Schumer Floor Remarks on Bipartisan Opposition to the Border Wall and President Trump’s Broken Promises

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer today delivered remarks on the Senate floor on the bipartisan opposition to the border wall and President Trump’s broken promises. Below are his remarks:

Mr. President, I’d like to echo the Majority Leader’s remarks on the tragic death of Matthew McClanahan last Tuesday.   

The Architect of the Capitol employs plumbers, landscapers, painters, electricians, custodians, and mechanics who make their careers ensuring that our buildings and grounds are well-maintained, safe, and beautiful. The stunning tragedy of last week has shaken this staff to the core.  

Matthew McClanahan died way too young. That he died at work repairing the Capitol’s sprinkler system has hit our entire community hard. To those who worked so hard to save him, you have our gratitude and admiration. To those who feel his absence so keenly in their daily life, you have our sympathy and our support.

May you remember the words of Scripture, fittingly from Matthew: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”

Our prayers go out to his family – his wife Lauren, his 7 year old daughter, Evie, his young son, Matthew, and to his parents, brothers and sisters in law, and grandparents. His funeral was yesterday and I understand it was completely packed with some mourners outside, unable to get in. He was well-loved, and will be well-remembered.

Now, Mr. President, I join the Majority Leader in welcoming everybody back to the Senate after the two-week recess. We have a lot of business to attend to this week. Most importantly, we have to pass a spending bill to keep the government open.              

So far the discussions between our two sides have been constructive and are progressing nicely. Without interference, I believe our two parties can come to an agreement together by the end of the week. The four-corner negotiations – that is, Leader McConnell, myself, Speaker Ryan, and Leader Pelosi – have been going very well until a monkey wrench was thrown into them.

I’ll caution: If the Administration insists on poison pill riders or extraneous funding requests, then our talks could get sidetracked – particularly if the Administration demands funding for a border wall.

Democrats have been long clear that the border wall is a non-starter. More than a month ago, here on the floor, from this desk, I warned against including funding for the border wall in any must-pass government funding bill.

If the Administration insists on funding for a wall in this bill, it will endanger the prospects of a bill passing and raise the prospects of a government shutdown, because a border wall – we believe – is a pointless waste of taxpayer money for several reasons:

First, President Trump promised Mexico would pay for the wall, not American taxpayers. The idea that President Trump is fulfilling a campaign promise when he says ‘America will pay for the wall now and Mexico will pay it back later,’ is untrue. He will only fulfill his campaign promise if he gets Mexico to pay for the wall now. That’s number one.

Second, the Trump Administration has not shown us any specific plans about how and where the wall will be built. How high will it be? How much will it cost? Where along the Rio Grande River will it be built? The President’s own Secretary of the Interior, Mr. Zinke, said: “The border is complicated, as far as building a physical wall…The Rio Grande, what side of the river are you going to put the wall? We’re not going to put it on our side and cede the river to Mexico. And we’re probably not going to put it in the middle of the river.” Zinke said it well. How, where, when, how many dollars is this wall going to the cost? Before rushing into it, we ought to see some real plans, not just talk.

Third, the cost of the wall is staggering – some estimates peg it as high as $50 billion – and that money could be better spent elsewhere; on things like infrastructure or education. For example, with $50 billion, we could connect more than 98% of Americans to high-speed Internet, more than double the federal funding for roads and bridges, and update every VA building listed in the VA’s Long Range Strategic Capital Plan. The money would be better spent elsewhere.

Fourth, there are much better ways to protect our borders – with drones, fences and other more-cost effective measures.

Now the President says a wall is needed to stop the flow of drugs. But drugs come into our country in several ways: by water, through tunnels, and snuck in by cars and trucks. We’ve all seen the pictures on TV where they hide them in the carburetor of a car. No one finds it.

A huge, expensive wall will still have border crossings for vehicles. A huge, expensive wall could still have tunnels dug beneath it. In reality, a combination of drones and fencing and other more sophisticated means would be a much more effective way to secure the border.

And fifth, in order to build the wall, the federal government would need to take private land (using eminent domain) from thousands of law-abiding Americans. Much of the land on the border is privately owned. It’s not owned by the federal government. Eminent domain. A lot of people on that side of the aisle don’t like it, and we all know it would take a very long time to get it done.

So, for those reasons, it’s not just Democrats who oppose the wall…many Republicans oppose the wall. According to the Wall Street Journal Survey, “Not a single member of Congress who represents the territory on the southwest border said they support President Trump’s request for $1.4 billion to begin construction of the his promised wall…” That includes my friends Sen. Cornyn, Cruz, McCain, and Flake.

And for the very same reasons, the American people don’t support the idea of a border wall by an almost 2 to 1 margin. A recent Quinnipiac poll found that 64% of Americans oppose a wall on the border with Mexico (versus only 33% who favor it). And that poll didn’t even include the fact that Mexico wouldn’t be paying for it under the President’s plan.

Now Mr. President and my colleagues and President Trump, we Democrats don’t mind having a debate on the wall in regular order. We don’t think it would pass given the amount of opposition on both sides…but certainly a proposal with as many flaws as this one shouldn’t be the thing that the Administrations uses to hold the government hostage. Certainly shouldn’t be pushed through without debate, without regular order, without answers to these questions.

Now let’s talk a little bit about the President’s 100 days. We are approaching the 100-day mark of the Trump presidency. It’s an appropriate time to take stock of what this President has accomplished so far. Unfortunately, it’s not much. In the first 100 days, so many of the promises the President made to working families during the campaign have either been broken outright or remain unfulfilled.

Now, the President ran as a populist – I’ve said this to him – the President ran as a populist against both the Democratic and Republican establishments, promising to stick up for the American worker. He talked like a different kind of Republican who might be willing to work with Democrats, particularly on issues like trade or infrastructure. Instead, the President has spent the first 100 days governing from the far right on behalf of the powerful and the special interests he once campaigned against, breaking his promise to be a president for the American worker… the forgotten men and women, as he called them. It sure didn’t take long for the President to forget them too.

The President has broken promises or has yet to fulfill them in areas that matter to so many of his voters and so many Americans, whether they voted for him or not.

• He promised he would drain the swamp – right? He talked about it over and over again. He promised he would drain the swamp, but instead he’s filled his cabinet with billionaires and bankers. And listen to this – he has given out secret waivers that allow lobbyists to work in his administration on the issues that they previously lobbied on. That’s not draining the swamp, that’s filling it up to the brim, going far beyond what others have done.

• He said he would deliver better health care that would cost less and provide more benefits. But his bill, Trumpcare, does the exact opposite, providing fewer benefits at a higher cost, all to finance a massive tax break for the wealthy.

• He promised a trillion-dollar infrastructure bill. We Democrats sent him our proposal, a trillion dollar infrastructure bill, taking the number that he talked about in the campaign, over a month ago. We haven’t seen any proposal or gotten any response from the President.

• The President promised he would be tough on trade, outsourcing, and jobs. He promised he would label China a currency manipulator and fight back against their rapacious trade policies, which robbed America of millions of jobs and cost us trillions – trillions – of dollars of our wealth. He hasn’t done either.

• And the 2018 budget he proposed is a dagger to the heart of the middle class, cutting some the programs that matter to the middle class most: transportation, education, scientific research.

So as we head into the 100-day mark, Democrats are going to hold the President accountable for the promises he made to working-class voters. We obviously disagreed with a lot of what he said in the campaign, but he made a number of promises to working-class voters that we could have helped him accomplish. Unfortunately, he’s abandoned those promises in favor of a hard-right, special-interest agenda.

We can work together, but only if President Trump and Republicans actually seek Democratic input and are willing to compromise. Right now, it seems the President’s idea of compromise is to never talk to Democrats, put forward his own Republican proposal, and pressure us to support it. Never talk to Democrats, that is, about the issue he’s moving forward. I have talked to him, but it’s never on the issues that are before us. That is not the way our politics has ever worked. Unless the President’s approach changes, the next 100 days will be just like the first: a whole lot of talk and no progress, a series of broken or unfulfilled promises to the working families of America.

Finally, one final issue Mr. President, on the nomination of Rod Rosenstein to be Deputy Attorney General, which we’ll vote to proceed on later tonight.

I sat down with Mr. Rosenstein a few weeks ago and spent time asking him questions about his career and his views on the DOJ and protecting the integrity of the department. I came away with the impression that he’s someone who is independent, who would stand up for the law regardless of which party controlled the White House. And his career backs that up.

With respect to the executive branch investigation into the ties between the Trump Campaign and Russia, Mr. Rosenstein committed to me he would appoint a special counsel to conduct that investigation if one is required. He has developed a reputation for integrity, he has promised to give this careful consideration. I believe if he studies the Department regulations, he will come to the same conclusion many of us have, that a special counsel is merited.

For those reasons, I will be voting for cloture this evening and voting for his confirmation.

Thank you, Mr. President, I yield the floor.