Majority Leader Schumer Floor Remarks On The Senate’s Accomplishments During This Congress
Washington, D.C. – Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today spoke on the Senate floor as the Senate prepares to depart for recess in October, and reflected on Senate Democrats’ accomplishments over the last two years, including confirming over 210 federal judges, passing a landmark national security supplemental package to aid Ukraine in its time of crisis, and passing KOSA and COPPA to keep kids safe online. Below are Senator Schumer’s remarks, which can also be viewed here:
A little over a month from now, the American people will exercise the most precious right that could ever exist in a free society.
I will not get into the back-and-forth of campaigns here on the Senate floor. But as we prepare to depart for October, let us take a moment to look back at the work of the Senate these last few months and these last two years.
We had a lot of obstacles to getting things done this year.
The Republican House was replete with disarray throughout the last two years, almost paralyzed.
And there was much Republican intransigence in both houses on issue after issue that prevented many good proposals from moving forward, despite our offers for compromise.
Despite that, there is still a good amount we have gotten done.
First, Senate Democrats continue to bring balance back to the federal bench by confirming over 210 judges to lifetime appointments. These judges are the most diverse group of nominees the bench has ever seen: nearly two-thirds are women, two-thirds are people of color, and we’ve confirmed more Hispanic, Asian and Native women and more LGBTQ judges to the federal bench than under any other president’s full time in office. These judges come with many backgrounds – not just partners in big law firms or prosecutors, as worthy as those professions may be. They come with civil rights backgrounds, public defender backgrounds, and more.
We also passed a landmark national security supplemental package, to protect America’s interests around the world, to stand up to Putin in Ukraine, to help Israel defend itself, and to provide humanitarian assistance for innocent civilians around the world.
The Senate provided historic funding to help Ukraine defend their homeland with more ammo and javelins and stinger missiles, more equipment for training, and we made clear to the world that in the fight between freedom and autocracy, America will never forget where she stands – on the side of freedom, despite, again, a lot of standing in the way because of extraneous amendments proposed by some of our Republican colleagues. It took longer than it should have, but the most important fact is that it got done, and I am proud the Senate stepped up at this historic moment. I thank Leader McConnell for joining me in that regard.
Tomorrow, Leader McConnell and I will proudly welcome Ukrainian President Zelenskyy to a meeting here at the U.S. Capitol, to reaffirm our support and hear from him what his country may need in the future.
Separately, we’ve also worked to keep our kids safe online, by passing KOSA and COPPA with overwhelming bipartisan support. I thank my Republican colleagues for working with us on these landmark bills. They’d be the first major updates to kids’ safety on the internet in decades, and I’m proud to have joined with parents and families of deceased loved ones to get it done. I urge Speaker Johnson and the House to get KOSA and COPPA done as soon as possible.
Finally, despite the hard-right’s intransigence, we prevented the government from defaulting last year. That would have been catastrophic. And then several times this year as well as last, we prevented the government from shutting down. As I said, despite right-wing wishes that it happen.
And on the non-legislative front, we have continued implementing our accomplishments of the last two years to help lower costs. This isn’t legislation, but rather working with executive agencies to implement our policies, and that has continued to lower costs. Democrats in the Senate Caucus spent a lot of time with cabinet secretaries and others making sure that the bills have been implemented, and they're showing great results from one end of the country to the other.
Around the country, Senate Democrats are hard at work turning our bills into action, implementing our agenda through new bridges in states Pennsylvania and Ohio, high speed rail in Nevada, and never-before-seen investments in chip-manufacturing in New York, Arizona, Ohio, and elsewhere. These are creating jobs, these are lowering costs, these are helping America get prosperous.
Now, there are also a lot of things we’ve tried to get done, but because of Republican intransigence we could not—protecting a woman’s right to choose and reproductive freedoms, securing our southern border, expanding the child tax credit.
So we will keep working when we return. It’s been a difficult road in divided government, but progress is possible. We have made that clear again and again and again throughout this 118th Congress.
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