Congressional Record, Volume 165 Issue 129 (Tuesday, July 30, 2019)

[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 129 (Tuesday, July 30, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5167-S5170]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

Trump Administration

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I am here on the Senate floor today
with my friend and colleague, the senior Senator from the State of
Maryland, Mr. Cardin, and I think we both agree that we would rather
not be here today to talk about this subject. But I feel compelled to
come to the Senate floor today because, in my view, we have a duty to
speak out when the President of the United States of America engages in
conduct that brings dishonor and disgrace to the Office of the
Presidency. That is what we witnessed, once again, over the weekend
when President Trump unleashed a torrent of personal, nasty, and racist
attacks on Congressman Elijah Cummings and the city of Baltimore, and
President Trump has continued his poisonous barrage for days.
Congressman Cummings can defend himself. He grew up having to
confront racist bullies. In the face of these attacks, he has shown
great strength and great integrity--the same strength and integrity he
has brought to his efforts to fight for his dear city of Baltimore, his
entire congressional district, and his constituents over many years.
Baltimore is a great American city with great people, great spirit,
and great heart. Yes, of course, Baltimore faces many challenges. It is
facing those challenges with determination, with unity, and with grit.
The President's attacks on this great American city have only served to
rally the people of Baltimore, the people of Maryland, and, in fact,
the people of the United States of America to support the city and the
people of Baltimore.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record
an op-ed that appeared in the Baltimore Sun today entitled ``Baltimore
leaders: `Proud not only to be in Baltimore, but of Baltimore.' ''
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:

[From the Baltimore Sun, July 30, 2019]

Baltimore Leaders: `Proud Not Only To Be in Baltimore, but of
Baltimore'

(By Ronald J. Daniels and Kevin Plank)

We are proud and privileged to call Baltimore home.
Baltimore is a city of creativity, optimism, and
determination. Home to leading public and private research
universities, world-class medical institutions, and a diverse
business community, Baltimore is a city where both artists
and start-ups thrive. From creating one of the nation's first
racially integrated library systems to producing today's
modern medical and technological breakthroughs, our city has
a proud legacy of leadership in improving lives and setting a
national example for a stronger tomorrow. It's no wonder we
are often named as a place where millennials are moving and
staying. This is a city where people not only want to live,
but love to live.
That is why we, as leaders of 10 of Baltimore's anchor
institutions, reject the recent unfair and ungenerous
characterizations of our great city and its region. Like so
many cities across America, Baltimore is a place of paradox,
at once vibrant and full of promise and yet also burdened by
the weight of generations of racial and economic inequities,
deindustrialization, and disinvestment. Like other cities of
our size and history, we face urgent challenges with crime,
housing equity and our education system. But like all
Americans, Baltimoreans deserve respect, support and
steadfast partnership from elected officials at every level.
Baltimore is not and will not be defined by our challenges.
What defines us is that we continually meet those challenges
with resilience and persistence, that we invest in innovation
for Baltimore and for the nation, and that we harness the
talent of so many exceptional individuals to create
opportunity not for the few, but for the many.
Baltimore's remarkable people include icons past and
present like Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall; the
longest serving woman in Congress, Sen. Barbara Mikulski; and
Rep. Elijah Cummings, outspoken advocate for all his
constituents, from west Baltimore to Catonsville and beyond.
These leaders are known not only for their deep commitment to
our city and communities, but for their stature and public
service on the national stage.
We see the promise of Baltimore because we are fortunate to
work, serve and live here, alongside our colleagues,
employees, students and neighbors. Such promise is proven
daily in our shared commitment to our city's growth and the
success of its residents. Baltimore fosters talent in its
strong academic institutions and has seen rising venture
capital investment in its businesses--a testament to the
dynamism and innovative spirit of our businesses large and
small. Our leading businesses and non-profits, called upon
and supported by our vibrant faith community, launched
BLocal, a targeted economic investment and community
development plan that over three years has invested more than
$280 million and hired more than 1,700 Baltimore residents in
underserved neighborhoods. BLocal expresses to the fullest
the deep and long-term investment of the city's anchor
institutions.
We never move forward as a community--or indeed, a nation--
by denigrating each other. Nor does it serve any of us to
demean a vibrant city and its citizens who exemplify those
most American of qualities: can-do optimism, grit and
creativity.
Justice Thurgood Marshall wisely counseled that ``In
recognizing the humanity of our fellow beings, we pay
ourselves the highest tribute.'' And as this city has shown,
time and again, when we work together, we rise together. For
this and so many reasons we are proud not only to be in
Baltimore, but of Baltimore.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. This is signed by many of the leaders in our
community, including the President of Johns Hopkins University; the
head of Under Armour, a great American company; the head of a number of
major companies in the city of Baltimore; the Casey Foundation; Morgan
State University, a great HBCU; Eddie Brown, one of our great civic
leaders; and many other leaders of Baltimore--diverse leaders who have
come together to stand up with pride for the city of Baltimore.
I would like to read to the Senate what they say in the first
paragraph:

I want to pay particular attention to these next sentences:

It's no wonder we are often named as a place where
millennials are moving and staying. This is a city where
people not only want to live, but love to live.

If you come to Baltimore today, you will, in fact, find lots of young
people from other parts of the country coming to settle, work, and
raise their families in this great American city. The President may say
that nobody wants to live in Baltimore, but the facts show a very
different story about young people--young people who understand that
they have a great future in Baltimore and are moving to that great
city.
Of course, it is true that Baltimore faces a series of problems. In
Baltimore we have had a legacy of racial discrimination and
segregation.
I would like to read from yesterday's editorial in the Baltimore Sun.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record
the editorial from the Baltimore Sun, dated July 29, 2019.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:

[[Page S5168]]

[From the Baltimore Sun, July 29, 2019]

Cummings Didn't Cause Baltimore's Woes; It Was People Who Profited From
Racism. Sound Familiar, Mr. Trump?

(By Baltimore Sun Editorial Board)

It's not our job to defend Rep. Elijah Cummings from
President Donald Trump's Twitter rants. For one thing, he's
quite capable of doing it on his own, and for another, our
role isn't to offer blind loyalty to political leaders of any
party but to hold them to account. Likewise, we're not in the
business of defending Baltimore from any and all criticism.
Our city has problems, big ones, and we don't shy away from
them, nor do we give any politicians a pass for failing to do
as much as humanly possible to fix them. But we are sticklers
for facts and perspective, and in case anybody is still
interested in those things, we have a few that are worth
mentioning.
Mr. Cummings has not single-handedly solved Baltimore's
racial and class inequities, its injustices, its blight, its
epidemics of lead poisoning and asthma, its violence or,
indeed, its problems with rats. And he has been in office for
a long time, more than 30 years between Congress and the
Maryland House of Delegates. But Baltimore's problems go back
a lot farther than that.
President Trump, whose early career was marred by a federal
housing discrimination suit, may be interested to know that
Baltimore was something of a pioneer in that regard. It
enacted the first housing segregation ordinances, which were
soon invalidated by the Supreme Court, leading to subtler and
more nefarious tactics. Racially restrictive covenants,
privately enforced, prevented the sale of homes in certain
neighborhoods to minorities. Redlining prevented minorities
from getting financing to buy homes in white neighborhoods.
And blockbusting made rich the unscrupulous men who
capitalized on racism and fear to drive white flight. They
profiteered on blacks who sought security and better
opportunities but instead found themselves exploited and
impoverished.
Those days aren't nearly so far in the past as we might
like to think. Just seven years ago, Baltimore settled a
landmark lending discrimination suit against Wells Fargo,
which steered minority borrowers into subprime mortgages--the
sort of abuse the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which
Mr. Trump has eviscerated, might have prevented. Landlords in
Baltimore continue to take advantage of rules stacked in
their favor to evict low-income (and frequently minority)
tenants; in a particularly egregious example, the Kushner
Cos. (as in Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner) has aggressively
sought to jail tenants who fall behind on their rent.
As whites moved to the suburbs, sped along the way by
massive investments in new highways, water and sewer systems,
schools and other public amenities, Baltimore City's
infrastructure began to crumble. Neighborhoods like those in
the East and West Baltimore portions of Mr. Cummings'
district became increasingly isolated from economic and
educational opportunities. (Mr. Cummings was among the
Baltimore leaders who sought to address that problem through
the development of a new light rail line connecting those
neighborhoods to employment centers including the Social
Security Administration and Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical
Center, but Gov. Larry Hogan, who over the weekend responded
to Mr. Trump's tweets by calling Baltimore ``the very heart
of the state'' and on Monday by asking why politicians aren't
``focused on solving the problems and getting to work,''
killed the project.)
Meanwhile, back in the '90s, Democrats and Republicans both
discovered that espousing zero-tolerance policing was great
politics, so long as it was enforced disproportionately
against blacks and Hispanics in the nation's cities and not
against whites in suburban and rural communities. Plenty of
people share blame for that, including former Vice President
Joe Biden and former Maryland Gov. (and former Baltimore
mayor) Martin O'Malley. But not a lot of them continue to
espouse the notion that locking more people up for minor
offenses or stopping and frisking people on the streets are
good ideas, as the Trump administration has done.
The Obama administration tried to do something about the
pockets of concentrated poverty in American cities (and
Baltimore specifically) by using federal housing policy to
affirmatively foster desegregation, something the Fair
Housing Act had called for 50 years before, but Mr. Trump's
HUD secretary, Baltimore's own Ben Carson, has been working
to dismantle those efforts.
We will agree with President Trump on one thing, though. We
wish Mr. Cummings weren't so focused on investigating the
Trump administration. We wish, for example, that immigrant
children weren't being held in inhumane conditions at the
border, that the White House complied with congressional
subpoenas, that administration officials weren't conducting
public business on private email accounts or that the
president of the United States didn't look on the office as a
giant profit center for himself and his family. If not for
things like that, Mr. Cummings' role as chairman of the House
Committee on Oversight and Reform would probably take up much
less of his time.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Here is what yesterday's Baltimore Sun editorial
states:

President Trump, whose early career was marred by a federal
housing discrimination suit, may be interested to know that
Baltimore was something of a pioneer in that regard. It
enacted the first housing segregation ordinances, which were
soon invalidated by the Supreme Court, leading to subtler and
more nefarious tactics. Racially restrictive covenants,
privately enforced, prevented the sale of homes in certain
neighborhoods to minorities. Redlining prevented minorities
from getting financing to buy homes in white neighborhoods.
And blockbusting made rich the unscrupulous men who
capitalized on racism and fear to drive white flight. They
profiteered on blacks who sought security and better
opportunities but instead found themselves exploited and
impoverished.

They go on to make the point:

Those days aren't nearly so far in the past as we might
like to think. Just seven years ago, Baltimore settled a
landmark lending discrimination suit against Wells Fargo,
which steered minority borrowers into subprime mortgages--the
sort of abuse the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which
Mr. Trump has eviscerated, might have prevented. Landlords in
Baltimore continue to take advantage of rules stacked in
their favor to evict low-income (and frequently minority)
tenants; in a particularly egregious example, the Kushner
Cos. (as in Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner) has aggressively
sought to jail tenants who fall behind on their rent.

We do have a legacy of discrimination in Baltimore City to overcome.
The President, instead of challenging that legacy, has decided to pile
on in the manner he did with his comments.
I know that Baltimore will rise above this. I know the city is
resilient, and I know this great city's greatest days are still ahead
as we tackle that legacy and move on to the future. But I think we as a
body--both Republicans and Democrats alike--have an obligation to also
stand up for our country. We cannot allow these kind of remarks out of
the Oval Office to go unanswered. We cannot allow silence when the
President of the United States challenges the very idea of what it
means to be American, which is a place where people of all different
backgrounds, all different races, and all different religions can come
together: ``E pluribus unum.'' The President wants to drive a stake in
that idea. He wants to divide the country, and we cannot be silent
while he soils the Oval Office.
I ask all of us to speak out, wherever we are, when we see this kind
of attack by the President of the United States. It is wrong for our
country. It is bad for our country. It is a disgrace to the Oval
Office.
The one thing I can say is that, in the face of that disgrace,
Baltimore has shown great dignity, incredible dignity, the dignity of a
city of people who see a wonderful future ahead, and we should all work
together to make that future as bright as possible.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record
an article from today's Baltimore Sun editorial board.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:

[July 30, 2019]

Better To Have a Few Rats Than To Be One

(By Baltimore Sun Editorial Board)

In case anyone missed it, the president of the United
States had some choice words to describe Maryland's 7th
congressional district on Saturday morning. Here are the key
phrases: ``no human being would want to live there,'' it is a
``very dangerous & filthy place,'' ``Worst in the USA'' and,
our personal favorite: It is a ``rat and rodent infested
mess.'' He wasn't really speaking of the 7th as a whole. He
failed to mention Ellicott City, for example, or Baldwin or
Monkton or Prettyboy, all of which are contained in the
sprawling yet oddly-shaped district that runs from western
Howard County to southern Harford County. No, Donald Trump's
wrath was directed at Baltimore and specifically at Rep.
Elijah Cummings, the 68-year-old son of a former South
Carolina sharecropper who has represented the district in the
U.S. House of Representatives since 1996.
It's not hard to see what's going on here. The congressman
has been a thorn in this president's side, and Mr. Trump sees
attacking African American members of Congress as good
politics, as it both warms the cockles of the white
supremacists who love him and causes so many of the
thoughtful people who don't to scream. President Trump bad-
mouthed Baltimore in order to make a point that the border
camps are ``clean, efficient & well run,'' which, of course,
they are not--unless you are fine with all the overcrowding,
squalor, cages and deprivation to be found in what the
Department of Homeland Security's own inspector-general
recently called ``a ticking time bomb.''

[[Page S5169]]

In pointing to the 7th, the president wasn't hoping his
supporters would recognize landmarks like Johns Hopkins
Hospital, perhaps the nation's leading medical center. He
wasn't conjuring images of the U.S. Social Security
Administration, where they write the checks that so many
retired and disabled Americans depend upon. It wasn't about
the beauty of the Inner Harbor or the proud history of Fort
McHenry. And it surely wasn't about the economic standing of
a district where the median income is actually above the
national average. No, he was returning to an old standby of
attacking an African American lawmaker from a majority black
district on the most emotional and bigoted of arguments. It
was only surprising that there wasn't room for a few classic
phrases like ``you people'' or ``welfare queens'' or ``crime-
ridden ghettos'' or a suggestion that the congressman ``go
back'' to where he came from.
This is a president who will happily debase himself at the
slightest provocation. And given Mr. Cummings' criticisms of
U.S. border policy, the various investigations he has
launched as chairman of the House Oversight Committee, his
willingness to call Mr. Trump a racist for his recent attacks
on the freshmen congresswomen, and the fact that ``Fox &
Friends'' had recently aired a segment critical of the city,
slamming Baltimore must have been irresistible in a Pavlovian
way. Fox News rang the bell, the president salivated and his
thumbs moved across his cell phone into action.
As heartening as it has been to witness public figures rise
to Charm City's defense on Saturday, from native daughter
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Mayor Bernard C. ``Jack''
Young, we would above all remind Mr. Trump that the 7th
District, Baltimore included, is part of the United States
that he is supposedly governing. The White House has far more
power to effect change in this city, for good or ill, than
any single member of Congress including Mr. Cummings. If
there are problems here, rodents included, they are as much
his responsibility as anyone's, perhaps more because he holds
the most powerful office in the land.
Finally, while we would not sink to name-calling in the
Trumpian manner--or ruefully point out that he failed to
spell the congressman's name correctly (it's Cummings, not
Cumming)--we would tell the most dishonest man to ever occupy
the Oval Office, the mocker of war heroes, the gleeful
grabber of women's private parts, the serial bankrupter of
businesses, the useful idiot of Vladimir Putin and the guy
who insisted there are ``good people'' among murderous neo-
Nazis that he's still not fooling most Americans into
believing he's even slightly competent in his current post.
Or that he possesses a scintilla of integrity. Better to have
some vermin living in your neighborhood than to be one.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. With that, I yield to the senior Senator from
Maryland, my friend, Ben Cardin.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.
Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, first, I thank Senator Van Hollen, my
seatmate and friend representing the State of Maryland in the U.S.
Senate. His comments reflect the views, I hope, of the overwhelmingly
majority of Americans. It is critically important that we speak out as
to what the President has said.
I have lived my entire life in Baltimore. I love Baltimore. It is a
great city. As Senator Van Hollen has said, it has an incredible
history. It is a vibrant city. There are so many good things happening
there. It has a great future, and it needs our help from the point of
view of any major urban center in America.
On weekends, my wife and I will frequently walk areas of Baltimore
City in order to get some exercise, to clear our heads from the
workweek, and to see what is happening in Baltimore. I must tell you
that it is so energizing to see the building cranes in downtown
Baltimore building new housing for our young people coming into our
city because they know the economic future of Baltimore. They are there
because they want to live in an exciting place in Baltimore City.
We see the optimism on their faces as they are doing their exercise
in the morning and walking the streets of Baltimore. We see a great
city that is continuing to rebuild in a modern economy. So when the
President of the United States insults the city of Baltimore and
Congressman Cummings, it is incumbent on all of us to speak out and
tell the President: This is unacceptable.
We know the Office of the President is frequently referred to as a
bully pulpit that he can use, but the President of the United States
cannot be a bully. Yet that is exactly what he is doing, trying to
bully minorities and others in this country. It will not work.
The bully is not Elijah Cummings, as President Trump called him. The
bully is President Trump. The person who is dividing our country is
President Trump, and he should be the one bringing us together.
Why does he do this? I don't think any of us believe that he isn't
doing it for political reasons. He wants to distract from what is
happening in this country. In the Congress of the United States,
Congressman Cummings is leading a committee that has the responsibility
of checks and balances of our system to act as a check on the President
of the United States.
Does anybody in this Chamber believe there shouldn't be a check and
balance in our system on this President? Look at how he has used his
Executive powers and abused his Executive powers and the emergency
declarations that he has used.
The Mueller report spells out how the President tried to interfere in
the investigation. The way he talks about our judiciary, saying that he
is not going to follow the orders of our court, and the way he trashes
our free press--all of that cries out for an aggressive check and
balance on the independent first branch of government, and that is what
Elijah Cummings is doing.
So why is the President using these personal attacks against Elijah
Cummings and the city he represents, Baltimore? To try to distract from
the legitimate role Congress plays as a check and balance on the powers
of President Trump.
It won't work. I can assure you that Congressman Cummings is going to
continue to do his work. His committee is going to continue to do its
work. I am going to continue to do my work as a U.S. Senator, and
Senator Van Hollen is going to continue to do what is right to make
sure we carry out our constitutional responsibilities.
He also does this, quite frankly, for a political appeal against
minority communities. That is inexcusable for any American, but for the
President of the United States, it is totally outrageous.
As Senator Van Hollen said, we don't have to defend Elijah Cummings.
He can defend himself.
I have known Elijah Cummings now for about 40 years. When I was
speaker of the house of delegates in Annapolis, there was a young, new
legislator who came upon the scene--Elijah Cummings. I recognized from
the beginning that he was going to be a great leader, and he showed
that in his very early years. He rose to become speaker pro tempore of
our house of delegates, and he was a leading voice as a member of the
house of delegates.
You see, we had something in common. Both Elijah Cummings and I
graduated from the same public high school in Baltimore City, Baltimore
City College. By the way, so did Dutch Ruppersberger and three members
of Congress--from the same public high school in Baltimore City. We
both attended the same law school, the University of Maryland School of
Law.
So I recognized from the beginning that there was a lot in common,
and I wanted to help this young legislator. He then, of course, ran for
Congress. He was elected to Congress, and he has done an incredible
job. He is a gifted orator. He motivates people by his speech. He is a
mentor for young people, and he has helped so many young people with
their lives.
He lives in Baltimore City in a neighborhood where he is an
inspiration to people who otherwise would not have much hope. He has
used his own life experiences to lift the lives of others, and, yes, I
can tell you the record of so many accomplishments that he has.
Just this past week, along with Senator Van Hollen, we announced a
$125 million grant for the Howard Street tunnel for which Congressman
Cummings played a critical role in getting those funds. That is going
to mean thousands of jobs for Baltimore and economic opportunity for
our region. That is just one example.
In the revitalization of Penn Station, Amtrak is going to invest $90
million in revitalizing that part of Baltimore. Elijah Cummings was
instrumental in getting that done.
In the Ellicott City flood--two floods within a 20-month period--it
was part of his congressional district. President Trump doesn't quite
understand how Congressman Cummings' district is redistricted, but he
represents Ellicott City. He was on the scene immediately and helped
bring in all of the Federal partners so that Ellicott City could beat
the odds.

[[Page S5170]]

When you have a major flood like that, most businesses don't return.
In Ellicott City, they returned. Why? Because of the Federal
partnership in which Elijah Cummings played a critical role, as well as
other members of our congressional delegation.
Affordable housing--Congressman Cummings has brought affordable
housing to Baltimore.
Public safety--after Freddie Gray, I will never forget the scene I
was watching on the television screen. We saw the riots and the
disruption that started in Baltimore. There was Elijah Cummings on the
streets, calming things down and saving lives. That is what he was
doing to represent his community. That is the type of legislator he is.
He has provided support for public safety in Baltimore, for public
education in Baltimore, and for STEM education in Baltimore City public
schools.
So, President Trump, when you say this guy hasn't done his work to
represent the people in the Seventh Congressional District, you are
absolutely wrong. Come to Baltimore. Let us show you exactly what we
have been able to accomplish and how you can help us, but don't defame
our city. You are the President of the United States. Act as President.
Bring us together. Recognize that you are responsible for this entire
country, and help us with the reputation of Baltimore.
Again, I don't have to defend my city. My city is well known. It is
one of the great cities in America, but I am going to do it anyway
because I want my colleagues to understand how proud we are of our
city, those of us who represent the State of Maryland and represent
Baltimore City.
There is the Nation's first Washington Monument, the National
Aquarium, Oriole Park, M&T Bank, Fort McHenry. Talk about Enoch Pratt
library, one of the great libraries in America that gave free libraries
to the people of our city. There is Eubie Blake National Jazz Institute
and Cultural Center.
I could go through all the museums we have in Baltimore: the American
Visionary Art Museum; the Baltimore Museum of Art; the Baltimore Museum
of Industry; Walters Art Gallery; the Jewish Museum of Maryland; Babe
Ruth's birthplace--born in Baltimore; the Reginald F. Lewis Museum; and
the B&O Railroad Museum. How many of us have been there? The great
history of the railroads in Baltimore started there. There is the
Maryland Science Center.
There are great sports icons that have come out of Baltimore--from
Johnny Unitas to Frank Robinson, to Brooks Robinson, Cal Ripken, and
Ray Lewis.
We have great healthcare institutions--Johns Hopkins. I just got an
email as I was sitting on the floor. I know the rules of the Senate
prohibit me from looking at my electronic device, but U.S. News & World
Report today ranked the Johns Hopkins department of neurology No. 1 in
the Nation. It is located in Baltimore City, MD.
We can go over the other great institutions we have, such as the
University of Maryland Medical Center, the Kennedy Krieger Institute,
and the Lieber Institute for Brain Development.
We have great colleges, from Morgan State University to the
University of Maryland School of Law, to Loyola University, Johns
Hopkins University, Baltimore Coppin State, Notre Dame of Maryland
University.
The list goes on and on: farmers markets and public markets; trend-
setting writers from John Waters to David Simon, Tom Clancy, and Barry
Levinson; the unique neighborhoods from ``Lil' Itlee'' to Pigtown.
Baltimore is well known. The Taste of Baltimore--how many of you know
that the only place you can get a really legitimate crab cake is in
Baltimore City? We all know that. And there are Old Bay Seasoning,
Berger Cookies, and Goetze's Candies.
There is the Port of Baltimore, the economic heart of our State;
Domino Sugar; and Under Armour, which is investing hundreds of millions
of dollars into Baltimore City because they know the future.
There are the NGOs that are centered in Baltimore--the Annie E. Casey
Foundation, Abell Foundation, Center for Urban Families, Catholic
Relief Services, and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services.
I do this in hopes that the President might be listening so that he
can learn a little bit about why we are so proud of Baltimore City.
What we do ask is very simple. To the President: Come and learn about
our urban centers and how you can help us in meeting the problems that
we have in Baltimore and many urban cities around the Nation. We need a
Federal partner who will help us with our economic growth and help us
meet the challenges of the future.
It is exciting to live in Baltimore, and it is exciting to see our
city grow. I am proud to be a Baltimorean, and I am proud to represent
Baltimore in the U.S. Senate.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.
Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I thank my colleague, Senator Cardin,
for talking about some of the highlights of Baltimore City and the
storied history of Baltimore City. It is a history of much good but
also a lot of challenges that I recounted earlier. It doesn't do
Baltimore City or any city in this country any good when the person in
the highest office in this country launches these nasty, personal,
racial diatribes.
I know the President had a history of these kinds of comments before
he came to the Oval Office. But now that he is in the Oval Office, all
of us have an obligation and responsibility to speak out when he fouls
the office in that way.
If the President really wants to help cities like Baltimore, he can
do some of the things Senator Cardin talked about. On a bipartisan
basis in the Appropriations Committee, we are working to make
investments that will help that city and many other cities with things
like the CDBG--community development block grants--things like economic
development administration proposals, things like financing through
CDFIs, and things like minority business enterprises. Those are four
investments. They don't solve the problems, but they certainly help.
Here is the thing. In President Trump's budget, zero--he zeroed out
every single one of those programs.
I propose a major additional investment in our schools throughout
this country, including title I schools, which are schools in lower
income areas. That would be a huge boost to education throughout the
country and to the city of Baltimore.
As Senator Cardin said, we need to make investments in our national
infrastructure. We have a great, thriving port in Baltimore with good-
paying jobs, so we need to expand it.
There are so many things we can and should be doing, but the
President, apparently, according to many, has this political strategy
where he doesn't want to talk about those things. It is a political
strategy that seeks to divide this country, not to unite this country.
If you think about that, that is a pretty sick political strategy. It
is sick for the country, sick for Maryland, and sick for Baltimore.
So I hope all of us will work to focus on the things we can do to
make Baltimore and Maryland and this country stronger and end this kind
of divisive rhetoric. Part of ending it means speaking out against it
when we see it. We need everybody in this body to join us in doing it.
Again, I think when it comes to the city of Baltimore, it is going to
rise way above the President's comments. It understands it has
challenges, but it also understands it has a great future. Let us--all
together--be part of a great future for Baltimore and this country, and
that means coming together to serve the interests of all of our
constituents.
I thank the Senate for the time Senator Cardin and I have had here.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.