Salon.com > Steny Hoyer, D-Md.

The biggest Democratic loser: Steny Hoyer

Mon, 08 Nov 2010 17:05:00 +0000

It's been, in case you missed it, a pretty rough week for Democrats. But for most of the party's top leaders, it's not that hard to find a silver lining:

Barack Obama is hardly the first president to suffer a midterm drubbing, and he'll have a chance in 2012 to do what the last two presidents to face his current predicament did: win reelection. (And he might get an assist from the Republicans, too.)
Nancy Pelosi has apparently had no trouble lining up the internal support to remain as the party's House leader; the odds are long, but she'll have a chance to reclaim the speaker's gavel in 2012.
Harry Reid caught one of the biggest political breaks in memory, drawing the one Republican in all of Nevada he had a chance of beating, Sharron Angle; instead of seeing his political career end, the 71-year-old Reid gets to stay on as Senate majority leader.
Chuck Schumer would likely have succeeded Reid as majority leader had Reid lost, but Schumer may get another chance in 2012, when Democrats will have to defend an unfathomable 24 seats (compared to nine for the GOP); a Republican takeover in 2012 could prompt Reid to give up the top Senate slot.
Dick Durbin also had his eye on replacing Reid, but he would very likely have lost to Schumer. At least this way, he was spared the indignity of having his roommate and old friend leapfrog him and grab the top slot.

Steny Hoyer: Colbert an ‘embarrassment’

Sun, 26 Sep 2010 15:55:00 +0000

The House's No. 2 Democratic leader says comedian Stephen Colbert's (kohl-BEHR's) testimony last week on immigration was "inappropriate" and "an embarrassment."

Colbert was invited to appear before the House Judiciary Committee by Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California. But other Democrats weren't happy about her decision.

The committee chairman, Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., asked Colbert to leave the room at the beginning of the hearing because Colbert has no expertise in farm labor issues or immigration policy.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland tells "Fox News Sunday" he thought the episode was more of an embarrassment to Colbert than to the House. But, he added, "I think it was inappropriate" that he testified.

Steny Hoyer: Then and now

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 20:21:00 +0000

(updated below)

Letter signed by Steny Hoyer to George Bush, June 29, 2007, demanding closing of Guantanamo:

Holding prisoners for an indefinite period of time, without charging them with a crime goes against our values, ideals and principles as a nation governed by the rule of law. Further, Guantanamo Bay has a become a liability in the broader global war on terror, as allegations of torture, the indefinite detention of innocent men, and international objections to the treatment of enemy combatants has hurt our credibility as the beacon for freedom and justice. Its continued operation also threatens the safety of U.S. citizens and military personnel detained abroad. . . . A liability of our own creation, the existence of the detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay is defeating our effort to ensure that the principles of freedom, justice and human rights are spread throughout the world.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, today:

Your White House Correspondents’ Dinner review and roundup

Mon, 03 May 2010 14:20:00 +0000

Every spring, the White House Correspondents' Association throws a dinner. It used to be a clubby sort of affair for journalists and a few politicians. Then presidents and vice-presidents started going. Then the C-Span cameras began filming and professional comedians began emceeing. Then news organizations began inviting actual, proper celebrities, because it was the only way to trick them into going to D.C. Everyone began calling it "prom," which is one of those nicknames that started off ironic and slightly critical but is now just descriptive. Then Politico, a newsletter for the worst people in Washington and those who aspire to be even worse, was invented. And now the whole depressing, debased affair, this little professional organization's annual self-congratulatory dinner, lasts a whole weekend and receives blanket coverage on multiple cable news stations -- and whether the president of the United States of America was funnier than the professional comedian is debated on multiple Sunday shows and in all the major newspapers.

Dems don’t have votes to pass House health bill

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 19:54:00 +0000

House Democratic leaders had hoped to have a final vote on their version of healthcare reform legislation Saturday evening. Now it looks as if the vote could be pushed back a day or more, and for the simplest of reasons: They don't yet have the votes to pass it.

It takes 218 "ayes" to pass a bill in the House, and the Democratic caucus has 258 members. But they won't get any help from their Republican colleagues, and there's a pretty decent number of Democrats who aren't ready to vote for the bill.

The big stumbling blocks remaining are the issues of coverage for abortion and for illegal immigrants. One other potential obstacle was removed on Friday when Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-Ny.Y., agreed to drop an amendment he'd planned to offer that would have turned the bill into one that created a single-payer system. House progressives had demanded at least a vote on the amendment -- which wouldn't have passed anyway -- but they won't get it now.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer is preemptively blaming any delay on Republican stalling tactics, but that's a stretch, at the very least. The GOP may employ some of those tactics when the House does prepare for the vote, but the thing holding it up right now is a lack of Democratic votes.

Rep. Alan Grayson goes a comment too far

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 16:12:00 +0000

Some elected officials -- you know the ones -- live on controversy. It’s one thing, of course, when you’re taking brave stands and challenging conventional wisdom. It’s another when, like Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., you’re going on wack-job conspiracy theory talk shows to call a fellow public servant a “whore.”

It was about a month ago that Grayson gave an interview to "The Alex Jones Show," which is home to a wide array of old-school right-wing conspiracy theorizing -- think the Bilderberg Group, Wall Street and Barack Obama conspiring to bring about the New World Order. You get the idea.

In the Jones interview, Grayson opined that Fed advisor Linda Robertson, with whom he has had some sharp exchanges, is a “K Street whore.”

Pelosi, Hoyer and Daschle do a Three Stooges bit on healthcare

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 20:45:00 +0000

Taking a shot at the president’s healthcare-reform efforts Friday, Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele challenged, “Put it on the table. And if you don't think you've got enough votes to get to 60, you've got the nuclear option. You've got 51.”

Steele’s explanation for why Democrats haven’t done this yet (“They know it's poisonous, and they know the American people will not tolerate it”) seems unfair, but the man’s still got a point: The crucial battle right now seems to be within the Democratic Party, rather than between the two parties. A unanimous Democratic Party could, as the RNC chief said, do whatever it wanted.

So what is up with the Democrats? Why can’t they get their story straight, even within the leadership? Yesterday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made clear that any bill missing a public option is intolerable. And it’s not just her opinion. That's how the votes in the House shake out, claims the Speaker, who said yesterday in San Francisco, “There’s no way I can pass a bill without a public option.”

Passing energy legislation is a lot like cat herding

Wed, 06 May 2009 19:10:00 +0000

If you've ever worked as a camp counselor and had to look after a seething mass of sugar-crazed kids all intent on running away from you in as many different directions as possible, you have a good sense of what the White House and some supportive House Democrats are going through in trying to get a climate change bill through Congress.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee released a bill at the end of March, sponsored by Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Henry Waxman, D-Calif., that would cut greenhouse emissions 83 percent by 2050. The measure also included a cap-and-trade system designed to curb carbon dioxide. Democrats immediately expected resistance from Congressional Republicans. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said at the time, "We would hope to have Republican votes as we go forward on this. Will I not put it forth unless I do? No. There’s an inevitability to this that everyone has to understand."

Politics ain’t beanbag

Fri, 16 Nov 2007 21:17:00 +0000

While the Republican presidential race reached its mean season somewhere around Memorial Day, the Democrats held their fire, aside from a few tracer bullets, until the Halloween Eve fracas in Philly when John Edwards lambasted Hillary Clinton for "double talk." The epithets continued during Thursday night's Vegas Vendetta when the steely Clinton accused the always-smiling Edwards of "throwing mud," while hope-monger Barack Obama likened the former first lady's sleight-of-hand with numbers to the statistical techniques of (horrors!) "Mitt Romney or Rudy Giuliani."

Small wonder that Friday marked the beginning of the inevitable cluck-cluck, if-you-can't-say-something-nice recriminations over the tone of the Democratic debates. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer complained on "Political Capital With Al Hunt" that this Democratic bloodletting "will hurt the party." Hoyer, who began his political career in the rough-and-tumble circus that is the Maryland Legislature, suggested that the White House contenders should instead "focus on the very significant disagreements we have with the Bush administration." (The quotes come from an advance transcript released by Bloomberg Television.)

Playing chicken

Tue, 22 May 2007 20:47:00 +0000

Democrats in Congress said they wanted a timeline for bringing the troops home from Iraq. The president said he wouldn't sign a war-funding bill without one. Somebody has to back down someday, and see if you can guess who it's going to be.

The deal isn't done yet, but Democrats -- or, at least, enough of them -- are clearly headed toward giving George W. Bush more money for the war in Iraq with no requirement that he bring it to a close. "We don't have a veto-proof Congress," says Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. "The president has made it very clear that he is not going to sign timelines," says House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer. "We can't pass timelines over his veto."

That's true. But isn't it also true that Bush can't get his war funding without timelines unless Democrats give him a bill that disconnects the two? It is -- but only in the as-yet-imaginary world in which congressional Democrats aren't the ones who blink first.

Here comes the House

Tue, 06 Feb 2007 17:25:00 +0000

Now that the Senate has fumbled the debate over Iraq, House Democratic leaders have decided to pick up the ball and run with it.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., told reporters Tuesday morning that Democrats would open the House floor in one week for three full days of debate on the president's plan to surge more troops into Iraq. At the end of the debate, which will allow time for nearly every member of Congress to speak, the House will vote next Thursday on a nonbinding resolution currently being drafted by Ike Skelton, D-Mo., and Tom Lantos, D-Calif., who chair the Armed Services and Foreign Affairs committees, respectively.

Phoning it in

Thu, 07 Dec 2006 16:23:00 +0000

Memo to members of the Armed Services: The next time you get word that your unit has been called up for more service in Iraq, why not ask if you can stay at home and fulfill your duties by BlackBerry instead?

Hey, it's good enough for Republican Rep. Jack Kingston.

Kingston, who complained earlier this week that Steny Hoyer's plan for a five-day congressional workweek will make families like his "suffer," now says that members of Congress don't really need to be in Congress much to get their jobs done.

"The idea that we only work when we are in Washington, D.C., is ridiculous," Kingston tells Fox News. "When we're back home, we're visiting schools, we're talking to groups, we're meeting with constituents. We're getting real information on the ground. We're listening and we're learning ... With BlackBerrys, cell phones, you can stay in touch with what's going on in Washington. But you know, when you're back home with the real people, folks can grab you by the collar and say, 'What in the heck did you guys do when you passed that bill?'"

The Democrats’ war on families?

Wed, 06 Dec 2006 15:19:00 +0000

Rep. Jack Kingston, a Republican from Georgia, said Tuesday: "The Democrats could care less about families -- that's what this says."

The subject of his grievance? Incoming House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer has announced that members of the new Congress will be expected to spend five days a week on the job.

Well, not five whole days. Under Hoyer's plan, House members will be expected to be on hand at the Capitol by 6:30 p.m. most Mondays, and they'll be sprung lose by about 2 p.m. most Fridays.

Why are Kingston and other members so upset? They're accustomed to a much, much cushier schedule. Kingston, who tells the Washington Post that marriages will "suffer" under Hoyer's schedule, is used to punching the clock on the Tuesday-through-Thursday shift. If Congress adjourns on Friday as planned, it will have been in session for all of 103 days this year.

Democrats elect Hoyer over Murtha

Thu, 16 Nov 2006 17:28:00 +0000

House Democrats have just elected Steny Hoyer over Jack Murtha as their new majority leader. The Associated Press says the vote was 146-89.

The rather lopsided result is a blow to Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi, who had thrown her support behind Murtha's candidacy. But truth be told, the mainstream press had already pegged Pelosi as the loser either way. As the AP's Andrew Taylor wrote in the run-up to today's vote, "The Hoyer-Murtha battle is a no-win situation for Pelosi . . . A Murtha victory could create hard feelings among Hoyer allies, especially moderate Democrats. On the other hand, a Hoyer victory could be seen as a defeat for Pelosi in her first major move since Election Day."

Democrats meet to elect a leader; is Murtha down for the count?

Thu, 16 Nov 2006 15:22:00 +0000

Appearing on "Hardball" last night, Rep. Jack Murtha sounded awfully confident that he had all the votes he needed to become the Democrats' new House majority leader. Maybe not. House Democrats are still meeting, but the Hotline says it has heard from two "independent sources" that Murtha's people are conceding that he won't beat Steny Hoyer.

Update: The Hotline seems to be backing away a bit from its earlier report, stressing that Murtha hasn't conceded and that the race hasn't yet been decided.

Pelosi’s power play

Wed, 15 Nov 2006 14:00:00 +0000

On Tuesdays when Congress is in session, Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md., gathers reporters in his third-floor sitting room just steps from the House gallery. For the last four years, about two dozen journalists show up to sit beneath brass chandeliers in well-upholstered chairs to hear from Hoyer about the Democrats' hopes and their frustrations with Republican rule.

But on this Tuesday, Hoyer found quite a different scene when he arrived for his weekly "pen and pad" briefing with the scribbling class. The room was packed with close to 60 reporters, who stood squeezed together like spectacled sardines, overwhelming the air conditioning and causing everyone to sweat. "It used to be such a small meeting," Hoyer said, as he removed his suit jacket and took his place in an armchair at the center of the room. "I must have the votes. You guys must be counting."

He was referring, of course, to the secret ballot that will be cast on Thursday by each Democrat who has been elected to serve in the next Congress. The vote for the new Democratic majority leader will determine whether Hoyer can continue his role in the Democratic leadership next year, or whether his throne will be usurped by Jack Murtha, the Pennsylvania poster boy of Democratic opposition to the Iraq war. Hoyer tried to cut the tension with another joke. "The reason I am running is because we need younger leadership," he said in an apparent knock at Murtha, who is 74, seven years Hoyer's senior.

A Democrat knocks Colbert, says Bush “deserves some respect”

Wed, 03 May 2006 13:48:00 +0000

Vying for the Joe Lieberman Profile in Courage Award, Democratic Rep. Steny Hoyer took it upon himself Tuesday to defend George W. Bush from mean ol' Stephen Colbert.

Hoyer, the Democrats' House whip, told the Hill that Colbert's performance at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner was funny but "a little rough," with some jokes that "crossed the line" and were in "bad taste." We're not sure which jokes Hoyer had in mind, and we're wondering if he made any similar objections about "bad taste" when the president made jokes about those missing WMD at a press dinner a couple of years ago.

Somehow, we doubt it.

Bush "is the president of the United States," Hoyer said Tuesday, "and he deserves some respect."