LIVE: Senate Democrat, GOP Leadership Hold Weekly Press Conferences (May 21) 2024-05-21 18:29

The Knicks did not do too well. Wait till next year, like we used to say for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Okay. Oops. But, how about the New York Yankees? Until last night, there were seven in a row. It's May. It's May. It is May. Seven in a row. They had the best record in baseball except for... Who? The Philadelphia Phillies. Where's... What's his name? P.K. He's a Phillies fan, I guess. Okay. Alright, thank you for coming. Senators Murphy and Cortez Masto, our great senators, have joined us. So, this week, we are again attempting to fix something our Republican colleagues have long called an emergency and a crisis. Our southern border. For years, Republicans have insisted that the only long-term solution to fixing the southern border was for Congress to pass legislation. We Democrats agree with them. That's why, this morning, I filed cloture on the motion to proceed to the Bipartisan Border Act, the very same bipartisan bill negotiated months ago by Senators Murphy, Sinema, and Lankford. It's the same bipartisan bill that was supported by the National Border Patrol Council, a very conservative group that usually leans Trump. The same bipartisan bill endorsed by the Chamber of Commerce, and even by the very conservative Wall Street Journal editorial page. The same partisan bill that Donald Trump killed, saying, So, blame it on him. Make sure you do. He said so. You're just following his wishes. I know you don't have to follow his wishes. That's okay. So, we will try to do something, again, our Republican colleagues have long claimed to have desperately wanted, securing our southern border. This Thursday, the Senate will vote on the bipartisan border bill. All those who say we need to act on the border will get a chance to show this week that they're serious about fixing the problem. They'll get a chance to show whether they're just talking points to them, or whether they want to improve the status quo. Unlike H.R. 2, and this is a huge and vital distinction, the border bill was written explicitly to win support from both parties, with input from both sides. When H.R. 2 came up in this House, in this Senate, for the first time, it got no votes at all. And there was no Democratic input, unlike our bill, which had tons of Republican and Democratic input, not only from the three negotiators, but from many others. And let's not forget, when this bill was being negotiated, Leader McConnell was also supportive of the effort. He insisted this has to happen as part of the supplemental right before we released our bill. He said, I think this is the ideal time to do it. This is a unique opportunity where divided government has given us an opportunity to get an outcome. As I said, H.R. 2 was not a serious bill. But what we're voting on this week is. It's the same bipartisan bill both sides negotiated for months this winter. Senator Murphy's here, and received bipartisan endorsements across the country. By any objective measure, it's strong, tough, and realistic. This is the same bipartisan border bill Republicans pushed for, then backed away when they got orders from President Trump, made an about-face, turned, and then voted no. If our bipartisan border bill was good enough to win support of the union that represents Border Patrol agents, why isn't it good enough for Senate Republicans? Our Senate Republicans say they know better than our agents patrolling the border. The question is, do Republicans want to improve the situation on the border or not? Maybe they're happy with the way things are. They're happy with chaos. They're happy with trafficking and smuggling. They're happy with fentanyl and the deadly flow of drugs coming through our ports. They're happy with the misery. I hope not. I sincerely hope our colleagues are ready to join us. Of course, we don't expect every Democrat or every Republican to come out in favor of this bill. It's bipartisan. By definition, it's a compromise. That's why the only way to pass this bill is with broad bipartisan support. If you go by what Republicans said over the last few months, you'd think they'd leap at an opportunity like we have right now. In the words of one of my colleagues from Texas, it makes no sense to me for us to do nothing when we might be able to do things better. And the words from a colleague from South Carolina, to those who think that if President Trump wins, we can get a better border deal, you won't. And he added, this moment will pass. Do not let it pass. I wholeheartedly agree. Let's not let the moment pass. Border legislation is just about the hardest thing Congress ever wrestles with. Bipartisan border bills are rare in the Congress. That's precisely what we have in front of us this week. I urge everyone not to let politics get in the way. And Senator Masto has to go to another event, so I'm going to call on her next. Thank you. I appreciate that. And I thank you to my colleagues. To my colleague Chris Murphy, thank you so much for all the work that you have done, along with Senator Sinema and Lankford on this bipartisan bill. And yes, I want to thank Leader Schumer for bringing us together again to talk about this important issue, which is how do we ensure we are passing legislation to address the very needs that I heard when I was down on the border. I was at the Tucson Sector. I was talking to the Border Patrol. I was talking to the Customs Agents. They are understaffed and overwhelmed. And my commitment to them was we will work here in Washington to bring you the resources that we need. This bipartisan legislation does just that. It would help us fund new technology to crack down on drug and human trafficking, and it would save lives by stopping the deadly flow of fentanyl and other dangerous drugs into our communities. It also updates our old asylum system that takes far too long to process cases. Everyone agrees our asylum system is broken. Let's fix it. And this bill would create a quarter of a million new visas to help reunite families and encourage people to go through the immigration process legally. Let me just say this. This is an issue you don't have to be a border state to realize this is affecting so many people across this country. It is important in Nevada. It's important across the country that we give our law enforcement on the border the tools that they need. That's what this is about. I sit and listen to my colleagues on the floor of the Senate, and the Republicans talk about wanting border security. They talk about wanting to pass policy to address it. This is that legislation. This bipartisan legislation fixes that. Our Republican colleagues are thinking about the people they serve back home. Are they really? No. They're not thinking about them. They're not thinking about the safety of American families. They're not thinking about the law enforcement officers at the border that I met with. They're only thinking about one person right now, and unfortunately, that's Donald Trump. Enough is enough. It is clear who the real party of law and order is, and right now, unfortunately, it is not the Republican Party. Thank you. Thank you, Leader Schumer. So why are we bringing this bill up a second time? The answer is simple. Democrats care about border security. We care about immigration reform. We are not willing to walk away from a bipartisan bill that we worked for four months to achieve that lines up with the broad priorities of the American public. Maybe it would have been easier to accept Republicans' political decision to side with Trump and move on. But Democrats believe that we have an opportunity to continue to bring this case to the American public, to try to change minds in the Republican caucus, so that we can finally come together, Republicans and Democrats, and do something about border security. Listen, this bill would be effective. It would be effective. And it lines up with where the broad middle of America is. People in this country are proud of our history of immigration. They want America to be a place where people can come to find a better life, to reunite with their family, to flee violence or persecution or torture. But they want our immigration system to be done in an orderly way. And at the end of last year, when 10,000 people were showing up every day at our southern border, that was not orderly. That put a strain on our law enforcement. It put a strain on our cities. And people in this country knew that we needed to make changes to how we bring people into this country at the southwest border. And that's exactly what we did. Our bill doesn't stop the ability of people to come to the United States. It just puts in place a more orderly system, where you will never again have 10,000 people showing up on an individual day, because it allows the president to shut down asylum claims when they overwhelm our resources. Never again will someone wait for 10 years to have their asylum claim processed, because we put in a new system with additional resources so that people's asylum claims will be taken care of in months, not in years. This bill, if it passes, would be effective in bringing order to the southwest border. And that is the reason that Republicans killed it earlier this year. Because Donald Trump said, plain and simple, I don't want you to do anything. Mitch McConnell admitted it at a press conference. Senator McConnell stood up and said, the former president of the United States told us to do nothing. The question that we believe is so important that we want to have another debate in the Senate is this. Do you care more about the security of your country, or do you care more about the political prospects of your party and your presidential candidate? I think this problem is so big. I think this solution is so important that it's worth putting that question to Republicans and to the country again. And I thank Senator Schumer for giving us the chance to have this debate this week. We're ready for your questions. Yes, Mr. Manu. Yes, look, I'm discussing that now with the Speaker of the House. And as I've always said, our relationship with Israel is ironclad and transcends any one prime minister or president. Look, we have ready-made legislation that had broad bipartisan support that Republicans supported until President Trump told them to make a U-turn. It's very important to do, and we're going to try to do everything we can to get it done. Yes. Look, the way to get a farm bill done is bipartisan, and we hope that can happen. The House bill is not yet bipartisan. It's going to be very hard to get a farm bill done unless we have bipartisan support in both the House and Senate. Look, we have a much better proposal, and Republicans ought to support it. The proposal put forward by Senator Duckworth has been thought through and carefully done. Yes. Look, I think what he did was really the wrong thing to do, and it casts some doubt on impartiality. And I'm discussing with Senator Durbin where we should go from here. Yes. I haven't seen what they put out, so I'll have to get back to you. You know, we have a lot of bills we want to get on the floor, but that's one of them in high consideration. Democrats are doing this because we believe in fixing the border, and we have the only real bipartisan bill negotiated by both sides with a real chance of passing and being put on the president's desk. Everything the Republicans do have no chance of passing. So who's more serious about fixing the border? We are. And I think the public will understand that. Thank you. This year, next to the economy, which the administration has completely mishandled, the next and most important issue in the minds of most people in this country is the border, as Senator McConnell pointed out. And in fact, you look at the polls, 80% of Americans believe the border is an issue. And more than 50% of Americans believe it is a major issue. Senate Republicans happen to agree on that, which is why we've been urging the Biden administration to take the actions that are necessary to get operational control of the border. And they can consistently fail on that regard. This is an example of just the got away. So you hear us talk about numbers like those apprehended. That number is seven and a half million or so. There have been since president Biden took office about 1.8 million gotaways. And this is just look at this. I mean, this is when he takes office to get 2021, two, three. And, you know, we're, we've got a long ways to go this year yet, but this is the way that the gotaways have increased. Now these are known gotaways, meaning that they have, they were observed. They couldn't catch them. There are also unknown gotaways. The number could be significantly higher. And what's really concerning about all this, of course, is that since president Biden's taken office, 362 people who have been apprehended, those who have been caught. Are on the terrorist watch list. That doesn't include the number on this list or the unknown gotaways. So Republicans have tried consistently repeatedly. To get the Democrats to focus on it. We twice had votes on HR two, which is a bill that passed the house of representatives. The Democrats defeated it, voted against it. They have blocked legislation like Senator Blackburn's bill. That basically would have said that law enforcement officials, state and local law enforcement officials can detain criminals, illegal criminals until they can be deported. There was a bud bill that would have made attacking a law enforcement officer, a deportable offense. The Democrats blocked that. They blocked a bill by Senator Haggard. If you can imagine this, that would make it a requirement. That to be counted in the census, you actually have to be a citizen of the country. They blocked that legislation. So Republicans have tried repeatedly to get Democrats to focus that on this, on the floor. And they have not. So where we are right now, obviously is this has become a political liability, a political vulnerability for the Democrats. I wish they were focused on this issue because they think it's a national security issue. The reason all of a sudden they're interested in doing something or at least appearing to be doing something is because they know they've got a big political vulnerability on this. This can be solved. Very simple. This president president Biden can reverse all the policies that he implemented the day he took office, which is what has led to this massive, massive problem at our Southern border. And we still encourage him to do that, but all the charades and political theater, the Democrats are trying to adopt on the Senate floor to protect incumbents that they are worried. They know we're on the wrong side of this issue. Isn't going to change the way things are. Chuck Schumer is going to bring to the floor of the Senate, a so-called immigration bill this week that he knows is doomed to fail because it failed the last time he tried the same trick. Democrats are desperately trying to deflect the blame for the damage that's been caused to our country as a result of our wide open Southern border people all across the country know that it's the Democrats fault for bringing in the drugs, the death, the destruction that comes from our Southern border. When Joe Biden took that first step into the white house as president, our Southern border was secure. He threw open the border along with the Democrats and 10 million illegal immigrants invaded our country. People on the criminal watch list, cartel criminals, drug dealers, people from all parts of the world came across our Southern border. Just a few weeks ago, a couple of those illegal immigrants who came in were arrested, trying to break in to our Marine Corps base that holds our combat command. One apparently was on the, on the terrorist watch list. So what did Biden's Homeland security director in the department say? Well, they dummied up. They wouldn't tell us anything about the identity or the intentions of those individuals. What they said is that the privacy of those illegal immigrants outweighed the right of public interest. They said minimal public interest. Well, look, Republicans continue to fight for the public interest for public safety. Democrats are fighting for and voting for wide open borders. They're the ones that stopped construction of the border wall. They're the ones that stopped telling people to leave the country, evicting people who were here, who are criminal illegal immigrants. They're the ones that stopped allowing the border patrol to enforce the laws of the land. So Chuck Schumer is going to be in here trying to throw a Hail Mary pass to save his vulnerable Democrats. The election is just a few months away. The American people will have an opportunity at that time to hold accountable Joe Biden and these open border Democrats. I think all of us remember what was going on about four years ago in 2020. We were in the throes of COVID-19 pandemic that swept all around the world. Well, folks, here we are four years later. And finally, the scientists at EcoHealth will never be allowed to get their hands on bats or our taxpayer funding ever again. For years, folks, I've been working very hard to protect Americans from funding EcoHealth's dangerous experiments at Chinese labs, including the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the same work that they are doing now right here on American soil. So, yeah, EcoHealth Alliance working right here in the U.S. doing the same thing they were doing at Chinese labs. And after years and years and years of denials by Dr. Fauci himself and his friends, HHS has finally now admitted that, yes, folks, they were funding gain of function research at Wuhan Institute of Virology. Straight from HHS, they are finally admitting what they denied for years. So before getting any other batty ideas, what we need to do as Congress is put in place guardrails so that what happened at the Wuhan Institute of Virology never happens again. Whether it's overseas in China or right here on American soil. So I'm working to ensure that Congress stops funding for all risky research of pandemic potential. So we need to make sure that Americans' taxpayer dollars are not being misspent again, whether it's in China or right here in the good old United States of America. Well, I wanted to bring to everybody's attention something that doesn't get much attention. And you've heard the term follow the money. So I looked up where did follow the money. I thought it was from a Tom Cruise movie, but it wasn't. It was from Watergate. And follow the money is what they did in Watergate. And we saw what happened. So my young staffer, who's very bright and I see him over there, Adam Pack, followed the money. And the money is from the so-called Inflation Reduction Act. So in the name of green and environmental justice, there's over $40 billion that are going to be granted out to the EPA. So with this great research that was done, what was discovered that in December, the EPA granted $50 million to an organization called Climate Justice Alliance. So we went to the website of Climate Justice Alliance. This is what we found on the website, that our taxpayer dollars are going to organizations such as this. This at the bottom is a picture of the bulldozer that went through the fence when Hamas attacked Israel on October the 7th. They have a rendering on their website that decolonized Palestine, and it has a picture of that same bulldozer going through that fence. If you dig deeper, they want to defund the police, defund the military. Either them or their affiliates want to have very radical, drastic initiatives that I think are anti-American. And they're certainly anti-Israel and anti-Semitic. So the Biden administration doesn't seem to care. $50 million in December, who knows how much more in the future, and other like groups because there are other associated groups with this group. There's no inspector general for EPA to follow the money because they don't care. Because all they care about is the mission, the climate mission, no matter what the radical ideas that are associated with the groups. So then you could ask yourself, is this group really going to be funding climate, cleaning up the water and cleaning up the soil and cleaning up the air? Or are they going to be funding things like the protests they had in Hart just several weeks ago where several of them were arrested? So follow the money. We're going to be doing that in the Environment and Public Works Committee. That's where the derivation of this was. And I find it rather startling to me that the EPA is not doing, and the administration, are not doing any better research as to where our American taxpayer dollars are going. So go back and watch the replays of what was going on in February of 21. We saw Joe Biden reverse policies that were working to secure the southern border that President Trump put in place. And now, three and a half years later, we've seen the Senate Democrats doing nothing to try to solve the border crisis that we have. They've done nothing to stop illegals who are flogging the country, those on the FBI terror watch list. They've allowed over 9 million illegal crossings up the southern border, but now they've seen the light. Or maybe they've seen the polls. Senate Dems' border crisis has become a political crisis. And now they're looking to Chuck Schumer to bail them out. This is Washington cynicism at its finest, and the American people won't be fooled. This is a political stunt. The reason, look at the votes the Senate Democrats have already cast. They voted against the Lake and Riley Act, which calls for illegals who commit theft or shoplifting to be detained or deported. They voted against deportation for illegals who are assaulting police officers. They voted to keep state and local law enforcement from detaining illegals who commit crimes until they can be deported. This is the real record. The Senate Democrats, in the spin or the sham votes, will not be able to erase this dismal record that opened our southern border and made America unsafe. Leader McConnell. I think I ought to give Manu one more opportunity, don't you? It happens once a week. Okay. I want to ask you about Justice DeLito. There was a report last week that the outside of Justice DeLito's home was an upside-down American flag that was thrown outside of his home, similar to what was used by the January 6th attack. Was that appropriate for the justice to do that? And did he recuse himself in many cases related to that? It seems to me they're just nonstop attacks on the Supreme Court. Week after week after week. And so I'm not going to dignify that with a response. We need to leave the Supreme Court alone, protect them from people who went into their neighborhoods and tried to do them harm. And we need to leave the Supreme Court alone. We need to do our job for the Supreme Court. That's part of the job of the administration. Leader McConnell, what was your message to the president when you talked to him, when there was a telephone conversation about this border bill? Yesterday? Yeah. Well, the president called the speaker and he also called me about the subject that we've all been talking about, which is the border. And he said, Mr. President, you caused this problem. There was no legislation that allowed the problem to be fixed. Why don't you just renew what the previous administration was doing, which got the border in decent shape. We tried on a bipartisan basis to see if we could agree to something. This is divided government. Senator Lankford met with him for literally months. It was clear that wasn't going to pass. So I think it's safe to say going to a border bill right now is just a gimmick, a way to try to convince the American people that they're concerned about this when they caused it. New York Times, Santa College Poll released last week showed Trump beating Biden significantly in Nevada, Arizona, also ahead in some other battleground states. But at the same time, Republican Senate candidates are behind Democrats in those states. Why do you think the discrepancy here? Well, I think incumbency, as we learned in 22, is an advantage, not a single incumbent lost in 22. Senator Daines and I have never said we thought this was going to be easy. We've got to beat an incumbent in Montana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and anywhere else we can. But we never said it was going to be a piece of cake. And we've got good candidates in all these places and are giving everything we've got to win. Thank you.