The second-ranking House Democrat said Tuesday that widening divides among congressional Republicans are preventing Congress from passing more legislation.
House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md., accused GOP leaders of stubbornly pushing partisan bills that many of their own members don’t accept and that are failed to doom.
Hoyer said a decision by House GOP leaders Monday to pull a border security bill that faced significant opposition from rank-and-file Republicans was the latest example of the “deep internal divisions” with the House Republican Conference.
He also pointed to a controversial abortion bill that House Republican leaders pulled from the floor last week after an intra-GOP rebellion erupted over a provision that limited exemptions for victims of rape or incest to only those who had previously reported those incidents to authorities.
“We have seen that repeatedly, where [Republican leaders], in trying to get bills passed, appeal not to the broader membership of the House of Representatives, but to the narrower, hard-line base,” he told reporters Tuesday. “They chose the latter almost every time.”
Hoyer said the party’s divisions aren’t limited to Capitol Hill, claiming influential outside conservative groups have been “very strident” in their attempts to push GOP leadership to adopt hard-line policies.
“That is causing, demonstrably, Republicans a lot of trouble,” he said.
When asked whether House Republicans were “imploding,” Hoyer said, “They’re in the status they’ve been in for some period of time.”
He said the internal GOP squabbles threaten several “must-do” endeavors Congress faces in the near future, such as the looming the debt ceiling increase, budget measures and a Homeland Security funding bill that passed the House but faces uncertainty in the Senate.
“It’s not fair to the country — forget about not being fair to Democrats,” he said. “It is clear to the most casual observer … that [House Speaker John] Boehner could construct a pretty broad majority for many of these issues if he felt himself free to reach a consensus between a large number of Republicans and a large number of Democrats. He has chosen, for the most part, not to do that.”
Hoyer added that a majority of rank-and-file House Republicans would back Boehner if he pushed less hard-lines positions.
“I think he can get the majority of his [conference] and we can get a number of ours — probably a majority — [to] come to a consensus on reasonable effective policies to go forward,” he said.
“It’s a tough decision for him to make, I don’t deny that. But I don’t think he has to abandon the majority of his party. I don’t think he’s going to be deposed.”
