By Adrianna McGinley
House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) today criticized Republican efforts to pass a Balanced Budget Amendment.
Although reporters noted that he supported a Balanced Budget Amendment in the 1990s, Hoyer said he no longer does because of fiscal “irresponsibility” on the part of Republican leadership over the last decade.
“What I said in 1995 I absolutely agree with today,” Hoyer said. “Unfortunately, I did not contemplate the irresponsibility that I have seen fiscally over the last 9 years or 8 years of the Bush administration and Republican leadership in the House and the Senate.”
Hoyer said Congress should be focused on finding ways to pay for the deficit, not passing constitutional amendments.
“The tough votes are paying for things, it’s not a tough vote to pretend you’re going to go for a balanced budget by having some amendment on the floor…if you want to cut revenues, make sure that you have the guts to cut spending…if you don’t have that kind of courage then don’t criticize others for saying we have to pay for things.”
Hoyer said, however, that he believes the so-called “super committee” tasked with creating a plan to reduce the nation’s deficit will meet its Thanksgiving deadline.
“Time is short but not so short that agreement can’t be reached,” he said. Failure, he added, is not an option because the billions in automatic cuts to domestic and defense spending that would result are “irrational and bad policy.”
Hoyer said that the U.S. has the resources to solve its problems but lacks “the courage and the will to do so.”