Steny Hoyer: “Scheduling the House, as my good friend, Roy Blunt, and I have discussed, is very difficult. It is very difficult…”

“Scheduling the House, as my good friend, Roy Blunt, and I have discussed, is very difficult. It is very difficult because we have 435 Members. Obviously, all of us have responsibilities. We have families and we have issues that happen within our districts that require us from time to time to be in our districts. All of the California Members who talked to me, and some on the Republican side talked to me and some on the Democratic side talked to me, I urged them to be in California. That's where I would be. If I had a wildfire, a flood or a tornado in my district, I would be in my district. Today's vote on SCHIP, which is the only vote we will have when we get to it, is not in my opinion in doubt and would not be affected by the absences we may have. On this vote there were 55 people not voting. Obviously, there are not 55 people in California. We have a number of the Californians here. There are representations on your side of the aisle that there are five or six Californians who might be there, and there are some on our side from Southern California who will also be there. Now, on the average day, we have 10 Members who are not here, give or take. Some for illness reasons and others for good reasons where they have determined they need to be someplace else. It is obvious we cannot cancel votes on those days. I will tell my friend that everybody knows we are not here tomorrow, and we are going to be hopefully through relatively early today.”