The Interview: Will House Democrats deal?

Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the secondranking Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives after Speaker Nancy Pelosi, was in Orlando recently for a campaign fund-raiser. In a wide-ranging video interview with the Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board, Hoyer answered questions about health care, immigration and tax cuts. For a complete transcript, and to watch interview excerpts on video, go to OrlandoSentinel.com/opinion.

Republican Lamar Alexander and Democrat Patty Murray struck a deal to maintain payments to insurance companies under the Affordable Care Act. Do you support this deal? Yes. Would it be exactly the deal we would make? No. But this was an agreement ... to try to stabilize the health-care market, which the president and Republicans have destabilized for a very long time as a result of their efforts to repeal. And although they said, “Repeal and replace,” obviously they had no replacement. … I have a great respect for [Alexander]. What I understand is, the president called him and said, “Look, see if you can get some sort of deal.” In fact, he got a deal, and [Alexander] thought the president would support that deal, which was … to lend some stability to the insurance market … so that … the 1.7 million in Florida and tens of millions of Americans [who get their health care through the Affordable Care Act] … would not be adversely affected by these changes in policy.

Is the deal a long-term solution to some of the problems that have emerged with the Affordable Care Act? Yes, we have to deal with the deficiencies in the Affordable Care Act, and we knew that when we adopted it in 2010. … Obviously we [Democrats] got our heads handed to us in the 2010 elections, and we weren’t in charge [in 2011] and the winners were simply focused on repeal — not alternatives, not fixing, not making it work better for the American people. So … we are fully inclined to do, in effect, what Sen. Murray did, and work with Republican colleagues to try to make this work better.

How would you rate the Trump administration’s response to Hurricane Maria? It’s not nearly as robust as it should have been. … Longterm, we need to make sure that … with respect to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, we help them get to a place where they are no longer as vulnerable as they were to these hurricanes.

Would your caucus be willing to support an extension of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program if it includes other provisions to tighten border security? The answer to that is yes. But we’re not for the wall — we don’t think the wall works; we think the wall is a waste of money, but we believe that the border needs to be secure. You can’t have people coming into our country, particularly in an era where we have terrorism risks, who we don’t know about. That we don’t approve. Having said that, almost everybody urged the president not to rescind the DACA executive order . ... Almost everybody, from right to left, believes that these young people are making a positive contribution and ought not to be removed and sent to countries they know not of . ... You’ve got a pretty broad consensus that darned well we ought not to send these kids home. So the answer to your question is yes, and we would be willing to consider a security enhancement … to our borders . ...

Is funding for the wall with Mexico a deal breaker for an agreement on DACA? Funding for a wall would probably be a deal breaker. I say probably because it’s very critical that we solve this issue of these 800,000 kids. … If they go home, they are at risk. Which is what the temporary protective status was for. That also needs to be dealt with . ... .