Hoyer: House Democrats Remain In the House Chamber Ready to Do the Business of Our Country

“Mr. Speaker, normally I would be having a colloquy with the Majority Leader about the schedule for the week to come. But there is no schedule for the week to come, and there's no schedule for six weeks thereafter.

“We were scheduled to meet tomorrow to do the business of the American people. We will not meet that schedule.

“And we will not meet the schedule of doing the business of America for those who are concerned about the epidemic of gun violence in America. Not even the small but meaningful and important steps of making sure that if you can't fly, you can't buy a gun. To make sure that the background checks are universal and comprehensive so that dangerous people do not get guns.

“We will not do the business of those who are confronting being bitten by a mosquito and having the risk of having a child deeply disabled.

“Nor will we do the business of those thousands of children in Flint, Michigan, and people in Flint, Michigan, who still, two years later, do not have clean water to drink.

“Mr. Speaker, my colleagues and I sit here ready to do the business of our country.

“Mr. Speaker, we sit here ready to address those critical public health issues that confront our country: of gun violence, of Zika, of Flint and water that is not drinkable and will damage our children.

“So, Mr. Speaker, the American people will see that there is a party here willing to work and protect them every day.

“And so my colleagues will, one after another, express their own views as to what this House ought to be doing. We ought not to have taken a walk on the American people. We ought to be sitting here doing the work of the American people.

“Yes, we will go to convention and we'll tell them we're going to protect them, we're going to make their lives better. We can do so right here, right now, and I yield back the balance of my time.”