Following President Obama’s lead, Democratic Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) told reporters on Tuesday that he blew it by voting against a debt limit increase under President Bush.
“Let me be the first to observe that I voted against the debt limit in the past,” he said. “That was a mistake.”
Nonetheless, Hoyer contrasted Democratic votes against past debt limit increases, which he said were symbolic protests against the Bush tax cuts, with current Republican demands for spending cuts and new budget rules in exchange for their vote, which he warned could lead to catastrophe.
“You try to make the point knowing full well that the debt limit had to pass,” he said of Democrats’ past opposition to raising the debt ceiling.
President Obama is slated to give a much-anticipated speech on deficit reduction tomorrow that the Washington Post reports will heap praise on the Bowles-Simpson debt commission, which outlined a plan to reduce the deficit by $4 trillion over the next decade. Hoyer said that while he did not expect to hear too many specifics, he predicted Obama would make a strong case for making tax increases a part of any deficit reduction strategy.
“I expect him to say that revenues have to be part of the picture, which [House Budget Chair Paul Ryan] rejected, I expect him to say that Medicare and Medicaid are going to continue to be items on which we can rely,” he said.
According to Hoyer, his hope is that the speech will lead to bipartisan budget talks along the lines of the “Gang of Six” in the Senate, a group of three Republican and three Democratic lawmakers who are trying to come up with a comprehensive deficit plan based on the Bowles-Simpson commission. Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi was extremely critical of the deficit commission’s plan at the time of its release, in particular its proposal to raise the minimum age for Social Security benefits.
