Steny Hoyer

George W. Bush "turned tail" from the Afghan war to invade Iraq, leaving President Barack Obama a worsening war he must now try to turn around, a senior Democratic White House ally said Tuesday. In unusually sharp comments, Democratic House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said he was "angry" about former vice president Dick Cheney's latest attacks on Obama's handling of a bloody conflict now in its ninth year. "Frankly, they turned tail. That's pretty tough language, but I get angry when I hear vice president Cheney talk about a job they started but didn't finish," Hoyer told reporters. "They started something and didn't finish ... Read Full Story

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. House Democratic Leader Steny Hoyer said the chamber will vote this week to permanently extend the estate tax rates scheduled to expire at the end of 2009. The House will take up a bill introduced by Democrat Earl Pomeroy last week to extend the current policy of taxing estates over a $3.5 million threshold at a rate of 45 percent. "We are going to permanently fix the estate tax," Steny Hoyer, the chamber's majority leader, told reporters. "We believe that a permanent extension of the existing law is the best policy." A 10-year extension of the tax would cost an ... Read Full Story

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Congressional Democrats' push for another U.S. stimulus package got a boost on Tuesday from an analysis that found their earlier effort had blunted the impact of the worst economic downturn in 80 years. As Democrats weighed measures to bring down the nation's double-digit unemployment rate before the November 2010 congressional elections, they touted a nonpartisan report that showed the $787 billion stimulus package passed in February had kept between 600,000 and 1.6 million people off the unemployment rolls. That effort, panned as a boondoggle by Republicans, also boosted the nation's GDP between 1.2 percent and 3.2 percent, the Congressional Budget Office ... Read Full Story

House Democrats are looking at swelling deficits further, at least temporarily, on a jobs-producing bill in response to double-digit unemployment and a sense within their ranks that the party needs to do more to put people back to work. But many of the ideas on the table so far are extensions of last February's $787 billion economic stimulus package — such as unemployment benefits and subsidies to help the jobless pay for health insurance. They maintain the social safety net for the 15.7 million Americans out of work but they don't directly create new jobs. Aware that the last stimulus bill has not prevented ... Read Full Story

Amid sky-high US unemployment, a top ally of President Barack Obama in the US House of Representatives said Tuesday he hoped to pass a new economic stimulus bill "targeted" on jobs by December 18. "I would certainly want to see us move something on jobs before that, and we are working on it now," Democratic House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, who has made December 18 the House's target adjournment date, told reporters. With US joblessness at a 26-year high heading into a mid-term election year, Obama and his Democratic partners have found fresh urgency in tackling the issue again nine months after enacting a ... Read Full Story