Hoyer Blames GOP Leadership For 'Do Nothing' Congress

By Adrianna McGinley

House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) told reporters at a press briefing Tuesday he remains hopeful that Republicans and Democrats will work in the last weeks of the year to pass economic recovery legislation, but the GOP must be willing to cooperate.

“There is no doubt in my mind that if Mr. Boehner, Ms. Pelosi, Mr. Cantor and I sat down and we could all agree that we’ll both come up with a majority, under the following circumstances…we could do it,” Hoyer said. “The issue is whether or not we’re going to do it in a bipartisan way or pursue a partisan message.”

Hoyer blasted Republicans for moving less than half the amount of legislation the Democratically-controlled Congress moved in 2007 under a Republican administration and attributed the lack of action to a complete unwillingness of the GOP to move away from political messages.

“They voted three times to end Medicare, we’re not going to do that, they continue to vote for it. [They] voted ten times on regulatory bills that do not create jobs…They voted 23 times against initiatives to create jobs…They voted 14 times to repeal patient protections and put insurance companies back in control of healthcare, they know that’s not going to pass the Senate, they know the president is not going to sign it. These are all political message bills for their base, a relatively narrow base.”

“We’ve moved a lot of legislation through the House which the speaker must have known, we knew, had no chance in the Senate, but it was their political message,” Hoyer added. “They’ve been pursuing their political message, not policy.”

When asked if he thinks House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is responsible, he said, “Yes, I think the Speaker bears responsibility. He is, after all, the leader.”

With the current continuing resolution expiring in two weeks, Hoyer said “we are going to urge staying here until we get [the sustainable growth rate, unemployment insurance, and payroll taxes] done.”

On the legislation proposing an extension and increase of the payroll tax, Hoyer said Republicans are alienating their constituents, citing that roughly 75 percent of Americans support raising taxes on millionaires to aid the middle class.

“I frankly think the millionaires’ tax is putting a lot of heat on the Republicans,” Hoyer said.

He criticized arguments that raising taxes on the wealthy would negatively affect small-business owners, saying it “is not going to impact at all, according to any economist, job creation in America. What it will do is give us resources to protect the most vulnerable in America.”

“Every bipartisan group that has looked at it says you cannot get to where we need to get if you do not deal with additional revenues, and very frankly, almost every Republican leader that I’ve talked to agrees,” Hoyer added.

While he does not want to see sequestration take effect, Hoyer said, Democratic leadership is not working to avoid it, and he believes Democrats will support a presidential veto on any legislation with that goal.

“We need to keep the sequester in place, but realize it is an incentive, a reason, a demand, if you will, that we come to an agreement and adopt a balanced response to the fiscal challenge that confronts us…The sequester was the discipline. If you now simply spend time figuring out ‘well how can we get around the sequester,’ frankly, it eliminate the discipline.”