Hoyer Remarks on House Republicans' Partisan Rules Package

WASHINGTON, DC - House Democratic Whip Steny H. Hoyer (MD) spoke on the House Floor this afternoon in opposition to House Republicans' proposed rules package, which increases partisanship and restricts transparency. Below is a transcript of his remarks and a link to the video. Click here for a summary of the Republican rules package.

Click here for the video.

“I thank the Gentlelady for yielding. Unfortunately, I don't have time to respond to many of the representations that [Chairman Pete] Sessions made with reference to our economy, but we can all agree that our most important responsibility as Members of the Congress is to grow this economy, create the kinds of jobs that Americans need so that they can succeed and support themselves and their families. But I want to speak about a couple of things in this rules package. Traditionally, Democrats will vote against, and Republicans will vote for, because traditionally this is a partisan vote. I urged the Rules Committee Chairman to adopt a couple of changes which I thought would make this rules package a better one.

“First, I asked the House to move to ban discrimination against gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered employees. We provide in our rules that you cannot discriminate against people based upon race, nationality, gender, and other arbitrary distinctions. We should have added this as we have in so many of our laws. Currently, there are no protections for Congressional staffers fired or refused promotions simply for LGBT status. I regret that the Rules Committee was unprepared to offer such a protection to our employees.

“Secondly, since Republicans assumed the Majority in 2011, Delegates from the District of Columbia, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands, as well as the Resident Commissioner from Puerto Rico, have been denied the opportunity to vote in the Committee of the Whole. They can vote in committees and the Committee of the Whole is, of course, a Committee of the House. It is not a final arbiter. When I was Majority Leader I offered that amendment in the rules. It passed. My Republican friends took it to court, and the court said that it was sustainable – and sustained it. This, effectively, unfortunately denies representation to nearly 5 million Americans. Americans. One of [the Delegates] is on the Republican side of the aisle from American Samoa so this is a bipartisan concern that I have.

“Unfortunately this rules package put forward by the Republican Majority does not include either change. In addition, this rules package does not live up to the responsible governing the American people expect and deserve from Congress.

“Mr. Sessions spent a long time talking about scoring: static scoring versus dynamic scoring. Dynamic scoring, I would suggest to the American people, is a gamble. It is a gamble that your projection is correct, and if your projection is not correct, as it has so often been, then you end up putting the deficit even higher because you bet on the outcome. The more conservative policy, I would suggest, would be to get the money first and then decide how you're going to apply it. Don't gamble on the fact that you're going to get the money, which is what dynamic scoring is – and the Gentleman admitted, he did not argue, that cutting taxes always paid for themselves. In fact, Alan Greenspan said exactly that in the last decade.

“What it means is the Republicans will be able to hide the true costs of tax cuts behind a debunked mantra that tax cuts pay for themselves. They do not. And this provision will allow them to explode the deficit, as they did the last time they were in charge. The last time the budget was balanced was not under the Bush Administration, when you had a Republican Congress, a Republican Senate, and a Republican President. It was when President Clinton was President of the United States – for four years we had a balanced budget.

“[Dynamic scoring] also threatens to politicize the Congressional Budget Office which has maintained its role as a impartial and nonpartisan arbiter on budget scoring for four decades, which makes us be honest, which is what the American public expects – rely on the figures that are not political figures but are independent, analytical figures on which we can rely.

“I urge my colleagues to vote against this rules package. It can be a better package. It should be, and if it's defeated, we can adopt a better, more fair package.”