Steny Hoyer: “It's my understanding, staff has just told me, that we have an agreement, I presume Mr. Obey and Mr. Lewis and other…”

“It's my understanding, staff has just told me, that we have an agreement, I presume Mr. Obey and Mr. Lewis and other leadership have agreed, to coordinate the floor and committee work so as to not have conflicts. So that apparently has been contemplated. I want to agree with you that, generally speaking, you are absolutely correct. The Appropriations Committee does not like to be marking up bills when appropriation bills are on the floor. I agree with that 100 percent. Mr. Obey in particular does not like that because Mr. Obey, either as the ranking member or now the chairman, was very engaged, as we all know, in the floor debates. So he was particularly not happy with that process, and as an appropriator, I can tell you that no appropriator likes to have that happen. Again, we understand that there has been some work on this so that we can try to accommodate both doing the work on the floor and doing the work in the committee.”