Broader Options for Americans Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 1958 to the language proposed to be stricken.

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Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, as we enter the second day of the debate on immigration, everyone should be focused on finding a bill to protect the Dreamers and address border security that can get 60 votes. That is the ball game.

The majority leader's desire to vote on an unrelated, partisan immigration bill--legislation that is not only silent on Dreamers but is silent on border security as well--is not a productive way to begin debate.

Let's get to the crux of the issue. Let Republicans offer whatever they want on DACA and border security, and we will do the same. The leader supports the proposal by Senator Grassley, which is, essentially, the President's plan. Let's vote on that first. We will have several bipartisan bills to offer. We should vote on those too.

Democrats are focused like a laser on finding a bipartisan bill that can pass the Senate to protect the Dreamers. Several moderate Republicans are working toward that as well. The one person who seems most intent on not getting a deal is President Trump.

President Trump's contribution to this debate has been to put forward a proposal that contains a vast curtailment of legal immigration, far outside the scope of DACA and border security, and has demanded that the Democrats support it. Instead of making a proposal in good faith or working with Democrats on a compromise, President Trump is trying to force his unpopular, hard-line immigration agenda down the throats of the American people by calling it a DACA bill.

The President's proposal, now the Grassley bill, is so extreme on legal immigration that several Republicans have been critical of it, including my friends from South Carolina and Arizona. Yet President Trump somehow thinks that Democrats would be to blame for not getting a deal on DACA because we didn't go blindly along with his partisan plan--extreme as it is and with no input from Democrats.

That will not happen.

Only in a Kafkaesque, 1984 world could the Democrats be blamed for the current predicament on DACA. As much as the President wants to turn the world upside down, as much as he wants everyone to just accept what he is saying, the American people know better. Everyone here knows that President Trump has stood in the way of a bipartisan solution to DACA from the very beginning. Let's take a quick look at the history.

First, it was President Trump who terminated the DACA Program last August, not the Democrats and not the Republicans here. Unilaterally, we are in this pickle--worse than a pickle--in this bad situation because President Trump chose to end the DACA Program last August. That stands out above anything else.

Then President Trump turned his back on not one but two bipartisan immigration proposals. I went so far as to put the wall--the President's signature campaign issue--on the table for discussion. That still did not drive him to a deal.

Finally, now that we are working hard in the Senate to come up with a bipartisan proposal, President Trump is just trying to gum up the works. According to reports, President Trump may threaten to veto legislation that doesn't match his hard-line demands--``my way or no way'' and with no Democratic input. A statement this morning from the White House said the President would oppose even a short-term bill to protect the Dreamers.

So who is intent on kicking out these people who know no country but America, who work in our factories and offices, who go to our schools, who serve in our military? Who is intent on kicking them out? It is not the American people, as 90 percent want to support the Dreamers. It is not any Democrat and not a good number of Republicans on that side of the aisle. It is just the President.

On three separate occasions, President Trump has stood in the way of a bipartisan solution to DACA--a problem he created in the first place. Yet the President is in this dream world. He thinks: Oh, I can blame the Democrats for the impasse.

As I said, only in a 1984 world where up is down and black is white could this be true. Only in a 1984 world where up is down and black is white would the American public blame the Democrats for this. They know where Trump stands. They know it. The American people know what is going on. They know that this President not only created the problem but seems to be against every solution that might pass because it is not 100 percent of what he wants.

If, at the end of this week, we are unable to find a bill that can pass--I sincerely hope that is not the case, due to the good efforts of so many people on both sides of the aisle--the responsibility will fall on the President's shoulders and on those in this body who went along with him.

Bipartisan negotiations are ongoing and are, perhaps, very close to a conclusion. Nothing is ever certain given the contentious nature of this debate, but I am hopeful that Senators can put the President's hard-line demands to the side and come up with a deal that works for both parties. If we want to go beyond border security and the DACA kids, let's do comprehensive reform. We did it once. It worked pretty well in the Senate, but the House blocked it. Let's go back to it. First, the issues at hand are the DACA kids and border security. That is the only thing that can pass this Chamber--the only thing.

We need to push through to the finish line. There are only 2 days of debate remaining this week. Everyone has to make a final effort to reach consensus. That doesn't mean adding new demands or drawing lines in the sand. It means being willing to compromise and take yes for an answer. If we pass something, it might not be everything that either the Democrats want or everything that the Republicans want, but it may get the job done for the Dreamers and the overwhelming majority of Americans who would like to see them stay in the country. Republican Tax Bill

Mr. President, on another matter--taxes--our Republican friends argued that their massive corporate tax cut was not such a huge giveaway to corporate America. They predicted that corporations would spend the tax savings on benefits for workers. The evidence is already mounting that those predictions were wrong. Since the passage of the Republican tax bill, corporations have been pouring billions of dollars into stock repurchasing programs, not into significant wage increases or other meaningful investments in workers.

These stock buybacks--this stock repurchasing--which benefit, primarily, the people at the top have reached a significant milestone. Since the passage of the Republican tax bill, there have been over $100 billion in stock buybacks. As of last week, corporations had announced twice the number of corporate share buybacks as during a similar period last year. Let me repeat that. The number of corporate share buybacks has doubled since the Republican tax bill passed.

Why is that so significant?

It is that share buybacks don't help the average worker. They inflate the value of a company's stock, which primarily benefits shareholders, not workers. It benefits corporate executives, who are compensated with corporate stock, not workers, who are paid by wages and benefits. The money corporations spend on repurchasing their stock is money that is not being reinvested in worker training, equipment, research, new hires, or higher salaries.

According to analysts at Morgan Stanley, companies that were surveyed said they will pass only 13 percent of the Trump tax cut savings on to workers in comparison to 43 percent that they will spend on share buybacks. For manufacturers, it is even worse: 9 percent to go to workers, 47 percent to share buybacks.

The Republicans made a conscious decision to give corporations and the wealthiest Americans the lion's share of the tax cuts and promised it would trickle down to everyone else. Unfortunately, trickle-down never works, and it is not what is happening now. Corporate America is doing what is best for corporate America, and working America is getting left behind. It goes to show you just who President Trump and the Republicans were working for when they crafted their tax bill. They gave corporations and the wealthiest Americans a huge tax cut and cut out everybody else.
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Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I modify my amendment No. 1958 with the text at the desk.

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