DPCC Incoming Chair Cicilline: Democrats Are Fighting For the People
WASHINGTON, DC – Congressman David Cicilline, Incoming Chair of the House Democratic Policy and Communications Committee (DPCC), appeared on All in With Chris Hayes on MSNBC to discuss the Trump Shutdown. Cicilline highlighted that Democrats will hold the Trump Administration accountable - while also staying focused on driving down health care costs, rebuilding the infrastructure of our country and tackling the pervasive corruption in Washington. Below are excerpts from the interview. Click here to watch the video.
"As Incoming Speaker Pelosi said when Democrats take back the House on January 3rd, we will move swiftly to reopen the government. I think there was a deal already, 100 senators, 100 to zero, voted for a continuing resolution. That would have passed the House. The President changed his mind. I think, in part because of all the things you just described, in an effort to distract from a very bad couple of weeks, the President shut the government down. Democrats will make sure the government reopens as soon as we come back into power on January 3rd."
"They've already voted for it – so they're going to be in a tough position to suddenly not vote for it. So I think the government will have been closed for several weeks by that point, two weeks. And the reality is there are more than 400,000 employees who are working and not getting paid. We need to reopen the government. We can have lots of disagreement about a bunch of other policies but we need to open the government. And we're going to vote to open it and then the Senate will do the same, I expect and then it's up to the President."
"Well, I mean, I think we have to make sure that we do everything to insist that everyone gets paid. I mean, it's outrageous that anybody would be expected to work and not get paid, especially during the holidays."
"Well, I mean, I think it's important to remember Democrats ran on an agenda articulating that we're fighting for the people of this country, not for the special interests, not for the powerful lobbyists. And we committed to driving down health care costs, particularly the cost of prescription drugs; raising family incomes by rebuilding the infrastructure of our country; and taking on the pervasive cooperation in Washington. We're going to deliver on those promises. At the same time, people expect us to do oversight and to hold this Administration accountable. In the Judiciary Committee, we have over 500 pages that really summarize our efforts in the last two years to do oversight that were blocked by the Republicans. I know it's the same in the Oversight Committee…And we are going to do our job. We're going to hold this Administration accountable. Elijah Cummings wants to make sure that a bunch of documents are preserved so we can do that work informed by data and materials and documents – so that we can do the oversight the constitution requires us to do."
"We will promptly open the government. We understand the first responsibility we have is to open the government, to force the President to sign legislation or let it go forward without his signature that opens the government again. So that we can continue to move forward on the agenda that we really articulated during this campaign, the issues that matter to the American people and at the same time do our oversight responsibilities, which our Republican colleagues have neglected almost entirely in the last two years. You know, this is part of our work, the American people gave us the House because they want us to move forward on the issues that matter in their lives and they want to be certain that we're doing our job and holding this Administration accountable and we intend to do that."