Transcript of Pelosi AAPI Community Roundtable on Ryan-Republican Budget
Contact: Nadeam Elshami/Drew Hammill, 202-226-7616
San Francisco – Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi participated in a roundtable on the Ryan-Republican budget with leaders of the Asian and Pacific Islander community on Monday, May 21st. Below is a transcript of the roundtable:
Leader Pelosi. I’m very impressed and very honored to see all of you here. And I talk in my mother’s voice when I want my children to hear me, not a stern voice, but a voice that can be heard. Annie and I have been working together for decades, and I have worked with the Chinese [community] for Affirmative Action for a long time and with many of the other organizations here. The Hire Ability Vocational Services is new to me, but congratulations on your work with people who have some challenges beyond just the fact that the economy is down and that we need training for all of our workers.
God bless you for what you do again, Norman. Thank you Kent, Jon, and Jenny for your very informed presentations. Let me just enlarge the issue for a moment because I do see in this room solutions to the challenges that we face, and you wonder why is that not getting done? And I’m not going to be political. I’m just going to make some distinctions here.
First of all, we all, and I think everybody in America subscribes to the American dream and what we are saying for our party is that – and again, I’m going to take it to the policy, but we are reigniting the American dream, where everybody who wants to work hard, play by the rules, take responsibility can succeed. That’s what you are saying. And part of the rungs – and we are putting down ladders of success for those people – part of the rungs of those ladders are what you’ve talked about, about education, about training, about health security, so that people will not be pauperized or have to lose their healthcare if they lose their job or whatever, if they want to change jobs, start a business.
We think that what is essential to our reigniting the American dream is investment in the entrepreneurial spirit of America, that small businesses are really the igniter of that dream, one of the places where jobs are created, capital is formed, and people can not only get jobs, but they can have ownership because the disparity between people who have jobs and who don’t, and the disparity of income is immoral, but the disparity in equity is not right either.
So, what we’re saying is that we have a moral imperative, the three of you, Kent, Jon, and Jenny spelled out the challenge and how we can honor the moral imperative, the moral imperative of us as a nation to create jobs. We have a moral imperative to make sure that people have health care as a right not a privilege. That has an impact on their economic security as well, their freedom to life, a healthy life, liberty, to pursue their happiness, if they want to become a rock band person, or if they want to change jobs, start a business, whatever it is, they’re not job-locked because someone has a pre-existing condition, or anyone can get sick and pauperize the family. And the issues that Jenny talked about, of course education, essential to innovation, which keeps us number one, and innovation begins in the classroom, and as Jenny said: the creation of jobs and the ability of people to take them, whether it’s child care, office work, or whatever it is, a sense of community about how we do this, about how to benefit everyone.
So, what are some of the specifics? You talked about health care. As you know, the health care reform bill goes before the Supreme Court of the United States. We won’t know, maybe by June they said. So, I don’t know if that means sooner, or what, by June sometime we will know. I think it will be 6-3 because we think it is iron-clad on the constitutionality but you just don’t know what the courts will do. But having said that, we have to do what you said, protect the Affordable Care Act, the bill itself, and protect it from the cuts that directly affect the community. The cultural or linguistic aspects of it are something that I have been involved in for years, even when Hillary Clinton, now Secretary Clinton, but when Hillary Clinton was doing the job people would say to me: ‘every time they come in,’ even the President of the United States, Bill Clinton, ‘all you talk about is the Chinese-American community, the Asian-American community in your district’ and I said: ‘I know that I care about other issues, but nobody else is talking about this, so I associate myself with those other remarks, but what I say about this community applies to the Hispanic community and the other communities, about the comfort level that people have that when the care is linguistically – when they can understand each other, culturally – and see, want to see caregivers and health care providers and the rest from the community. Our bill is big in terms of Medicaid and that is something that bothers us about what the court might do. But I’m going to take you to why I think some of this is happening but not before I go to education.
One only need look to the Republican budget and the Congress to see what a difference in values we bring to it. The Republican budget, you’re talking about – to what you said exactly – on the Pell Grants that they’re not keeping up. Well it’s worse than that. In the Republican budget, 400,000 people will lose their Pell Grant and millions more will lose what they receive for a Pell Grant. So, we just have to fight that. It’s totally unacceptable. Everybody knows the best thing a family can do for its children, a country can do for its future, is to educate its people. Who doesn’t know that? Apparently those who wrote this budget. In fact, when I had suggested that they should stop the subsidies to Big Oil, which is about $38 billion dollars, you know what they said to me? ‘You could save the same amount of money by cutting it out of Pell Grants.’ And I said: ‘how could you even mention those two things in the same breath?’ But they do. Because we have a different set of priorities, and I say to the Republican friends: ‘take back your party.’ You don’t have to believe in this, you don’t believe in this. And then Jenny, and then I’ll come more to the budget, Jenny talked about the importance of training, and thank you for your comment about the President. I also was happy that two weeks ago he came to the dinner, the event in Washington, D.C. [the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus Dinner (CAPAC)].
[CAPAC] had asked me to ask him whether he was aware of the request and I said: ‘the minute [you] invite, I’ll ask him. He will come, not because I ask him, but because you want him there.’ But it’s just a question of making sure he knows about the invitation. And he was there and they were thrilled. And that was really important, that was the first time he had been brought to that event as President of the United States. But anyway, that just being a sign of respect to the community, all of these issues that relate to training and the rest are definitely at risk, we hear testimony from business owners all the time that they have jobs to give, that people are not trained for them. And I hear that in San Francisco – when I’m in the Mission District, you know, it’s not just Siemens. The man told me at Siemens he had 3,400 jobs he couldn’t get enough people with the skills to fill them.
So, there’s a disconnect there that we have to mend. But we have to do it, you still have to have an education in order to specialize in whatever, even if it’s vocational – well if it’s vocational, that’s great, but you still have to go get an education, and you can’t do it if they are – now, right now, we have a fight. We passed, five years ago when the Democrats took the majority, [a] bill that cut student loans down to 3.4 percent [interest], with the idea that we would renew it. That’s how you do it, five-years. So now it’s coming up again and we’re saying: ‘we cannot let that go up.’ And they’re saying: ‘well we’ll pay for it, but we want to pay for it out of women’s health and all these community health initiatives.’ Well that’s just not right. That’s just not right, we could take it out of Big Oil tax subsidies, take it out of tax cuts for the wealthiest people in America, but they want to take it out of other entities that support the very people we are around this very table to support. It’s just not right.
So, the fight on education is about the fight for America’s future. It goes beyond any community, but it’s very specific to the lives of every single person. Statistics are one thing, personal impact is really important. So the budget is a place where we can fight and make sure the spotlight is there. But it’s not just about grants or the cost of loans, it’s what Jon said: it’s the rising cost, the affordability in the first place. And that’s part of our discussion, when we give federal assistance, we’re saying this is not so we can have money here and then raise tuition there. It’s supposed to be for you to maintain your effort, or quality [of life], at least at the same place. And I’m sorry about what the Governor announced, what was it you said? And what I wrote now 300 million dollars for Cal Grants. That’s a terrible thing but that’s what, when you have decisions in Washington that do not support the local and state effort, that’s what happens.
So, this is all connected. So then just one more point I want to make before we go on to the next thing, is on the child care issue. I said we had a moral imperative to create jobs, we have a moral imperative to educate our people. We have a moral imperative. And that includes life-long learning. We have a moral imperative to reduce the deficit. Nothing, nothing, brings more money to the Treasury than education and training of Americans – early childhood, K-12, higher education, post-doc, if you’re going another, and lifetime learning and training. So, it is a false economy to say we have to cut education to reduce the deficit. You’re doing the exact reverse. You’re doing the exact reverse. It hurts the individual, it hurts America’s competitiveness, and it grows the deficit to do that.
So, we [have] a real fight on our hands. We have a real fight on our hands. You know you want to try to make these issues as bipartisan as possible, but if they’re drawing a line saying: ‘we’d rather give tax cuts to oil subsidies, to Big Oil, than to invest in Pell Grants; you see that we have a different set of values there. So, it is something that we have to work together on, I would say that this community has a lot to gain. Look when we passed, when I told you about small business and entrepreneurship, when we passed our small business bill, we created jobs and tax relief for 1.5 million AAPI-owned businesses. Minority communities across the board [are] the fastest growing communities for small business ownership.
So what we do there, so what we’re saying: it comes down to the battle of the budget. It all comes down to the battle of the budget. And the battle of the budget is: what are your values? How do you decide, and we’re saying: ‘it has to have balance.’ The Speaker of the House just said a few days ago, he said that: ‘we’re not going to raise the debt ceiling unless we have as much cut in spending, or more,’ they want more than when we cut the debt ceiling. But if you just go to cuts, again, as we did last year, then you’ll see the impact in the communities. We cut over a trillion-dollars. They want us to cut a trillion-dollars, again, without touching one hair on the head of the wealthiest people in America. So this is what the fight is about. You have to give them credit. They go with the guy that brought them to the dance, you know, that’s who they dance with. And the guys who brought them to the dance were the wealthiest special interest people in our country, and others, that they have persuaded that [it] is in their interest – that we have a trickle down instead of a bubble up economy.
So, here’s the thing, simply put, their budget, we can make these kinds of contrasts, will [raise costs on save] seniors on Medicare and those on Medicaid, but let’s just stick with Medicare for a moment because we can quantify that very directly, we’re going to sever the guarantee, Annie, we’re going to sever the guarantee between seniors and Medicaid, Medicare, excuse me, Medicare. We’re going to sever the guarantee, no longer will there be a guarantee, you’ll get a voucher. And in the meantime, that’ll take a few years, and in the meantime, seniors next year will pay $6,400 more. By this budget, $6,400, now you don’t understand $6,400, you think they’re going to borrow from their kids? Six-thousand-four-hundred dollars more, Marlene. Why [would] they give a tax cut in the same budget of $400,000 to people making over a million dollars a year? Because what they do is, they keep the Bush tax cuts in place and they lower the rate, $400,000,do you make a million dollars a year? Anybody? You’re going to get a $400,000 tax cut. If you’re a middle-income senior, you’re going to spend $6,400 a year. And that is a statement of their values about how our federal budget should be read.
So, it’s really now, now just to put it in perspective for you, one of the reasons they do this, and they say they are not going to raise the debt ceiling, but put at risk the full faith and credit of the United States of America. [House Republicans] would put that at risk, but [they] will not put revenue on the table. We will not put tax cuts for Americans, for people making over a million dollars, that’s hardly anybody, but it’s a lot of money up at that end. It’s hardly anybody we know, but it’s a lot of money at the high end. We’re going to risk full faith and credit of the United States so those people can continue to live in this complete luxury, and this isn’t class warfare, this is a government of the few, a government of the rich, it’s a plutocracy. It’s no longer even about class; it’s about what kind of government we have. And it’s not a democracy, because those people that take that money spend it in campaigns to elect people, special interest handmaidens who do their bidding, in the tax code, in the budget, just reinforces all this.
But one of the reasons they do it, remember I said they wanted to cut more than what the debt ceiling will be? Because if you keep doing that, you eventually will eliminate all federal government, which is exactly their design because, bless their hearts, they don’t believe in any government involvement at the federal level — and they act upon their beliefs. Their very religious people. They act upon their belief in no government. No government for clean air, clean water, food safety, public safety, public education, public transportation, public housing, public health, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security. They think Medicare should wither on the vine, and they have the blueprint right in this budget. They think Social Security has no place in a free society – these are their statements.
So, that is what we are up against. That’s why I say to my Republican friends: ‘take back your party!’ This is the over the edge game. This is over the edge.
What [House Democrats] have said is: ‘we know we don’t have it all, we have to make a compromise, we have to have a balanced approach.’ But we can’t go about cutting more unless there is revenue on the table. And why don’t we just start with small businesses and entrepreneurship where jobs are created and say: ‘what would our tax and investment policies be in order to grow the economy?’ Growth of jobs, money, and educating our people [are] the biggest reducer[s] of the deficit. So, this is the, this is what, again, this is not a political meeting, but this [is] the debate that we will be in for the next few weeks.
So, when you pose these things, you think: ‘well why wouldn’t anybody – there wasn’t anything political about anything that was proposed here. This isn’t political, this is common sense. Educate our people, create jobs for them, keep them healthy – it’s not even about health care. It is about a healthy America. Prevention. You mention over 80 million people already benefitted from the healthcare bill. [The Affordable Care Act] reduces costs, improves quality, and expands access. So, this is the values that you put forth. It’s a shame that we can’t say: ‘consider it done,’ because that is the fight that we are involved in. And that President of the United States is taking it. He is very strong on this. And again, I wish it were not much of a difference. But it just so happens that it is.
Q: Could you talk to our Governor too and educate him?
[Laughter]
Leader Pelosi. But the impact comes, it’s a trickle. And then it is a domino. The ramifications come right down the line. One from the other. So, this- a battle over the budget and what the priorities are, what the values of our country are. [That] is what is at stake in the next several months.
But, again, I say to the Republicans: ‘I don’t care if you win, if you care about people.’ I mean this isn’t about party it’s about getting the job done for the American people. ‘Take back your party.’ They say to me: ‘you go beat them, and when they’re gone, we’ll move in.’ That’s okay with me.
[Laughter]
What I told you here is what they say themselves about themselves – wither on the vine Medicare – no place in society about Social Security. The head of the [National] Republican Campaign Committee in the House of Representatives is the sponsor of the privatization of the Social Security bill. I mean, they earned a badge, because it is what they believe. And you have to give them credit for acting on their beliefs. However, [House Democrats] disagree with them. They don’t believe in government.
Any other questions?
[Applause]
Leader Pelosi. I followed John’s lead. I didn’t tell you any of the other stories from last time.
[Laughter]
Q: Thank you, Norman. Leader Pelosi, I am so glad to hear you talk about the American dream and the moral imperatives that we have to live by. And I believe that one of these imperatives is the imperative for our communities to live without fear. Today, we are seeing so much fear in our communities. For example, the unprecedented use of local police and our criminal justice system to enact immigration enforcement. You are familiar with secure communities, we are seeing that creating a culture of fear – and the police, where victims and witnesses are afraid to report crimes to the police and where domestic violence victims are getting caught up in detention just because they are going there for help. So, we ask for your support on that issue.
And then the DREAM Act – the failure of the Dream Act to pass continues to affect our communities. In the University of California system, 40 percent of undocumented students are Asian. So, we ask that you keep that issue alive.
And then finally – I want to thank you for your support in the [Uniting American Families Act] United Families Act. In particular, the part that provides [inaudible]. Thank you.
Leader Pelosi. Thank you very much. Thank you.
We passed the DREAM Act in the House of Representatives.
[Applause]
The Senate didn’t. And it was hard. I said to my Members: ‘we’re going to make a decision – comprehensive immigration – we have for a long time said comprehensive immigration reform, because if we take off one piece here of that, it all adds up. Or, in other words, the hi-tech community wanted H-1B visas, and we said to them: ‘you help us with legalization and [the] DREAM Act and we will help you with H-1B. Finally, nothing was happening. And I give credit to President George Bush, Bush 43, he really knew the right thing to do for immigration. But he couldn’t persuade the Republicans. Even the Republican President of the United States couldn’t persuade the Republicans. So, that’s why we didn’t get it then. Now we don’t have the majority. But in between, we thought we could at least – a decision was made since we [couldn’t] get it all, let’s build bridges. And the first bridge was the DREAM Act. And I said to the Members: ‘we’re going down this path, the other side is going to make it sound like we are amnesty – give away – I don’t even like to repeat their stuff, it is so repulsive. But nonetheless, that’s what is going to be thrown at all the Members. So, we are going down this path, once we decide to take that first step, we have to win. You know, we have to win. And we did. And I was very proud of all our Members who had the courage to vote for it.
Q: And we are proud of you too.
Leader Pelosi. Well, that’s what we believe. It’s easy for me, but for some of my Members, it takes a lot of courage because they are not blessed like I am with a district like this.
So, the DREAM Act – how the government, this Administration, the federal government supports secure communities, and all of that, is so wrong. It was supposed to be some kind of priority, if someone committed a felony, and now they just use it. They just use it. I have this fight all the time with the Administration because they tell me my numbers are wrong. So, you help me with the numbers, because Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren was the Chairperson of the Immigration Committee. She was an immigration lawyer, she taught immigration law, and she is the [Ranking Member] of the Immigration Committee. She is up in arms about the enforcement. Again, the more you can help me with numbers, and I’ve been at care services, community events with families that are affected, that are not documented, strictly speaking.
So, I associate myself with these efforts very strongly because it is a waste of taxpayer dollars – don’t they have something else to do?
Easter Sunday I was at church in Napa. And there was this beautiful family sitting next to me. The mother, father, two little boys and an infant about one month old, and during this he took out a napkin, a paper napkin, and he wrote me a note saying that his wife is undocumented and that they were coming after him, and that she would have to go back to Mexico. Now, they have three little kids and the oldest is four-years-old and an infant. There they are at church on Easter Sunday. The Pastor greeted them warmly and all that. And they are going to send them back? And that is supposed to be a good idea? This man said: ‘I either have to leave, or I’ll miss my family for ten years to have financial security.
How is that – what, where is the thing of the to-do list, what am I doing today? I’m sending women who just had a one-month-old baby and her two children away from their father for 10 years, rather than – what are their reasons to do that? Which is spelled out in the law really, the intent of Congress anyway, how they interpret the law. So, don’t get me started on this right now.
[Laughter]
Because it is just plain wrong.
Q: We will get the papers to you.
Leader Pelosi. All the documentation you can give me, because every time I encounter this, it is just not right. And I said: ‘well, I don’t care if I’m off by 75 percent, these people should not be sent back.’
The third point – the Violence Against Women Act – we just passed the bill the other day. We lost. And I’m telling you we had a great operation – well we don’t have the votes because we don’t have [the] majority. They had the women on their side, I believe, for this bill. It’s harmful to immigrant families, documented or undocumented. It is harmful to Native Americans. It is harmful to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender women. It is harmful, and it is a bill that goes backwards, ours would have gone forward, but instead they want to stay the same. It goes backward. Why? Why is it that you have to say – why is it that they would do such a thing? Craze on that anti-immigrant, and I don’t know what they have against Native Americans in Alaska, whatever it is, because that – even the Member of the Republican – the Republican Member, after I spoke, he called me over and he said: ‘I listened intently to what you said and I’m very concerned about the Native Americans. I know what goes on in the Native American community. Especially if a Native American woman is married to a non-Native American man.’ He didn’t vote with us in the end, but he voted with them, but he sent a letter saying we have to change the bill in conference. That’s a lot. We want to have leverage over – against the bill. Nonetheless it leads, but this is very wrong.
And what we want to do, drumbeat across your communities, is make sure across the country the people that you know, talk to Members of the Congress, editorial boards and the rest because this is saying we are not going to legalize violence against women.
Q: Will the President veto this?
Leader Pelosi. Yes. The President has said he will veto the bill. We fought – and they said to me, in my press conference I had with the women, a lot of people, men and women, Congressman John Conyers, Congresswoman Gwen Moore, who is the author of the bill, who went through domestic violence herself, an African-American woman. The press said to me: ‘the Republicans said you are politicizing this.’ And I said: ‘politicizing? I don’t agree. I didn’t utter one political word in my [press conference] when I made my presentation.’ I said: ‘this is the difference between the two bills. So. if you come in here to say what they are saying, I’m not even answering the question. They are saying we are politicizing because we are saying Native American women should not be beaten up with bats?’ No, you know the story. All [an] undocumented person has to do is say somebody committed violence against her and she is out of here. So much for that, it is just so wrong. You are talking to women right here, we have a lot of men who help us on this issue this isn’t about politics, it’s about people. It’s about people, and your distinction about people who are gay, and lesbian, and Native American, and immigrant? What is this? ‘Everybody is going to [be] safer, we have a Violence Against Women Act. Except, don’t step forward, not so fast. You’re not included.’ It’s unbelievable, but that’s what they passed.
Now, we are going into conference and we are really strong in conference. Mind you – the Senate Republicans and the Senate Democrats, 68-31, supported the comprehensive bill for immigrants -- documented and undocumented. The House Democrats support the bill. So, there is four pieces, three of them are in agreement. The President is in agreement and the House Republicans decided to have their own bill. Who are these people?
[Laughter]
I mean, tell me, who are these people? Why would you even make a thing of it? Especially since we’ve been there and done these things before, and now they want to take us back. I’ve been working on this since I’ve been working in Congress – 25-years-ago. And Joe Biden was our hero, just so you know. Joe Biden was our hero, he was the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee. This was a big thing for him. We all worked for it in the House. My role was on the Appropriations Committee getting funding. Fifty-percent reduction in domestic violence because of this bill, many people safer, and the Republican bill costs money. It’s ridiculous.
Did you have another point?
Q: Leader Pelosi, some of us have been working throughout the year about the plight of our communities because the AAPI community grew 36 percent since 2000. But yet our needs seem to always fall on deaf ears. We worked with many people on the state level, on the county level, and as you said, funding is just not there for our community. So, on all of our behalf – my question is to ask you to think of a way of how we can get engaged with you and your staff over in Washington D.C. to find some more sustainable program funding to fund the various needs that you have heard, and many of the needs that you are not able to hear today. So, you are our only hope that maybe you will go with us through these dark days but there is still that hole.
Leader Pelosi. Let me say, Annie, you have been such a leader for such a long time, and I have learned so much from you over the years. Let me say, here is what I think has to happen and obviously, we are happy to do that. That’s my role, that’s my job. I don’t want to raise your expectations that anything much can happen in Washington, but we always try to shine a bright light on the decision making as to how they are choosing this. But Walter Reuther, said once ‘the ballot box and the bread box are connected.’ There – we really have to, and I’m not saying this vote Democratic, not Republican, I’m saying have an impact on the Republicans that you may know. Not here because in California we are so overwhelmingly Democratic and everybody is on the same page with these issues and we are going to grow our Asian-American membership in the [Congress of] the United States. In the next election too, I am very excited about that.
But here’s the thing, taking away from politics and talking about elections. You have a situation right now, and it is very important to know this, and it doesn’t seem like a direct answer to your question but it is a solution to the problem. The bigger problem is you have a situation now, and again it is hard for us to understand, in fact, I have asked – I asked Paul Volcker: ‘why are they doing this?’ I understand motivation, I understand all these kind of things, I study – and that is I do what I do, but I can’t understand why they want to crush the American people under their heel, blatantly, without even a shot, you know, without even a gesture. And to say this is good for you, it is healthy for you that we reduce the deficit by keeping tax cuts for the rich and cutting education for poor Americans, and the poor middle income and those who aspire to be middle-class. Why don’t they want a strong middle class that strengthens our democracy? That’s the backbone of the middle class and it provides customers for their businesses. Even Paul Volcker said to me: ‘they’re different. They just think in a different way.’ I don’t even know if he is a Democrat or a Republican, but the people are making these decisions. You don’t understand, they think in a different way. So, we have to set their thinking straight by either replacing them or changing their minds.
But here is the challenge we have: the Supreme Court, a year-and-a-half-ago, said that the people, the campaigns, individuals of wealth, could spend any amount of money – it doesn’t even have to be individuals, it can be corporations, anybody, God knows who, not only anybody but God knows who, anybody, could spend unlimited secret money in campaigns, secret money in campaigns.
Now, why that is important is if you are so proud of what you are doing, why wouldn’t’ you want anybody to know? Except you don’t want anybody to know because it would hurt your reputation and they don’t want their customers to know, their employees to know, their stockholders in many cases, even their shareholders to know. So, they put it under the law – now we had always been restrained – you can only spend this much money and it had to be disclosed. If I want to put on an ad on T.V. I would have to say, in California, I would have to say: ‘I am Nancy Pelosi, and I approve this ad.’ But the Koch brothers and all these people, they don’t have to say anything, it is like the money just came, just materialized.
So, unlimited money to suffocate the system. They can buy all the time because they have endless money. They don’t have to prioritize – we have to spend money on Marlene, or against Victor, no, just throw it all out there, unlimited money to suffocate the system, suppress the vote, they already have initiatives in 30-states to suppress the vote. You have to have ultra, ultra, ultra I.D. and the rest of that.
And poison the debate. Poison the debate. Now, you are sophisticated, so you watch with a discerning eye, most people hear this stuff and they say: ‘a pox on both your houses, I don’t want to hear it, why can’t you get along? Why can’t you come to agreement?’ We can’t come to an agreement because they don’t believe in government. So, are we going to agree to destroy government? No. Should we reduce – we don’t need any more government than we need, but we need the government that we need. And so here is what we have to do.
We have to disclose. Just make sure they disclose. Just say to everybody, ask them: ‘have you put any filthy – I mean you might say it in a different way – have you put any undisclosed, secret, hidden, unlimited, large amounts of money into campaigns?’ And if they don’t answer, then that tells you what you need to know, but that is what we are doing – going around the country: disclose, disclose, disclose.
Again, we passed it in the House when we were in the majority and the Senate couldn’t get 60-votes. They had 59, but that’s not a majority in the Senate anymore.
So, disclose – slightly political, win – and then change the law so that we have citizen financing of campaigns. Just take all the money out. Take all the money out. I’m not talking about ‘x’ number of dollars, limited and disclosed – take it all out. Just have public funding of campaigns. Shorten, that would shorten the campaign season. Who needs these perennial campaigns with perennial fundraising? I mean, it’s like, huh?
And then the fourth is to overturn the Supreme Court decision on unlimited secret, filthy lucre that is coming from God knows where into these campaigns. Maybe God doesn’t even know where.
[Laughter]
And so it is, it is what we have to do to get our country back, and I’m not talking Democratic, Republican.
I’ll close by saying this: you like that I’ll close part didn’t you?
February 20th I had the honor of speaking the President’s Day address [at the] George Herbert Walker Bush, that would be the father, his library, the Bush library at Texas A&M, the most conservative school in Texas. It’s where his library and his school of Public Policy and Government reside. It’s a fabulous place. The Republicans went crazy because he invited me.
[Laughter]
But we had worked together [in] a time where you can disagree on the issues and that’s what you went there to do – is to find agreement, if you couldn’t find common ground, if you couldn’t stand your ground, but be respectful, and I had my issues with the President but we always had a civil relationship. I was a relatively junior Member at that time, when he was President, 1989-1993, but we interacted and there was civility, kinder and gentler – thousand points of light. You know, whether you agree with him or not, he had a demeanor that was respectful of people, and we respected him in return. And so that is why he invited me.
When I told them about reduce the money, stop the suppression, raise the civility, they were in standing ovation. And the most conservative – they had about a thousand people – some in the overflow room, I think that might have been the Democrats.
[Laughter]
Everybody knows that this has to happen. That something different has to happen about politics. I promised them one thing, I said this: ‘I will guarantee you, an absolute promise and I promise you, if you reduce the role of money, and you increase the level of civility, you will elect more women, more minorities, and more young people to public office’ because they won’t have that mountain to climb, of money, and they won’t have to be afraid that their families will not recognize them once they put their hat in the ring for all the things that will be said about them. And so we, we got to take it back, a democracy which our founder intended, a democracy in which a voice and a vote determine the outcome of elections not the bank books or the check books of a very few people. That is called, as I said earlier, an oligarchy, a government of the few, plutocracy, the government of the wealthy. That is not what our country is about.
Our American dream is what attracted many people to our shores. I’ve told all of you, most of you have heard me say this before, but I say it all the time: ‘the American dream is something that is predicated on the idea that we will always make the future better for the next generation and the idea that people came to our shores were attracted by that.’ Their own families, their own families determination to make the future better. That optimism, that hope of immigrants that come to America, that reinvigoration, it reinvigorates America. It makes America more American. And in order for us to be who we are, we have to keep those doors open and that respect flowing.
So, I thank you for the role that you all play in that regard, representing the beautiful diversity of our country and I was proud a few weeks ago to be with some of you when we had the ceremony giving the Congressional Gold medal to our Japanese-Americans who have served, while their families were in camps, they were fighting for America’s freedom and doing so, they fought both the opponents and fought discrimination and made our country stronger. So, thank you for what you all do in that regard.
Thank you, Norman.
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