| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| A more fulsome discussion about what the role of Congress should be and whether or not we need to take action. | ||
| But I think right now, let's hope and pray for the best outcome, the best solution. | ||
| And in my view, that would be Iran coming to the negotiating table and agreeing to end their nuclear program. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Senate Democratic leaders also addressed reporters on Capitol Hill highlighting their disagreements with the Republican tax and spending cuts bill. | |
| During the news conference, California Democratic Senator Alex Padilla spoke about his recent detention and removal from a Homeland Security press conference in Los Angeles. | ||
| We're not only joined by Senator Padilla, Amy Klobuchar, and Ron Wyden, but we're joined by his family who watched his amazing speech in the gallery. | ||
| We have Angela, his wife, and Roman, one of his kids. | ||
| So we're proud to have them here with us. | ||
| Our whole caucus, I just have to say, our whole caucus was completely moved by Alex, what he said on the floor, and then what he said to us privately in the room there. | ||
| We had a great discussion, and I got to find my remarks. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You can just wing it. | |
| No, I don't know where they are. | ||
| I'll read Alex's, but not as eloquently. | ||
| Hey, my staff. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't have my speech. | |
| You know what we're going to do? | ||
| It's not in the folder. | ||
| There is a folder, but it's empty. | ||
| So you know what I'm going to do? | ||
| I'm going to call on Alex first, and then I should do that anyway, and then I'll go after him. | ||
| Alex. | ||
| Alex. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You guys are coming forward. | |
| Thank you, Leader Schumer. | ||
| And of course, I want to thank not just my colleagues, but most importantly, my wife, my sons, for their love, their support, always, but particularly this last week, which has been so tough for so many. | ||
| Thank you all for being here, for listening. | ||
| I'm hoping that you all saw and heard my remarks on the floor just a little while ago. | ||
| And I do thank so many of my colleagues that took time out of their busy schedules to be there, to listen, and to support. | ||
| Now, the first, I won't repeat the entire speech, but I do think there's a couple things worth emphasizing, a couple things worth calling out, beginning with the fact that we are on record as a United Senate Democratic caucus calling for President Trump to withdraw the military from the city of Los Angeles. | ||
| We cannot and will not stand by while this administration attempts to militarize our cities and to ignore the laws passed by this Congress. | ||
| As I mentioned during my fourth speech, today the focus is Los Angeles. | ||
| But the administration has laid the groundwork to try to do this in any city, in any state in the country. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And that's just wrong. | |
| Also, what happened to me last week was really not about me. | ||
| If this is how the administration responds to a United States senator who simply wants to ask a question as part of our oversight responsibility as Congress, then imagine what they are capable of doing and what they are doing to people all across the country right now when cameras are not rolling. | ||
| I'm speaking up because this is about every single American who cherishes our Constitution, our freedoms, and our rights. | ||
| Federalizing California's National Guard and bypassing the governor's authority should be a wake-up call to everybody. | ||
| As I said, it's happening in California today, but it can happen in any state tomorrow. | ||
| Now, on Friday, I did have a small glimmer of hope because I heard an announcement by the administration that the president ordered the Department of Homeland Security to kind of pull back from aggressive enforcement actions in hotels, in restaurants, and in agricultural fields. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I thought maybe that was a baby step in the right direction. | |
| Well, even before they reversed that directive yesterday, more chaos, more confusion, there was also that announcement that bears highlighting. | ||
| Yesterday morning, we saw that Trump, via social media, has said, oh no, we are doubling down on our targeting of big blue cities. | ||
| It's a blatant partisan attack and nothing less. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We all have a responsibility to speak out. | |
| That was my appeal to my colleagues on both sides of the aisle. | ||
| It doesn't matter if you're a Republican, a Democrat, or an Independent. | ||
| We all have a responsibility to speak out and push back before it is too late. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You all saw what happened when I had the audacity to ask a question. | |
| And despite that, I will continue to speak up because I will not and we cannot give in to the overreach of this administration. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Do you want to answer a question or two before we start? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No? | |
| Oh, wait. | ||
| Alex will wait around for a few questions that you, I'm sure, have. | ||
| But I just have to say, I hope anyone here who didn't watch his speech watches it. | ||
| It has all kinds of things that I didn't see reported in the media until I heard him say it. | ||
| It was powerful. | ||
| It was strong. | ||
| It was not at all arrogant or angry. | ||
| But it was basically a strong plea for America to regain the gyroscope of democracy which has led us forward for so many years. | ||
| And we're now, we're losing it. | ||
| I heard in the speech, what did Noam say? | ||
|
unidentified
|
She brought in troops to, what was the word? | |
| Liberate. | ||
| To liberate Los Angeles. | ||
| What is going on here? | ||
| I had not seen that in the media. | ||
| So please watch that speech. | ||
| It was really powerful. | ||
| But it's a wake-up call to all Americans, Democrat and Republican, and I was glad to see some of my Republicans stayed and listened to the speech about our democracy. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And let me just say something a little bit about what happened in our Mansfield room, a briefing that Senator Bthune and I were part of. | ||
| First, I want to be really clear about the Capitol Police. | ||
| They've always been the silent heroes. | ||
| behind the scenes keeping our members safe. | ||
| It's no secret. | ||
| The country saw that on January the 6th and in the footage after. | ||
| But after the awful assassinations this weekend, there's real concern not just here in the Capitol, but with folks across the country about the safety of elected officials. | ||
| And in that meeting and in our lunch, many of our colleagues got up and told how they had been under real duress in terms of being threatened in one way or another. | ||
| One way or another. | ||
| And we need a full investigation of who's making those threats and to stop it. | ||
| And not just stop it, to make sure the whole force of the law is used against them, because almost all of these were, what was done was criminal, in my judgment. | ||
| So, but in any case, public servants and ordinary citizens should not have to fear their lives simply for doing their jobs. | ||
| We believe we must take immediate steps to ensure the safety of members, and that includes sending significant additional funding and resources to the Capitol police. | ||
| Inside that room, there were a good number of Republicans who were nodding their heads and some who spoke out in favor of it. | ||
| So we hope, believe, and sort of demand that it be bipartisan. | ||
| Look at the administration. | ||
| They're doing the opposite. | ||
| USA Today reported that as lone actor attacks are on the rise, Trump cuts the program aimed at spotting them. | ||
| The program called AIM, the program aimed at spotting them, is a program to spot, it's called AIM, lone actor violent domestic extremists. | ||
| They were taken out of that program and put in other roles. | ||
| And since Trump took office, the administration has sunk the program that goes after people like this to 10 people, led by a 22-year-old graduate with no law enforcement experience. | ||
| They should change that immediately. | ||
| It's just incredible. | ||
| With everything going on, they're just cutting, cutting, cutting. | ||
| Right now, we need to give our law enforcement more resources to prevent horrific acts, not less, as the Trump administration is doing. | ||
| But I want to be clear about something. | ||
| The dangerous environment isn't spontaneous. | ||
| It's being stoked, often deliberately, by reckless rhetoric coming from the most powerful voices in the country. | ||
| It's the responsibility of leaders, especially the president, to not just unequivocally condemn hatred, but to stop the violence and aggressive language used against political opponents. | ||
| We are opponents. | ||
| We're not the enemy, as he has tried to make us be. | ||
| And that kind of rhetoric is dangerous and inflammatory. | ||
| And instead, they're cutting the programs to prevent these tragedies. | ||
| Okay, let me speak for a minute on the cuts, the big ugly betrayal. | ||
| Amy has insisted we use the word betrayal, and she's right. | ||
| It's a great word. | ||
| Last night, Republicans dropped the much-anticipated Finance Committee portion of the big ugly betrayal. | ||
| Who would have thought that the bill could get worse in the Senate when everyone thought it would get better, at least a little closer to what the American people want? | ||
| But it got worse. | ||
| It got more extreme. | ||
| It did more damage to the American people, even than the House bill. | ||
| The Medicaid cuts the Senate Republicans planned are even deeper and more devastating than the cuts made in the House. | ||
| They made the biggest cut in Medicaid history even worse. | ||
| It means that our Republicans are looking to rip health care away for more than $16 million. | ||
| CBO kept raising it from 13 to 14 to 16 would lose health care. | ||
| It's pretty certain that the next bill, the next CBO report, and of course, Trump will say the CBO lies. | ||
| Anybody who doesn't agree with him, he just discounts. | ||
| And that's one of the many, many problems with this administration. | ||
| But I'm sure it will be more than $16 million. | ||
| With the ACA cuts and defunding a Planned Parenthood, their bill would be nothing short of a backdoor abortion ban. | ||
| Not only do they eliminate money for Planned Parenthood, but they don't allow people who get their health care from ACA to use any monies for reproductive activities. | ||
| They do nothing to modify the horrible strangulation of the clean energy economy. | ||
| It's a headfake. | ||
| So, you know, they moved up the deadlines somewhat for geothermal and for hydro. | ||
| But the biggest producers of clean energy far and away, wind and solar, are still virtually eliminated by this bill. | ||
| Virtually eliminated. | ||
| 800,000 jobs, lower energy costs, all gone. | ||
| In fact, it is estimated that at minimum, this bill would raise the average American's electricity bill by 10%. | ||
| So they're cutting jobs and raising your costs, American people. | ||
| The legislation is going to surrender our clean energy leadership to China. | ||
| That's what it's going to do. | ||
| China in 10 years will just dominate clean energy if this bill passes and have the American consumer, you can be sure China will get Chinese consumers will get a lot lower prices than Americans. | ||
| They'll have us by the neck. | ||
| Why are Senate Republicans shipping the jobs overseas? | ||
| Why are they doing this? | ||
| Why are they cutting SNAP? | ||
| Tax cuts for billionaires. | ||
| Ron is going to talk about that at great length, or at greater length. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Greater length. | |
| Greater length. | ||
| But Republicans, their fundamental belief is help those at the tippy top. | ||
| Trickle-down economics was discredited years ago. | ||
| But this greedy, powerful, influential group of billionaires has the Republican Party's ear, and they just listen to them. | ||
| They bow down in obeisance to them. | ||
| And that's why they come up with such a very unpopular bill. | ||
| Amy at our caucus lunch today showed how the American people so much dislike this bill. | ||
| Those who know about it and more and more know about it, and it's our job to get them to know about it. | ||
| So, folks, we're going to fight this bill in every way that we can. | ||
| And with that, Senator Klobuchar went through a very harrowing experience this weekend. | ||
| We talked regularly about it, and I'd like to call on her now. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks, Chuck. | |
| Thank you, everyone. | ||
| And thanks, Chuck, and thank you, Ron and Alex, for that incredible talk. | ||
| If you didn't see it, you should see it. | ||
| And to have Angela here, Roman, know how proud, Roman, you must be of your dad, along with your brothers. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| So we went through a devastating weekend in Minnesota. | ||
| You all know that, Senator Smith, myself, and really our entire state. | ||
| And we witnessed horrific murders of a good friend of mine, Melissa Hortman, her husband Mark, and we pray for this speedy recovery for Senator Hoffman and his wife, Yvette. | ||
| They were one was shot eight times, one shot nine times. | ||
| I'm not going to go through what law enforcement did here, but it was phenomenal. | ||
| They were called, they were called to the scene of the Hoffman shootings, and then they communicated with other law enforcement at three in the morning, got them to other locations. | ||
| We've now learned he went to two places before he shot the Hortmans, two additional places. | ||
| And one wasn't home. | ||
| The other, he would have shot the legislator, but the cops were there. | ||
| He ends up at the Hortmans. | ||
| They arrive just as he's shooting them and murdering them. | ||
| And then they are able to locate information that stopped the spree and eventually caught him. | ||
| I would just tell you about Melissa because people would just love her if they knew her. | ||
| I got to know her as a mom with a child. | ||
| She had young kids, both going door to door. | ||
| She was a phenomenal speaker. | ||
| She got there after being a Girl Scout leader, after teaching Sunday school. | ||
| She trained dogs for veterans, and she had one dog that was just too friendly to be focused on one veteran because he loved everyone named Gilbert. | ||
| She kept that dog herself, and the murderer shot that dog. | ||
| And her two kids, Colin and Sophie, had to make the decision to put the dog down this weekend. | ||
| I just end with what Colin and Sophie said about their mom and dad last night when they issued their first statement. | ||
| And in part, they said, they were the bright lights at the center of our lives. | ||
| And they said, the best way to honor our parents' memory is to do something, whether big or small, to make our community just a little bit better for someone else. | ||
| That's what we try to do every day around this place. | ||
| That's what Alex tried to do when he walked in that room, what he did with his speech, what we do in ways that are big and small every day. | ||
| And I hope this will bring people together so we do something more about security, so we bring down the rhetoric, do something about what's going on online. | ||
| And it was a horrific weekend, but we have jobs to do, and we all know that. | ||
| And one of them is to engage in civil debate, not the horror show that we saw this weekend, but to actually debate consequential issues for the people of this country. | ||
| And one of them is this bill. | ||
| So trying to work together better doesn't mean you call things out when they're bad. | ||
| And this bill is bad. | ||
| It's a big, beautiful betrayal of the American people. | ||
| It gives a whole bunch of tax cuts to the wealthiest among us on the backs of everyone else. | ||
| To give you some examples, it lowers the income of the average full-time worker making minimum wage by over $700 while giving nearly a $400,000 tax break to people making over $4 million a year. | ||
| It increases mortgages for regular people by $1,000 per year because of all the debt it piles on, while spending $400 billion to lower the tax rate for people making over $600,000 a year. | ||
| It raises interest rates on loans for small businesses by $800 per year while giving big corporations more than $1 trillion. | ||
| You all know you've heard the numbers, kick 16 million people off of Medicaid, and this is all based on the House bill, because we just got the numbers today on the Senate side, which Ron will explain, raises grocery costs for millions, raises costs from energy to education. | ||
| This is not what the Republicans or Donald Trump promised the American people when they went to the voting booth. | ||
| This is the opposite. | ||
| So it is no surprise that in the Washington Post poll that came out today, it showed that almost twice as many Americans oppose this bill as supported. | ||
| 42% oppose, 23% support. | ||
| Poll after poll shows 60-some percent thinks it does so much for the wealthy, and only like 30% say it helps the middle class at all in their right. | ||
| So instead of rubber stamping this bill, at least four Republican senators should stand up, call it out for what it is, and they should start over. | ||
| Thank you, Chuck. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Senator White. | ||
| Thank you, Leader. | ||
| And let me first just say I so admire my colleague from the West for his dignity and his caring. | ||
| I've never heard him, even before what happened in Los Angeles, raise his voice in a typical situation. | ||
| This is the person we admire so much. | ||
| It's so good to be here with his family. | ||
| So much of our country is wrestling with chaos right now. | ||
| And I just wanted to take a minute because here in the Senate, Republicans are working on a big economic piece of legislation that's going to bring loads more chaos into the homes of millions of Americans who are so vulnerable, who wrestle every day with the food bill against the rent bill and the rent bill against the gas bill. | ||
| And now they're going to be pushed up against it every week, trying to figure out how they're going to make ends meet. | ||
| And this bill that my colleagues are talking about is a textbook case of class warfare. | ||
| It is, in effect, caviar over kids and Mar-a-Lago over the middle class. | ||
| Now, some of the Republicans in the Senate said, well, we're going to have a milder and a more gentle bill than the House of Representatives had. | ||
| Well, I've had a night now to study the Senate Republican bill, but what I can tell you is it is going to cut Medicaid, which is already the biggest health care cut in American history. | ||
| It is going to cut Medicaid even more than the bill in the House of Representatives. | ||
| And these deeper cuts in Medicaid are going to hit rural America like a wrecking ball and other essential health care providers, plus our states that are on a funding cliff, being put in a position where they too are going to be unable to help the vulnerable. | ||
| Senator Schumer and I have led the effort to try to hold down energy bills for those who are vulnerable in America. | ||
| And in particular, we want to keep these tax incentives because these tax incentives ensure that we'll have good paying jobs and we'll be in a position to prevent price hikes in energy. | ||
| But we are met with opposition there. | ||
| I can tell you this Senate bill, as it's written now, is a stake in the heart of the solar manufacturing industry. | ||
| And the reason this is so important is because of growth, we need more energy. | ||
| And even people who run gas companies are saying we need the electrons from renewable energy. | ||
| So we are going to continue, and my colleague from Minnesota touched on it very well, to advance the cause peacefully, fairly, to try to listen to all sides, but give everybody in America the chance to get ahead, not just the people at the top. | ||
| That's not an agenda that we're all about. | ||
| We're all about giving everybody a fair shot. | ||
| So in the spirit and the dignity of the Padilla family today, I want you to know we're going to pursue this legislation in a thoughtful way to try to make sure that everybody can be heard and to do our best to write a fairer bill, a better bill, a bill that's in line with the spirit of what our country is all about. | ||
| Thank you, Leader. | ||
| Thank you, Ron. | ||
| We'll take questions for any of us. | ||
| Whoa, go ahead, Sahil. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Senator Kaine's resolution to require congressional approval for any U.S. involvement in the Israel-Iran conflict. | |
| I believe Congress and the Senate, Senate Democrats, if necessary, will not hesitate to exercise our authority. | ||
| Yes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What do you make of the Republicans holding this hearing on President Biden's conference of the buildings tomorrow and talking about the 25th century? | |
| This is the kind of coarseness that America doesn't like. | ||
| And they're just unrelenting in diversionary actions. | ||
| This has nothing to do with cutting Medicaid costs, cutting Medicaid help, helping clean energy, keeping hungry kids fed. | ||
| It's one of their many circus-like diversions that is a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing. | ||
| Who wrote that? | ||
| Who wrote that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Shakespeare. | |
| No. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sound and fury is from Shakespeare. | |
| That's Shakespeare. | ||
| I think it's William Faulkner. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Shakespeare wrote. | |
| He copied Shakespeare. | ||
| So you get the question. | ||
| Because I was thinking Faulkner. | ||
| It's a trivia question. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Faulkner is one of the great writers of all time. | |
| One of the greatest. | ||
| Yoka Nyoka Pataka. | ||
| I can never say the county. | ||
| He has a fictional county, Yoka Pataka. | ||
| Oh, she gets two. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Questions about security for members of the Congress, you spoke a little bit earlier to the reporter, but can you talk about the resources you think are needed? | |
| Yes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And how soon they can. | |
| Okay, first, we need significantly more resources. | ||
| Obviously, in a Senate that's controlled by Republicans, we need their support. | ||
| We did get some very hopeful signs in the meeting and in discussions afterward that we would get that support. | ||
| A good number of Republicans in the room, some with real authority on the Appropriations Committee, said we needed it. | ||
| And in terms of timing, ASAP. | ||
| People are getting threats all the time. | ||
| And the number of threats that I didn't even know, I know most of them, but some were revealed in that room that I hadn't known, they didn't tell anybody about them. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Go ahead, Alex. | |
| Alex, Alex. | ||
|
unidentified
|
On that note, I think it's important to add, I took the baton earlier this year from Senator Klobuchar as the top Democrat on the Rules and Administration Committee. | |
| So we work directly and closely with the Sergeant-at-Arms, with the Capitol Police. | ||
| God bless them for what they're able to do with their existing budgets and with their existing resources, whatever is necessary to address member safety in the short term, not alone, but leveraging a lot of partnerships with our state law enforcement agencies and our local sheriff's departments and police departments throughout the country. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So in the short term, I just want to speak up for them and for member safety. | |
| But, yes, for the long term, there needs to be a significant increase in the resources they have to work with. | ||
| And just to add this for my time period before. | ||
| We have the former head of the Rules Committee and now the right member of the Rules Committee. | ||
| With Alex, though, ably taking over. | ||
| As you know, after January 6th, we made a whole bunch of changes. | ||
| We got a new police chief. | ||
| Now we're getting another one. | ||
| New sergeant-in-arms. | ||
| And we've really upped, I believe, our security around here. | ||
| But the next step is the capital, because as Chuck mentioned, is at home. | ||
| As Chuck mentioned, we went from 1,700 threats in 2016 to over 9,000 threats against members of Congress last year. | ||
| And we also have seen more threats against judges and the like. | ||
| So the funding is a major piece of it. | ||
| But other things I'd mention is doing something like we did with judges for members' addresses. | ||
| This murderer, he went to the addresses that he knew. | ||
| He had some names without addresses. | ||
| He didn't go there. | ||
| He went to the addresses he knew. | ||
| And Senator Cruz and I have long advocated for some changes. | ||
| I believe we have growing support for that. | ||
| Also, of course, bringing the temperature down, people looking in the mirror themselves when they're saying stuff that has instigated this kind of thing. | ||
| So I just want to thank. | ||
|
unidentified
|
In that vein, taking the temperature down, Senator Lee took down his tweets, correct, related to the shooting. | |
| He said he had a conversation with you about this. | ||
| Is there any insight you can provide? | ||
| And do you feel better about the direction this is headed after that conversation? | ||
| And Senator Schumer is going to have me talk to Senator Lee about things in the future. | ||
| Senator Lee, I told him what I've said publicly that this isn't one bit funny for my state. | ||
| They spent the weekend, many of them, locked in their homes in certain areas, depending on where they thought that the murderer went. | ||
| For many, Melissa Hortman and her husband were beloved. | ||
| Republicans in our state have come out very strong against this violence. | ||
| And in fact, Congressman Emmer and I led a bipartisan statement of every single member of our delegation decrying this violence, calling it politically motivated, and saying there's no place for this in our politics. | ||
| So Senator Lee and I had a good discussion and I'm very glad he took it down. | ||
| And I also thank my colleague Senator Smith for also speaking out on this. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Did he seem remorseful or contrived? | |
| Okay, I'm not going to go into our discussion or I wouldn't be able to get things done, but I will just say he took it down. | ||
| And let me just say one final thing in augmentation of what Amy said. | ||
| The increase in violence, threats of violence against members, didn't happen by accident. | ||
| It happened because of the coarseness of the debate, but beyond that, the kind of rhetoric that we hear some in the hard right use, which at least some people think gives them a permission structure to do very evil things. | ||
|
unidentified
|
On Wednesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee meets to investigate former President Biden's fitness to serve in office near the end of his term. | |
| Watch that hearing live starting at 10.15 a.m. Eastern on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, or online at cspan.org. | ||
| Democracy is always an unfinished creation. | ||
| Democracy is worth dying for. | ||
| Democracy belongs to us all. | ||
| We are here in the sanctuary of democracy. | ||
| Great responsibilities fall once again to the great democracies. | ||
| American democracy is bigger than any one person. | ||
| Freedom and democracy must be constantly guarded and protected. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We are still at our core a democracy. | |
| This is also a massive victory for democracy and for freedom. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Now the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals hears a case on the legality of President Trump's deployment of National Guard troops during immigration-related protests in Los Angeles. | |
| This comes after a ruling against President Trump's deployment by a lower court was paused until this appeals court makes its ruling. | ||
| The Ninth Circuit handles cases in the western United States and is based in San Francisco. | ||
| The oral argument runs an hour and five minutes. | ||
| The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is now in session. |