| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| Ideas and values that I've fought for are going to eventually prevail. | ||
| I may not be at the signing of the bill, but that's not the important thing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's important that they get done for the good of this country. | |
| Let me close by saying thanks to the media. | ||
| A lot of you came a long way and sacrificed to be part of this announcement today. | ||
| I appreciate your coverage over the years, and I hope I've been available as you've needed me as much as I possibly can. | ||
| I'll continue to be through this election for the friends, family, and staff who've come here from around the state. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you from the bottom of my heart. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| Well, next, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer speaks at the 2025 World Economy Summit hosted by Semaphore News. | ||
| He discusses the retirement announcement from his deputy, Dick Durbin from Illinois, and the rise in the polls of potential primary challenger, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. | ||
| This is about 15 minutes. | ||
| Please welcome Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and Burgess Everett, Congressional Bureau Chief at Semaphore. | ||
| Senator Schumer, how are you feeling? | ||
| Burgess, how are you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you for joining us today. | |
| We really appreciate your time. | ||
| So we'll start with, you know, the biggest news in your caucus today is your former roommate and your whip, Senator Durbin, has announced he's not running for re-election today. | ||
| How does that affect your job and how are you feeling about that? | ||
| And how are you reflecting on this long career you guys have had working together? | ||
| Yeah, well, today's Dick Durbin's day. | ||
| And let me just say he is one of the greatest, not only senators I've ever met, but one of the greatest people I've ever met as well. | ||
| He is somebody who is a great and an amazing, smart legislator. | ||
| But I think what stands out the most is his compassion for people who need help. | ||
| You could just see it. | ||
| When he heard a story of someone in trouble, his instinct was to help them legislatively or back in Illinois or whatever. | ||
| His passion, for instance, for the DREAMers was incredible. | ||
| He would get on the floor every day and give a speech and show pictures about these dreamers because he cared so much about them. | ||
| And everyone in the Senate knew when Dick Durbin got up to speak for something, it wasn't to seek political advantage for himself. | ||
| It was much rather because his heart was, he had a great brain, a great soul, but an amazing, amazing heart. | ||
| And of course, he's a dear friend, as you know. | ||
| I lived with him for more than 20 years in the famous rooming house that George Miller was the landlord of. | ||
| I used to tell people I've lived with my wife. | ||
| These were a few years ago, 35 years, George Miller, 33 years, and Dick Durbin, 30 years. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He said you were a little messy, though. | |
| Yeah, he was much more of a neat freak than I was. | ||
| But he tolerated everything because he was such a decent guy. | ||
| I can't think of a thing bad about him except one. | ||
| We had two bedrooms upstairs. | ||
| Miller, the landlord, got one. | ||
| And unfortunately, Durbin had the other. | ||
| So I had to sleep downstairs, you know, in the sort of place that had the kitchen and the living room on a couch for a while. | ||
| Then later we finally got a bed. | ||
| But I never got that bedroom because of Dick Durbin. | ||
| That's the only bad thing I could say about him. | ||
| I've talked to him today, yesterday, and the days before. | ||
| He will be missed in every way, but leaves a giant mark. | ||
| Love the guy. | ||
| Love the guy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So I just actually reported that Senator Schatz, who's the chief deputy whip, he's been making some calls today to Democrats about the WIP position. | |
| Do you support him for that role at this point? | ||
| Today's Dick Durbin's Day. | ||
| I'm talking about Dick Durbin. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| You've been back home in New York for the past two weeks where we've been on recess. | ||
| You know a lot of folks in the business community in New York, Wall Street, et cetera. | ||
| What are they telling you about Trump's economic plans and the tariffs specifically? | ||
| Are people aggressive? | ||
| They're aghast. | ||
| They're aghast that this man has so mismanaged an economy that was given, you know, that was in good shape when he took office. | ||
| They're aghast about the lack of thinking of how these tariffs work. | ||
| They're aghast at the chaos, different people saying different things every day. | ||
| You talk to business people. | ||
| It could be big business people, small business people, or anyone in between. | ||
| They need some kind of certainty. | ||
| They don't have it. | ||
| And they're aghast at the foolishness of the plan. | ||
| If you want to go after China, you don't attack everybody else in the world and ally them to China. | ||
| But I'll tell you, as much as Wall Street is upset, our people upstate are upset. | ||
| I spent, we have seven Republican districts in New York State. | ||
| I was in six of them over the last week talking about the reconciliation bill, which will, in a sentence, make the middle class pay for tax cuts for billionaires. | ||
| And particularly, you know, on Medicaid, I was at nursing homes where people would lose their jobs. | ||
| People would lose the ability to be in a nursing home because they are 60, 70, 80% funded by Medicaid. | ||
| One of the biggest hospitals in the Bronx told me that they'd close if these Medicaid cuts were done. | ||
| They're talking about Social Security. | ||
| They're talking about veterans. | ||
| And on the tariffs, yesterday I was in Albany and Syracuse at a bunch of restaurants and small business owners. | ||
| The restaurants have to pay much more for their imports of many different kinds of things. | ||
| They're worried about closing. | ||
| In New York, they're worried that the Canadian tariffs prevent tourists from coming. | ||
| It's huge for our tourist season. | ||
| And we had a pool manufacturer. | ||
| Manufacturers upset. | ||
| This guy gets about, he's the biggest pool, not a manufacturer, but he installs the pools. | ||
| And it's a great company in Albany. | ||
| It employs over 300 people. | ||
| He's going to lose out a lot of business in Canada, and he's going to have to charge more because of Canadian imports. | ||
| And many of the people I talk to are Republicans. | ||
| So let me say this, Burgess. | ||
| It is no wonder that we Democrats are unified on our message. | ||
| We're not for tax cuts for billionaires and cutting Medicaid, Social Security, Medicare, veterans, et cetera. | ||
| They are, and they're in disarray. | ||
| You have House Republicans, four of the six congressmen whose districts I went to sent a letter to Johnson saying, don't cut Medicaid. | ||
| Well, how the hell are they going to do that when the right wing is demanding even deeper cuts than the $880 billion that's put down for the Energy and Commerce Committee, most of which would be Medicaid? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, we even heard Mike Lawler was distancing himself just yesterday from the idea of making states pay more of the federal share on Medicaid. | |
| Yeah, well, I was in his district, and he called up a newspaper and screamed at him for covering me, talking about his Medicaid position. | ||
| But then he was not one of the original people on that letter, but then he signed it, of course. | ||
| They're all feeling the heat. | ||
| And ask yourself this simple question. | ||
| Why are Democrats so unified and Republicans in such disarray on this reconciliation bill and on the tariffs, but on the reconciliation bill, why are House Republicans fighting with other House Republicans? | ||
| Why are Senate Republicans fighting with other Senate Republicans? | ||
| And amazingly enough, why are the two leaderships not on the same page? | ||
| tell you why, because the policies are so damn unpopular with the American people and not just with Democrats, with Independents and Republicans I've met across the state as I've traveled the state the last week and a half. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, Senator, I mean, you are, though, you're a China hawk. | |
| You supported President Biden's China tariffs as well. | ||
| Do you support President Trump's China tariffs or at least what he is trying to achieve in taking on China? | ||
| Look, targeted smart tariffs make sense against China. | ||
| I was for them then. | ||
| I'm for them now. | ||
| What Trump did is chaos and disaster. | ||
| He's turned the whole world against America, and China's seeking alliances and seeking to take advantage of the stupidity of the Trump tariffs. | ||
| And that's why you even have such dissent in the administration. | ||
| Navarro wants to go against these tariffs, wants to impose these tariffs all the way. | ||
| Some of the more business-oriented people say do this, do that. | ||
| They don't even have a consistent plan. | ||
| And as I mentioned, businesses, whether they be huge businesses, whether they be financial services in New York City or the small businesses upstate, they need some kind of certainty. | ||
| And they don't get any certainty at all with Trump. | ||
| So the American people, you saw this YouGov poll today or somewhere, that they're losing total faith in his ability to run the economy. | ||
| The guy who said, on day one, I'll start reducing your costs, has raised their costs. | ||
| The tariffs, by the way, we estimate, you know, the fell on before, I don't know who it was, but I just heard him. | ||
| He said it's also, who was it? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Stephen Mirren. | |
| Oh, he said it's only going to raise your prices 14, or, you know, it's only 14% of the economy. | ||
| We estimate that the average family will pay more than $4,000 a year with Trump's tariffs as they are now. | ||
| The average IRA has lost close to $100,000. | ||
| Go tell that to average people that they shouldn't worry about that, to working class families that they shouldn't worry about that. | ||
| They're worrying, baby. | ||
| They are really worried. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Are the tariffs, I mean, Democrats obviously had a tough election in 2024 and have been kind of, you know, in the wilderness a little bit for the past six months. | |
| Are the tariffs giving you all an opportunity politically? | ||
| And how are you dealing with that as you try to take the Senate back? | ||
| Well, look, we have three things going for us in the last week or two, now a fourth. | ||
| We first had the signal gate, total incompetence of the administration. | ||
| Then now we have the reconciliation, which we've been pounding away at and already making Republicans pay a price for sticking with the Trump plan. | ||
| And now we have the tariffs. | ||
| And so it just keeps piling on. | ||
| So yes, Democrats, we are on our front foot. | ||
| We are on offense. | ||
| We are fighting the Republican proposals that so hurt working families across America. | ||
| And they're on their back foot fighting with each other and not really knowing what they're going to do. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You took a lot of heat from your own party for your vote to advance that government funding bill. | |
| Do you feel like you've been vindicated given that the government could still be shut down today if you all had voted against it? | ||
| Look, I did what I thought was the right thing to do. | ||
| Sometimes as a leader, you have to take a bullet to do the right thing, which was clearly, I think, the right thing for the country and for us. | ||
| But we're all moving forward now. | ||
| We're all united. | ||
| My caucus is totally united, no matter which way people voted on that proposal, to go to show the American people how Trump has betrayed them, how Trump is on the side of the billionaires club, not on their side. | ||
| And we have great unity in our caucus. | ||
| And I think it's terrific. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Do you take any of this talk, polling, et cetera, about AOC running against you in 2028? | |
| Do you take that seriously? | ||
| How do you deal with that? | ||
| What's your reaction to it? | ||
| Polls always come and go. | ||
| I'm focused on making sure the people of New York and the people of America know how bad Trump is. | ||
| And I have found throughout my career, you do your job and everything works out just fine. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Are you ready to announce that you'll be running for another term yet? | |
| I'm focused on letting people know how bad Trump is. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Let me ask you about a few months ago when we last talked, you said that President Trump had sort of alluded to maybe meeting with you at some point at the White House. | |
| You guys got some deals done together in his first term. | ||
| Has there been any talk of you being able to meet with him, work with him, any of those things? | ||
| When he met me, he said he wants to meet. | ||
| He hasn't called up. | ||
| He hasn't set up a meeting at this point. | ||
| I'll certainly meet with him, but if I meet with him, I'm going to tell them how bad his policies are for the American people. | ||
| And ultimately, it'll be bad for him because the people do not like what he's doing. | ||
| They hate it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Are there aspects of the Trump tax cuts for middle class and lower income earners that you would like to keep in place moving forward? | |
| Look, we have to look at the whole package. | ||
| And if such a high proportion of the money goes to the wealthiest people in America, that package can't be defended. | ||
| And the American people know that. | ||
| About 80% of the people don't like tax cuts for billionaires, particularly when the middle class is paying for it on programs vital to them. | ||
| And one other thing, Burgess, you know, like Medicaid. | ||
| I don't know, some of these Republicans, they don't realize that Medicaid is not only a program for poor people, and I'm glad it is, they need help, but it's also a program that hurts the middle class. | ||
| I was on Staten Island in Maliotakis' district. | ||
| And we were there, and we were at nursing homes, and the head of the nursing home, very nice man, said, if I have to close with these Medicaid cuts, these middle-class families who live on Staten Island, they're not going to know what to do for their parents. | ||
| Their houses aren't big. | ||
| You can't really move your mom in back end home. | ||
| They need different kinds of medical care. | ||
| Kids can't do that themselves, but they can't afford it. | ||
| It's just crazy. | ||
| So, you know, what they're doing in obeisance to the billionaires club is really hurting middle-class people. | ||
| And every day, more and more middle-class people are learning that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, it seems like, though, in the Senate, at least, you have four, possibly way more senators uncomfortable with cutting Medicaid. | |
| You have, you know, relationships with some of these Republicans. | ||
| Do you think ultimately the Senate Republicans are going to say, we cannot do this? | ||
| Well, there are some of them who are saying that and have said it publicly, but they're divided. | ||
| For everyone who says you can't do it, you've got somebody else in the Senate caucus, Republican caucus on the hard rights saying, it's not enough. | ||
| We've got to even do more. | ||
| That's why they're so stuck. | ||
| They're just stuck. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, they also have the debt ceiling in their reconciliation package right now. | |
| They may have to pull that out and ask for your help. | ||
| Are you willing to give that to them? | ||
| Look, right now it's in their package. | ||
| We'll have to see what they do with it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| So you're not ruling that out entirely. | ||
| Well, I'm just saying it's in their package right now. | ||
| I'm not negotiating in any way. | ||
| Let's see what they do with it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We have time for one more question. | |
| And you know, I love Senate races. | ||
| And you're somebody who shares that love with me. | ||
| You guys have a tough map. | ||
| You got to pick up four seats. | ||
| Right now, I know you don't have candidates in line, but do you feel like if the election were to be held now, would you be majority leader? | ||
| Do you think you'll be majority leader in 2027? | ||
| In 2027, I believe I will. | ||
| Trump is alienating people left and right. | ||
| And we are, you know, people said, oh, it's a hard map. | ||
| I remember what they said in 2020. | ||
| He'll never become majority leader. | ||
| And then we surprised him and won two seats in Georgia. | ||
| People, and I think in this election, we are going to be in the majority in 2027 because first, people know that we are fighting for working families. | ||
| But just as importantly, maybe even more importantly, they're not going to want people, the Republicans who embrace Trump. | ||
| They're going to desert the electorate will desert the Republican candidates who embrace Trump in an overwhelming way. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Senator Schumer, thank you so much for joining us and giving us 15 minutes of your time. | |
| We appreciate it. | ||
| Purgas, you have always been an excellent reporter. | ||
| Thank you, sir. | ||
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