Hoyer Press Staff Blog
Blog posts from the press staff of Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer
After yet another period of “soul searching” by Republicans, this time at their Republican retreat, it’s pretty remarkable that all they can come up to address their problems is that they need a new message. The Washington Post reports:
Republicans continue to float the idea of holding the debt limit hostage so that they can get their way on fiscal negotiations. Defaulting, as the President has warned, would hurt our economy, delay Social Security, Medicare and military payments, and could lead to a credit downgrade (again).
It seems like it was only last Congress that we were seeing headlines like these:
Today’s must-read is a Politico article highlighting Republican division and the difficulty they are having in setting their agenda:
This article from National Journal today says it all:
According to POLITICO, Majority Leader Eric Cantor said “We intend to avoid the fiscal cliff.”
A Christmas classic about to go terribly wrong: it’s time for House Republicans to hear the music and get back to negotiating a bipartisan, balanced solution.
A CNN/ORC poll out today shows that the majority of Americans find the GOP too extreme and believe they should compromise more.
A look at the morning news shows Speaker Boehner is having a tough time finding the votes he needs for his “Plan B”… or rather Plan C or D, or whatever we’re up to at this point.
Over the weekend, more Republicans joined with lawmakers like Senator Tom Coburn and Congressman Steve LaTourette in saying that higher tax rates for the top 2 percent of incomes will be part of any balanced agreement to avert the fiscal cliff. Senator Bob Corker said on Fox News Sunday:
More and more Republicans are joining the chorus calling for a balanced, bipartisan solution to the fiscal cliff that protects middle-class families while asking the wealthiest to pay their fair share through higher tax rates. As Dana Milibank says in his Washington Post column:
In case you haven’t seen it already, we wanted to pass along Sen. Tom Coburn’s common-sense remarks on the need to include revenues in an agreement to prevent the fiscal cliff. And by “revenues,” he means “rates.”
A new poll out today by The Washington Post and ABC News explains why a growing number of Republicans in Congress are racing to distance themselves from Grover Norquist’s tax pledge. According to the poll’s findings, 60% of Americans – including 63% of independents – favor raising income tax rates on earnings over $250,000 to help get America’s fiscal house in order and avert the looming fiscal cliff. As noted in the Washington Post :
While we know that Democrats’ future attempts to bring forward legislation on the House Floor will not come as a surprise to Republican leadership (spoiler!), we hope that they will surprise us, and actually agree to come back to work so we can find bipartisan solutions to pending legislation.
While Governor Mitt Romney and Rep. Paul Ryan tout Ryan’s record on deficit reduction, an unflattering Washington Post article tells a different story, with members of their own party criticizing Ryan’s lack of involvement on any meaningful efforts to reduce the deficit and his unwillingness to work across the aisle.
House Republicans may be able to put their jobs in the Capitol out of sight and out of mind, but Democrats will continue to remind them of the long list of unfinished legislation they abandoned when they left for recess. Today, Congressmen Chris Van Hollen and Henry Waxman were on the House Floor to remind House Republicans of the critical legislation they left undone. As The Hill reports, attempts to get Congress back to work were ignored by Republicans once again:
As House Republicans use up their last hours in session this month on more partisan messaging bills with no hope of enactment, we wanted to make sure you saw today’s New York Times piece highlighting the dismal record they’ve set as the least productive Congress of the modern age. Most egregiously, the Senate has passed a number of bipartisan bills that haven’t seen the light of day in the House – bills Congress used to pass easily and that affect millions of Americans. From the article:
We’ve been saying it all along, but this article in Roll Call presents some pretty stark numbers of exactly how fruitless the Republican-led House has been:
Today’s misguided decision to uphold the restrictive voter ID law in Pennsylvania is a reminder of the challenges we face to ensure that all citizens have access to the ballot box on Election Day. Democrats will continue to work to ensure all citizens have the ability to participate in elections by informing people on their right to vote.
As the Republican budget once again takes center stage, we here in the Democratic Whip Press Shop wanted to make sure you saw the latest round of criticism for their misguided plan that would raise costs for seniors while protecting tax breaks for the wealthy.
Recently, we have seen several states across the country implement restrictive and unfair voting restrictions, citing the need to prevent against alleged fraud. But as this analysis in the Washington Post confirms, there are fewer examples of this illegal activity than voter ID supporters claim:
After skipping town for the summer with a long list of unfinished business, Republicans are back home in their districts, scrambling to find an argument to explain why they blocked middle class tax relief for American families, after the Senate passed a bill and the President indicated he would sign it. By leaving town, they are continuing to hold middle class tax cuts hostage until they get additional tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans that our country cannot afford.
We keep talking about how Republicans are rewriting history when they try to falsely pin fault on President Obama for the upcoming sequestration. After all, 174 House Republicans voted for the measure that Politico said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was “the chief Republican architect of.” Today’s New York Times editorial has some choice words for this blame game, calling out Republicans for their attempts to bend the truth and rightfully showing the GOP is responsible for the upcoming sequestration:
Wanted to make sure you all saw this quote from Republican Rep. Richard Hanna, which perfectly sums up the state of play on Capitol Hill right now, as Republicans refuse to work with Democrats to pass middle class tax relief—even though both sides agree on the need for it and the Senate has already passed a bill.
So much for that whole “read the bill” thing. Apparently Republicans didn’t even make it to page 3 of this week’s bill on regulations (remarkable, considering the text didn’t even start until the bottom of page 2).