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.”

Cornyn: Defense Cuts Would Be 'Arbitrary And Reckless'

By Adrianna McGinley

At the Hudson Institute Wednesday, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) warned that sequestration following a possible supercommittee failure would have a disastrous impact on national security.

“I worry that our strategic thinking is being driven by dollars and cents more than common sense,” Cornyn said. “If this process fails, and I hope and pray it does not, then … the base defense budget would be cut 14 percent in real terms over just three years.”

Cornyn cited that the sequestration cuts would be in addition to $489 billion in defense cuts under the Budget Control Act and roughly $180 billion of efficiency cuts recommended by former Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

“This should really be a time for rebuilding and retraining and not retreating,” Cornyn advised. “But retreat is the only way to describe what would happen if our military forces are required to live under this sequestration process.”

Cornyn said military leadership is trained not to panic, but “you can hear their frustration and you can hear grave concern in their voices that America’s strategic commitments are being defined not by the requirements but by budgets. They’re frustrated that under the sequestration process the cuts would be arbitrary and reckless.”

The Senator said however that concerns over how the Pentagon spends money should not be disregarded. Rather waste, fraud, and abuse should be aggressively fought. He specifically alluded to financial mismanagement at the Department of Defense citing that it has not been able to produce an “auditable financial statement,” and although the department is not required to do so until 2017, he said it was “shocking” that it could not do so now.

Cornyn joked that the twelve members of the “Super Committee” have more power than any group of Americans since those who wrote the constitution and said they must make use of that power.

“Failure really should not be an option,” Cornyn said. “What would it say to not only the American people…what would it say to the markets, what would it say to the world about America’s seriousness of dealing with these problems?”

Savings Panel Pitches Ideas To Super Committee

By Lisa Kellman

A bipartisan panel of experts met Tuesday to do the job the congressional committee on deficit reduction can’t seem to manage.

The panel proposed its own spending cuts and revenue generators that they believe would be the most effective way to reduce the nation’s deficit, and the most likely to pass in Congress by Thanksgiving.

The panel suggested cutting federal healthcare programs, wasteful subsidiesand defense.

The Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction — also known as the super committee — has until November 23 to send Congress a plan to slash the deficit by $1.2 trillion over ten years or an automatic sequestration will trigger, resulting in across the board spending cuts to domestic and defense budgets.

According to David Kendall from Third Way, a centrist think tank, sequestration would result in 12,000 criminals not going to jail, 50,000 new cases of food poisoning, 225,000 pounds of unscreened luggage and half as accurate weather reports because America won’t be able to afford new satellites.

Phil Kerpen from Americans for Prosperity, a conservative nonprofit that has been advocating against tax increases, called for repealing President Obama’s healthcare law, block-granting all federal entitlements and cutting federal agriculture subsidies, which he said would save taxpayers $1.651 trillion.

Gary Kalman from the Public Interest Research Group agreed that industries should have their subsidies cut.

“Some of the dairy management funding…pays pizza chains to market extra cheesy pizza,” Kalman said, citing the wasteful ways in which profitable industries spend taxpayer money.

Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah.) joined the panel midway and pushed for revenue neutral tax reform, while Michael Linden from the left-leaning Center for American Progress argued that Americans pay a low tax rate as is and the budget issue could be solved by raising tax rates.

The panel was clearly divided, but they called on members of the super committee to consider their recommendations by visiting EndingSpending.com.