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Hoyer Floor Remarks Urging Members to Table Leader McCarthy’s Privileged Resolution

WASHINGTON, DC – House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (MD) spoke on the House Floor this afternoon urging Members to vote to table Minority Leader McCarthy’s Privileged Resolution. Below is a link to the video and a transcript of his remarks:     “Madam Speaker.... We are expecting the Republican Leader to offer a Privileged Resolution at the conclusion of debate on this rule. I am disappointed in that news. His resolution is being used by Republicans to posit a moral equivalence between a comment by the Gentlelady from California standing up for justice and peaceful protests and remarks by Representative [Marjorie Taylor] Greene who directly threatened violence by retweeting a tweet – I understand it was not her words – but she retweeted those words which said that if you want to shut [Speaker] Pelosi up, a bullet to the head would accomplish that objective. She didn't say it. I want to make that clear. She retweeted a tweet that said that.   “Even more egregiously, it's being used to twist reality to suggest that somehow Congresswoman Waters' remark is as condemnable as rhetoric that incites a violent attempt to overthrow the government of the United States on January 6, an action that Republicans refused to condemn.   [Leader Hoyer is asked to yield]

“No, I will not.   “There is no equivalence. Chairwoman Waters' remarks reflect the very profound anger and sense of hopelessness that she and so many others, myself included, feel when we see African Americans being killed during encounters with our law enforcement, and their families not seeing justice. It's my understanding we'll get a ruling, perhaps, almost any minute. We will see.   “It is, however, irresponsible to take Chair Waters' remarks out of context to just hold a gotcha partisan vote. Particularly when no action was taken by their party, by her party regarding Mrs. Greene's remarks. It is, frankly, exploiting the pain of so many families and communities to turn Chairwoman Waters' concern for justice into a partisan cudgel. As my friend, the dearly departed Elijah Cummings used to say and would surely say now, ‘we are better than this.’ So, when the Minority Leader offers his motion, I will offer a motion to table and urge all my colleagues to support that motion.   “I urge all of my colleagues to pick up their dictionary. Turn to the C's, and look up confront: confront is to face the facts; confront is to face the truth; confront is to face the challenges that we have – and that is what Ms. Waters urged. And I would suggest to my friend, the Minority Leader, Madam Speaker, that if confrontation is subject to sanction, then we're going to have a lot of people on your side of the aisle whom we believe are confrontational every day.

“Confront is not violence; confront is not waving guns and say some groups' biggest fear; confront is not to say be violent in confronting the facts and the truth and the opportunities and the challenges, and, yes, the alternatives that we ought to take. And so if one of us stands up and said, we need to confront this and we need to be confrontational, we need to get up in people's faces saying, this is the truth and we need to act, that would be subject to admonition. Then, I suggest to my friend, Madam Speaker, and my friends in this House that we all confront. We came here to represent people, and to confront their needs, to confront their fears, to confront their wants. Now, yes, you could say that's advocacy. Of course it is.

“And so I ask my friends not only to vote for this rule but to vote for the motion to table of my friend's motion that I anticipate. We could spend all our time here, Madam Speaker. We've been on this side of the aisle – as my friend, the Leader, knows – we haven't had all the resolutions that have been introduced on my side of the aisle. This makes it harder, however, not to proceed on numerous resolutions on my side of the aisle. Let us Table this resolution. On behalf of this institution and every Member in it, I yield back the balance of my time.”  

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