WASHINGTON, DC - House Majority Leader-Elect Steny H. Hoyer (MD) joined NPR's Morning Edition to discuss the Trump shutdown and how House Democrats will bring legislation to the Floor today that would reopen government. Below are excerpts from and a link to the interview:   “…I'm going to be offering two bills [to reopen government on the House Floor], all of which are Republican bills, all of which we've compromised on, and included things that the Republicans wanted in their bills. Again, they were reported out of Republican committees, and passed by the Republican Senate... So we’ll offer those. We trust they will pass the House, and we will send them to the Senate… Government could be open tomorrow if the Senate passes bills they've already passed and send them to the President.”

“The point is to once again give the Senate and the President of the United States the opportunity to sign bills that they have already said they were for. They voted for them in the Senate. The President had agreed to open up government with those bills. We've kept the February 8 date. We think it should have been until September 30,  the end of the fiscal year, but we kept the February 8 date, which gives us another four weeks with the government open, with government serving the American people, with federal employees not traumatized by thinking that they’re not going to get a paycheck and not going to make their mortgage payment, or their car payment, or their kids' college payment. We think that's the right thing to do for our federal employees, but more importantly, it's the right thing to do for our country and for our citizens.”