Hoyer Discusses President Trump's Budget Proposal on CNBC's Power Lunch

WASHINGTON, DC - House Democratic Whip Steny H. Hoyer (MD) joined CNBC's Power Lunch this afternoon to discuss President Trump's budget proposal released today. Below are excerpts from the interview and a link to the video:

Click here to watch the video.

"It's not real. And frankly, my first thoughts were mirrored by almost every Republican who has made a comment on the budget: this is not a real document; it is not a real offer; it's not a starting point. It’s a draconian document, according to [Hal] Rogers, the former Republican Chairman of the Appropriations Committee. It’s a budget that Mike Simpson from Idaho, former Speaker of the Idaho House, a Republican, said he couldn’t possibly vote for it and it’s dead on arrival. So it's not a real document. It may be Mr. Mulvaney and Mr. Trump’s idea of how they're going to fund their tax cuts, but it's not a real document in terms of our responsibilities. Mr. Mulvaney, you just had him on, saying: well, it wasn’t about compassion. Well, it is certainly about judgment. It’s about judgment of how America invests in making it a great country and making its people healthy and educated.”

“We certainly ought to be bringing down the deficit that confronts our kids and our grandkids because they are going to have their needs in their time, and we ought not to be squandering their inheritance, in effect. And we ought to be paying for what we buy. The richest country on the face of the earth can afford to do that. What we need to do is make sure we're investing in things that will make our country even greater and, as I said, healthier, educated, safer both on the defense side and on the nondefense side. And this budget is an unrealistic offer or suggestion. It is not, I think, responsible.”

“We need to invest both in our defense side of our budget to keep us safe in a dangerous world, and we need to invest in educating our kids and keeping them healthy and in our infrastructure or we're not going to be a competitive country. How do we do that? It can be done, and I think if we would sit down and agree on how to get that done, we could do it – rather than simply offering proposals, which, frankly, are rejected out of hand by both parties.”