Majority Leader Schumer Floor Remarks On Three Months Since Republicans Blocked Bipartisan Legislation To Secure Our Border

Washington, D.C. – Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today spoke on the Senate floor on three months since Republicans blocked serious bipartisan legislation to secure our border after those same Republicans demanded action on the border. Below are Senator Schumer’s remarks, which can also be viewed here:

Let me read a few quotes from the last six months about securing out southern border from some of my Republican Senate colleagues.

“This crisis requires swift, serious, and substantive action.”

“It makes no sense to me for us to do nothing when we might be able to make things better.”

“This moment will pass. Do not let it pass.”

Yes indeed, these are the words of our Republican Senate colleagues, uttered at press conferences and floor speeches and interviews from just the last few months. There are many, many, many more quotes like these going back years – from Republican Senators, Republican Congressmembers, from Republican Speakers, from the former Republican president.

We kept hearing the same thing again and again and again: we need to do something about the border now, they shouted. The border is an emergency, they screamed.

We cannot put this off until tomorrow. And on and on and on.

So three months ago, here on the floor, Republicans got a chance to back up their words with real action, by voting on the strongest bipartisan border bill Congress has seen in decades. And practically every Republican voted no.

Including my Republican colleague who said “it makes no sense to do nothing.” He voted no.

Including my colleague who said “this crisis requires swift…action.” He voted no.

And the Republican Speaker, Speaker Johnson, who said “the time to act” on the border “is yesterday,” and then told the whole world that our bipartisan border bill would die in the House if we sent it over to them.

Donald Trump has spent years bellyaching and bemoaning the problems at the border. But when Congress finally reached a breakthrough on a strong and bipartisan border bill – a bipartisan border bill – he told his MAGA acolytes to kill it, so he could exploit the chaos at the border for political gain. He was bold and open about that. He wanted to exploit the chaos at the border for his own political gain. That’s cynical even for Republicans. Even maybe, for Donald Trump, whose cynicism knows no bounds.

For Democrats, the situation at the border is utterly unacceptable.

That is why we worked with our Republican colleagues for months to write the strongest border security bill Congress has seen in a generation – a bill that had the support of the Border Patrol Union and the Chamber of Commerce and the extremely conservative Wall Street Journal Editorial Board.

But Donald Trump, desperate to exploit the border for the campaign trail, torpedoed this bill right in its tracks. He knew it would take real action to secure our border – that’s why he didn’t want it to happen.

Republicans will go on and on about the border this year, but their rhetoric, their political ads, everything else will ring hollow, because the border bill they killed in Congress will linger over them like stink on garbage.

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