Notice of Intention to Offer Resolution Raising A Question of the Privileges of the House

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. JEFFRIES. Mr. Speaker, I thank the distinguished gentleman, my good friend from the great State of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong opposition.

This resolution, this effort to censure Delegate Plaskett and to rip away her membership on the Intel Committee, is nothing more than a political stunt by a desperate, failed candidate for Governor trying to pander to the people back in South Carolina. It is nothing more than that.

You want to make the statement about who has brought disgrace to the House. The actions of this House Republican majority have brought disgrace to the House of Representatives from day one of this Presidency.

The reality is, if you want to talk about fealty to the Constitution and things of that nature, the House is a separate and coequal branch of government. You don't seem to understand that.

You have functioned from the very beginning of your so-called majority, Mr. Speaker, not as a check and balance on an out-of-control administration, but as a reckless rubber stamp for Donald Trump's extreme agenda, and you are failing the American people.

You failed to keep your core promise. Your core promise to the American people was that you were going to lower costs on day one. Costs haven't gone down here in the United States of America. Costs have gone up.

The Trump economy is a complete and total failure. It is a disaster. The American people are hurting, and so every week, you come to the House floor now that you have returned from your 7-week, taxpayer- funded vacation and come up with another stunt to try to distract the American people. Or perhaps you were ordered by your puppet master, Donald Trump, who wants to distract the American people today.

That is because his effort to suppress the Jeffrey Epstein files has failed spectacularly.

We believe in transparency, we believe in accountability, and we believe in due process. That is the opposite of what is happening on the floor today.

Let me be very clear about Stacey Plaskett. She is a woman of great intelligence and a woman of great integrity, and she deserves better than what she is receiving from House Republican extremists. She deserves the opportunity to be heard. She deserves due process. She deserves the ability to make her case, not to be prosecuted by pettifoggers playing lawyer on the floor of the House of Representatives. Google that if you don't know what it means.

The so-called Freedom Caucus wants to lecture us about proceeding at this moment.

The actions that you continue to engage in will have consequences: consequences today, consequences tomorrow, consequences next week, consequences next year, and certainly consequences when the American people throw this House Republican majority out in the aftermath of the election next November. Be very careful about the extreme actions that you continue to engage in.

Now, it is extraordinary to me week after week, censure after censure, and I wonder: Is it just coincidence that the last three censures we have had on the House floor happened to involve--first you tried to censure LaMonica McIver, and then, Mr. Speaker, Republicans tried to censure Ilhan Omar. Now we are on the floor, and you are trying to censure Stacey Plaskett.

What is it exactly that those three individuals have in common?

House Republicans are going to have to answer for the extreme things that you continue to do.

The American people know this is a phony majority. It is a fake majority. It is not a real majority.

Republicans aren't doing anything to make life better for the American people, and that is why we are on the floor right now. There is nothing that House Republicans can do to disgrace Stacey Plaskett because House Republicans continue to disgrace themselves. So whatever happens later on this evening, the American people will hear from Delegate Plaskett beyond this making her case. The people of the Virgin Islands, I am confident, will continue to stand behind her.

We will never be lectured on issues related to accountability, transparency, principle, and ethics from this group of extreme House Republicans who continue to visit a national nightmare on the American people, bending the knee to a wannabe king and doing real harm in real time. At the end of the day, your time is coming as well.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source