House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer called for extending unemployment benefits and more food stamps funding Monday, saying it will take more than the recently approved $700 billion financial rescue package to turn around the economy.
“I think the public is still ambivalent, still not sure, still scared,” Hoyer told The Examiner in an editorial board meeting. “Almost every economist thinks something else needs to be done.” Democratic leaders have suggested in recent days that they plan to push for a package of benefits after the election that could add $150 billion to the bailout.
Hoyer said Monday it was less a question of cost, and more a question of “what can we afford not to do?”
He blamed both the public and banks for housing-market woes, saying, “People were taking risks they never should have taken; both consumers and lenders.”
The lawmaker from Maryland’s 5th U.S. Congressional District, which includes parts of Prince George’s and four other counties, described himself as a “budget hawk.” But he said cutting congressional earmarks was not something he endorsed.
“Earmarks are rancid pork you ought not to eat, and good pork that is very healthy for you,” Hoyer said. “When I go back to my district, the pork they don’t like, the investments they don’t like, are in somebody else’s district.”
He called the roughly $17 billion in earmarks passed by Congress in the last budget “a relatively small number.”
As the Dow had its biggest single-day rally since the Great Depression Monday, Hoyer warned that the recession he said America had already entered would likely create tough economic times well into the future.
“I think this recession is going to be longer-lived than any of us would want,” he said Monday, “longer maybe than the one after World War II.”
