Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I was unavoidably absent in the House chamber for rollcall votes, 53, 54, and 55 on Tuesday, February 6, 2018. Had I been present, I would have voted ``nay'' on rollcall votes 53, 54, and 55.

Mr. Speaker, I was unavoidably absent in the House Chamber for Roll Call votes 45 and 46 on Monday, January 29, 2018. Had I been present, I would have voted Yea on Roll Call votes 45 and 46.

Mr. Speaker, I had an interesting meeting yesterday with General Kelly. Twenty-five Members of Congress, almost all of whom are descendants of immigrants who came here with nothing, whose parents came here with nothing, sat down with the Chief of Staff of the President of the United States. He said, basically, that we are the wrong kind of people in America, and that people like our parents who came here to this country really are bringing the country down. Because when he says he is for a merit-based system, he is saying he is not for my mom and my dad being able to come to this country.

But interestingly enough, all of us who came to this country because of a family-based immigration system wound up as being Members of the U.S. House of Representatives.

But he was saying: You know, I am meeting with a group of Congressmen, and you really shouldn't be here because your parents really are tearing the country apart and bringing it down.

That is what he means when he says: I want to replace the system with a merit-based system.

And that was very telling in the meeting yesterday.

But, you know, we want a system that is family-based. That is the system the Democrats want because we believe that businesses are created by

immigrants and that it is essential for their families to be united as they come to this country so that they can achieve American success and we can all achieve the American Dream together.

That is exactly what they want to stop with the merit-based system; unless, of course, they come from Norway, then they continue to come.

We hear from the party of family values and the party of Donald Trump, who even employs his children at the White House. The Trump Organization, just think about. Here is an organization where the dad created the business, handed it down to the son. The son is now going to hand it down to his children. But they don't want immigrants to be able to do exactly the same thing and follow the same course that, apparently, has been so successful for the President of the United States.

Here is something else we learned from the Chief of Staff: when people from one party work with people from another party, that is not bipartisanship, he said. Bipartisanship, defined by General Kelly and this White House, is when people with completely different, opposite views of the world work together.

So only a Senate deal between people who believe in immigration and those who don't believe in immigration and who want to end our immigration system as it is, unless you come from Norway, that is the only way it is bipartisanship. That is like saying that if a Republican and Democrat are working together on an environmental issue, it is not bipartisanship because it is a Republican and Democrat, unless the Democrat and the Republican are persons who believe in climate change, working together with a Republican who believes that climate change is a hoax created by the Chinese.

Do you know what kind of legislation you get? You get nothing. You get a stalemate. You do not move the agenda forward. But that is their bipartisanship, and that is what we learned at the meeting yesterday.

Look, Democrats and Republicans are working together--Senator Graham, Republican; Senator Durbin, Democrat. They put a proposal on the table, and the President rejected it. That includes, just so that we are very clear, Democrats giving up things that are unprecedented in that Senate deal that was put on the President's desk.

Members of the Hispanic Caucus meeting with General Kelly can't fathom supporting the Senate deal. But guess what. That is bipartisanship. That is what it comes down to, which brings us to the votes this week.

Republicans might not need our help because you are the majority party, we are the minority party. But just in case you do need our help in getting a budget approved, I want you to know we are ready to stand to help you to keep the government open and to approve a budget.

But what I learned from the meeting with General Kelly, and everybody should understand, is that Democrats are more united than ever before. If you want our help on the budget, you have got to release the 800,000 DREAMers you are holding hostage. You have got to do it. Democrats aren't going to blink. We are going to stand by our values.

There comes a time that, if you say you stand for justice, you have to actually take a stand and hold it and not back down, and that is what Democrats are going to do this week. We are not going to back down.

Need our help? Release the 800,000 DREAMers you hold hostage. And guess what. We are ready to pay a handsome ransom for their release.

Mr. Speaker, I was unavoidably absent in the House chamber for Roll Call votes 18 and 19 on Tuesday, January 16, 2018. Had I been present, I would have voted Yea on Roll Call votes 18 and 19.

Mr. Speaker, I was unavoidably absent in the House chamber for Roll Call votes 9 and 10 on Wednesday, January 10, 2018. Had I been present, I would have voted ``Nay'' on Roll Call votes 9 and 10.

Mr. Speaker, on Monday, President Trump took action to undocument 200,000 immigrants from El Salvador, who have TPS and have been working regularly and renewing their documents in the U.S. for more than 20 years. He said the same thing to 58,000 Haitians. They need to leave in another 16 months. This is the same thing that happened with the DREAMers. He made them undocumented, 800,000 of whom are working.

Mr. Speaker, I am tired of coming to work here and meeting people in the cafeteria and people who are sweeping floors and doing all kinds of work here in the Capitol who now are in fear of losing their legal protected status and being able to work here in this country because they are undocumented. They want to make people who are working, yes, right here in the Capitol of the United States undocumented.

For that, I call upon us to do the work that we were sent here to do and to protect people. We shouldn't be sending 58,000 Haitians back to the poorest country in this hemisphere from the richest country. That is unfathomable and unconscionable and we shouldn't do it.

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, I was unavoidably absent in the House Chamber for Roll Call votes 685, 686, and 687 on Monday, December 18, 2017. Had I been present, I would have voted ``Nay'' on Roll Call vote 685 and ``Yea'' on 686 and 687.

Mr. Speaker, I was unavoidably absent in the House chamber for Roll Call votes 674 and 675 on Tuesday, December 12, 2017. Had I been present, I would have voted Yea on Roll Call vote 674 and Nay on 675.

Mr. Speaker, every day, 122 people with DACA lose their protection from deportation. They lose their government-issued identification that allowed them to stay in this country and work legally.

DACA is the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that the President ended in September and which will completely expire in March. But let's be clear: people don't have until March. People are already losing their DACA coverage on a daily basis.

So when reporters and politicians say that Congress can stall until March to enact the Dream Act, they are flat wrong. We cannot wait until March. The Dream Act and the protections of the DACA program are not light switches we can turn on and off. Every day we delay the passage of the Dream Act, another 122 DACA recipients lose their status. They go from being documented to being undocumented, and their worlds are turned upside down.

It is not just their lives, but also the lives of American citizens who love them, who employ them, and who rely on them.

Young DREAMers came forward and reported to the Department of Homeland Security and paid their own money for a criminal background check by the FBI. In fact, many of them have successfully completed their paperwork and biometrics three times. They paid all of this processing--the paperwork, the background checks, and the fingerprints--with their own money.

By definition, they arrived in the United States as children, and, by definition, they all arrived at least 10 years ago--a year and a half before Obama even got sworn in as President.

There are 800,000 of them--800,000 young Americans who have been playing by the rules, doing everything their government has asked them to do, and who have been living productive lives in communities in every State of the Union. As of today, more than 12,000 have lost their DACA status and protection.

Let me tell you about a few of them. Mayron owns three businesses. He lives in Washington State and has lived in the U.S. since he was 11 years old. His DACA expires on December 22, the day after the CR is set to expire and the day we are all supposed to go home and return to our families for the Christmas holiday and New Year's.

He submitted his DACA renewal well before the application deadline that was arbitrarily set for last October. But he made a mistake. His check was for $465, not $495, so he will be deportable as of December 22. He has lived his entire life in the United States, yet, if Republicans and the President have their way, he will be sent back to Honduras. His three businesses and those who work there? Who knows what will happen to them.

Another DACA recipient named Saul is from California. Thanks to the security and stability provided by DACA, he has pursued a career in education. I was a teacher, and I know that the monetary rewards are few, but the rewards for your soul are many, and the rewards to our society of having dedicated teachers are just as priceless.

But without DACA and without the Dream Act, Saul has no future in teaching, and we may squander the passion he would bring to a classroom. His DACA expires on December 29, and this is anything but a Merry Christmas for him as we drag our feet here in the Congress of the United States.

Finally, there is Brittany in New York. She is a childcare provider who works with infant twins--one of whom has a severe health condition. Her employers are now scrambling because Brittany's DACA expired last Thursday, and she has no clear legal path forward. The family said: We are devastated at the thought that she may not be able to work in this country and know we won't find another caregiver who is as reliable, nurturing, and unshakeable as Brittany.

Most Americans don't understand why taking away legal status from a childcare provider who is employed, cherished, and loved by her employers will somehow create law and order. How does creating more undocumented immigrants help? It doesn't make America great. It doesn't even strengthen security or our economy. I

don't think it even benefits the Republican Party politically to send this young American woman like her away.

But it is up to Republicans and Democrats to stand up for Brittany, Saul, and Mayron. Democrats must be clear that we value the contributions of these young people and will not allow their stories to be ignored.

Republicans--even the brave ones who have said that they are for solving the plight of the DACA kids--must do more than write a letter or whisper quietly in the Halls that they hope something happens.

It is up to us right now. I am not leaving, and I am not shutting up until we do.

Mr. Speaker, I was unavoidably absent in the House Chamber for Roll Call votes 672 and 673 on Monday, December 11, 2017. Had I been present, I would have voted Yea on Roll Call votes 672 and 673.

Mr. Speaker, I was unavoidably absent in the House Chamber for Roll Call votes 658, 659, 660, and 661 on Wednesday, December 6, 2017. Had I been present, I would have voted Nay on Roll Call votes 658, 659, and 660, and I would have voted Yea on Roll Call vote 661.

Mr. Speaker, every day that Congress does not pass the Dream Act, 122 DACA recipients lose their protection from deportation. That is 122 every day--young people who arrived in the U.S. as children, have gone through multiple background checks, and have lived in the U.S. for at least 10 years.

Every week that passes, nearly 1,000 DACA recipients lose their protection from deportation. By Christmas, the number of DACA recipients who will have lost protection will reach 13,492.

But now we are hearing that we may have a short-term CR or a series of CRs and that the whole budget and funding debate may get kicked down the road to next year when all 800,000 young immigrants who signed up for DACA begin losing their status.

Mr. Speaker, with Republicans in control of the House, Senate, and White House, I am pretty sure you will not need my vote to pass the next budget. So I will vote against any short-term CR because I assume you have the votes to govern as you see fit no matter how much I and other Democrats disagree with your priorities on women, on children's healthcare, the environment, or DREAMers.

Now, if Republicans decide they do need help from Democrats to approve a budget, they know where to find us, and we are more than willing to help if what we are voting on meets minimal standards of priorities for the American people. For me and a lot of my colleagues, that means a vote on the Dream Act right now this year.

The votes are here, the legislation is here, and the American people are already in support. So, Mr. Speaker, at some point, Republican leadership should just get out of the way and let America vote. That is what leadership, compromise, and bipartisanship look like.

Now, we certainly know what it doesn't look like. In the middle of the night last weekend, Republicans voted to give a tax cut to the richest Americans. They dressed it up as a tax cut for all of us--for everyone--but we all know that it is an obscene tax cut for the obscenely wealthy and rich in America.

Not a single Democrat in either House supported it. This chart explains part of the reason. It is tremendously unpopular with the American people as the small slice in red on this chart shows us. According to a Gallup poll, just 29 percent of Americans support the Republican tax cut for billionaires and the multinational corporations. That is what partisanship looks like.

So what does bipartisanship look like? It looks like the Dream Act. Overall, 86 percent of Americans support the Dream Act, a bill to legalize immigration status of immigrants who arrived in the United States as children. Yes, 86 percent. That is a big slice of red on the chart. That number comes--get this--from a FOX News poll, just in case you think I was using a partisan poll where they put their thumb on the scale to show things in my favor. Sixty-three percent of Trump voters back citizenship for the DREAMers.

So here is a proposal supported by an overwhelming number of people, an overwhelming number of Republicans, and an overwhelming percentage of Trump voters. But we can't get a vote. Yesterday, 34 Republicans in this body wrote to the Speaker asking him to please allow a vote and something to protect the DREAMers. Clearly, all 34 percent of those Republicans can read the chart in red. They want to do something that is both politically popular and the right thing to do from a moral standpoint.

The reason Republican leaders will not allow a vote on the Dream Act, or at least are acting like they won't, is because they know it will pass. So you take 34 Republicans who wrote the Speaker and add 194 Democrats, and do you know what you got? A majority of the House.

For all of those Republicans who oppose the Dream Act, they get a Christmas present. They get to vote against it. What better way to associate yourself with the comments of your President on Mexicans, on Muslims, and on everything else than to vote against the Dream Act?

So, Mr. Speaker, I urge you to let your Members vote against the Dream Act as an act of charity in the Christmas spirit. Republicans will get what most of them want: an opportunity to send a message to their base voters by voting on something the rest of us agree on--just like the tax bill--but this time, with the passage of the Dream Act, at least a majority of the American people will get something out of it, too.

Mr. Speaker, I was unavoidably absent in the House Chamber for Roll Call votes 653 and 654 on Monday, December 4, 2017. Had I been present, I would have voted Nay on Roll Call vote 653 and Yea on Roll Call vote 654.

I believe that both the House and Senate GOP tax bills are an attack on the middle class and only serve to benefit the wealthiest in our nation. The GOP tax plan would raise taxes on millions of families and students, send jobs overseas, devastate our health care system, and overwhelm future generations with crushing debt. I stand with my Democratic colleagues in opposing this plan and urge the enactment of tax reform that puts working Americans first.

Mr. Speaker, I was unavoidably absent in the House Chamber for rollcall votes 655, 656, and 657 on Tuesday, December 5, 2017. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea'' on rollcall votes 655 and 656, and I would have voted ``nay'' on rollcall vote 657.