Hoyer Discusses Tonight’s State of the Union Address on CNBC's "Squawk Box"

Press Release

For Immediate Release:

2013-02-12T00:00:00

Contact Info:

WASHINGTON, DC - House Democratic Whip Steny H. Hoyer (MD) discussed the President's upcoming State of the Union address on CNBC's "Squawk Box" this morning. Below are excerpts and a link to the video.

Click here to watch the video.

“I certainly think that we need to encourage business growth in our country, manufacturing in our country. [House Democrats] have an agenda called Make It In America, as you probably know.… I... believe the President will be talking about growing manufacturing jobs, growing our economy, growing jobs, generally - that's obviously what we need to do in this country and for our people. And I think he's going to focus on that.… [It’s] a question of creating an environment in which business - small, medium and large - feels that there's an opportunity for success, growth, and profits, and if they don't have that, obviously they're not going to create the kinds of jobs we [need].”

“Creating confidence, I think is critical. This has been the most confidence deflating Congress in which I've served. I'm speaking [of] the last Congress but this Congress continues the pace. We've got to ensure people that, in fact, there's going to be a stable environment fiscally and from an economic policy standpoint in which they feel confident that they can expand. If they don't have confidence, they're not going to do that.”

“We need to come together, Republicans and Democrats, and give our country confidence, give the business community… the confidence that they can expand with reasonable regulation, a tax structure that's competitive with the rest of the world, which, by the way, as you will remember, [President Obama] mentioned in the last State of the Union. So [the President] gets that. … We need to create an environment in which business can expand, we can create jobs and we can be competitive globally. And, in fact, frankly, we're growing our economy. Now … last quarter, as you know, GDP went down for the first time in a very long time. Why? Because of instability in dealing with our fiscal challenges, and we have to get over that. The President's going to talk about that and talk about job growth …. We need to have a compromise on moving forward, particularly on the fiscal field.”