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Floor Speech
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Mr. MORENO. I was 5 years old when I came to this country from South America, 18 when I became a citizen. Since that time, there have been 10 Presidents of the United States of America and only one that actually had the guts and the courage to stand up for working Americans.
We lost 90,000 factories in this country. If you take the logic of my colleague, let's shut down all of our factories and send manufacturing to the lowest wage countries on Earth that employ slave wages, that have massive government subsidies, and gut out what is left of the American manufacturing ecosystem.
Of course, that is completely illogical. But that is almost what we have done over the last four to five decades.
You drive through Ohio, Dayton was the computing capital of the world; you go to Toledo, it was the glass capital of the world; Youngstown, the steel capital of America; Akron, the rubber capital of the world.
Today, these cities are working to get past what they have gone through. But as I went on the campaign trail against a Democrat that always claimed to be on the side of the working men but then saw what their policies enacted, we beat him soundly.
I urge my Democratic colleagues to go back to your original North Star. The point of the Democratic Party for decades, as far as I knew, was that you were for the working men and women of this country. But that is not the Democratic Party today. They are the party of electric vehicle mandates, against tariffs, against fringe social issues.
If we want to talk about the specific resolution, look, there is no greater ally ever in the history of the United States of America with Israel than President Donald J. Trump. Every single Republican last week voted against Bernie Sanders' resolution to block arms sales to Israel. Fifteen Democrats voted to kneecap them while in the middle of a war. When we talk about Israel, they have already negotiated a situation with President Trump.
So let's talk about Ukraine. This is a country that both sides of the aisle--shockingly to me, quite honestly--have given hundreds of billions of dollars to this country of Ukraine when we have enormous needs in our country. What do we get in return? They impose a tax of 20 percent or more on our goods that we send there. Let me repeat that. We sent them hundreds of billions of dollars in aid, and then when we send them our products, they add a tax on our imports.
Look, President Trump is doing a masterful job of negotiating with countries and with companies to finally do what should have been done a long time ago, which is to rebuild this country from the inside out.
So for the reasons that President Trump laid out last week that we are going to rebuild this country with American hands, with American hearts, and with American pride, it is with that sentiment that I, therefore, object.
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Mr. MORENO. I actually read the resolution. Again, I will repeat it. There is no greater friend of Israel's in the White House, ever in the history of the United States of America, than Donald J. Trump.
He negotiated with these countries. We need to give him the latitude in terms of negotiating with these countries. In terms of bipartisan, go back through the record in the last 90 days and see almost the complete block voting on everything, including we have two votes coming up and another two votes at the end of the day. Let's see if there is one Democrat that doesn't vote in total unison with their party.
Look at the Republican side. We are much more freethinkers and we have differences of opinion and that comes out when we vote. When we talk about bipartisanship, I hope the Democrats get to a point where they are willing to work with us on common sense.
I had a bill that I presented to the floor about 3 weeks ago. Here is what it said: If you come into this country illegally, you can't claim asylum. And if you do, you invalidate your right for asylum for life, and you must only claim asylum at a designated port of entry. This is a 90-10 issue. Democrats blocked that.
I want to work in a bipartisan manner. I think the American public demands that we do. But when every Democrat votes in total and complete lockstep with their leadership every single time to block any progress, we are going to be unable to do that.
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