Hoyer Discusses President Biden’s State of the Union Address on MSNBC’s “Meet The Press Daily”
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Press Release
For Immediate Release:
March 1, 2022
Contact Info:
Margaret Mulkerrin 202-225-3130
WASHINGTON, DC – This afternoon, House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (MD) joined MSNBC’s “Meet the Press Daily” to discuss tonight’s State of the Union Address and House Democrats’ agenda. Below are excerpts from his interview and a link to the video:
On President Biden’s State of the Union Address
“Well, what I do want to hear [from President Biden] is a call for unity and focus and a unity of purpose. We are now confronting the worst real risk of war that we have since 1945. General Milley said that yesterday, and I agree with him. …[President Biden] has, I think, handled himself extraordinarily well leading up to what apparently was this inevitable intention of Putin to violate international law and make a criminal act of aggression against a nonthreatening country, a free country, an independent member of the United Nations, and I think that our country needs to come together in unity. We're obviously – have a lot of differences and we have a lot of polarization, but now is not a time for polarization. Now is the time for unity, not only to confront the challenge in Ukraine and to assist the brave and courageous people of Ukraine, but also to come together on domestic threats that we have, the pandemic being one, obviously inflation. We need to deal with that as a unified country because that is a great stress on the American people, and we need to come together and do what the President is going to talk about, and that is of course building a better America. I think we're in the process of doing that.”
On House Democrats’ Agenda
“Well, the most immediate challenge we have is making sure that we pass an Omnibus by the 11thof March, because at that point in time the authorization for funding ends. We also need to have a priority of getting the COMPETES bill done… that was our name for a bill that, in effect, makes America stronger and better by making sure that we can manufacture and be independent of supply chains from abroad, as we found during the pandemic, where we needed to rely on China and other entities to provide us with medical equipment that we needed. So I think that passing that bill is critical. I also believe that we need to continue to focus on voting rights, absolutely essential to make sure that Americans have the right, not only have the right to vote, but are facilitated in casting that vote, making it easier rather than so many states around the country are doing, making it more difficult.”
“The President will be talking about building a better America. I think as I just said that we've done two legs of that. The COMPETES is the third leg, and the Build Back Better [Act] is the fourth leg of that very, very critical agenda. Those are really the major items. Voting rights, I mentioned, is a critical agenda item, but I think we're moving in that direction. I would hope we could do so in a bipartisan way and to the extent that Republicans differ from specifics, we ought to breach those gaps, but building a better and stronger America is I think the President's agenda and vision.”
“Look, I think we've been a very solid party in terms of our unity. And I think you see that in the bills. For instance, Build Back Better, which we mentioned briefly, only had one negative vote... We’ve unified over voting rights, unified in the [America] COMPETES Act, unified in almost every piece in the infrastructure bill, so we've been a very unified party. Are there voices who want to talk about the nuance or difference that they have or addition or subtraction they would like to have? We're going to have that. But when you look at the votes, Chuck, and you know this, you see a unified party. We can only give up four votes and we have passed everything in the House that we wanted to pass. We're a unified party. But, yes, do we have different voices and different perspectives? Of course we do, and they want to be heard and they speak out.”
Click here to watch the video.
On President Biden’s State of the Union Address
“Well, what I do want to hear [from President Biden] is a call for unity and focus and a unity of purpose. We are now confronting the worst real risk of war that we have since 1945. General Milley said that yesterday, and I agree with him. …[President Biden] has, I think, handled himself extraordinarily well leading up to what apparently was this inevitable intention of Putin to violate international law and make a criminal act of aggression against a nonthreatening country, a free country, an independent member of the United Nations, and I think that our country needs to come together in unity. We're obviously – have a lot of differences and we have a lot of polarization, but now is not a time for polarization. Now is the time for unity, not only to confront the challenge in Ukraine and to assist the brave and courageous people of Ukraine, but also to come together on domestic threats that we have, the pandemic being one, obviously inflation. We need to deal with that as a unified country because that is a great stress on the American people, and we need to come together and do what the President is going to talk about, and that is of course building a better America. I think we're in the process of doing that.”
On House Democrats’ Agenda
“Well, the most immediate challenge we have is making sure that we pass an Omnibus by the 11thof March, because at that point in time the authorization for funding ends. We also need to have a priority of getting the COMPETES bill done… that was our name for a bill that, in effect, makes America stronger and better by making sure that we can manufacture and be independent of supply chains from abroad, as we found during the pandemic, where we needed to rely on China and other entities to provide us with medical equipment that we needed. So I think that passing that bill is critical. I also believe that we need to continue to focus on voting rights, absolutely essential to make sure that Americans have the right, not only have the right to vote, but are facilitated in casting that vote, making it easier rather than so many states around the country are doing, making it more difficult.”
“The President will be talking about building a better America. I think as I just said that we've done two legs of that. The COMPETES is the third leg, and the Build Back Better [Act] is the fourth leg of that very, very critical agenda. Those are really the major items. Voting rights, I mentioned, is a critical agenda item, but I think we're moving in that direction. I would hope we could do so in a bipartisan way and to the extent that Republicans differ from specifics, we ought to breach those gaps, but building a better and stronger America is I think the President's agenda and vision.”
“Look, I think we've been a very solid party in terms of our unity. And I think you see that in the bills. For instance, Build Back Better, which we mentioned briefly, only had one negative vote... We’ve unified over voting rights, unified in the [America] COMPETES Act, unified in almost every piece in the infrastructure bill, so we've been a very unified party. Are there voices who want to talk about the nuance or difference that they have or addition or subtraction they would like to have? We're going to have that. But when you look at the votes, Chuck, and you know this, you see a unified party. We can only give up four votes and we have passed everything in the House that we wanted to pass. We're a unified party. But, yes, do we have different voices and different perspectives? Of course we do, and they want to be heard and they speak out.”