Hoyer Press Staff Blog
Blog posts from the press staff of Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer
The headlines say it all:
This morning, Republicans walked away (again) from the Senate compromise bill to continue tax cuts for middle class families, extend assistance for unemployed Americans, and ensure seniors access to doctors. And it’s certainly not playing out well for them.
Headlines this morning aren’t flattering for the GOP after they refused to vote on a Senate compromise bill to extend tax cuts for middle class families. A few highlights (or, for our GOP friends, low-lights).
This can’t be the WSJ editorial Republicans hoped to wake up to this morning.
Today during a colloquy on the Floor, Whip Hoyer couldn’t get a straight answer from Leader Cantor when he was asked about the House schedule. That’s because Leader Cantor doesn’t want to admit that House Republicans are leaving town and letting taxes go up on middle class families, allowing unemployment insurance to expire, and putting seniors’ access to doctors at risk.
Last fall, House Republicans unveiled their Pledge to America, promising to provide transparency by restoring “regular order” and addressing major legislative items one issue at a time.
A year later, it’s clear that the GOP has fallen short on their promises:
This morning, Republicans on the Ways and Means Committee tried to blame Democrats for any potential lapse in the payroll tax extension—despite House Republicans’ refusal to bring to the floor a measure to ensure there will not be a middle class tax increase that passed the Senate with 89 votes.
Today House Republicans are proving our point that they don’t like middle class tax cuts by refusing to bring the bipartisan Senate compromise bill to the Floor for a vote. As a result, Republicans will be responsible when middle class families see their tax increases on January 1. Throughout this year, Republicans have stood on the side of the wealthiest Americans at the expense of middle class families.
Today, Senators Lugar and Brown called on the House GOP leadership to do what’s best for the country and pass the bipartisan Senate bill to extend middle class tax cuts, which 39 Senate Republicans supported.
Wanted to be sure you saw this NY Times article on the consequences of Republicans walking away from a bipartisan bill to extend middle class tax cuts.
On Saturday, Speaker Boehner supported the Senate’s bipartisan bill to extend middle class tax cuts, calling it a “good deal”:
With less than two weeks until a slew of critical provisions expire—including the payroll tax holiday, unemployment benefits and the Medicare physician payment rate compromise---Majority Leader Eric Cantor said on the floor a few minutes ago; “it is difficult to predict…if or when we may need to return.”
But it is not difficult to predict what would happen if Republican leaders refused to call their members back to finish their work. There would be a middle class tax increase, millions of American would start to lose unemployment benefits just days after Christmas and seniors could lose access to their doctors.
Congress cannot leave for the year without concluding its work on these critical issues.
In case you missed it yesterday in all the back and forth over year-end business, we here in the Democratic Whip Press Shop wanted to highlight a critical number: 2.5 million.
Today, at an event sponsored by Politico, Speaker Boehner said:
“The American people expect us to find common ground and move the ball down the field. That’s exactly what we have in this package.”
While Democrats agree that we must find common ground, the GOP’s year end extension package is not a serious attempt at finding common ground – the President has said he will veto this bill and Senator Reid said the package is dead in the Senate. The package is nothing but a political exercise. Now that it’s over, it’s time to work together and compromise on a plan to extend middle class tax cuts, assist the unemployed, and ensure seniors have access to their doctors.
While Republicans are playing politics instead of getting work done for the American people, they did manage to earn one big distinction – though it’s not the big prize Speaker Boehner was hoping for: a new Wall Street Journal/NBC poll released yesterday shows that 42% of Americans think this Congress is “one of the worst” in history. A further 33% rated it “below average.” We’d rate it as “forgettable.”
Check out our Year in Review for more on how this do-nothing Congress stacks up.
Yesterday on “Fox News Sunday,” Senator McConnell claimed that attaching an unrelated, controversial items like the Keystone pipeline to a year-end tax package was worth it because it was ready to go and would create thousands of jobs.
Speaker Boehner and Leader Cantor’s least favorite quote of the weekend, from Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC) on NBC’s Meet the Press.
Wanted to be sure you saw this article in today’s Politico highlighting how Republicans are struggling to live up to their Pledge by packaging unrelated and controversial items to a bill to extend the payroll tax holiday, extend unemployment insurance, and fix the Medicare physician payment rate. Democrats remain willing to work with Republicans, but attaching unrelated, controversial provisions in order to satisfy their conservative base is not the way to address these must-pass items.
Wanted to make sure you all saw this NPR article debunking the GOP claim that the millionaires surtax would place an undue burden on job creators. So who exactly is doing the debunking? The very millionaires the GOP is currently trying to protect at all costs.
Key Points: “Ever since the idea of the surtax was introduced weeks ago, Republicans in Congress have railed against it, arguing that it is a direct hit on small-business owners and other job creators…We wanted to talk to business owners who would be affected. So, NPR requested help from numerous Republican congressional offices, including House and Senate leadership. They were unable to produce a single millionaire job creator for us to interview.”
“So we went to the business groups that have been lobbying against the surtax. Again, three days after putting in a request, none of them was able to find someone for us to talk to.”
“…So next we put a query on Facebook. And several business owners who said they would be affected by the ‘millionaires surtax’ responded.”
"It's not in the top 20 things that we think about when we're making a business hire," said Ian Yankwitt, who owns Tortoise Investment Management.”
Read the full article here.
In the House Republicans’ weekly meeting yesterday, Speaker John Boehner reportedly told his members: “The big prize is 2012.”
That’s truly disappointing, since Democrats believe the big prize is getting millions of Americans back to work and finding agreement on the three outstanding issues we need to address before Congress adjourns for the year: extending the payroll tax holiday for middle class families, extending unemployment benefits, fixing the Medicare physician payment rate. All three expire at the end of the year, and time is running out. It’s time for Republicans to stop focusing on politics and start focusing on helping the middle class.
A look at this morning’s headlines shows Republicans are divided over whether Congress should extend the payroll tax holiday. And to think, all this time we thought they were the Party of tax cuts. While they have no problem uniting around tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires, they’re struggling to find support for putting more money back in the pockets of middle class families and boosting our economy.
Today, during colloquy, Leader Cantor said:
“The bar is pretty low when it comes to fixing big problems… Let's look to see how we can come together in an incremental way.”
While economists, business leaders and a bipartisan group of Democrats and Republicans in both the House and Senate are urging Congress to work together on a big, balanced deal to reduce the deficit, it’s unfortunate Leader Cantor is writing off the idea of going big.
According to NBC’s First Read, Speaker Boehner ducked on the issue of extending unemployment benefits before they expire at his weekly press conference this afternoon.
As Republicans continue their drive to protect tax breaks for the wealthy at all costs, they are firm in their conviction that said tax breaks will actually create jobs.
