Hoyer needles Fox News Channel
By Ben Pershing
Add House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) to the list of top Democrats taking shots at Fox News Channel.
Hoyer may not have gone quite as far in his criticism as the White House, which has suggested FNC is not "a legitimate news organization." But he still managed to needle the network at a press conference Friday.
At a session with conservative "Blue Dog" Democrats on the group's desire to attach "pay as you go" budget rules to an increase in the federal debt ceiling, Hoyer made the case that implementing such rules would be an important step toward fiscal responsibility.
Chad Pergram, a producer for Fox, then began a question by saying: "Let me play devil's advocate for a minute here ..."
Hoyer interrupted Pergram, saying with a smirk, "Oh, Fox News is going to play devil's advocate!"
The assembled lawmakers and reporters laughed.
Pergram took the laughter in stride, then asked his question, which concerned "those who say you're talking out of both sides of your mouth," by vowing fiscal responsibility while moving to add close to $2 trillion to the debt.
Hoyer, despite his wisecrack, did answer Pergram's question, arguing that Democrats were simply ensuring the country could pay its debts while moving to reduce those debts in the future. "In my opinion, there is absolutely no contradiction," Hoyer said.
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Ben Pershing
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December 11, 2009; 12:28 PM ET
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Posted by: jonweiss1 | December 12, 2009 3:14 PM | Report abuse
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We don't need Fox News or any "devils advocate" to find idiocy in Congress. Yesterday, Hoyer did that for us. He made a statement telling us that Congress was a failure at their job of playing "referee" to wall street and that they had failed to say "time out" to stop wall street from over spending. He followed that statement by saying that the people should now trust Congress to play referee, and to do what they had already failed at doing. But I say, why should we trust people to succeed at a task that they have already failed at, when they admit their failures? Congress needs to go, and if any of the current crew is retained beyond 2010, then the people have no one to blams for the failures but themselves.