Schumer Floor Remarks on Appropriations and President Trump’s Broken Promises
Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer today delivered remarks on the Senate floor regarding current negotiations to pass a short-term spending bill and outlined some of President Trump’s broken promises as he completes his first 100 days in the White House. Below are his remarks:
First, I would like to speak on the appropriations bill.
We still have several issues to address. Our Republican friends, mostly in the House… I want to say that my friend, the Leader, Republican Leader is really working hard to get a good bill done, and I appreciate that. But Republicans are holding us up on critical poison pill riders. But we’ve made good enough progress. The four corners of the negotiations – the Appropriations Chairmen and Ranking Members in both chambers – and the House and Senate leadership were negotiating until 1:30AM last night. So I want to thank all the staff who worked so hard and stayed up so late to bring us closer to an agreement.
They have done heroic work, and I am happy to report that if we get an agreement, we will see significant increases in NIH funding, year-round Pell grants, and housing assistance and an underlying omnibus.
We’re willing to have a voice vote on a short-term extension of government funding soon in the hopes that we can wrap this up early next week. But as I said last night, there is still a handful of unresolved poison pill riders. There were yesterday at 6:00 because of the work they did last night, but there’s still some out there and I want to reiterate the Democratic position – we don’t want them. Zero. We are happy to pass clean, bipartisan appropriations bills, which is the way this process is supposed to work. On the more controversial issues, we can have a debate in regular order. They shouldn’t be stuck in these bills with no debate and no discussion and no votes, no regular order of voting.
So, I am confident we can get there if both sides realize that these important debates on policy be left for the regular order process in the full view of the public.
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Tomorrow will be President Trump’s 100th day in office. And this week, we Democrats have spent each day highlighting how this president has broken or failed to fulfill promise after promise to the working men and women of America, on issue after issue: on jobs and the economy, on health care, and on “draining the swamp.”
Earlier today, my colleagues talked about how the president’s budget is another example of his tendency to promise one thing and then do another. Despite promising to address the issues of education, infrastructure and scientific research, the president’s budget takes a meat axe to funding for the NIH and NSF, vital school programs, and transportation grants.
This morning, I want to touch on a few examples of these broken promises that characterize the President’s first 100 days. Broken promises to the working men and women of America. He ran in the campaign as a populist against both the Democratic and Republican establishments. He is governing from the special interest-laden hard right… far, far away from where the American people want him to go.
In the president’s scramble to show some progress before his 100th day, he’s rushed to make progress on the wall, healthcare and taxes. This desperate sprint has only left these three efforts more damaged than before.
First, on the wall. We were progressing nicely on a bipartisan agreement to keep our government open and running, until the president stepped in to muck up the process by insisting on funding for his wall on the Mexican border.
This is a huge broken promise. Every time he mentioned this wall on the campaign trail, he has rushed to make progress on the wall, on healthcare, taxes. This desperate sprint has only left these three efforts more damaged than before. First, on the wall. We were progressing nicely on a bipartisan agreement to keep our government open and running until the President stepped in to much up the process by insisting on funding for his wall on the Mexican border. This is a huge broken promise. Every time he mentions this wall on the campaign trail, he’s insisted that Mexico would pay for it. This week he demanded the American taxpayers pay for it and threatened to shut down the government over it. Americans know that $50 billion, if that’s what the wall will cost, is far better spent laying broadband throughout America, rebuilding our roads and bridges, doing things that help Americans… not some ideological issue.
Thankfully, for the American people, the president failed.
Second, on health care. Breaking his promise of “insurance for everybody” and lowering costs yet again, the president’s health care bill rose from the dead and moved further to the right. It’s hard to think of a bill worse than the first, but TrumpCare 2.0 has all of the terrible aspects of round one—with even more cruelty placed upon the American people.
TrumpCare 2.0 would still leave millions without coverage, raise rates on 50 to 64 year olds, but also takes us back to the day when insurance companies could deny coverage to those with preexisting conditions.
Once again, the president failed.
And finally, the president’s tax plan was another huge broken promise. As a candidate, Trump promised to lower taxes for middle-class Americans, but his Treasury Secretary can’t even guarantee this plan will do so.
The president could have worked with Democrats on taxes, but he chose to focus on the wealthy instead of the middle class. To be clear: the president’s plan is a wish list for billionaires, not a serious proposal.
The Trump tax plan is designed to cut Trump’s taxes, those of his cabinet, and those of people of his wealth – not the taxes of the middle class.
Thankfully, this too, this plan is yet another dead-on-arrival Trump proposal that has been panned by both Democrats and Republicans.
The Trump tax plan pretty much sums up the dynamic of the first 100 days – promise for the working class, deliver for the wealthy. Frankly, it’s why he has made such little progress.
These three actions this week in the President’s rush to try and prove that the 100 days isn’t as bad as everybody is saying – the wall, TrumpCare and the Trump tax plan – have made our point that his 100 days have been a failure as we ever could.
President Trump could have chosen to spend his first 100 days working with Democrats, to find consensus on issues like jobs, trade, outsourcing and infrastructure – places where we have some common ground. I told him many times that if he governed from the middle, his presidency would have some success.
Instead, he has abandoned his campaign populism in favor of a hard-right, special interest-driven agenda and chose to go at it alone, without consulting or so much as considering the minority party.
That’s why he’s be unable to make any progress on healthcare, that’s why he’s been unable to make any progress on his wall, that’s why he’s been unable to achieve any, any significant piece of legislation.
In fact, of the 10 pieces of legislation the president promised in his first 100 days, he’s achieved none of them. these are the bills the President promised to get done in his first 100 days. Not a one.
The president’s achievements to date consist of executive orders – something he repeatedly derided during the Obama Administration as an ineffective way to govern – and several bills passed under the Congressional Review Act. Keep in mind that many of these executive orders simply direct federal agencies to “study” issues (they are messaging tools that don’t actually achieve anything); and many of the CRAs only benefit powerful special interests.
Compared to Franklin Roosevelt’s first 100 days, in which he passed 76 pieces of legislation, this can hardly be considered a record of effectiveness.
And the contrast between the president’s boasts and his actual record through the first 100 days is even starker when you consider just how much this president promised to deliver all these things. There is an air of unreality when he says it’s the best 100 days ever. Compared to Franklin Roosevelt? Come on. Give me a break. In fairness, candidates make a lot of promises. That’s the nature of campaigning. But this president made particularly outlandish promises to working Americans, summed up by a line he said in the campaign—he said to his supporters “I will give you everything.”
President Trump promised working Americans a cherry pie, but after 100 days, he’s delivered only crumbs.
If President Trump wants his next 100 days to be better than his first, he needs to abandon the my-way-or-the-highway approach, abandon his special-interest-driven, pro-wealthy agenda, and start pursuing policies that actually help the middle-class and those struggling to get there. We’re willing to work with him if he does.
But if he stays on this current path, abandoning the working people of America for the very wealthy, the next 100 days will be just like the first: a series of broken or unfulfilled promises and very few results for America’s working families.