[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 1]
[Senate]
[Pages 8-10]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         A TIME TO LOOK FORWARD

  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, first, I want to thank my friend the 
majority leader. As this is the first time offering opening remarks 
with the Republican leader, I will speak a little longer than he did 
today. After all, it is my first speech.
  I want to start by extending my sincerest wish to him that we be able 
to work together to get things done for the American people. The 
Republican leader is my friend. He is also a great believer and 
defender of the Senate and the important role it must play in our 
national life and around the world. I look forward to working with him 
to preserve that legacy. Coming from the swearing-in ceremony, as we 
just did, I thank the people of my home State of New York for 
entrusting me with the most sacred obligation to represent them, to be 
their voice in the United States Senate. It has been the honor of my 
life to serve them, to use what ability I have been given on their 
behalf, to endeavor to make their lives and the lives of their fellow 
Americans better, safer, more prosperous, and more free.
  I could never have done this job I love if not for my family, my wife 
Iris and two beautiful daughters, Jessica and Allison, my parents, age 
93 and 88, Abe and Selma, who came down from New York for this 
occasion, and my new son-in-law Shappy. They support me. They keep me 
going through the good times and the bad and, maybe most importantly, 
they tell me when I am wrong. They are my rock and the light of my 
life.
  I would also like to acknowledge, in this my first speech as 
Democratic leader, that I am honored and humbled by my caucus for the 
trust they placed in me to lead them in this new Congress. We are like 
a second family. We watch each other's backs, we seek unity, and like a 
family, while we at times may have disagreements, we always move 
forward together. We are a big, diverse group from all walks of life 
and political perspectives, from all corners of this great country, but 
at the end of the day, we are family. To have earned their trust and 
support means the world, and I will try every day to deserve it.
  To my staff, another second family of mine, thank you. Most of them 
are working, I guess. They are not here anymore. There are so many 
hard-working, dedicated, and brilliant men and women who over the years 
have put their shoulders to the wheel to help New York, this country, 
and me. There are too many to name. I wish I could name them all, but I 
must mention two, Mike Lynch and Martin Brennan, who have been with me 
since the 1998 campaign, the twin pillars of my office. Whatever 
success I have had in my campaigns, it can be traced back to them. So I 
thank them and all of my staff, past and present, from the bottom of my 
heart.
  Finally, although he is no longer a Member of this esteemed body, I 
salute the outgoing leader, my predecessor, mentor, and friend for 
life, Harry Reid. Thank you.
  Now is a time to look forward. We Democrats lost the election. It is 
a result many of us did not expect. It was a result none of us hoped 
for. When you lose an election like this, you can't flinch, you can't 
blink. You have to look it right in the eye, analyze it, learn from it 
and, most importantly, make corrections and move forward. It is easy to 
blame the results and elections on outside forces, and it is true that 
any one of them or a few in combination could have been responsible for 
the outcome of an election which the Democrat candidate won by nearly 3 
million votes but lost by slim margins in a few States that decided the 
electoral college.
  It is easy to look back and place blame, but now is the time to look 
forward. I believe the Democrats must take a hard look at what we can 
do better. It is clear that many Americans felt the economy was rigged 
against them and that their government wasn't looking out for them. It 
was too beholden to Big Money and special interests. Democrats did not 
do enough to show American workers we are the party that has their 
backs, that our positions are much more in line with their needs than 
the Republican positions, and so, as we look to this new Congress and a 
new Presidency, Senate Democrats will once again recommit ourselves to 
a set of principles that has always been at the core of our party, what 
my beloved friend and mentor Senator Ted Kennedy called economic 
justice. It is what our party has stood for since the days of Thomas 
Jefferson and Andrew Jackson through FDR, whose enduring New Deal is 
now almost a century old. It has been reaffirmed and deepened by 
passionate advocates like Susan B. Anthony, Cesar Chavez, and Martin 
Luther King, Jr., a commitment to the common man, to economic fairness 
for the American worker, to opportunity and prosperity for the American 
middle class and those trying to get there.
  What is needed from we Democrats is a bigger, bolder, sharper-edged 
economic program that addresses how those struggling to stay in the 
middle class can stay there and those struggling to make it into the 
middle class can get there more easily and deals directly with the 
unfairness so many see and experience in our economic system. That is a 
mission that unites our caucus, from my friend from West Virginia, 
Senator Manchin, to my friend from Vermont, Senator Sanders, and one 
that appeals to the blue-collar worker in West Virginia and Michigan 
just as deeply as the college student from Los Angeles who is 
struggling with student debt. It appeals to the factory worker in the 
heartland just as much as to the immigrant family in New York City and 
the single mom in Cleveland trying to make ends meet on minimum wage.
  There are a great many things we Democrats would like to do in the 
Senate to help these people, to ease the burden on the middle class and 
those struggling to make it--creating more jobs by investing in 
infrastructure and education, science and medicine, making college more 
affordable, increasing the minimum wage, changing our trade laws and so 
much more.
  We will be making proposals we hope our Republican colleagues will 
join us on. As the year wears on, and it becomes clear that Democratic 
proposals are what the American people want and need, I hope many will. 
But we are not in the majority. Therefore, we cannot delude anyone that 
this Congress will start tomorrow taking up priorities of the 
Democratic minority. But we can raise our voices to present an 
alternative way forward, and we can rally the American people to 
support this program.
  As Republicans return majorities to both Houses of Congress and we 
prepare for a Republican in the White House, the Democratic minority in 
the Senate has a very important task ahead of it.
  There are those who suggest our baseline posture should be to work 
with the President-elect and have him pass his whole agenda, but it is 
not our job to be a rubberstamp. It is our job to do what is best for 
the American people, the middle class, and those struggling to get 
there. For instance, if the President-elect proposes legislation on 
issues like infrastructure and trade and closing the carried interest 
loophole, we will work in good faith to perfect and potentially enact 
it, but when he doesn't, we will resist. What we will always do is hold 
the President-elect and his Republican colleagues in Congress 
accountable--accountable to the working people to whom the President-
elect promised so much; accountable to the people of all colors, creeds 
and sexual orientations in this country for whom he is President; 
accountable to the millions of Americans who voted for him even though 
many of the Republican

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policies he now, postelection, seems to be embracing are inimical to 
their interests; and perhaps most importantly, accountable to the law.
  The Senate has a rich, bipartisan tradition of being a constitutional 
check on Presidents of both parties. Many in this body have long 
observed that in America we are a nation of laws, not men. That sacred 
constitutional duty of holding the President accountable to the law 
must continue, and Democrats will make sure of it. Sometimes it will 
mean pointing out where rhetoric and reality diverge, and sometimes it 
will mean resisting the President and Republicans in Congress when they 
propose legislation that we believe will hurt the American people. This 
will be an accountable Congress, and we will be a caucus that makes 
sure the President-elect keeps his commitment to truly make America 
great again in its finest sense and tradition.
  We know what makes America great, a fundamental optimism, a belief 
that the future will bring every child more opportunity than their 
parents, a conviction that this American dream can be shared by all of 
us, regardless of race or gender or sexual orientation. We will hold 
President-Elect Trump accountable to the values that truly make America 
great, but we will fight him tooth and nail when he appeals to the 
baser instincts that diminish America and its greatness, instincts that 
have too often plagued this country and too often plagued his campaign, 
and we will have benchmarks throughout the campaign. The President-
elect said he could push GDP growth to 5 percent or 6 percent. He 
complained that the real unemployment rate was too high and he would 
bring it down. We will hold him accountable to that. What does he think 
he can achieve in a year or two or four? What policies does he propose 
to achieve those goals? He promised to be much tougher on China, even 
though many Republicans for years have resisted legislation in Congress 
to do that. We will hold him accountable for it and demand he keep his 
promise. He promised to protect Social Security and Medicare, but 
tapped an avowed critic of Medicare, a man who has spent his career 
advocating for its demise as his Secretary of Health and Human 
Services. We demand that he keep his promise not to cut Social Security 
or Medicare. He says he wants to build a strong America and earn 
respect around the world but seems to be marching in lockstep with the 
bullying, despicable autocrat who has caused a great deal of trouble 
around the globe and here in America, Vladimir Putin. We will hold him 
accountable to that.
  We will hold the President accountable if he doesn't nominate a 
mainstream Supreme Court Justice. President Obama nominated a 
mainstream candidate in Merrick Garland. President-Elect Trump should 
do the same. The President-elect said a great many things about 
rebuilding our infrastructure. Democrats welcome that discussion, but 
how is he going to do it? We have thousands of bridges and tunnels and 
highways and schools, waste water systems, airports in need of repair, 
not only in our big cities but in rural and suburban communities 
throughout America. A program of tax credits isn't going to get the job 
done no matter how large. We need significant direct spending. How does 
the President-elect plan to get that done? The President-elect has said 
there are several parts of the Affordable Care Act he favors. We will 
hold him accountable to that. The ACA extended affordable health care 
to 30 million Americans. We ask the President-elect, if you repeal the 
ACA, what are you going to do to protect these 30 million people? How 
are you going to ensure that a kid right out of college can stay on his 
parent's or her parent's plan, that the mother with a child who has a 
preexisting condition can get health care for her child, that women 
everywhere are not charged more for their care simply because they are 
a woman? It is not acceptable to repeal the law, throw our health care 
system into chaos, and then leave the hard work for another day.
  Mr. President-elect, what is your plan to make sure all Americans can 
get affordable health care? We will hold the President-elect 
accountable for actually creating jobs and raising incomes, growing our 
economy and lowering our trade deficit, for protecting voting rights 
and civil rights, for safeguarding our clean air and clean water, for 
maintaining our commitment to our Nation's veterans and troops and 
their families, for giving that worker in Michigan, that college 
student in L.A., that single mother in Cleveland a real opportunity and 
a ladder up. What could be fairer? After all, his biggest and most 
consistent pledge was that he would, ``Make America Great,'' make the 
lives of Americans better. We, the Democrats of this Senate, will hold 
him accountable to that, and we will resist him if he breaks that 
promise. While we respect the Office of the Presidency, we will not 
hesitate for a moment to call out the person occupying that office if 
he demeans women or Muslims or Latinos or our friends in the LGBT 
community, and if allies or aides to the President demean a group of 
Americans, we will not hesitate for a moment to demand that our new 
President condemn these comments, not sidestep them, not simply 
distance himself from them, condemn them, pointedly and roundly, as 
Presidents of both parties--every President of both parties--have done 
throughout the decades. We will hold President-Elect Trump accountable 
to the finest instincts of what America has always stood for, e 
pluribus unum.
  The bottom line is, the President-elect ran as a change agent. He ran 
against the establishments of both parties. He promised to change the 
way America operates, to oppose elites, drain the swamp, pay attention 
to working families, but, my friends, since the election, he seems to 
have forgotten that.
  Looking at the Cabinet, which is stacked with billionaires, corporate 
executives, titans of Wall Street, and those deeply embedded in 
Washington's corridor of power, it seems that many of his campaign 
themes are quickly being abandoned.
  He said he was going to unrig the system. So far, it still looks 
rigged. Too many of his Cabinet picks support the same hard-right 
doctrinaire positions that many in the Republican Party have held for 
years, policies that the American people have repeatedly rejected. If 
President-Elect Trump lets the hard-right Members of Congress and his 
Cabinet run the show, if he attempts to adopt their timeworn policies 
which benefit the elite, the special interests, and corporate America, 
not the working man and woman, his Presidency will not succeed--maybe 
not in the first 90 days but certainly in the first 2 years. 
Unfortunately, that seems to be the path he is following throughout the 
transition.
  So Mr. President-Elect, if there is one part of my speech that I hope 
you listen to and take to heart it is this one. I mean it with the best 
of intentions. If you abandon change and simply embrace the shopworn, 
hard-right, pro-corporate, pro-elite policies diametrically opposed to 
the many campaign themes that helped you win working class votes and 
get you elected, your Presidency will not succeed.
  We Democrats will hold you accountable to the working people of 
America, not to the conservative ideologues in Washington who seem to 
have great number in your Cabinet. We will hold your feet to the fire 
every time you abandon your pledge and work instead as an ally of the 
hard right.
  The issues facing this country are many. We have a lot of work to 
do--creating jobs, raising incomes, making college and health care 
affordable, rebuilding our infrastructure, making trade laws work for 
the American worker, keeping Americans safe from threats of violence 
and terrorism, taking care of our vets. Each one takes serious thought 
and action. These issues are too important for mere words.
  Our challenge is too entrenched for mere tweeting. Making America 
great again requires more than 140 characters per issue. With all due 
respect, America cannot afford a Twitter Presidency. We have real 
challenges, and we have real needs to get things done. Many Americans 
are afraid, Mr. President-Elect, that instead of rolling up your 
sleeves and forging serious policies, for you, Twitter suffices.

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  There is nothing wrong with using Twitter to speak to the American 
people. It is a good use of modern media. But these issues are complex 
and command both careful consideration and action. We cannot tweet them 
away. For instance, a tweet bragging about the 800 jobs that were saved 
at the Carrier plant does not solve the underlying problem. While it is 
good the 800 jobs were saved, even at Carrier, 1,300 jobs are still 
leaving. Hundreds more jobs are leaving from the nearby Rexnord plant 
down the road; they are going overseas.
  Most importantly, thousands more jobs each month leave our shores 
from every part of America. Tweeting about 800 jobs you saved is not a 
remanufacturing policy. That is not an economic policy. We are going to 
hold the President-elect accountable for a real policy to stop jobs 
from leaving this country, not just one half of one plant, not just one 
tweet, even if Republicans in Congress oppose it.
  Similarly, tweeting ``very smart'' to Vladimir Putin for ignoring 
American sanctions is not foreign policy. America does not conduct 
foreign policy by tweet, least of all by flattering Putin after our 
intelligence agencies have confirmed that Russia interfered in our 
election.
  Conducting foreign policy by tweet while spurning vital intelligence 
briefings that lay out the real emerging threats around the world 
should alarm Democrats and Republicans alike. It is utterly amazing 
that our Republican colleagues who have spent years lambasting 
President Obama for not being tough enough on Putin are now, with a few 
rare exceptions, utterly silent on this and so many other issues.
  The President-elect must be held accountable on both sides of the 
aisle. On January 20, we will not be on reality TV; we will be in 
reality. We Democrats will make sure government works for every 
American in reality, not just on TV and on Twitter.
  So to those who wonder what the Democratic minority will do in the 
115th Congress, the answer is simple: We will fight for our principles, 
we will fight for our values, and we shall fulfill our solemn 
constitutional duty to hold the other branches of government 
accountable.
  To the extent that the President-elect and the Republican majority 
pursue policies that help America and are consistent with our values, 
we stand ready and willing to work with them. But if they propose 
policies that will hurt America, deny health care, cut their benefits, 
unleash irresponsible Wall Street risk-taking at the expense of 
consumers, their efforts will crash and break apart like waves upon the 
rocks of the Senate minority. That is our challenge. That is our 
charge. We rise to meet it.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Barrasso). The Senator from Texas.

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