Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/rep-hoyer-weighs-congress-plans-for-iraq-budget-issues Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Transcript U.S. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., discusses his take on some of the biggest challenges currently facing Congress, including budget debates, U.S. funding of the war in Iraq and other topics. Read the Full Transcript Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors. JUDY WOODRUFF: House Democrats elected Steny Hoyer as their leader soon after the November elections put them back in the majority for the first time in 12 years. Mr. Hoyer now is in his 14th term representing the Fifth District of Maryland. And he joins us from the Capitol.Good to see you, Mr. Majority Leader.REP. STENY HOYER (D-MD), House Majority Leader: Good to be with you, Judy. JUDY WOODRUFF: To start off with, the defense secretary, Gates, yesterday went to the Congress and talked about needing an additional $42 billion to fight the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, 15 percent increase. It would bring the total to something like $190 billion. Is the administration going to get this from the House, from the Congress? REP. STENY HOYER: Well, certainly the Congress is going to look at very carefully how they want to spend this money, Judy. This is an extraordinary sum of money.We had indicated last year that we thought that the war costs ought to be included in the regular budget, but the administration continues to send up supplementals in very, very large sums to fund this war. So it's very difficult to budget.I know that Mr. Murtha, Mr. Obey will be looking at this very carefully to see exactly what they want to spend this money on. And I think there's going to be great reluctance to approve that sum of money when the administration says we cannot invest sums in domestic issues, whether it's education, policemen, firemen, health care, those issues we think are very important, as well. So there's going to be a real close look given to this. JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, Secretary Gates is saying, as I'm sure you know, that this money is needed, not only for the troops to take care of the troops, but he talks about those Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, the MRAPs. We just heard a report about them. Can Congress really say no to protecting the troops? REP. STENY HOYER: Judy, we certainly don't intend to say no, and the answer is we're not going to say no. As you know, we passed a continuing resolution that has funding for those MRAP vehicles in it. And we will certainly fund MRAP vehicles as long as our troops are there, because we know that they are saving lives. And so we're not going to cut on investments in saving lives and keeping our troops safe.