Hoyer: Keep the Deal. Stop Taking Hostage the American People and Their Government.
WASHINGTON, DC — Congressman Steny H. Hoyer (MD-05) spoke on the House Floor tonight about the current Republican dysfunction in the House of Representatives. Below is a transcript and link to his full remarks:
Click here to watch full remarks.
“Madam Speaker, the American people deserve to know why we are in this position. They need to know less than 5% of us, of the 435 members of this body, have put us in this position. The gentleman from Texas indicated how they did that; they’ve held hostage the rest of us unless the bill they want is passed.
“They’re taking hostage the American people. They’re taking hostage federal employees, and they’re taking hostage the Congress of the United States. What ought to happen is the 300 of us, the over 300 of us, 147 Republicans and 165 Democrats vote to compromise.
“I would call all of your attention to a 1998 speech in October by Newt Gingrich. He called it the ‘Perfectionist Caucus Speech’ because he made a deal with Clinton, because Clinton was the president. As Newt Gingrich pointed out, we had a lot of Democrats in the House, a lot of Democrats in the Senate, and a lot of Republicans in the Senate who said, by the way, don't always agree with us.
“But the American people expect us to make it work. How do we make it work? We make compromises. But the 5% that shut down the Congress for a week did it because they didn't like the compromise and they stomped their feet and they sent us home, which of course costs money because none of us took a salary cut, but nothing got done that week.
“Yeah, maybe it should be back in July, but it was shut done again just last week, where they sent us home because less than 5%, in this case 1%, little more than 1% of the Congress, 1% of this body had a tantrum. And they wouldn't vote for the national security. They wouldn't vote for a Rule that put a Defense appropriation bill on the Floor. Their bill, not our bill.
“Madam Speaker, the American public needs to know why their House is in the chaos of which the gentleman from Texas talked about is occurring at the border.
“We are going to be here for the next four, five days, maybe even longer pretending that somehow we’re compromising and moving forward. That is not the case. We have had a small group take the House hostage, the American people's House hostage.
“And we can talk about the numbers and disagree on the numbers, but Mr. and Mrs. America, Madam Speaker, ought to know that when I was the Majority Leader, we didn't shut down the government. When I was the Majority Leader on this side of the House, we passed every bill we wanted to pass because we are not a divided party, as the party that is now in the Majority has so clearly demonstrated on a regular basis of how divided they are.
“The Speaker made a deal. Keep the deal. Stop taking hostage the American people and their government. I yield back.”