Talking Business With Steny Hoyer

 

After 25 years in the House, Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD) was voted House Majority Leader after the Democrats won control in the November 2006 elections. Sheryll Poe, uschamber.com staff writer, sat down with the majority leader to discuss the Democrats' progress so far and the business agenda ahead.

 

uschamber.com: How would you summarize the Democrats' first session in terms of small business?

Hoyer: We had a very successful first session of Congress in which we addressed some of the needs of the country that we promised to address during the 2006 election. We passed a minimum wage bill and some small business tax relief. We passed an education bill that will give businesses greater opportunities to hire people who can help their businesses succeed. We passed a stimulus package that seeks to give a shot in the arm to business. All of these bills were passed in a bipartisan fashion and signed by the president. Further, our small business committee has been focused on taking actions to help small businesses become more competitive in the government contracting process.

 

We'll have to wait and see. A second bill is a possibility, but we want to see how successful this first one is. There are continuing needs that we talked about in the course of this stimulus bill. One is infrastructure, which I know the Chamber and businesses of all sizes are very interested in. If we don't have good infrastructure, we're not going to have an environment in which businesses can grow and thrive and compete. So clearly infrastructure is on the table.

 

During the last 17 years, there have been a number of court cases that have narrowed greatly the scope of coverage of ADA. For example, if I had epilepsy that was controlled by the use of medication, my employer could still say, "We don't want you on the job." The court, in effect, said my epilepsy doesn't qualify me for protection under the ADA because my condition is mitigated by the use of prescription drugs and therefore does not impede a major life function. That was not the intent of Congress. If you discriminate against me because I have epilepsy, it makes no difference whether the drugs are mitigating.

 

I'd like to see us come together and agree on workable solutions to this issue. I look forward to working with the Chamber and business community to facilitate the adoption of a piece of legislation that, on the one hand, protects against discrimination but, on the other hand, does not require businesses to do something they can't do.

 

There obviously is bipartisan controversy that some of the requirements are unreasonable and encourage teaching to the test. I hope that we'll pass NCLB with the accountability requirements intact. Changes need to be made so that students are counted discreetly in terms of progress and not all lumped together. Clearly, we need to fully develop every child we have in America because our workforce demands it.

 

Last year's alternative minimum tax (AMT) relief bill was only a one-year fix and did not address tax extenders such as the research & experimentation (R&E) tax credit. Will Congress act on those this year?
The House bill not only included the extenders, but they were paid for. We feel very strongly that we need to pursue a policy of paying for what we buy and the tax cuts we provide so that they do not have an adverse impact on our deficit. We want to pass the extenders and an AMT fix, but we want to pay for them. We'll try to do that again this year. 

 

Following the collapse of comprehensive immigration reform in Congress last year, what are the prospects of a narrower bill that would help alleviate a worker shortage?

It's important that we pass a seasonal workers' bill, but it's difficult for a lot of our members to view this issue outside of the larger immigration debate. If we just resolve the issue that the business community is rightfully worried about-the need for seasonal, temporary, or agricultural workers-without addressing other concerns, some members would see that as delaying solutions to some significant problems such as border security. I'm not sure that will be possible this year.