美眾議院民主黨高層舉行新聞發布會

Good morning, Republicans spent the last week lying about their vote to throw 17 million Americans off of health insurance. They're so terrified of voter backlash that they're charting new frontiers in dishonesty and political chutzpah. Rob Bresnahan says the Big Ugly Law will be the largest deficit reduction in 30 years, when it actually explodes the deficit by $4 trillion. Gabe Evans, on the other hand, has twisted himself into knots, claiming that there are no Medicaid cuts because technically health care spending will continue to rise. He's hoping that the one in three voters in Colorado who he represents won't notice losing their health care. Derek Van Orden wants his voters to believe that somehow he managed to secure more money for BadgerCare even though he voted for a trillion dollars in cuts to Medicaid, prompting the governor of Wisconsin to call him out for lying. Here's the truth. Republicans own the health care crisis that they've created. People will get sick, hospitals will close, like we've seen in places like Curtis, Nebraska, and nursing homes will shut down. And they're doing all of this so they can give billionaires tax breaks and make private jets fully tax-deductible. They're the same rich and well-connected elites that they're protecting by keeping the Epstein files under lock and key after campaigning to release them. It's shameful, and House Democrats will make sure that they are held accountable. Now I'll turn it over to Vice Chair Ted Lieu. Thank you, Chairman Aguilar. Donald Trump, when he campaigned, promised on day one he would end inflation and lower costs. Donald Trump lied to the American people because we now know that inflation has continued to increase under his policies and that of Republicans. The most recent inflation report shows that inflation increased to 2.7 percent above expectations and core CPI increased to 2.9 percent. We call on Trump and Republicans to focus on lowering costs instead of things like the big ugly bill that are taking millions of people off health care. I've also noticed that there's been an uptick in activity around the Epstein files recently. I just want to remind the American people that in February of this year, Attorney General Pam Bondi acknowledged the existence of Jeffrey Epstein's client list. In fact, she said that Jeffrey Epstein's client list is, quote, sitting on my desk right now. Where is that client list? What is Attorney General Pam Bondi hiding? She needs to release Epstein files as soon as possible. I talked about Epstein files under the Biden administration. I'm talking about it under the Trump administration. This is a case of the powerful protecting the powerful. We need to have those files released. I also note that the Epstein files that have already been released show that Trump is all over the files. He's in multiple pictures with Jeffrey Epstein. There's multiple videos of Trump with Jeffrey Epstein. There are plane logs of Trump on Epstein's plane. There are statements by Trump about Epstein. There are court pleadings of alleged victims of Epstein naming Trump. So we need to have these Epstein files released. I also want to talk a little bit about Ukraine. The only way we get Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table is to defeat Russian troops on the battlefield. I support President Trump's decision to send Patriot missiles to Ukraine. I support President Trump's decision to say that he's going to backfill Europe's military equipment when Europe sends military equipment to Ukraine. And that is how we're going to get Putin to the negotiating table by letting Putin know that he cannot win this war. And with that, I yield back. Thank you, Vice Chair Liu. Questions? Mariana? You know, when Stephen Miller, and I appreciate the question, when Stephen Miller and Tom Homan are running your immigration policy, it's going to be pretty difficult to find common ground. I appreciate our members' willingness to engage with their Republican colleagues. And I appreciate anyone who takes that spirit of bipartisanship and wanting to solve an issue that we have let lapse for 30 years without a solution, leaving millions of people in limbo. And I've been a part of efforts both in the Democratic Caucus as well as in the Congress in order to support pathways for DREAMers particularly. But it's a little hard to believe our House Republican colleagues who wrote a lot of letters saying that they didn't want the Latino population impacted by Medicaid cuts. And then they vote for that same bill that attacks Medicaid and will cut Medicaid for millions of Latinos across the country. So it's a little difficult. And right now we want to see the details of the bill. I understand that it has narrowed, though. And that's unfortunate when a vast majority of Americans, including recent polling that came out in the last week, show that Americans, including Republicans, believe in broadening path to citizenship, a path to citizenship for people who play by the rules, who pass a background check, who are working in this country. That's what we need to do. So we don't need to come backwards on pathways to citizenship. We need to expand those. And so that would be my concern. And Democratic caucus efforts will include pathways to citizenship for people who are playing by the rules, living here, paying taxes, and trying to provide the American dream and want to be part of the fabric of this country. Yeah, I think it's a fair question. And this is an honest conversation that we need to have back home. I had a town hall last night virtually where we talked about this. I met with constituents last week where we talked about this as well. We just need to be clear-eyed and tell our constituents what the impacts will be. But we also are joined by validators. We're joined by local hospitals and the national hospital associations and nursing homes and those folks who are going to be impacted by this. So this isn't just us as members of Congress saying, danger is coming. There's a lot of folks standing with us saying, yes, danger is coming. This is how they're going to do it. This is how they're going to unwind Medicaid for 17 million people, impacting 17 million people and their health insurance coverage. So we need to be honest and clear about what the bill does. But we're also going to be very mindful of outside pressures. There will be private health insurance that will have to set rates. And those rate structures will likely have to increase. And so this is something that's going to affect folks not just on Medicaid but on private health insurance. And that could be before the implementation, the full implementation of the bill, which you mentioned, starting in October on the Medicaid side, October of next year and continuing into 27. So Republicans might think that they're being cute by half. We have to be clear-eyed and honest and have community validators there to say, no, they're lying to you. The cuts are coming. And this is what's happening in our communities. Republicans voted for a law that's going to implement these automatic cuts. And the only way to possibly stop that is if a different person gets elected who can say, no, no, no, we're not going to let this law get implemented with these automatic cuts. So that is actually a pretty compelling message because the person that voted for these cuts is not going to be a person that's going to stop the cuts. You're going to need a new person in there that then could, with a different makeup on Congress, stop the cuts from actually happening. How could they have the same issues and this bill and Medicaid cuts? But they're saying that these would be the issues. Are they wrong? What I'm more concerned about when you're talking about elections coming up, I'm concerned about, I'm looking at Virginia and New Jersey more than I'm looking at the city of New York, New York City. So that's what I'm interested in looking at. Medicaid will be on the ballot in those gubernatorial elections. And that's what we'll be looking at. But broadly, what Assemblymember Mamdani has talked about are the rising costs that people face. I think there's a lesson to be learned there. He's talked about rising grocery costs that people face, bus fares, those types of things. He's not campaigning on impeaching Donald Trump. He's campaigning on reducing costs that people face. And I think there's a lesson for us there too. And people wouldn't commit to that. So our Democrats, their caucus, their team, their people, their economy is not impacted and only protects that. You know, that's what he's always been about. Yeah. I mean, that's our underlying message is it shouldn't matter whether you live in a blue state or a red state. If you experience a natural disaster and you need help from the federal government, we should be there to help. That's it. That's the bottom line. Not red states get faster attention and blue states don't. Or we don't send help to one and the other. If this speaker wants to be the first speaker in American history to politicize disaster recovery and assistance and to penalize states from another political party of his own, then that might be the legacy he wants to leave in addition to the legacy of kicking people off of health care. That would be unfortunate. But we'll see what happens. But we are committed, and I'll defer to the vice chair as a member of the California delegation as well. We are committed to hold Republicans accountable to this. This is a very simple solution. This isn't about Texas or California or North Carolina or New Mexico. The funds that Congress puts dollars into need to be replenished. There's a series of them, from SBA to FEMA. All of these funds are going to be strapped for cash because of the claims that will be filed. We just need to replenish those funds irrespective of the claims and where they're coming from. That's it. That's the solution. Replenish the disaster relief fund and the associated counts that respond to disasters. It doesn't matter where people apply. If they meet the qualifications and come from a state that has experienced a disaster, they will apply. So let's keep the states out of it and just replenish the funds. That's our message to our Republican colleagues. I hope that cooler heads prevail and I hope that people who pride themselves on supporting this place as an institution meet that moment. I'm concerned that Donald Trump leading this and leading them poses a risk to that. But I hold out hope that they will push back and work with us in a bipartisan way. Vice Chair Liu. There are more Republicans living in Southern California than a number of red states. So why would Trump and Republicans want to punish Republicans who happen to live in Southern California? It makes no sense. It's un-American. It's unpatriotic to do disaster relief based on party registration or ideology. I also note that Trump and Republicans are making drastic cuts to organizations like the National Weather Service that in a time like this when you're seeing more and more extreme weather events, we actually need more people at the National Weather Service, not less. And I ask Trump Republicans to reverse those devastating cuts. It's important for those seats to be filled because the people who live in those communities deserve representation. And we shouldn't play politics about those special elections and the deadlines like the governor of Texas has done in leaving that seat open vacant while the governor of Arizona fulfills the requirement to call that election. It's important for these constituents. This isn't about Democrats and Republicans. We'd say the same thing if it came to filling a Republican vacancy. People deserve to be heard. They deserve to have a representative in Congress who is exercising their votes who is exercising a vote on their behalf. We obviously believe having full strength as we fight against House Republicans and Donald Trump on the reconciliation bill and the appropriations bills around the corner and the government funding deadlines that are looming. We think it's important that we are at full strength. And so we will be comfortable and we will feel better when we have full representation within the Democratic Caucus. Thank you.