Steny Hoyer: “The House is ready to negotiate with the Senate, and the House has cleaned out a lot of the brush, but it seems that the…”

“The House is ready to negotiate with the Senate, and the House has cleaned out a lot of the brush, but it seems that the Senate is going to have a very hard time getting their members in the conference committee to support a highway bill. So that is why we did the extension today on 8 months to give them more time to work. The FSC/jobs bill, the conferees met on that bill last night. It was a very good conference. Democrats were certainly included, and we have scheduled another meeting for next Tuesday. I believe there is a good chance that a conference report could be ready for the House to vote on later at the end of next week. The appropriations process, the gentleman being on the Committee on Appropriations, knows very well, as he stated, that we passed 12 of the 13 bills. The thirteenth bill has problems. We know there is going to be an omnibus bill, and we will solve those problems in an omnibus bill, but the problem is in the other body.”