Hoyer Press Staff Blog
Blog posts from the press staff of Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer
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).
Just wanted to make sure you saw these twin editorials in yesterday’s New York Times. The first chides House Republicans for their continued refusal to accept the Senate’s bipartisan reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, leaving LGBT, immigrant, Native American, and student victims vulnerable. The second makes it clear who is to blame for delaying much-needed postal service reforms.
By now you have probably heard House Republicans try to tout their so-called “jobs plan” as they try and explain to voters what they have been doing for the last 18 months. (Hint: Not passing a comprehensive jobs plan.) Instead, House Republicans have wasted $50 million in taxpayer dollars in a fruitless attempt to repeal the health reform law, failed to take action on middle class tax relief and stalled critical legislation like the Farm Bill, postal reform legislation and the Violence Against Women Act—all of which passed the Senate with strong bipartisan majorities.
The list of officials speaking up in opposition to recent attacks on the right to vote across the country continues to grow. In case you managed to skip over this op-ed, your ever-helpful Democratic Whip Press Shop wanted to make sure you saw former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist condemning the latest attempt to deny access to the ballot box in Florida. In the op-ed, which ran in the Washington Post, the governor points to a key example of how these policies can go wrong in his own state:
A look at the morning news isn’t flattering for House Republicans. Not only did their “confrontation over compromise” approach to raising the debt limit take our nation to the brink of default and result in our nation’s first credit downgrade, but it also cost American taxpayers $1.3 billion in fiscal year 2011 alone:
Lately up here on Capitol Hill, the GOP has engaged in quite a bit of revisionist history on the sequester, hoping the American people will conveniently forget that 174 House Republicans (including all of the senior leadership) voted for a measure that Politico said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was “the chief Republican architect of.”
We’re excited to see a growing unity within Republican ranks –over the need for their presumptive nominee to release more than just two years worth of tax returns. The calls for transparency are growing, even from House Republicans:
Not content to trash a sequester mechanism House Republicans themselves voted for, Congressional Republicans are now taking their obstruction a step further, with their ludicrous attempts to pin the pending “fiscal cliff” squarely on Democrats, even as they refuse to yield an inch in their drive to protect tax cuts for the wealthy at all costs.
Recently, several states across the country have made unprecedented attempts to undermine voters’ rights across the country. We knew these policies will keep many voters from being able to cast their constitutional right to vote, and according to a report released today by the Brennan Center for Justice, several obstacles, including transportation, office hours, and costs, make compliance with Voter ID laws a challenge:
We’ve been saying it all along: Republicans should work with us on a deficit reduction plan that prevents sequestration from occurring through a balanced mix of spending cuts and revenues. And today, defense firm Pratt & Whitney President David Hess agreed, urging Republicans to put everything – including revenues – on the table.
