Hoyer: Shutting Down the Government is Irresponsible and Dangerous

WASHINGTON, DC - House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (MD) spoke on the Floor in support of House Democrats' tenth attempt to reopen the government and end the Trump shutdown. Below is a link to the video and excerpts from his remarks:     "We need to open up this government… Hopefully, we have a consensus on this Floor. Shutting down the government of the United States is stupid, irresponsible, and dangerous. That ought to be a consensus on this Floor, and if that is the consensus – as it certainly is mine and certainly on my side of the aisle – then the cure is to open up government. We have offered nine, ten, eleven different alternatives to do that, most of which were [Republican] bills formed in the last Congress under Republican leadership in the House and the Senate. But sadly, [Republicans] won't take yes for an answer, and so you keep government shut down.”

"This is historic that we have shut down the government for this length of time, and it is unforgivable that we have put [at risk] 800,000 of our fellow citizens – people who work for this government; people who help millions of people every day to get assistance they need, or documents that they have to have to settle on a home, or make sure that there's training for firefighters, or any one of thousands of different critically important jobs that the federal government does. You on the Republican side of the aisle, my colleagues, have done that. You have shut down the government. We have not.”

"As the urgency of this shutdown grew last week, House Democrats attempted to send a continuing resolution at last year's funding levels. Now, it’s important to understand, last year's funding levels are the levels that were set when the Republicans were in charge of the House and the Senate, not Democratic numbers. This is not a partisan issue. This is an issue about doing the right thing: opening up the government."