WASHINGTON – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer gave a response to President Trump’s border wall speech Tuesday, with the New York Senator criticizing Trump for keeping the government shut down after “having failed to get Mexico to pay for his ineffective, unnecessary border wall.”
“The symbol of America should be the Statue of Liberty, not a thirty-foot wall,” Schumer argued during the Democrats’ rebuttal to the president’s Tuesday night prime-time address.
Pelosi, speaking first, pointed out that the first day the Democrats were in charge of the House they passed two bills that would fund the government – bills the president rejected “over his obsession with forcing American taxpayers to waste billions of dollars on an expensive and ineffective wall – a wall he always promised Mexico would pay for!”
The House speaker argued for border security, just not the pricey wall, while defending the migrant women and children crossing into the country saying they “are not a security threat, they are a humanitarian challenge – a challenge that President Trump’s own cruel and counterproductive policies have only deepened.”
Schumer hit on many of the same points, while suggesting that Trump’s prime-time address during week No. 3 of the shutdown was merely a distraction.
“Most presidents have used Oval Office addresses for noble purposes. This president just used the backdrop of the Oval Office to manufacture a crisis, stoke fear, and divert attention from the turmoil in his administration,” the New York Democrat said.
The Democrats indicated that they still supported their plan to keep Department of Homeland Security funding separate from the other closed agencies. The House Democrats supported a bill that would fund those additional agencies through the fiscal year, while passing a continuing resolution that funded DHS through February, giving lawmakers and the White House extra time to work things out while reopening the government.