Pelosi Floor Remarks in Opposition to Republicans’ Anti-Family, Anti-Children Bills
Contact: Ashley Etienne/Henry Connelly, 202-226-7616
Washington, D.C. – House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi delivered remarks on the Floor of the House of Representatives to voice her opposition to Republicans' Floor vote to kill the Queen of the Hill discharge petition to protect Dreamers and instead bring up H.R. 4760, the Securing America's Future Act of 2018 and H.R. 6136, the Border Security and Immigration Reform Act of 2018. Below are the Leader's remarks:
Leader Pelosi. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I thank the gentlelady for yielding and for her leadership on America.
I had the privilege of traveling with her under the leadership of our colleague, [Congressman] Juan Vargas and [Congresswoman] Susan Davis, to their districts earlier this week to see firsthand what was happening at the border.
So, I come to the Floor now with that fresh information and I come to the Floor as a mother. A mother of five children, grandmother of nine, who knows, as many of you here who are parents know, and all of you here who are children know, the importance of the bond between parent and child. And, how breaking that bond is outside the circle of civilized human behavior.
Mr. Speaker, I want to quote a favorite President, I'm sure, of yours and of many in this body, President Ronald Reagan. In the final days of the presidency, President Ronald Reagan said, ‘And, since this is the last speech that I will give as President' –
My colleagues, I want to you hear this because this is about Ronald Reagan. Maybe you don't want to hear it. Okay, they don't want to hear it.
President Ronald Reagan said, ‘And, since this is the last speech I will give as President, I think it is fitting to leave one final thought, an observation about a country, which I love.'
President Reagan went on to say, ‘Yes, the torch of Lady Liberty symbolizes our freedom and represents our heritage, the compact with our parents, grandparents and ancestors. It is that lady who gives us our great and special place in the world.'
President Reagan went on to say, ‘For it's the great life force of each generation of new Americans,' of new Americans, he said, ‘that guarantees that America's triumphs shall continue unsurpassed into the next century and beyond.'
These are the words of President Ronald Reagan in the final days of his presidency as he said, ‘in the last speech that I will give as President.' Beautiful values.
Today we're considering two Republican bills that insult our nation's values and tarnish our heritage, as the President said, as a beacon of hope and opportunity.
Both do absolutely nothing to solve the heartbreaking and horrific situation for children on the border. According to the Conference of Catholic Bishops, both bills ‘perpetuate child detention and undermine existing protections relating to such detentions.' Catholic Conference of Bishops.
Both of these bills fail to provide a permanent legislative fix for our Dreamers, selling out their American Dream to build the President's obscene border wall.
Both are loaded full of every anti-immigrant provision imaginable: dismantling legal family immigration, slamming our doors to millions who have followed the rules and have been waiting for years for a visa and cutting off the lifeline of asylum to countless vulnerable refugees.
In terms of those refugees, in testimony that was given to a Steering and Policy meeting we had, Democrats had – Republicans didn't come – the American Association of Evangelicals testified that the United States refugee resettlement program is the ‘crown jewel of American humanitarianism'. American Evangelical Association. And yet, and yet, it's horrible what they do in these bills to cut off lifeline of asylum to countless vulnerable refugees.
The Speaker's bill carries out the President's family deportation agenda. It paves the way for the long, long-term incarceration of families in prison-like conditions and denial of basic health and safety protections for children. The Republican plan is a family incarceration plan. It replaces one form of child abuse with another, and it brazenly violates children's human rights.
Why do Republicans think traumatized, terrified little children at the border do not deserve the same basic respect that their own children do?
According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, family detention poses serious dangers. Family detention poses serious dangers to children's health and can result in lifelong consequences, quote, ‘lifelong consequences for educational achievement, economic productivity, health status and longevity,' end of quote.
Congress should be working day and night to protect vulnerable children. We should be working on legislation that protects Dreamers, keeps families together and respects America's heritage as a land of newcomers – as spelled out by President Reagan in his last speech as President of the United States.
These bills will not go anywhere in the Senate, yet a vote for these bills is a vote to destroy the Queen of the Hill discharge petition, destroying the best chance this Congress has to provide a bipartisan permanent legislative fix for Dreamers.
Republicans need to walk away from these bills. They need to call on to the President to rescind his family incarceration policy, which is as much a stain on our nation's history as his family separation policy. Tearing children away from their parents.
Democrats reject this outrageous legislation and reject the American, the Republicans' attack on Dreamers, vulnerable children, and families. And, we reject your zero, your zero policy. It has no place.
I urge a no vote on both these bills, on this rule and any supplicant rules that come up and yield back the balance of my time.
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