Schumer Floor Remarks On Post-Mueller Report Actions: Holding Russia Accountable, Strengthening 2020 Election Security, And Holding All-Senators Intelligence Briefing; Leader McConnell Turning The Senate Into Legislative Graveyard; And The Trump Economy Failing Working And Middle Class Americans

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer today spoke on the Senate floor regarding three action items needed following the release of the redacted Mueller report: holding Russia accountable for interfering in our presidential elections, strengthening 2020 election security, and calling on Leader McConnell to host an all-Senators classified briefing with the intelligence and defense communities; Leader McConnell turning the Senate into a legislative graveyard for middle-class priorities; and the Trump economy, which is not doing enough for working and middle-class Americans. Below are his remarks, which can also be viewed here:

Madam President, the Mueller report, released earlier this month, was divided into two sections: one detailing the concerted and coordinated effort by President Putin to interfere in our presidential election, an effort that the Trump campaign welcomed and at times amplified. It also included a second section, which laid out a pattern of dishonesty and interference with a federal investigation by the president and his team.

Now, today, I want to focus the Senate’s attention on the first half of the report – the coordinated effort by President Putin to interfere in our elections, which is an unbelievable thing, a threat to our democracy, something that every American should be concerned about.

Though we have long known that President Putin’s interference in the 2016 elections, we’ve all known about that, the conclusion of the Mueller report demands a vigorous response by this Congress to ensure that Putin pays a significant price for his actions and that Putin and other adversaries will not consider similar action in the 2020 election cycle.

What occurred in 2016 was nothing short of an assault on our democracy, an attack on our most revered traditions. It was the kind of foreign influence feared by the framers and warned about in the Federalist papers. It’s the very reason we have an emoluments clause in our constitution.

Even so, President Trump and his administration have met these attacks with apathy. The president has routinely sought to undermine or weaken efforts by this chamber to sanction Russia. The Treasury Department recently cut a deal to reduce sanctions on the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska.

And just last week, the Times reported that then-Homeland Secretary Nielsen was told not even to mention election security in front of the President – even though she reportedly considered it one of America’s highest priorities as we head into 2020.

In the face of the administration’s disturbing indifference, it is clear the Senate must act.

In the past, this body has proudly come together – bipartisan – to pass sanctions on Russia. But we have not yet done enough to hold the guilty parties of 2016 accountable, and we must do more to ensure that a foreign power cannot meddle in our elections ever again.

With that in mind, I have three proposals for my colleagues to consider.

First, we should pass additional sanctions against President Putin, his cronies, and other adversaries considering similar maligned activities. There are multiple, bipartisan sanctions bills awaiting action, including the Defending American Security from Kremlin Act, called DASKA, and Defending Elections from Threats by Establishing Redlines Act, the DETER Act. I would urge the Chairmen of those committees to take up those bills and send them to the floor where Leader McConnell should bring them up for serious consideration.

Second, we should commit serious – and I mean serious – resources to election security. FBI Director Wray and other intelligence officials have testified that 2016 was not an isolated incident; foreign powers will try again to interfere in our elections, they posited, in 2020 and beyond.  Director Wray, and this should trouble every American, called 2018 a “dress rehearsal” for our adversaries. And it might not just be Moscow next time; it could be Beijing, Tehran, or Pyongyang. If our elections are susceptible to foreign influence, our democracy is at risk. We know – we know right now – that another foreign influence campaign is coming, and if we don’t take steps to secure our elections, it would be astonishingly irresponsible.

In Fiscal 2018, we were able to allocate $380 million in funding through the appropriations process for states to harden their election infrastructure and help improve election administration. I thought this was very important. I pushed very hard to get it in that budget, that appropriation. Unfortunately, though, in Fiscal Year 2019, our Republican colleagues blocked us from allocating more funding to the states, despite overwhelming demand. Why? Why would Republicans want to not stop Russia or someone else from interfering in our elections? It’s befuddling. Make no mistake, though: Democrats will push for more election security money in the upcoming appropriations process. And we should also take up the bipartisan Secure Elections Act.

Ranking Member Leahy and Ranking Member Klobuchar have been leaders on this issue, and I hope that their diligence will pay off once again.

Third, we must hear from the intelligence and defense community about the coming threats of 2020. So today, I’d like to request that Leader McConnell – I’m officially requesting him – to schedule an all-Senators classified briefing with the leaders of the Dept. of Homeland Security, FBI and Cyber Command to inform Senators about the threat of foreign interference in the 2020 cycle. We must be very aware of these threats and take immediate steps to avoid the repeat of 2016.

The Senate can do these three things quickly, and each one of them should be bipartisan and noncontroversial. There are no doubt other ideas and legislation along these lines that we should consider, but this is a place to get started. And I look forward to having discussions with my colleagues about these items in the coming days.

Legislative graveyard. Now Madam President, on another and related matter. The three items I just mentioned are examples of the things that the Senate could – could – be doing in a bipartisan way to address a serious challenge.

I hope the Republican leader sees the value in pursuing them, because so far this year, the Republican leader has shown little interest in pursuing meaningful, bipartisan legislation.

With over a year and a half left in this Congress, Leader McConnell has turned this chamber into a legislative graveyard. And without a shred of irony, he’s proudly bragged that he is the Senate’s Grim Reaper. Is that what the American people want? There supposed to work together in a bipartisan way, but Leader McConnell takes all the bills that have passed the House, puts them in his drawer, and spends his time simply doing nominations.

We are a quarter of the way through the year, so let’s do a quick quarterly review.

Our colleagues in the House have been busy – in four months, over 100 pieces of legislation have passed their chamber. Here are some of them:

• Legislation to oppose the lawsuit that would eliminate protections for Americans with pre-existing conditions. Who’s opposed to that? Leader McConnell is.
• Legislation to reform our democracy, improve elections, restore voting rights and get the money out of politics;
• Legislation on paycheck fairness so women are treated equal to men;
• Common sense background checks (which 90% of Americans support);
• Upgrades to the Violence Against Women Act;
• Legislation to restore Net Neutrality.

And despite the fact that President Trump shut down the government for over a month, these bills passed the House, most every one of them with bipartisan support. These aren’t partisan bills; they’re common sense proposals to help the middle class, solve our country’s basic problems.

The Republican leader told the American people that under his leadership, the Senate would debate and vote on issues of the day no matter if his party supported them. And yet, not one – not one – of these bills has come to the floor of the Senate. Not one – not one – has been debated in this chamber.

These are the bills. If the Republican Leader doesn’t love every aspect of one of these House bills, fine! We’re not saying take ‘em or leave ‘em. Let’s have a debate! Let’s have amendments! But let’s at least try to compromise on language that can get through both chambers.

What has the Senate been doing instead? Leader McConnell has wasted precious time on basically two issues: “gotcha” votes, like his stunt on climate change and Republicans’ cynical attempts to limit women’s reproductive health choices. The remainder has been spent on the approval of alarmingly unqualified nominees to executive agencies and the judiciary. What are we doing this week on the calendar? Not one piece of legislation; just nominees. Next week could probably be more of the same.

So over the next two years, the Republican Senate is in danger of becoming little more than a staffing agency for the administration’s radical nominees.

That’s a tragedy because, at the start of this Congress, the American people sent a clear message: they wanted us to work together on legislation in a bipartisan way.

The American people voted for action. Action on health care, action on prescription drugs, action on climate change and gun safety. Poll after poll shows that these issues are on the minds of Americans. Substantial majorities of Democrats and Republicans support them.

We cannot – simply because we have a divided government – allow this entire Congress to go by without making meaningful progress on these issues. This is not good – for the country, certainly for the Senate, and for the Republican Party and the incumbents in those chambers. The American people cannot afford to have Leader McConnell turn one chamber of their government into a legislative graveyard for two full years.

We hope he will realize the folly of this, both substantively and politically, and maybe we’ll start doing some real work.

Finally, on the economy. That’s one area that deserves our attention, though you wouldn’t guess it if you listened to President Trump.

President Trump repeatedly brags about low unemployment numbers and a rising – if volatile – stock market, two trends that actually began long before he took office. President Trump should say “Thanks Obama” for handing him an economy that was well into recovery from the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

But what the president has done has been tilting the playing field to allow most of the benefits of this recovery to flow to those at the very top. You can brag about GDP numbers, but when most of the wealth is going more and more to the highest level of people, it doesn’t benefit that many people, enough people.

President Trump has consistently weakened programs that help middle-class Americans afford health care. He’s rolled back critical worker and consumer protections, rammed through a tax bill that gave egregious giveaways to big corporations. Instead of wealth trickling down, corporations have spent the lion’s share of their new profits on corporate buybacks – benefits the shareholders and the CEOs, most of them very wealthy, not average Americans or the workers. So if the economy is so strong, why is it that four in ten Americans can’t afford a $400 emergency expense? Why is it that income disparity grows with the middle-class left holding the bag?

Recent polls confirm – this should be a watchword to the president – Americans don’t believe the Trump economy is working for them. In a recent ABC poll, most Americans see the Trump economy as primarily benefiting those in power, those who are already wealthy. According to Monmouth, most Americans say the economy hasn’t benefitted them much, if at all. To simply brag about large, macro numbers, but not look at the effect on the average person who’s making $40, $50, $60,000 a year – that is wrong. That’s not helping them. The group that believed the economy was benefitting them the most were making over $100,000 a year. God bless them. But economic benefits we ought to be working to spread to the middle class.

So, despite the president’s trumpeting of self-selected economic data, the bottom line is this: the Trump economy is working ok if you are already doing quite well, but it’s not doing enough – not close to enough – for working America and for the middle class.

I yield the floor.

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