Transcripts For CSPAN Minority 20240706

One thing i found about government we did not want to be here as i said before. We made the circle smaller and smaller. Were getting closer. I dont give up. Thank you all very much. Have a good night. Ritical of the gops negotiation tactics. That is a conversation i will at the white house have. What is clear to me is they House Republicans have rejected that because they want to impose draconian cuts on the American People. The speaker has said they want to go back to before the june level. Will House Democrats reject any proposal that reduces spending low this years level . The proposal as i understand it that President Biden has offered House Republicans is to freeze spending at current fiscal year levels. That is an inherently reasonable place to be and the extreme maga republicans have rejected it. Will you accept it . What i would like to see is what is in President Bidens Budget Proposal which is to increase investments in the health and safety and economic wellbeing of the American People to protect and strengthen social security, to build an economy that works for Everyday Americans but the extreme maga republicans have rejected that. What has been reasonable is what President Biden has put on the table and that has been rejected because apparently House Republicans have said we will accept nothing short of their extreme default on america. You are saying what they put on the table is extreme here. It sounds like you are playing defense right now. The speaker came out rather optimistic saying they still have differences, think they had to resolve. [indiscernible] i think that any proposal that offers to freeze spending is not a proposal that has been put into the Public Domain by the left flank as you articulated it. That is an inherently reasonable effort to find common ground. In a divided government situation. I think the American People understand that. If you said what we would like to do is increase investments and we have a democratic majority in the senate and the white house but given the fact that we are in a situation where you have got extreme maga republicans barely in the control of the house of representatives and temporarily holding the gavel that as part of the effort to find common ground, we are willing to consider freezing spending. That is not an extreme proposal. That is a reasonable proposal. Where things stand on the discharge position and can you get five republicans to sign onto that . In answer to the last question, we are very clear, House Democrats, who we are fighting for, who we are responding to. That is the American People. What we are not going to let them do is put the cost of people on the American People through higher mortgages, hire car loans, Higher Health care. That is their proposal. Getting veteran services. What we are saying with the discharge petition is look at the reasonableness we are seeing from the president saying lets get past this. We should not be in this extortion position we are in what we are going to be reaching out and saying to a handful of our colleagues, come join us. Come fight for the American People. Make sure we are standing up for children and veterans and our planet. Do not let them take in this economy over the cliff to protect the tax jam of 2017. At the end of the day when you peel away the layers, that is what is driving them. The hypocrisy they raised a quarter of the deficit under the Trump Administration in four short years and voted to raise the debt ceiling three times with democratic help, they know exactly what they are doing. They are betting against american families. Would you consider putting a spending freeze into the discharge petition or some other kind of compromise, covid money, Something Like that . A lot of the moderates say they will never sign. Are you considering subbing that might attract moderate republicans . The one thing we can do right now is agree we have to avoid a default at all costs. A dangerous default will trigger a job killing recession that will hurt millions of Everyday Americans. It will crash the stock market in a way that will undermine the Retirement Security of millions of Older Americans and it is going to dramatically skyrocket costs. Other that is mortgages or car loans or credit card payments. We have to agree that we will avoid a default at all costs. The discharge petition is one vehicle available to us to do that. We will need five or six republicans who claim that they will never allow a default to happen to join us and if they did so, we can find a way out of this manufactured crisis. You think the meeting went well today . I will let the white house characterize the meeting. Speaker mccarthy will characterize the meeting. What is clear to me is we need action. We need movement. You dont need talking points. Because there have now been discussions for two weeks. The other side is complaining about the fact there were no conversations. That is mythology because they did not even produce a position until late april and then got out of town. The first day the house came back to my President Biden called us to the white house and we had a meeting. That has been two weeks now. Can anyone point to me a single area where extreme maga republicans have moved off of their position in these conversations taking place . I cannot find a single example. I keep going back to work requirements. They keep going back to tenyear or multiyear caps. They keep going back to we want a border wall. They keep going back to we want to gut their inflation reduction act. They need hr one to become law. These are all extraneous things that are moving in the wrong direction. I dont know how the meeting went. I am thankful President Biden held the meeting but it is time for action from my House Republican colleagues. Not talk. House republicans are going to have to figure out who they want to stand with. Do they want to stand with the American Public or do they went to stand with Marjorie Taylor greene, and extreme maga republicans as they hold the United States government hostage. At some point those members from california and new york and around the country are going to have to answer the question, why they continue to stand with George Santos and Marjorie Taylor greene as we get closer. [indiscernible] again, his part of the challenge that it is not a democratic thing or a republican thing to avoid a catastrophic default. It is the american thing to do. America always pays its bills. A default would be catastrophic. Part of the challenge we are confronting in terms of this discussion that is underway is republicans are asking for extreme right wing policy changes as it relates to the environment, as it relates to the wall, as it relates to socalled work requirements, as it relates to dramatic and in many other areas shared in exchange they are saying what the American People will receive in return is us doing our responsibility to protect the full faith and credit of the United States of america. It is unreasonable. It has taken revenues off the table. They dont want to revisit the gop tax scam that exploded the debt by 2 trillion, subsidized wealthy, the welloff and wellconnected. We cannot have a conversation about that. We cannot have a conversation about revenue. We cannot have a conversation about any policy change democrats would like to have. Does that sound like a negotiation or is that a hostagetaking situation . It is a hostagetaking situation or the hostage is the economy and the American People. It is time to move in different direction. Are you confident you can reach a deal