DC – Today, House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-MD) unveiled a new website sharing information with the public about the work being performed by House Committees to address the challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic.  
 

House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-MD) again held his weekly meeting of House Committee Chairs over videoconference this afternoon. 
 

On substance, the proposal made by Leader McCarthy, Ranking Member Cole, and Ranking Member Davis falls woefully short of reopening the House for legislative business. Their proposal only covers hearings, and even then wouldn’t enable fully-remote proceedings.

“It is unacceptable that the White House has blocked Dr. Anthony Fauci from testifying before the House Appropriations Committee while allowing him to testify before the Senate.

Good afternoon. Thank you very much for being here. I am pleased to be joined by Karen Bass, the Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus; Jim McGovern, the Chairman of the Rules Committee; and three of my Maryland colleagues, Mr. [Dutch] Ruppersberger, Mr. [John] Sarbanes, and Mr. [Jamie] Raskin. Mr. [Anthony] Brown and Mr. [David] Trone are also joining [in co-sponsoring the legislation], but could not be here at this particular time.

WASHINGTON, DC – Today, House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (MD-05) introduced legislation to remove a bust of Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney from public display in the U.S. Capitol and replace it with a bust of Associate Justice Thurgood Marshall. 

I want to thank all the Members of the Caucuses that are here, including the Chairman of our [Democratic] Caucus [Hakeem] Jeffries, Vice Chair [Katherine] Clark. 

For decades, perhaps centuries, people are going to walk into this room. They are going to look up to see the ‘Elijah Cummings Oversight Committee Room,’ and they [are going] to turn to somebody and say: who was Elijah Cummings? And perhaps those who knew him well will say: ‘he was better than us.’

The President promised the American people that Mexico would pay for his border wall, but once again, he is stealing funds appropriated by the Congress to the military in order to fund this costly, ineffective, and wasteful endeavor. 

It’s never too late to do the right thing. About sixty days after…Congress passed the ERA, Maryland voted to ratify the ERA. I had been in the State Senate for five years at that point in the time, and I could not understand why women were not equal under our Constitution as it read, and how sad it was that, the consciousness of our Founders, which was extraordinarily high for their time – extraordinary – but they didn’t say ‘we hold these truths to be self-evident that all human kind are created equal.’ It is time to act. It is far past time to act. As I said in Maryland, 48 years ago, [we] overwhelmingly said: all of us are equal.

From the wage gap and pregnancy discrimination to sexual harassment and attacks on reproductive health care, women face gender discrimination in many ways. Persistent gender inequality and discrimination impacts women, their families, and our economy: