Schumer: We’ll Force Votes on Health Care, Taxes, and Climate

“My fellow Americans…

Over the past month, evidence has emerged that the President of the United States pressured a foreign leader to investigate one of his leading political rivals.

It is an offense serious enough to warrant a full investigation by Congress, and that is exactly what the House of Representatives has decided to do by beginning a formal impeachment inquiry.

We have a responsibility now to see that all the facts get out, and to consider those facts with the best interests of our country, nothing else, in mind.

When I studied our constitution in high school and college, when we learned that one of the greatest threats our Founding Fathers feared was foreign interference in our elections – I said at the time, ‘Why did they care about this? This hasn’t happened in any real sense.’

But of course, once again, we have learned how the wisdom of the Founding Fathers is relevant to this very day.

If a foreign country can actually affect our elections, Americans will lose faith in our democracy – this grand and wonderful democracy.

So we must guard against that, but at the same time we have to do two things at once. We can protect our constitution and do things average working families need at the same time. And Democrats are intent on pushing for working families

From the very beginning, Senate Democrats have been committed to doing the people’s business.

The price of health care is too high, incomes are too low.

Our infrastructure is crumbling, gun violence is an epidemic.

Too many Americans have trouble voting, and our elections remain vulnerable to foreign interference.

Climate change is an existential threat to the planet that demands bold and far-reaching action.

Over the course of his presidency – long before the House investigation – President Trump has failed to offer serious proposals to address any of these issues.

In many cases, his policies have made things worse.

And while the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives has passed hundreds of bills dealing with health care, infrastructure, gun violence and much, much more, the Republican Leader of the Senate, Mitch McConnell, has turned our chamber, the Senate, into a legislative graveyard.

Not one of those bills has even received a vote in the Senate: no vote to save protections for people with pre-existing conditions, no vote on bipartisan background checks, no vote on bipartisan election security legislation, no vote on the Violence Against Women Act.

So as Congress comes back into session next week, Senate Democrats have a plan to jolt the Senate into action on several important issues.

Over the next few weeks, we will force our Republican colleagues to vote on whether to protect Americans with pre-existing conditions or not; to protect middle-class families from a tax hike or not, to protect our climate or not.

And we will also demand that our Republican colleagues take up legislation to protect hard-earned pensions for millions of workers, and they are in danger of losing it right now.

As we continue to fulfill our solemn constitutional duty to hold the president accountable, Senate Democrats will never, never stop putting pressure on Leader McConnell to get the Senate back to work for the American people.”