CNBC Interview - Transcript

Interview

CNBC Interview - Transcript

CNBC INTERVIEW WITH HOUSE MAJORITY LEADER STENY HOYER (D-MD)
SUBJECT: BUDGET INTERVIEWERS: BILL GRIFFETH, DENNIS KNEALE

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MR. GRIFFETH: We are pleased to welcome now at a critical time on a number of issues, the budget not the least of them, in Washington right now, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer has joined us from DC and I know you've got a very busy schedule today, Leader Hoyer, and we appreciate your time. Thanks for joining us today.

REP. HOYER: Thank you. We're in the midst of votes, so I'll have to go quick.

MR. GRIFFETH: Let me start on the tobacco FDA issue. You made a rather provocative statement the other day. You are convinced that come next week; the FDA will have the authority to regulate tobacco. Yes?

REP. HOYER: Well, I don't remember making that statement, particularly, I do remember saying that I thought we would pass the bill this week and whether the Senate will pass it in the time frame, we're going to be off for a two week Easter work period, so I doubt that the Senate will take it up until at least later in this month.

MR. GRIFFETH: Do you sense they will pass it though?

REP. HOYER: I do. I believe this bill is going to pass. It passed last year in the House very handily and I expect it to pass pretty handily in the House this year, and I would hope and expect the Senate to pass it as well.

MR. KNEALE: Why do this at all? What do we hope to gain from regulating a product that already kills 200,000 Americans a year or whatever the number is?

REP. HOYER: Well, it kills far too many, that's for sure. What we hope to accomplish is to have the Food and Drug Administration, which is charged with making sure the public knows the risks and avoids the risks to the extent they can, look at this from a federal perspective and make it very clear to the public the consequences.

So we think this will up the level of oversight, which we think is appropriate.

MR. GRIFFETH: Let me ask you about the budget. You're just considering both versions, the president's and this Republican alternative that Paul Ryan wrote about in The Wall Street Journal this morning. How far apart, I mean, this sounds like a naive question, but how far apart are those two versions? How rancorous do you anticipate the budget process is going to be this year?

REP. HOYER: Well, you know, the committee markup was long, but not particularly rancorous. Both sides articulated their position. We think that the policies that are pursued in the Republican budget are the same policies that they pursued of deep tax cuts in the past and, very frankly, the spending levels that they are projecting are really not realistic in terms of their own members' votes, much less the Congress' votes.

So we don't think their budget is realistic, and furthermore, we think their policies are the policies they pursued for eight years, which created deep debt, high deficits, high unemployment, hemorrhaging employment status for jobs towards the end of the administration.

MR. KNEALE: I believe the original Obama budget had $250 billion for extra TARP money for the banks and then some Democrats pulled that out of there. Should that $250 billion line go back in?

REP. HOYER: No, I think we were right to take it out, after all, what we're trying to do is both invest in our future, invest in the president's priorities, which we think the American public overwhelmingly support in terms of investment and health care for all Americans and energy independence for our national security and for our global health and also in the education of our kids so that they'll be competitive in world markets.

But we also while investing want to bring the deficit down. Clearly, the fiscal irresponsibility that we pursued for eight years has put us in a deep hole in our economy and is very much struggling. So we want to get back to fiscal discipline and we think this budget is a step in that direction.

MR. KNEALE: But then what do you do if the banks do need more money to stop from collapsing?

REP. HOYER: Well, we'll have to consider that, clearly, but very frankly; the situation won't be much different than if we include it in the budget, but we don't think as a plan that we ought to be planning for more money, after all, there is still additional TARP money available to the administration. We see that bank lending is going up. We see that the stock market has rebounded somewhat so that we are hopeful that the policies that we've adopted over the last 50 days are not only having a stabilizing effect, but hopefully are going to have a growth effect as well.

MR. GRIFFETH: Leader Hoyer, again, thank you for your time, sir and let you get back to those votes going on there.

REP. HOYER: Thanks a lot.

END.

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