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Hoyer Discusses the Need to Address Public Health Emergencies, Fund the Government on NewsChannel 8

September 8, 2016

WASHINGTON, DC – Congressman Steny H. Hoyer (MD-05)discussed House Republicans' failure to address public health emergencies and their division over funding the government on NewsChannel 8, managed by ABC-affiliate WJLA in Washington, DC. Below are excerpts from the interview. 

Click here to watch the interview.

"I am shocked and deeply disappointed that we came back after seven, eight weeks where the Republicans had the opportunity to plan what they were going to do to deal with this emergency, and we have filler this week.  Bills that aren't going to pass the Senate, bills that the President is not going to sign and that aren't high priority items for the country, and Zika is not being addressed. We ought to pass the Senate bill…."

"The Senate… is about to pass, [Senate Majority Leader Mitch] McConnell says it will pass, a continuing resolution for approximately three months to December 9, and then hopefully we will, by that time, have resolved the appropriations issues for 2017 and pass a bill, as we did last year, an omnibus bill which funds the government from then until September 30 of next year. That's what we ought to do, that's the responsible thing to do."

"We haven't funded the effort on opioids, which is a crisis throughout the country. We need to deal with the Flint crisis on lead in the water in Flint, Michigan. People are still at risk and still drinking out of bottled water. We should be addressing that problem."

"In addition, we have an epidemic of gun violence in America. We have urged the Republicans in the House to put on a Republican bill, sponsored by [Rep.] Peter King of New York, a Republican, the former Chairman of the [House] Homeland Security Committee, who has two bills that we think are very reasonable, supported by ninety-percent of the American public which say, ‘if you're too dangerous to fly on an airplane, you're too dangerous to buy a gun.' And secondly, which says, if we adopt the premise, we ought to have background checks. Then we ought to have background checks in every transaction, not just some of the transactions... We are asking Republicans to bring those to the Floor."

"Those are… four items of critical importance to the American people and they're not being dealt with. That's a demonstration of the continual dysfunctional leadership in the House of Representatives by Republicans."