Weekly House Democrats Press Conference 11.15.22 | People Over Politics

Morning, it's great to see everyone to be here with our caucus vice chair, Pete Aguilar. At the caucus meeting earlier today, we centered it around introducing more than 30 new members who are on their way into the 118th Congress. It was buoyant, it was triumphant, it was enthusiastic. The House is about renewal, all 435 members up for re-election or election every two years. And we're excited by the talent, the energy, the ability that will be joining the House Democratic Caucus in the next Congress. We're also excited that so many of our frontline members who are in incredibly tough races, hundreds of millions of dollars spent to try to stop them from coming back to Congress. And almost every single one of our frontline members are returning to continue to do the business of the American people. House Democrats get stuff done. We deliver lower costs, better paying jobs, safer communities. We put people over politics and the American people have recognized that under the most challenging midterm conditions possible, but the American people recognize that. And the other side of the aisle is in complete disarray. Vice Chair, Pete Aguilar. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman mentioned the caucus meeting was fun, it was lively. Hearing the biographies and the resumes of our new colleagues really just reinvigorates the energy of the caucus. We'll have an opportunity to pay our respects to those who are retiring and moving on, but the energy was fantastic. And we congratulated all of our colleagues on their hard fought success while we continue to count votes. But it was very clear that voters across this country rejected abortion extremism. They rejected extremism when it comes to democracy, rejected individuals who want to cut Social Security and Medicare, and they rejected MAGA candidates who continue to put our country and our democracy at risk. The American people clearly want us to work together. They want us to solve problems. And that's the moment that we're in now. We have a chance to make continued progress if Republicans are willing to work together or they can choose a path of partisan investigations that will send a clear message to the American public that they don't deserve to ever hold a majority. We're gonna continue to work hard, as the chairman mentioned, to lower the costs of everyday Americans, to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. Those are the priorities of the House Democratic Caucus and will continue to be the priorities of the caucus moving forward. Thank you so much. Thank you, Pete. Questions? Well, we're focused right now on welcoming our new members, an extraordinary group of individuals and Americans, as Pete has said, and also making sure that we count every single vote in the races that are still out there because there still is a path toward 218. Whatever happens, House Democrats have vastly overperformed expectations, and we will have momentum going into the 118th Congress, but we are at a point in time where the focus should continue to be on making sure that every single vote is counted. I think it's time to make sure that we finish the business of the American people over the next few weeks before the end of the 117th Congress and also to make sure that we keep the focus on counting every single vote in the races that are out there, candidates who are on the battlefield, a few of our incumbents in races that haven't been called, and we're gonna continue to support their efforts. Second row? Yeah, well, I wanna yield to Pete on that, particularly given his expertise and focus as a member of the Appropriations Committee, but it is certainly the case that we have to make sure we arrive at a year-end spending agreement to continue to fund the priorities of the American people and to make sure we have a fully functional government. I believe that Speaker Pelosi and Leader Hoyer, Leader Schumer, President Biden have talked about some of the issues that they'd like to see resolved. We have to stand up for the people of Florida and Puerto Rico who've been devastated by natural disasters, make sure that there's a sufficient amount of COVID funding that is available to be able to continue to beat back the pandemic. President Biden has done an extraordinary job of working through this once-in-a-century public health crisis, and we wanna make sure that that job can be completed. We also have to stand with the free world and the efforts of the Ukrainian people to push back against Russia and Putin and aggression and totalitarianism. And I expect that additional funding for Ukraine will be part of any year-end agreement. Yeah, I think all of that's right. I think the chairman hit the points that are important, funding government and making sure that Rosa DeLauro and our colleagues in the Appropriations Committee have the ability to continue to negotiate. I think those conversations continue. At this point, the emergency supplemental that'll be needed for Florida and Puerto Rico, obviously the aid to Ukraine. We hear a lot of talk on the other side of the aisle now about conditions that they might want in the future are related to that. Our support for Ukraine is unconditional, and we wanna make sure that we honor that. And clearly, and Leader Hoyer mentioned it this morning, as well, a fix for DACA. The courts have put DACA at risk moving forward, and we wanna make sure that we offer the ability for these individuals who have had DACA status and are American in every way except a piece of paper to continue and to have hopefully a legislative solution to a path to citizenship. The Democratic Caucus has led on this issue from the original DREAM Act to the USA Act, the discharge petition when Republicans were in control to the DREAM and PROMISE Act that we have passed to the U.S. Citizenship Act that has been introduced by Linda Sanchez. I mean, we have time and time again stood on the right side. We're waiting for Republicans in the Senate to do the same. We need 10 votes, and I'm sure that Senator Padilla, Senator Menendez, Senators Cortez Masto and Ben Ray Lujan, as well as Chairman Dick Durbin are working on these issues as well. But we hope that they can resolve them, and we stand to be willing partners in that discussion moving forward. Donald Trump has clearly demonstrably snubbed the January 6th committee. The deadline came. Y'all didn't have a clear path or next steps ready to announce. What do you do now? Well, I think it's been pretty clear from the individuals that he associates as well that he was not interested in cooperating with our subpoena. We have proven that there are consequences to individuals who don't comply. And I think we'll eventually continue to have the next word on these issues. And we stand ready to work and continue to work through the final report that will be out between now and the end of the year. And really our effort has been so nonpartisan. And I think that's the legacy of the committee is that we're gonna continue to move forward, engage in this process, put together a good work product, do it together. So we understand that the former occupant of the White House clearly made some decisions to snub us yesterday. We're confident in our work, and that history will judge the work that we've done to hold him and individuals around him accountable. Back. I think the leadership of both the House and the Senate has indicated that it's something that we need to take a look at. And here's why. Extreme MAGA Republicans led by the so-called leadership on the other side of the aisle have said that they're gonna hold the economy hostage, potentially blow the whole thing up. Why? Because they want to detonate Social Security and Medicare for tens of millions of Americans. Now it's that type of extremism that was just rejected by the American people all across the country. But they don't get it. They'll never learn. And so I think it's gonna be important for us, responsible members of Congress, led by Democrats in the House and the Senate, to address this existential threat to the economy, to everyday Americans, certainly to Social Security and Medicare. The focus today was on discussing a few of the items that we expect to be taken up over the next several weeks that are of importance to the American people. But as Pete has indicated, as I've indicated, it was just really a warm and triumphant space. Seeing so many of our frontline members back in the Congress preparing to continue to serve after surviving incredibly well in tough elections, notwithstanding the fact that the other side of the aisle had been measuring the drapes for a so-called red tsunami for the last two years. But they're back. And to see so many dynamic colleagues ready to do the work. That's the difference. Democrats get things done. We actually want to make life better for everyday Americans. And we've done a pretty good job of doing it. The American Rescue Plan. Save the economy. Shots in arms. Money in pockets. Kids back in school. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Millions of good-paying jobs created. Also to fix our crumbling bridges, roads, tunnels, airports, our sewer and water system, our mass transit system, high-speed Internet access in every single community. Gun safety legislation for the first time in 30 years that will save lives. The Chips and Science Act. To bring domestic manufacturing jobs back home to the United States of America, as opposed to our jobs going in the other direction, which has been happening for 30 years. And of course, the Inflation Reduction Act. To strike a blow against the climate crisis. Set our planet on a sustainable trajectory forward. Lower energy costs. Strengthen the Affordable Care Act. Lower healthcare costs and drive down the high price of life-saving prescription drugs. Democrats deliver for everyday Americans. We get stuff done. We put people over politics. And the other side of the aisle is extreme. They're out of control. They're off the hook. They don't believe in democracy. That was rejected. They don't believe in reproductive freedom all across the country. That was rejected. They want to detonate Social Security in five years. That was rejected. And so battles were won that are extraordinary. But that doesn't mean that we're off the battlefield. We have to continue to fight for these priorities, for lower costs, for better paying jobs, for safer communities, and to defend freedom, defend Social Security, defend democracy. And we're excited that we're going to have the opportunity to continue to do that. What do you make of the fact that those split seats in New York really could have been majority makers for Democrats? And why did that happen? Yeah, we'll see what the final margin is. As I indicated, we still have a pathway to 218. But I do think some of the conversations that are happening in New York right now are going to be important. I've suggested that this should be an after action analysis with a focus on the state Democratic Party, focus on some of the statewide campaigns, and try to figure out what happened in Long Island, what happened in the Hudson Valley. More importantly, how do we fix it? Assess the situation, but don't agonize. Organize and prepare for what comes next. Joe Biden is a big and clear winner. Everyone said that President Biden's agenda is too ambitious. He wasn't elected to do all of these things. The American people will reject it. Everything that we've done is incredibly popular. And our frontliners ran on that policy agenda, and so did our candidates. Why shouldn't Joe Biden? He said he's going to make a decision over the next few months. I'm hopeful that President Biden will seek re-election, and I look forward to strongly supporting him. This is definitely a Pete Aguilar question right here. I'm hoping that they will need your legislation next term if they are in the majority. Have you had Republicans reach out to you in recent days to try and forge relationships? Are you open to forging those relationships? And should the caucus be open to working across the aisle? I think Speaker Pelosi has always made clear in the leadership within the House, every single member of the House Democratic Caucus, some of our accomplishments that have been extraordinary during the current 117th Congress have been bipartisan in nature. We've consistently indicated a willingness to work with Republicans to get big things done. In fact, that was the case going back to the prior presidency. We worked with the administration to get the First Step Act done under a Republican House, Senate, and a Republican presidency to strike a blow for criminal justice reform in a way that brought both sides of the aisle together. We worked together with Republicans to pass the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement on President Trump's signature political issue. But we worked with him because we understood it was the right thing to do for America, for organized labor, for working class and middle class folks. And so I think our track record speaks for itself. We are always guided by doing the right thing for the American people. I think that's the metric of this caucus is does the policy help our communities and does it help our country? As the chairman mentioned, his own leadership on the First Step Act, the work that we have done in prior administrations I think should speak for itself. I personally led some efforts to solve DACA when Republicans were in control, joined with Republicans who supported the discharge petition to force bills to the floor so we can have resolution on this. I think 19 Republicans joined a discharge petition against their own leadership to do it. So we've got relationships and we can have conversations with individuals across the aisle when the policy is right and when the policy matters. But if Republicans are gonna engage in the continued extremism that we've seen over the past few years, then I don't know if there's an appetite. The policy is gonna have to dictate that, but they're gonna have to work to silence their extreme voices within their own caucus when it comes to achieving results for the American people. Because when it comes to the infrastructure bill, when it comes to these big pieces of legislation, those have always been bipartisan. And we hope that there are bills in the future that meet that threshold. But I don't know if this leadership on the other side of the aisle can string together enough willing participants to do that. But we're gonna hold out hope because the American people want us to work together. I think that was a resounding message from last week. And we're always gonna hold out hope that this new Congress can operate in that same way. Go back to this side, yeah. Will there be a talk on leadership talking about security for members and if there's discussion of possible affirmative steps to increase security? Well, the two relevant committees in that regard are the House Appropriations Committee and House Administration Committee, so I'll yield to Pete. But there have been ongoing conversations amongst the members as well as amongst the leadership about ways to continue to strengthen the infrastructure around the safety and security for members of Congress in an environment of increasing political violence and dangerous rhetoric coming from extreme forces throughout America, including the former president of the United States of America. And so it's an honor and a privilege to be able to serve the people that we are elected to represent in the House and the Senate to do the best possible job in that regard. Members and their families should be safe and secure. Under the leadership of Chairwoman Rosa DeLauro, some important steps have already been taken. Additional funding has been made available to try to secure the members when they are back home in their districts. And Chairwoman Zoe Lofgren has also taken some strong steps to heighten the coordination involving the Capitol Police, the Sergeant-at-Arms, and local law enforcement back at home. And I expect that additional steps will continue to be taken as needed. Yeah, just echo what the chairman said, Chairwoman DeLauro and Chairman Tim Ryan and Chair Zoe Lofgren have really put us on a path where this is something that we feel make progress on. There's more steps to take. And obviously as a caucus, our hearts and our thoughts go out to Paul Pelosi. He's someone who is a figure in our meetings, in our dinners. He is a frequent guest and we spend a lot of time with members of the leadership and their families. And so we're thinking about him in these times as well. As the chairman mentioned, this hot rhetoric is troublesome and worrisome. And I can tell you, one of the things you've heard me say before is I don't talk about member security and that's gonna hold true. But I will tell you, this continues to be a topic among members. Members are concerned, new members are concerned and we need to do everything we can to help that. We need to talk about the local coordination efforts that are available to them. We need to support the $10,000 that was in the budgets for each of us to look through security. We need to hope that Republicans join us in ensuring that something like that continues in future Congresses and that that should be a bipartisan issue. So those are our hopes and we're gonna continue to work within the committees of jurisdiction to ensure that that gets done. But this is something that members continue to talk about often. The package for development amortization and then we're gonna talk about child tax credit. Do you see that as a possible way to go ahead with that? Well, from my understanding that there are discussions, those discussions are gonna presumably be led by Chairman Richie Neal. I have great faith and confidence in him to try to negotiate something that makes sense for the American people, for American families, but also for the economy, for commerce and for businesses that are committed to creating good paying American jobs. Anything else on this side? I think we need an after action assessment of what went right, what went wrong and what can be done better. That should focus on the institution and not any one particular individual at this point in time. On the outreach of any Republican and assuming Republican majority is gonna be a narrow one, would you guys try to work with breakaway Republicans to elect them to represent the speakers? I think that's all premature until we have some definitive resolution on who gets to 218. But think about this for a moment. And I know for a fact that outreach has taken place to Representative Cuellar. The nerve of these individuals and how desperate are they? That they literally just spent millions of dollars mischaracterizing Henry Cuellar's leadership and talked about the emergence of a red wave in the Rio Grande Valley, then get wiped out by Cuellar and Vincente Gonzalez and wanna run to them saying, we need your help because we're struggling, because the American people rejected our extremism, because they saw us for who we are and are not confident despite all of the gerrymandering that took place across the country, including in Florida, which may actually be decisive, but we'll see what happens at the end of the day. This wasn't an effort that they've earned at all. And now we see how desperate they are reaching out to members like Henry Cuellar, literally days after he just defeated millions of dollars spent against them. Well, I think that's an issue that I presume will be taken up by the Financial Services Committee under the great leadership of Maxine Waters, as well as the Agriculture Committee under the leadership of David Scott, both of whom in different iterations could have jurisdiction over issues related to crypto and we'll see what happens. It wasn't an issue that was raised in the caucus meeting today. I think there are a whole host of issues that I think we are planning on working through. And I could imagine that the situation related to the cryptocurrency industry will be one of them moving forward. Yeah, I wanna yield to Pete on this, but think about this for a moment. This is why extreme MAGA Republicans are in such a bad spot and are not right for our country. We are working to emerge from a global once-in-a-century pandemic, working to deal with global inflation, working to make our communities safer. All issues where Democrats have acted over the last two years in an extraordinary way, but Democrats recognize that more needs to be done. And what is right at the top of the extreme MAGA Republican agenda in the House? Let's investigate President Joe Biden's family. That's what they wanna do. That is the message that they're sending to the American people. It is not a winning message, but that's what happens when you are captive to the hard right. And House Republican leadership is captive right now to the hard right. And the situation didn't get easier based on what happened in the midterm election. It got harder for them. Same time, Democrats are going to continue to focus on kitchen table, pocketbook, bread and butter issues like lower costs, better paying jobs and safer communities for the American people. I think it's very telling that the Kevin McCarthy applause line he wants in his job interview is that he's going to defund the January 6th committee and send that money over to investigations. That's who he's speaking to. He's speaking to the House Freedom Caucus because he needs to count these votes. He's not speaking to the issues that the American public want addressed. He's not speaking about the economic issues of the day. He's not speaking about how we make communities safe because he's trying to string together the number of votes to be leader. And I think it's an unfortunate state of where our politics is on that side of the aisle, but we're not going to be deterred. Our values are going to be the same. Our focus is going to be the same. How do we stabilize these issues? How do we make life better for Americans and working class individuals in our communities? That's what our focus is. All right, last two questions. I don't really want to discuss the leadership situation after your recent call. That might take a few days. And then you guys are out for Thanksgiving and your leadership elections are currently scheduled for November 30th. Is there any chance you guys might push that back a little further? Or is that date set in stone? Yeah, there's no plan to change the date of the leadership elections. And more importantly, the organization in preparation for the 118th Congress that will take place beginning on Wednesday, November 30th. All right, we got two more questions. We'll take the third row and then we'll go back to the second row, yeah. Yeah, that issue may have come up in the Senate discussions. I think that's a question perhaps best directed to Leader Schumer or Whip Durbin, but it didn't come up in any of the conversations that we had earlier today in the caucus. Well, with respect to the January 6th Committee, I'll yield to Pete on that. Chairman Thompson has done an incredible job. All of the members of the January 6th Committee have done an incredible job in lifting up the challenges that our democracy has confronted because of the events of January 6th and before when the former so-called twice impeached President of the United States perpetuated the big lie that led to a violent insurrection and did a whole host of other things to inspire the attack on the Capitol as the January 6th Committee has so forcefully and comprehensively and in a bipartisan way documented. But the interesting thing about the former president who apparently is gonna make an announcement today, which is kind of extraordinary, the so-called GOP red wave turned into a red wedding for extreme MAGA Republicans and election deniers in race after race after race all across the country. Here's the Republican response. The cult leader should run again and we're gonna double and triple down on extremism. We're gonna double and triple down on a nationwide abortion ban. We're gonna double and triple down on attacks on our democracy and we wanna eliminate Social Security and Medicare. That's extraordinary, but that is the modern day Republican Party as compared to Democrats who deliver big things for the American people on the issues that matter, including around the economy, job creation, lower costs and safer communities. There isn't anything that the former, the twice impeached president can do that would impact the January 6th, the work that we have ahead. Like I said, this has been non-partisan work, non-partisan work under the leadership of Chairman Bennie Thompson and Vice Chair Liz Cheney. We look forward to our work product standing the test of time and speaking for the day of January 6th and what led up to January 6th. And we look forward to the conclusion of that work. Our view has always been that this was a select committee that serves at a point in time only for this Congress. That has always been our focus and our goal. New information came up that necessitated more hearings that bums back the final report a little later than maybe we would have wanted, but we wanna make sure it's fulsome. We wanna make sure it's right. And nothing that goes down in Florida is gonna affect our focus on that. Thank you so much. Thank you everyone.