Anne Arundel Today

WASHINGTON, DC – Congressman Steny H. Hoyer (MD-05), Chair of the Regional Leadership Council (RLC), joined Julie Mason on "The Julie Mason Show" yesterday to discuss the work of the RLC to amplify the Investing in America agenda and Republicans’ dysfunction in the House of Representatives. Below is a link to the audio and excerpts from the interview: 

To listen to the interview, click here.

On the Regional Leadership Council

"Well, we had a very productive session. As a matter of fact, this is my 22nd session, and the last session, I think, was the most productive in terms of Investing in America. I've had an agenda I call Make It In America for 13 years now. In 2010, I came up with an agenda and shared it with my colleagues, my Democratic colleagues, as our agenda, which said we need to Make It In America. And that doesn't mean just produce things in America, although it means that. But it means: making it, succeeding, getting the job, acing the test, winning the game – Making It In America."

"And what we have done in the last Congress was make extraordinary investments, which right now are producing extraordinary growth in jobs and manufacturing and opportunities for our people both in the business side in the jobs field, but also in health, environment, and education. So, the last Congress was a very productive Congress. Unfortunately, however, the American people, when asked in a poll about 62% of them said, 'Well, yeah, they didn't do much in the last Congress.' That was wrong. They don't have that information. And so the job of the Regional Leadership Council is first to identify, okay, what did we do? Let's catalog it. How can it be gotten out to people? And then implement and make sure that happens. Make sure it happens in a timely fashion."

"...Right now, as a result of the Infrastructure Bill, there are $479 billion of private sector investment as well as $220 billion in public sector investment: roads, bridges, et cetera, et cetera. Private sector investors: business enterprise, what's that doing? It's creating jobs. It's creating good paying jobs.... So everybody is winning in this environment. And I am very excited about the fact that Hakeem Jeffries, our Leader, asked me to chair what is called, you mentioned, the Regional Leadership Council. And our task representing the twelve regions of the country is to make sure that what we passed what we wanted to do, we are in fact doing: creating the jobs, helping people with education, bringing health care costs down, and yes, bringing inflation down, which is as a result of the pandemic."

 "...And I'm very enthusiastic about chairing the Leadership Council at Jeffries' request and seeing us make sure the American public knows exactly what we did and the impact it's having on them, their families, their family's health, their family's education, and by the way, their environment. The largest investment in making sure our environment is sustainable for life and healthy in the history of any country in the world. And that's going to make a gargantuan difference and try to resolve this climate crisis that we see almost every day." 

 "...I'm very excited about this Regional Leadership Council, as are the twelve members of the Regional Council who are talking to all of our members. And we're not just focused on Democratic districts, we're focused on America….We need to make sure Middle America, which was the heartland of our manufacturing strength for decades, in the past, is revitalized and that investment is being made so that our country from the Atlantic to the Pacific and to Hawaii and Alaska, are vibrant economies making the quality of life of our citizens better. So it's an exciting responsibility that Mr. Jeffries has given me, and I'm pursuing it with a great deal of zeal." 

On the Deep Divisions in the Republican Majority

"Chaos, unfortunately, in the Majority party in the House of Representatives, they cannot get agreement [on spending levels]. You know, they took, I talk about my Republican friends, and when I say friends, a lot of them are my good friends, and they are very frustrated about the disunity in their own party. And we see that not only in the 15 ballots it took to elect a Speaker, but we saw it last week – the Congress of the United States was shut down. Why? Because of twelve people. Think of that. Just twelve people. And because the Republicans only have a four vote majority, they could not do business on their own, and so they shut down the House. Now they've started up again and they made a deal."

"In my opinion, they broke the deal that we made with the President on the levels of spending in our country and what we would do. And the President and the Speaker reached a deal, and now they're not keeping that deal. But having said that, we're all, I think, justified in being concerned about a shutdown of government. A shutdown of government is a graphic measure of failure by the Congress to do its work on time in a common sense, reasonable way."

"And not only that, it costs billions of dollars to shut down the government, and it shuts off services that are absolutely essential to people. And if it goes on a long time, it puts at risk even getting the checks out to veterans, to Social Security recipients, to Medicare, and to Medicaid... So I am very hopeful that over the next seven months, I guess between now and December 31, that we come to agreement....but it will take compromise on both sides, as did making sure we extended the debt limit of the United States so we didn't welch on our debts. That would have been catastrophic for our own country, it would have been recession and yes, even depression-causing not only in our country but globally. So we came to an agreement. We're not happy that that agreement does not seem to be followed at this point in time, but I am very optimistic that we can work together with Speaker McCarthy, with Leader Jeffries, with the Senate to come to an agreement before the end of the calendar year."

"...But it's going to, in my opinion, necessitate the rejecting of the most hard line members of the Republican Party who, as I say, shut down the House last week and made their demands, which over 300 Members came to consensus on. So we've got the tail wagging the dog, unfortunately, and we've got to get over that or we're not going to succeed." 

Original source can be found here.