Hoyer Discusses Government Funding on Fox 5 DC
WASHINGTON, DC – Congressman Steny H. Hoyer (MD-05) joined Fox 5 DC this morning to discuss the need for Republicans to work with Democrats to fund the government and address the biggest issues facing the American people. Below are excerpts from the interview and a link to the video.
Click here to watch his comments on Fox 5 DC.
"There's no doubt shutting down the government makes no sense. We don't want to shut down the government, and we haven't shut down the government. The Republicans have under [former Speaker Newt] Gingrich, and then just three years ago have shut down the government purposely as a tactic. We want to make sure we have an agreement so we can move forward in funding the government. [Democrats] voted for a CR [in September], that's 134 days of additional time in order to negotiate and come to an agreement. One hundred and thirty days later, we hadn't had that agreement. So we didn't vote for the next two CRs, and this is the fourth Continuing Resolution because the Republicans refuse to come to the table and bargain with people they need to have votes from. It's not like they don't need us, they need us and we haven't gotten an agreement on how much money we're going to have to spend over the next eight months, and, therefore, how much we can budget and appropriate until September 30th of this year."
"Let me tell you, the agreement we're asking for is the agreement that [Speaker] Paul Ryan agreed to with Senator [Patty] Murray four years ago and then two years ago. All we're asking is the same thing that Speaker Paul Ryan suggested, and the Senate adopted: for parity of spending on the defense and non-defense in terms of the increases. That's all we're asking for, and, unfortunately, we've been unable to reach that agreement. We also think that we need to reach agreement on protecting the DREAMers, people who were brought here through no-fault of their own, when they were children, went to our schools here, they know no country but the United States of America and the President said he wants to protect them. And he goes back and forth hourly on what exactly that means. But we need to reach agreement on that, too. We also, in this CR, by the way, they didn't even deal with the emergency relief that's needed for Florida, Texas, Puerto Rico, and the [U.S.] Virgin Islands."