"Morning Joe" - Transcript: Hoyer Discusses Bipartisan Budget Agreement, Speaker Election on MSNBC's "Morning Joe"

Interview

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House Democratic Whip Steny H. Hoyer (MD) appeared on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" this morning to discuss the bipartisan budget agreement and the Speaker election. Below are excerpts from the interview.

On the Bipartisan Budget Agreement

"… I want to congratulate John Boehner for doing what he said he would do, trying to clean up some of the tough issues before Paul Ryan steps in, and he's done that. Hopefully, today we will pass this debt limit budget deal, which is not a perfect deal, obviously. It's not a long-term deal, but it is certainly better than the alternative."

On the Need for Bipartisan Action in the House

"What I say to people is the House is less than the sum of its parts. What I mean by that is that there are, as you well know, Joe, some very good people on both sides of the aisle. And if we would stop just confronting one another and do real things and understand that we have to compromise, the House can and should work for this great country. So we have good people in the House, but as a body we have not functioned in an effective manner because we have been too partisan, too divided. But I would tell you this, it has largely been the Republican Party that was deeply divided. You saw yesterday a perfect example of that. Just before the election of the new Speaker, we considered the Export-Import Bank that we had passed overwhelmingly bipartisan in the past. There was a confrontation [this time]. Republicans had to bring it to the Floor over the objection of the Chairman of the Committee, and guess what -- 127 Republicans, a majority of the Republicans, voted for it, and every Democrat, save one, voted for it. That was a bipartisan agreement. I think we took an effective step forward."

On Paul Ryan as the Next Speaker

"Well I think he's, obviously, what everybody knows, he's very bright, very hardworking, very issue-focused, and I think can be an outstanding leader of the House. But there's a big if, of course. In order to be an outstanding leader, you've got to have outstanding followers, and the problem Republicans have had is they're a deeply divided party and have rendered their leadership dysfunctional."

"I thought Paul Ryan's budgets were not good budgets. Hal Rogers has referred to them as unrealistic and ill-conceived. Hal Rogers, as you know, the conservative Chairman of the Appropriations Committee, a Republican. So, I don't think Paul Ryan's budgets were good policy documents. They were good political documents. But if Paul Ryan -- he certainly has the ability -- if he wants to lead in a constructive, positive, bipartisan way, he has the ability to do that, and I hope that's what he does."

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