-9999

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. PADILLA. Madam President, I rise today profoundly humbled by the people of California for placing their trust in me to serve and represent them for a full term in the U.S. Senate.

It is a tremendous honor to return to this body, and I also recognize that it is also a tremendous responsibility.

To the people of California, thank you, and please know that I will work hard every single day to uphold that trust.

And to my colleagues who have helped me hit the ground running since my first day in the Senate 2 years ago, thank you, and that includes California's senior Senator, Dianne Feinstein, who has served the State of California for over three decades as a trailblazing public servant and a model for principled leadership, whom I have been honored to serve alongside.

And I will always be thankful for my parents, Santos and Lupe Padilla, for all they did for my brother, my sister, and me growing up.

And, of course, I could not be here without the love and support and often the patience and understanding of my wife Angela and our three boys, Roman, Alex, and Diego.

Now, as the first Latino elected to represent California in our State's history, it is not lost on me what this moment means for millions of people back home. I understand that my family's story is a reflection of what so many other hardworking families have experienced.

As I have shared many times before, my parents emigrated from Mexico. They came to the United States in search of a better life. For 40 years, my dad worked as a short order cook and my mom cleaned houses as they raised the three of us in the proud, working-class community of Pacoima, CA, in the San Fernando Valley.

I am proud of our family's journey, but it wasn't without our share of challenges. I remember what it looked like to see our neighborhood neglected, navigating everything from buckled sidewalks to drug dealers as we walked to and from school.

I remember what it was like for our family to live paycheck to paycheck--my mom, at times, bartering the mechanic, offering some of her homemade tacos for just a little bit more time to pay the bill.

And when it came time to figuring out how I was going to pay for college, I remember filling out the financial aid forms and realizing that tuition alone at MIT was a larger amount than my dad's W-2.

But it is because of their hard work and sacrifices that I stand here today. The very idea that a first-generation son of a short order cook and a housekeeper is now serving in the U.S. Senate is proof of the American dream.

But that dream has never been about passive participation. It is made possible by those who work for it and by those willing to defend it and expand it. It is about hopeful goals for a better future and the ambition to work towards them. It is about the drive to get up each morning before the sun rises, to put on a white apron, and push through tired eyes and a sore back because you know that someday your kids can have it better.

And if my parents are my inspiration for being here, then my children are my motivation for fighting to keep the dream alive. I am one of the few Members of this body blessed to still have young kids at home. So when we talk about the future of our country or the future of our planet, it is not in the abstract. I think of Roman, Alex, and Diego and their generation. They are the generation who will carry on these monumental tasks and fight for equality and opportunity in the future.

So, colleagues, we have to be focused on doing the work today to make sure the American Dream is alive for them tomorrow.

So I ask: Who is willing to defend the dream? And what are we willing to do to defend it?

(English translation of the statement made in Spanish is as follows:)

Who is willing to defend the American dream?

Today, I am here before you as the first Latino elected to represent California in the Senate. It is a dream come true because my family's story reflects what many working families have lived in this country.

My parents, Santos and Lupe Padilla, emigrated from Mexico to this country in the sixties.

For 40 years, my father worked as a cook, and my mother worked cleaning houses.

I am here today thanks to their sacrifices, and they continue to be my inspiration.

Now it is our turn to defend the dream for the next generation.

When we talk about the future of our country, or the future of our planet, I think about my sons Roman, Alex, and Diego.

They are my motivation to continue working for a better future, and to continue defending the American dream.

(End of Spanish translation).

You know, my first 2 years in the Senate, we have made real progress to keep the dream alive for millions of Americans--from giving families the extra support they needed to get through a once-in-a-century pandemic to lowering healthcare costs to passing the largest investment in history to confront the climate crisis--but we can't stop now.

American prosperity over the next 6 years--the survival of the American Dream--means keeping up the fight to level the playing field, and that starts with addressing some of the most urgent threats standing in the way of that dream.

You know, just last month, over the course of 3 days--3 days--my home State experienced three back-to-back-to-back mass shootings that claimed the lives of 19 Californians.

I was returning home from visiting a victim resource center in Monterey Park, CA, when I received word of the two additional shootings in Half Moon Bay and in Oakland.

Americans are sick and tired of the Republican excuses and the gun lobby rhetoric. No one can deny that we have a gun violence problem in America. When gun violence is the leading cause of death for children, how can we say they have the opportunity to achieve their dreams?

So I refuse to grow numb to the epidemic of gun violence. And I still have hope that we can prevent future tragedies with commonsense policies like universal background checks and an assault weapons ban that has been proven to save lives.

This winter California also experienced a relentless stream of severe weather--rain storms, flooding, and mudslides--that caused over $1 billion in damages. I welcomed President Biden and Vice President Harris to survey the storm damage in California, and they have been exemplary partners both in disaster response as well as efforts to rebuild our communities. But the process to rebuild is ongoing, and we will need to work together to get the impacted areas the resources they need.

Let me be clear that, despite the record rainfall that dominated the news last month, California and our fellow Western States are still suffering from a crippling drought. Californians know all too well that natural disasters and extreme weather whiplash have become the new normal in the 21st century. Each year we brace for increasingly frequent and devastating wildfires, catastrophic flooding and mudslides, and searing droughts. They all point to one thing: the need for climate action.

Our very survival depends on our ability to combat the climate crisis. We must continue to step up our efforts to protect our planet. Yes, that means eliminating carbon pollution and transitioning to a clean-energy economy, and it also means fighting for clean air and water, particularly for the more vulnerable communities disproportionately impacted by environmental pollution. And it means protecting and managing our Federal lands and waterways.

At times, that means making difficult and innovative decisions to preserve our resources and protect our communities. For Western States that rely on the Colorado River, that means coming together to find consensus on a water agreement that prevents disaster and preserves the human right to water.

We must also reform our outdated immigration system and do so in a way that better reflects our values. That means creating a pathway to citizenship for the hundreds of thousands of Dreamers who live in daily fear of deportation from the only home they have ever known and for all the essential workers who kept us safe and our economy going throughout the pandemic.

It means making sorely needed updates to our legal migration system by addressing the crippling visa backlog that keeps families apart and denies our economy the workforce that it needs. And it means ensuring that individuals and families who are fleeing horrific conditions in their home countries and seeking asylum in the United States are treated humanely and provided due process.

Our Nation is also confronting a serious mental health crisis. Now, this crisis existed well before COVID, but we saw the pandemic exacerbate the crisis. Demand for healthcare is way up, while we have an increasing shortage of healthcare professionals available.

This is also a critical opportunity to fundamentally end the stigma surrounding mental health. You know, if a family member or a friend breaks their arm or leg, we don't judge them for going to the hospital to seek help. Nobody looks down on somebody for going to the dentist for regular checkups. We need to treat mental health the same way.

And, finally, at a time of rising nationalism around the world, we must secure the foundations of democracy. For those who say that legislation to protect the sacred right to vote in America is too partisan, they are only right in the sense that attacks on our right to vote are partisan.

We must denounce Republican candidates across the country who choose to divide the American people with lies and conspiracy theories. As long as Republican-led State legislatures work to pass voter suppression laws across the Nation or election deniers put our election workers in danger, we have more work to do.

And as long as millions of eligible Americans have yet to exercise their right to vote, including the roughly 80 million who did not vote or were unable to vote in an otherwise record-setting 2020 election, we have more work to do. That work includes bolstering our cyber security efforts, not just to secure the infrastructure of elections but to combat disinformation from bad-faith actors.

Now, I am not naive about the challenges ahead. After 2 years of historic achievements, an extreme wing of Republicans now hold progress in the House of Representatives hostage. This group has shown that they would rather undermine our democracy than defend it. They would rather risk a first-ever default by the Federal Government than serve the interests of the American people.

At stake for millions of Americans are programs that they have spent decades paying into, like Medicare and Social Security, American institutions that define how we take care of one another and how we provide dignity for seniors.

And they have set their crosshairs on a woman's right to make her own decisions about her own body.

So we have a tall task ahead of us. But to the people of California, please know that I didn't seek out this office because I thought it would be easy. I did so because the issues are too important, and I am ready--I am ready--for the difficult fight ahead because today we have a responsibility to write the next chapter of American progress into history, to join so many who came before us who made the American dream possible.

When ``huddled masses'' came to our shores with the belief in a better future, immigrants put in the work to build our country and our economy and to make the dream a reality. When we celebrate America as the land of freedom and equality, we recognize generations of civil rights activists who risked everything for the right to vote and to expand the dream to groups often denied it.

And when a man from Jalisco and a woman from Chihuahua immigrated to Los Angeles in search of a better life, it was them--Santos and Lupe Padilla--who toiled and sacrificed to secure the dream for their children.

They are the American story. They are the American dream.

In closing, I just want to share that, over the last 2 years, countless people have asked me if becoming a U.S. Senator is a dream come true. My honest answer is no. You see, for me, when I was a kid growing up, I never dreamt that anything like this was possible.

But, now that I am here, I promise I will not take a single day for granted, and I will never stop fighting to keep the dream alive for future generations.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source