Schumer Floor Remarks On The Need To Prevent More Trump Shutdowns, And Insisting That President Trump Does Not Back Down On Huawei Charges
Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer today spoke on the Senate floor
regarding the widespread suffering caused by the Trump shutdown, the need for
President Trump to stay out of Congressional negotiations to prevent another
shutdown, the Justice Department’s recent charges against the Chinese telecom
giant Huawei, and the Koch network’s attempts to rebrand itself as less
partisan. Below are his remarks, which can also be viewed here:
Now
hundreds of thousands of federal workers are, thank God, returning to work this
week to tackle a backlog that’s been building up for over a month.
Over
that time, the U.S. economy suffered a loss of $11 billion, according to the
non-partisan Congressional Budget Office. $11 billion for the president’s
temper tantrum, including $3 billion that can never be recovered. It’s an
expensive temper tantrum.
The
individual costs are even harder than the big number. Who knows how many
federal workers missed a doctor’s appointment or fell behind on their payments
because they were missing multiple paychecks. Federal contractors may not get
back pay and may have lost health insurance entirely during the shutdown.
Senator Smith is working on legislation to fix that problem.
So even
while federal employees and contractors are returning to work, they might still
be digging out of the hole the Trump shutdown put them in.
Now, I
hope this serves as a lesson to President Trump and all of my Republican
colleagues: no more shutdowns. We cannot repeat this same nightmare scenario in
three weeks when the CR expires. We Democrats will not shut down the
government. We hope that President Trump has learned his lesson, he touched a
very hot stove. We hope our Republican colleagues will join us as they did last
Thursday to make sure there is no shutdown.
Thankfully,
I’ve heard several of my Republican colleagues say that. A number of them,
including some of the most senior Republicans here, have said we shouldn’t have
another shutdown. So we look forward to working with you to avoid that in every
possible way.
The
House and Senate conferees should strive to find common ground where it already
exists and build from there. The good news is they begin with plenty to work
with. Democrats and Republicans agree on the need for stronger border security
measures at our ports of entry as well as the need for more humanitarian
assistance. That’s a good place to start.
Plenty
of column inches have been dedicated to the discussion of areas where Democrats
and Republicans have friction, but several times over the past two years
Congress has come together to reach big compromises, including two budget
agreements and a landmark Russia sanctions bill. The common theme of those
agreements was that the president stayed out of our negotiations. Because
President Trump gave Congress space to find a deal on our own, we were able to
strike an accord. That’s what we’ll need again if the conference committee is
to succeed because the president has no understanding of what the realities are
in this Senate and in the House and no consistency in what he says one day and
what he says the next. As I said, negotiating with President Trump is like
negotiating with Jell-O. So, let Democrats and Republicans, House and Senate,
come together on an agreement and my bet – my guess – we can avoid a shutdown.
Now, on
another matter. Yesterday afternoon, the Department of Justice
unveiled nearly two dozen charges against the Chinese telecom giant Huawei
in two indictments: one for the evasion of US sanctions on Iran and another for
its attempts to steal sensitive intellectual property from T-Mobile in the
United States.
I’m
glad the Justice Department announced these indictments yesterday. China has
been flouting international sanction laws, and even worse, stealing American IP
and know-how for the last decade. State-connected telecom giants like Huawei
are an example of how China operates. They’re not an exception, they’re the
rule in China. When China wants to supplant U.S. dominance in an emerging
industry, it acts rapaciously – it steals. Our law enforcement needs to be
especially vigilant with China’s telecom companies, like Huawei, like ZTE, who
intend to displace U.S. communications networks with their own 5G networks
because those could give China access to all kinds of sensitive information.
U.S. authorities should be prosecuting Huawei’s criminal violations to the fullest
extent of the law. And I give the administration credit for having the suit go
forward.
My
message to President Trump is: don’t back down. While the Trump administration
has shown signs of being tougher on China than either the Bush or Obama Administration,
for which I commend them, President Trump has also tried the conciliatory
approach, particularly when the administration is engaged in negotiations with
the Chinese.
Just
last year, President Trump let ZTE – another
state-backed Chinese telecom that violated trade sanctions – off the hook in the hopes of achieving
concessions from China on North Korea that never materialized.
And in
December, the president has said that he would “certainly intervene” in the
Huawei case if he “thought it was necessary” to achieve a trade deal with
China.
President
Trump: do not make the same mistake you made with ZTE by interfering with the
Justice Department’s prosecution of Huawei. The United States should not make
any concessions unless and until China makes credible and enforceable
commitments to end all forms of theft and extortion of American intellectual
property, which is exactly what Huawei is accused of.
Finally,
a comment on the Koch brothers. I read a column with interest today in the
Washington Post, the Koch network has been trying to rebrand itself as less
partisan. They’re saying: “let’s bring us together, let’s work with both
sides.” That’s a good instinct.
Color
me skeptical. The Koch brothers may sit out the presidential contest, as they
did in 2016, but their political arm, Americans for Prosperity, continues to
support candidates who are divisive, who do not bring us together. Some of the
ads you see, the very candidates they support, are dividing us. You can’t on
the one hand say you want to bring us together and on the other use your
political arm to tear us apart. Yet that is what the Koch brothers are doing.
And they support the kinds of judges who agree with them on all the corporate
stuff, they don’t want regulation, who are against voting rights. How does that
bring us together? Are against immigrants. How does that bring us together?
At the
state level, their network of affiliates continues to support so many different
initiatives that divide us. Through support for shadowy think tanks and
pseudo-academic institutions, the Koch brothers continue to fund studies that
sow doubt about climate change and evangelize deregulation. And so, it seems
that still the highest priority is to help the rich and powerful no matter how
divisive it is. As long as we can get our corporate taxes cut even further, cut
the taxes for the wealthy, stop the protections by preventing government
regulations for average folks – as long as they do that – all this talk about
coming together and supporting an occasional bill here and there doesn’t mean
much. I hope that this beginning of what the Koch brothers say spreads. I hope
it’s not sort of just a fig leaf because they’re getting such bad publicity and
America is moving so far away from what they believe.
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