Concurrent Resolution on the Budget, Fiscal Year 2019--Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHUMER. Thank you, Madam President.

Before I get into the substance of my remarks, I always listen diligently to my friend from Kentucky. There is a number that is missing in his charts; it is 1.5 trillion. The reason we don't like government spending is--he thinks--a lot of it is wasteful, but, ultimately, the reason is also that there is a huge deficit.

Our side scratches our heads not only with our friend from Kentucky, but with everyone on the other side who rails about too much government spending and creation of the deficit when they created the deepest hole they could have with the tax break that could have been paid for by closing loopholes. A group--a bipartisan group--had put something together that would have reduced the corporate rate to 25 percent, brought the money from overseas at 8, 9 percent, increased the child tax credit, left the individual side alone, and would have barely increased the deficit. So our side, at least, rankles when we hear these budgets that relate to deficit spending when, on the tax side, that doesn't seem to apply at all.

I say that with due respect to my good friend, who I know is sincere in his beliefs. He will argue with me that cutting taxes increases the economy. I would say that spending money on education and infrastructure also increases the economy. It is a slippery slope once you say: We can cut all the taxes we want; the deficit doesn't matter. It would be like our side saying: You can spend all the money you want; the deficit doesn't matter. We don't quite say that.

I thank my friend. Net Neutrality

Madam President, yesterday was a good day for the future of the internet. Democrats forced the Senate to take an important step closer to restoring net neutrality. It is another step closer to ensuring that large internet service providers don't get to hold all the cards, another step closer to protecting equality of access to the internet. In doing so, Senate Democrats stood with the 86 percent of Americans who oppose the repeal of net neutrality.

I am proud to say that Senator Markey's Congressional Review Act resolution passed yesterday afternoon with the votes of every single Democrat, as well as three of our Republican colleagues. I thank Senators Collins, Murkowski, and Kennedy for supporting this fine legislation.

Here is what my friend the Republican Senator from Louisiana had to say after the vote:

If you trust your cable company, you won't like my vote. If you don't trust your cable company, you will like my vote.

He is right. It is that simple. So you have to wonder why 47 Republicans voted no yesterday. Do they trust the cable companies and the large ISPs to do what is level best for the average American family? Do they believe that cable companies are really popular with the American people? I don't think so.

Now Republicans in the House have to take up this bipartisan resolution. We hope they will.

This isn't some partisan stunt. Absolutely not. It is a real, bipartisan effort to right the FCC's wrong and protect the free and open internet. It is very crucial to the future of the country.

House Republicans don't have to choose the same path that the vast majority of Republicans in the Senate decided to follow. Speaker Ryan should bring this up for a vote immediately. The American people have spoken. The Senate has spoken. Speaker Ryan should listen and bring the net neutrality CRA to the floor of the House. Russia Investigation

Madam President, 1 year ago, former FBI Director Robert Mueller was appointed to lead the FBI's investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 election. Of course, the investigation began long before that. According to the New York Times, it began in the middle of 2016 as a result of information we received from the Australian Ambassador, who told the FBI that Russian intelligence was working to share information with the Trump campaign.

At that time, we heard a lot about the FBI's investigation of Hillary Clinton's emails, but remarkably, we heard nothing about this other investigation. Now we know that one of those two investigations is much more serious than the other one was. We also know that if it were a witch hunt--as the President seems to think it is--if they were out to get him, they certainly would have leaked information about that during the election campaign. They didn't.

The probe led by Special Counsel Mueller, a Republican and decorated marine veteran, concerns the campaign of a hostile foreign power to interfere in and influence the outcome of an American election. There is nothing--nothing--more serious to the integrity of a democracy than the guarantee of free and fair elections.

The Founding Fathers warned about foreign interference. When I used to read that clause in high school, I said: What do they mean? That is not going to happen. Well, they were a lot smarter than we are--as always. They knew this danger. Here it is, 2018, and we see how real it is. It is the core of the special counsel's investigation.

The investigation has already yielded multiple indictments and guilty pleas. Yesterday the Senate Intelligence Committee, in a bipartisan manner, confirmed that Russia sought to interfere with our elections, sow discord, and tip the scales toward Donald Trump and against Secretary Clinton. The Trump administration itself has even taken punitive action against Russia's actors named in Mueller's investigation.

I salute the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, the Republican Senator from North Carolina, for being straightforward about this. Not so many on the other side of the aisle are.

Yet, again this morning, President Trump called the investigation a ``disgusting, illegal, and unwarranted witch hunt . . . the greatest witch hunt in American history.'' The rhetoric this man uses is amazing.

I say to the President: It is not a witch hunt when 17 Russians have been indicted. It is not a witch hunt when some of the most senior members of the Trump campaign have been indicted. It is not a witch hunt when Democrats and Republicans agree with the intelligence community that Russia interfered in our election to aid President Trump.

Any fair-minded citizen, even the most ardent partisan, should be able to look at the facts and say that this investigation is not a witch hunt. The FBI Director, Christopher Wray, appointed by President Trump, a Republican, said as much yesterday.

Truly, we should all be aghast, on this 1-year anniversary of Mueller's appointment, at the smear campaign by the President and his allies. We should all be aghast at the relentless parade of conspiracies manufactured by the most extreme elements of the Republican Party and conservative media to distract from the special counsel's investigation. From ``deep state'' leaks to unmasking requests, phone taps at Trump Tower, Uranium One, Nunes's midnight run to the White House, and the Nunes memo--these are all attempts to derail a legitimate and important investigation.

Now House conservatives are badgering DOJ officials for classified documents, hunting desperately for any scrap of information that would help them sully the investigation. By the way, for all of their ranting and raving and interfering, they don't have a scintilla of evidence to support that this is a witch hunt, that this is unfair, or that this is politically motivated.

The President and his allies don't quit with all these conspiracy theories, with all these ridiculous fomentations. Frankly, it is because they are afraid of what Mueller's investigation will reveal.

Every American who looks at the President's actions says that he is afraid of what the Mueller investigation will reveal. Yet the volume of mistruth, the weight of all the distortion and fabrication is hurting our democracy.

The double standard is enormous. The Times article shows no leaks when Trump was under investigation during the campaign; obviously, it was made public when Hillary Clinton was. Again, if this were a witch hunt, why didn't the FBI, which the President seems to feel is politically motivated with no scintilla of proof--why wouldn't they leak it?

One more point before I leave the floor--yesterday, the words of former Secretary Tillerson were these: ``If our leaders seek to conceal the truth or we as a people become accepting of alternative realities that are no longer grounded in facts, then we as American citizens are on the pathway to relinquishing our freedom.''

He is exactly right. When distortion, lies, and intimidation come repeatedly from the other side and some conservative news media, and that becomes the accepted way, when it is just he said, she said, where one side is blatantly lying, and that becomes accepted, our democracy is at risk.

We are a beautiful thing here--founded on facts, real facts. What we have seen from the President and some of his allies, the way they are behaving, makes you worry about the future of this democracy.

Ultimately, I have a firm belief that they will not succeed. The Founding Fathers were geniuses--geniuses--when they set up a system of checks and balances that we read about in our classes and we study, but it is almost mystical. It always rises to the occasion. It will again, despite the efforts of the President, despite the efforts of some of his allies who have gone way overboard; I might mention Chairman Nunes on the other side. I believe the checks and balances of this country will hold, and we will eventually find out the truth, no matter where it leads.

Today is a good day to remember that the special counsel's investigation is serious, it is nonpartisan, and it is critical to the integrity of our democracy. We must allow it to proceed without political interference, without intimidation, to follow all the facts in pursuit of the unvarnished truth on such an important issue.

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