DACA

Floor Speech

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Mr. President, I think I will shock nobody by telling the Chair that I disagree with almost every policy President Trump has brought forth.

No, I do not believe that we should throw 23 million Americans off of health insurance and give hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks to the top 2 percent. No. I happen to believe that at a time of massive income and wealth inequality, it is high time for the wealthiest people in this country and for large, profitable corporations to start paying their fair share of taxes.

No, I do not believe, as President Trump does, that we should cut Pell grants and food stamps and afterschool programs and Medicaid and nutrition programs for pregnant women and heating assistance programs.
I believe that in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, we must protect those who are the most vulnerable.

No, I do not believe, as President Trump does, that climate change is a hoax. I believe it is the greatest environmental crisis facing our planet and that it is already causing devastating harm throughout our Nation and throughout the world and on and on it goes.

There is very little in public policy on which I agree with the President, but there is one area in which my disagreement with President Trump goes much deeper than public policy. The truth is, every President in recent history, including conservative Presidents like George W. Bush and liberals like Barack Obama, has understood that one of the prime functions of being President of the United States is to bring the people of our country together, whether you are Black or whether you are White or whether you are Latino or whether you are Asian American or whether you are Native American. Every President has instinctively understood that one of the prime responsibilities of a President is to bring our people together as proud Americans.

Unfortunately and tragically, this is something Donald Trump does not understand. At a time when this country faces so many serious crises, whether it is the high cost of healthcare, whether it is climate change, whether it is the proliferation of low-wage jobs and a starvation minimum wage, whether it is the huge national debt we face, whether it is inadequate educational opportunities, whether it is a broken criminal justice system, instead of bringing our people together to address those important issues and trying to solve them, what this President is doing, uniquely in modern history, is trying to divide us up by the color of our skin, by our sexual orientation, by the country we were born in, by our religion.

Instead of bringing us together to solve the many problems we face as a people, he is trying to divide us up in order to gain political support from a segment of our population. He is trying to divide us up based on the color of our skin, which is what his attacks on affirmative action are all about. He is trying to divide us up based on religion, which is what his Muslim ban is all about. We are not supposed to like Muslims. He is trying to divide us up based on sexual orientation, which is what his attacks on transgender individuals serving in the military is about. We are supposed to hate transgender people and discriminate against them, and he is trying to divide us up based on our country of origin and our immigration status.

In my view, Trump's decision to end the DACA Program for some 800,000 young people is the cruelest and most ugly Presidential act in the modern history of this country. I cannot think of one single act which is uglier and more cruel.

These are 800,000 young people--often exemplary young people--the kind of kids we are proud of. These are kids who know this country--the United States of America--as their only home. In fact, many of these young people know English as their only language. These are young people who today are in college, they are in law school, they are in medical school, and they are proudly serving in the U.S. military.

What this President has done is to take away the legal status by which these young people can work and find jobs, go to school, and live without fear. If they don't have that legal status, it means that anytime they walk down the street, they are frightened they could be arrested and deported from this country and separated from their families.

This act, on the part of Donald Trump, is an abomination, and Congress must reject Trump's action and pass DACA into law.

This is exactly what the American people want us to do. A recent poll--I think it came out yesterday--done by Morning Consult and Politico reports that 76 percent of those who were polled said the government should allow immigrants brought to the United States illegally as children to remain here--76 percent. Eighty-four percent of Democrats support the Dreamers having legal status, while 69 percent of Republicans surveyed also favor such a policy.

In another poll in April of 2017, 73 percent of Trump supporters said Dreamers should be allowed to stay in the United States and become legal residents. In other words--and I say this to the young people who are in DACA--please do not think for one moment that you are being deserted by the people of this country. You are not. You are being attacked by a President of the United States who chooses to divide us up, and you are today's victims. Tomorrow it may well be another minority group.

So this is a pivotal moment in American history, and we need to tell those young people that we will not see their legal status removed. We will not see them thrown out of the only country they have ever known.

We need strong, bipartisan support to pass the Dream Act, and I hope we will do that as soon as possible.

Thank you, Mr. President.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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