Hoyer Discusses the Regional Leadership Council and the Francis Scott Key Bridge Collapse on 'The Julie Mason Show'

WASHINGTON, DC - Congressman Steny H. Hoyer (MD-05), Chair of the Regional Leadership Council (RLC), joined Julie Mason on "The Julie Mason Show" to discuss the RLC's Investing in America Week of Action and the bipartisan, bicameral work to secure federal aid to rebuild the Francis Scott Key Bridge. Below is a link to the audio and a transcript of the interview:

To listen to the interview, click here.

On Securing Bipartisan Federal Funding for the Francis Scott Key Bridge

"Well, I think that the majority of Republicans and the majority of Democrats, overwhelming majority of Democrats, understand that when we have a crisis in a state that has national repercussions, and international in this case repercussions, we have a precedent for the federal government paying to correct that tragedy and to get back to work and get back to being able to accommodate whatever the use of that facility was.

"In this case, of course, getting cargo in and out of the Baltimore Harbor and taking literally 30,000 cars a day up and down the north - the eastern coast. So, I think while the Freedom Caucus - which is a pretty obstreperous group and is a bane in the existence of the Republican Party, who now has again yesterday prevented them from passing a rule to consider legislation they wanted to consider and needed to be considered - is not going to dictate the terms of what's going to happen here.

"And I was very pleased the President of the United States, just hours after this tragedy occurred on March 26 at 1:30 in the morning, said that the federal government was going to pay to repair this bridge. And we very much appreciate his assertion. We have the assertion of Members, Republican Members of the Appropriations Committee, that they're going to follow precedent. So, I think we're going to have discussion about that. There's no doubt about that, Julie. But I think that's what's going to happen. That's what needs to happen.

"This tragedy - which knocked down portions of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, clearly interrupted extraordinary economic endeavors. Immediately to the Port of Baltimore, immediately to the longshoremen that service the Port of Baltimore, immediately to the 30,000 drivers a day who crossed across that bridge, as well as, in the short term, traffic that doesn't have the depth, the need for 50-foot depth, which is about 20% of the traffic that goes through there. But the Corps of Engineers, the Coast Guard, the Secretary of Transportation - Pete Buttigieg, the President of the United States, Governor Moore has done an extraordinary job setting up a Command Center, and just an extraordinary amount of work has already been done in the short time since the tragedy occurred about 14 days ago. And I'm convinced that we're going to get that port working within the next two months.

"Now, it will not have all the traffic that will be going into there because about 80% of the traffic that goes in and out of there only needs a channel depth of about 30 or 35 feet. The ship that hit the bridge was one of the massive, massive ships that are running in the world, and it requires a 50-foot depth and that will take a little longer. And getting the bridge built is going to take a little longer, but I think we're going to get the channel cleared hopefully as soon as the latter part, the end of May."

On Governor Moore's Leadership

"On a scale of 1 to 100, I'd rate him 110.

"I mean, I will tell you that everybody who has worked with this - he's been on the job literally almost 24 hours a day. Obviously, he takes some sleep. He sleeps sometimes. But he has been doing a job that - you know he was a leader in the military in Afghanistan, at the point of the spear, in harm's way, and you have to be pretty organized and know how to get things done - who to tell, do this, do that, and do the other, and motivate them to do so. And that's what he's done. And I want to say something about the federal authorities - both the Army Corps of Engineers and the United States Coast Guard have been extraordinary.

"And let me tell you one thing that we're all very, very proud of. We obviously are very sad. There were six souls lost, but it is extraordinary that it was only six souls. Six is too many, but it could've been scores of people. But what happened was the people on the ship had the good sense to contact the people running the bridge and the Francis Scott Key Highway part of it, to tell them immediately that it looked like they could not control their ship, and it may hit the bridge. And what they did immediately was to stop traffic - immediately - within minutes.

"So, in fact we could've lost scores of people. Now it was 1:30 in the morning, so traffic wasn't heavy, but it could've been you know, it could have been another 50 people that could've been on the bridge at that time. And thank God for that swift action of the Port Authority people and the bridge people - the people who are running the bridge. So, I think this is an A-plus performance so far - by everybody."

On the Regional Leadership Council's Investing in America Week of Action and Meeting at the White House

"We did. I had an agenda I called Make It In America. And in the last Congress, we adopted legislation. Now, the legislation was the legislation of the President and the Congressional leadership - not my Make It In America - but it was all about what we had recommended in Make It In America, in making us more competitive, and providing goods, and providing self-reliance, and building up our manufacturing capacity.

"Because during the pandemic, we found there were things we weren't making that we needed - for instance, masks. We had to get masks from China. That's not a very reliable supply chain. That supply chain went down. [A] specific example, I won't go into all of them, were the chips - the chips that were made in Singapore, the chips that were made in Taiwan. They stopped manufacturing because they sent everybody home and they closed down their factories. Ultimately, not too long thereafter, it led to closing down our automobile manufacturers. Why? Because they couldn't get chips. And so, we invested a lot in chips and basic science. We invested in infrastructure. We invested in our people. We invested in bringing costs down in the last Congress.

"But unfortunately, a lot of people didn't know exactly what was done in the last Congress. And as it relates to this Congress -which has been so unproductive - the last Congress was extraordinarily productive. And the [council] that I now Chair as a result of the appointment by Leader Jeffries, is the [Regional] Leadership Council, which is designed to let the American people know what we have done and how they and their families and their businesses can benefit.

"And so, we had a Day of Action, actually a week, two Weeks of Action throughout the United States of America. We did over 160 to 80 events - somewhere in that neighborhood.

"Over 160 events by over 100 Members of Congress dealing with all of the things that we did - which reflected roads, bridges, highways, airports, health care costs, clean air, clean water, potable drinking water for kids and families. All of those subjects we dealt with. The Affordable Connectivity [Program], which we found during the pandemic, there were scores of, you know, millions of people who didn't have access to being connected to the Internet and therefore couldn't get information and couldn't get information out and couldn't do health care, for instance, online - which was very important for a lot of people. And we had a program that has connected people. We need to continue that program. We haven't done that yet, but we need to continue it. But the Day of Action was very, very successful.

"We were in coordination with the White House from the very beginning on this project. We went down to the White House. We reported to the Chief of Staff of the White House. We reported to a number of the officials, the Deputy Chief of Staff in the White House, and to a number of the people who are in charge of various segments of implementing the Investing in America agenda the President put forward, which we enacted, and which has been one of the most successful Congresses in which I've served. And this is my 22nd Congress.

"So that's what it was. It was a very good meeting. I think they were excited, we were, as it were designed to do, communicated with the White House about what we were doing. They communicated to us what they were doing and how we could be most effective together."

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