Steny Hoyer responds to your questions

Over the course of two days, Yahoo! readers submitted more than 400 questions and comments for the latest guest on Talk to Power, Rep. Steny Hoyer (news, bio, voting record) of Maryland.

Reflecting the Democratic sweep of the recent elections and Rep. Hoyer's subsequent election as majority leader, many readers focused on the political equation — will Democrats work cooperatively with Republicans now that they are the majority party? Frustration with partisan fighting in Washington has been a common theme on Talk to Power for months, so we began with that question.

Rep. Hoyer was interviewed in his office on Capitol Hill by Talk to Power producer Ilyse Veron. 

You can view Rep. Hoyer's responses by following the links below or read the full transcript.

Thanks again to our readers for their questions and thoughts, and to Rep. Hoyer for participating. 

The new leadership

The comment from a Yahoo! reader: "As an independent voter I was glad to see some change on the hill, however, if it only leads to partisan actions by the democrats I will have to again question the effectiveness of our leaders. When we become less concerned with the letter behind someone's name and start focusing on the real issues that face this country, then and only then can we overcome those who wish to harm us. It is only through united leadership from our elected officials that we can acheive our goals in this country."

See Rep. Hoyer's response.

Universal health care

Health care — both cost and access — was raised as an issue by many readers.  Here was the question from one person: "Thank you for fielding our questions.  I was wondering when you think we will have healthcare for everyone living in America, so that we stop lagging behind other countries."

See Rep. Hoyer's response.

Energy and the economy

The question from a Yahoo! reader: "If you were forced to choose between meaningful environmental and energy policy reforms that would prepare and protect us from the twin perils of global warming and peak oil. Or helping America's corporations to continue to have a healthy and growing bottom line. Which would you choose? Obviously we would all prefer that both happen (and will strive to do so) but if protecting the environment and preparing America for peak oil must cause significant financial pain for Wall Street (will you and our Democratic Congress) be able to take the heat and do the right thing?"

See Rep. Hoyer's response. 

A new policy for

Iraq war

On the subject of Iraq, a Yahoo! reader wrote: "No matter who or what is to blame, it's undeniable that we caused the mess in Iraq. Therefore we have a profound ethical obligation to the Iraqis to do all we can to clean it up. How can we morally consider abandoning them? Why are no politicans or pundits, Republican or Democratic, willing to talk about this? How can we expect to be considered a beacon of morality to the world if we don't clean up our messes?"

See Rep. Hoyer's response.

No draft on agenda

On the matter of a draft, one reader wrote: "Will the Democratic leadership bring up Congressman Charlie Rangel's impending bill to call for a national service draft and have an up or down vote on it?"

See Rep. Hoyer's response.

* * * * * 

Below is a transcript of Rep. Hoyer's interview. 

ILYSE VERON:  Congressman Hoyer, thanks so much for joining me today.  Generation Next: Talk to Power is a joint project of The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and Yahoo! aimed at inspiring young people to participate in the political process.

The new leadership

The Yahoo! editors noted that of the more than 300 comments posted since Tuesday for you, more than anything Yahoo! readers asked if the change in control of Congress might also lead to a less polarized political process.

I quote one reader, an independent voter.  He said, "as an independent voter, I was glad to see some change on the Hill.  However, if it only leads to partisan actions by the Democrats, I will have to again question the effectiveness of our leaders.  In-fighting between the parties has become unbearable.  When we become less concerned with the letter behind someone's name and start focusing on the real issues that face this country, then and only then can we overcome those who wish to harm us."  Your response?

REPRESENTATIVE STENY HOYER (D-MD):  Well, I agree.  I think that members of Congress hold a responsibility to their constituents and to their country to work together.  We have had a confrontational strategy effected over the last, frankly, 12 years, since 1994 when Newt Gingrich came into leadership as speaker in January of '95 and said, in effect, there is a Republican way to do things and we're going to do it the Republican way.  That, unfortunately, has continued for a long period of time and created confrontation and great partisanship in not only the House, but also in the Senate.

The American public said very clearly that they wanted to move forward in a new direction and a different way of acting.  Speaker Pelosi has said that we want to restore honesty and civility to the deliberations in the House of Representatives.  I agree with her 100 percent.  It so happens that next week I will be having lunch with John Boehner (news, bio, voting record) - who now is the majority leader; he'll be the minority leader - to sit down with John Boehner and say, how can we work together?  We will disagree on some things, but how can we work together to make our country more secure and our people have a better quality of life?

And Roy Blunt (news, bio, voting record) and I - who is the Majority Whip now, will be the Minority Whip, the position I now hold - he and I have had lunch in one another's office every other month.  We didn't always agree, but we had the ability to talk to one another and to focus on, again, how we can make deliberation fairer in the Congress of the United States and how we could - when we can agree - act on behalf of the American public to make our country a better place.  I'm hopeful that as we move forward, we can do that.  That certainly will be the objective of Speaker Pelosi and myself.

In addition to that, we had lunch with the president of the United States in which he indicated that he wanted to work on areas where we could agree, and we indicated we would certainly be willing to do that.  So hopefully we're going to enter into an era not where politics will be forgotten, not where differences will be forgotten, but where there will be a primary focus on working together on behalf of our country to make the lives of our citizens better.

Universal health care

MS. VERON:  I don't know if healthcare was among the issues where you think you might find agreement, but it was among the most common topics on the Yahoo! boards.  Dozens of questions were presented about healthcare costs and availability.  One person wrote, "thank you for fielding our questions.  I was wondering when you think we will have healthcare for everyone living in America, so that we stop lagging behind other countries."

REP. HOYER:  Well, first of all, healthcare is clearly one of the most important issues confronting our country.  Forty-six million Americans uninsured is unacceptable in the wealthiest country on the face of the earth.  We're one of the few industrialized countries on earth that doesn't have a universal healthcare system so that all of its citizens have access to affordable healthcare.  We need to move towards that objective.  There is a commitment by the Democratic Party to move towards that objective so that we don't have millions and millions of people in America who don't have access to a primary care physician and therefore, when they get sick, have no way to enter the healthcare system other than through an emergency room, which is clearly the most expensive; and by the time they get to an emergency room, they are much sicker than they otherwise would have been.  So that's going to be one of our primary objectives.

Now, we put forward in our agenda of action what we call our Six for '06, two specific items that we're going to deal with in the short term.  One is we want to make prescription drugs affordable for our seniors, and one of the ways we want to do that is to make sure that the government, in purchasing large amounts of prescription drugs, will be able to negotiate prices for those prescription drugs.  The law that we passed under the Republican leadership specifically precluded the government from negotiating that.  We do that with the Veterans Administration.  We certainly ought to do it with our prescription drug program for seniors.

The second thing we want to do with relation to healthcare is we want to make sure that the United States can undertake and pursue embryonic stem-cell research.  We believe that that research provides hope for billions of people afflicted with very serious illnesses, and perhaps even those who are paralyzed because of nerve damage.  That will be an issue that we disagree with the president on, but we'd like to see passed.  We're going to try to pass it in January and put it on the president's desk, and hopefully, he will reconsider, because over 80 percent of America thinks we ought to move in that direction.

But in the longer term, going back to the question, I believe the Democratic Party is going to be working towards making sure that there is universal access to our healthcare system in America.

Energy and the economy

MS. VERON: Thank you.  Energy is next.  Yahoo! readers offered specific ideas about fuel economy and alternatives.  One also offered a broader question about tradeoffs. Quote - "if you were forced to choose between meaningful environmental and energy policy reforms that would prepare and protect us from the twin perils of global warming and peak oil or helping America's corporations to continue to have a healthy and growing bottom line, which would you choose?  Obviously we would all prefer that both happen and will strive to do so.  But if protecting the environment and preparing America for peak oil must cause significant financial pain for Wall Street, will you and our Democratic Congress be able to take the heat and do the right thing?"  Unquote.

REP. HOYER:  Well, the questioner posits that obviously doing both things - that is, protecting the environment and growing the economy - are what we want to do.  That should be our objective.  I believe this is an objective that we can accomplish.  I believe that while there will be tradeoffs - and one of the tradeoffs that we cannot make, in my opinion, is to allow our environment to be adversely affected so that we make global warming worse, have our ice caps melt and flood our cities, and undermine the health of our citizens - that's not a tradeoff that we can make in society.  At the same time, we need to provide for the protection of the environment in a context of making sure that we also have jobs available for our people and economic growth to support our communities.  We're going to work towards that end.

But Democrats have shown that they believe very strongly that you need to protect the environment.  ANWR, the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, is a perfect example, that although there are resources there to be explored and extracted, we happen to believe that they could not be done without damage to the environment, and as a result did not support that particular policy.  However, Democrats are well aware that we need to adopt a comprehensive legislation to ensure research on alternative energy resources, which would be clean and not damaging to the environment, efficient operations of our automobiles, which use over 50 percent of the petroleum products that we use in this co untry and to ensure that the technology is developed to use bio-fuels, to use hybrid automobiles, electric and gasoline or ethanol products.  We believe very sincerely that other sources of energy as well, whether it be wind or wave, whatever it might be - hydrogen is another alternative - are researched and that we invest in alternative sources of energy.  We're going to pursue those policies vigorously because we think it's critical for our environment, critical for our economy, and very frankly, critical for our national security.

A new policy for Iraq war

MS. VERON:  The topic of Iraq did not dominate conversation on the Yahoo! boards, but it was a common concern and there's a lot in the news right now.  Pulling out of Iraq at some point is also something you have raised since you were elected Majority Leader.  One reader had some concerns about the exit plan - quote - "no matter who or what is to blame, it's undeniable that we caused the mess in Iraq.  Therefore we have a profound ethical obligation to the Iraqis to do all we can to clean it up.  How can we morally consider abandoning them? How can we expect to be considered a beacon of morality to the world if we don't clean up our messes?"

REP. HOYER:  Iraq, obviously, is an extraordinary challenge, not just to the United States, not just to Iraqis, but to indeed the world.  It is a global responsibility, not just a U.S. responsibility.  Having said that, the questioner is correct: it was our initiation of action that has gotten Iraq to where it is today.  The fact is that I have advocated, and the Democratic Party has advocated not staying the course, but setting a new direction in Iraq.  Staying the course, as the president has suggested, is clearly a policy that has not worked and is not working.  The American people, on November 7^th, made it very clear that they don't believe that it's a policy that is working.  At the same time, however, we need to ensure that as we transition from the present, almost sole responsibility of the U.S. armed forces for maintaining stability in Iraq, as we transition to Iraq responsibility for maintaining security and its own defense, we do so in a way that provides for the opportunity for success in Iraq of stabilizing that country, making it secure, and providing an environment in which minority rights can be protected, and in which an economy can grow to provide jobs and quality of life for its people.

Ultimately, however, the Iraqis themselves must take responsibility for that accomplishment.  It cannot be imposed upon them, even by the United States or by others.  I have urged, and Democrats have urged, that the president, in talking to the prime minister, Mr. Maliki, make it clear to him that the United States in the near future - that may be six months; it may be a year - in the near future, he's going to be turning over primary responsibility to the Iraqis, redeploying our troops out of harm's way, and we'll work with international partners, both on a bilateral basis and on a multilateral basis of neighboring states who themselves are concerned about stability in Iraq to accomplish that stability.

But the questioner is correct.  The United States has a responsibility.  But I would suggest as well that the international community has a responsibility.  After all, it was the international community that said that

Saddam Hussein had violated international law by invading Kuwait.  It was the international community that fashioned the armed forces to push him out of Kuwait and back to Baghdad.  It was the international community that imposed upon him conditions.  And it was the

United Nations unanimously determining that he had not complied with those conditions that ultimately led to the action that we saw the United States and others take in 2003.

No draft on agenda

MS. VERON:  Final question - will the Democratic leadership bring up Congressman Charlie Rangel's impending bill to call for a national service draft and have an up or down vote on it?

REP. HOYER:  That's not going to be scheduled on our agenda.  Congressman Rangel has made the point long before he made it just a few weeks ago that he believed that there ought to be a shared responsibility for the action in Iraq, or frankly, the action that we might take in a military way in any other part of the world.  His point was and is that a draft would share that responsibility.  I think all of us feel that there ought to be a shared responsibility, but none of us believe that we need to have a draft at this point in time, nor do we expect to have that an issue in this Congress.

MS. VERON:  Okay, on behalf of Generation Next, Yahoo!, and the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, thanks so much for joining us.

REP. HOYER:  Thank you very much.  It's been good to be with you.

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