Today, Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA), the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, took to the House Floor to blast H.Con.Res.58, “Denouncing the Horrors of Socialism,” a baseless resolution filled with misleading and hypocritical claims about socialism, while ignoring the affordability crisis facing millions of Americans.
“Mr. Speaker,
I wish we were here on the House floor this morning debating solutions that would reduce grocery bills, lower housing costs, end Trump’s tariffs strangling American small businesses and manufacturers, solve the Republican healthcare crisis, or any legislation that allows Americans to afford to live through the catastrophic economic policies of Trump and the Republicans.
But, instead of doing the work our constituents desperately want us to do, Republicans in the House have chosen once again to advance a resolution under the guise of denouncing ‘socialism.’ Let me be clear, this resolution is an embarrassing distraction from the complete and total failure of the Trump Administration to deliver actual results for the American people.
And the American people see right through it. 61% of Americans say that Trump’s policies have ‘worsened economic conditions in this country’ and 64% of Americans say Trump’s policies are raising the prices of food and groceries.
What’s worse is that this resolution, this very resolution, goes further by using the specter of socialism to undermine some of the most important government programs in our country like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare—programs that help everyday Americans put food on their plate and care for their children. Republicans absurdly think they can convince Americans these programs that are decades old are leading America toward a Stalinist Russia, even though it is blatantly obvious that the policies of Donald Trump are straight out of a dictator’s playbook.
Mr. Speaker, the House returned this week from the Trump-Republican shutdown, the longest government shutdown in American history. And while House Republicans gave themselves a paid two month vacation, hundreds of thousands of federal employees were left wondering how they were going to pay their rent or mortgage, and 42 million Americans nearly lost their food assistance. And what was the Trump administration doing? Instead of working with Congress to end the shutdown, or with local communities to blunt the impacts of the shutdown, it decided to use the full force of the United States government to make sure these American families went hungry, fought twice in the Supreme Court to block legally available funds from being used to help feed them, further chipped away at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and fired an entire office dedicated to helping rural and struggling communities: the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund. All this because Republicans want to raise the cost for people with Obamacare health insurance. 22 million Americans will see their monthly health insurance premiums double, and up to 5 million Americans will likely lose their insurance altogether.
Where is the Republican plan, where’s the plan? Where’s the plan to deal with all this? They don’t have one because they think keeping healthcare costs low is socialist.
If Republicans truly cared about denouncing authoritarian socialism, they’d start with the Trump Administration. In less than one year, the Trump Administration has demanded U.S. companies like Intel, US Steel, MP Materials, Lithium Americas, and Trilogy Metals hand over stock to the U.S. government and the President of the United States. Capitalist companies who are doing business, and they claim this government supports. Trump is also considering forcing Lockheed Martin to do the same. Why are my colleagues who are so quick to tout their capitalism silent when Trump follows China’s communist tactics? The double standard is astounding.
This resolution also seeks to condemn atrocities committed by despotic regimes such as Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong, which everyone in this chamber agrees should be condemned. But somehow, once again, this resolution fails to condemn some of the history’s most terrible dictators like Adolf Hitler and modern-day dictators like Vladimir Putin, who is responsible for killing countless people in Ukraine, or President Xi who basically runs actual concentration camps for ethnic minorities. Why aren’t House Republicans denouncing these dictators when we as Congress can actually do something to stop them? Probably because President Trump has said he thinks Putin has done ‘a great job’ and is ‘a genius.’ Or maybe because he thinks President Xi ‘is really a friend of mine.’ In line with these authoritarian regimes, just last week, Trump said Democrats in the House and Senate had committed ‘seditious behavior, punishable by death’ and reposted a post saying ‘hang them.’ We should be working as Congress to denounce these horrific words, not beloved government programs like Medicare and Medicaid.
And just as those authoritarian regimes are often rife with corruption, the Trump family is also doing everything possible to enrich itself. Since taking office, they have issued their own stablecoins, memecoins and various crypto products, even as Congress was in the middle of considering legislation and regulators were drafting rules. In fact, the Trump family is more than $1 billion richer from crypto alone since Trump took office. And Trump’s billionaire buddies have also made fistfuls of money as the rest of America struggles to just put food on the table. The excess is so great that Trump is literally tearing down the White House to build a golden ballroom, sending $40 billion to bailout Argentina and his billionaire buddies, and hosting Great Gatsby-themed parties at Mar-a-Lago.
This resolution is a huge waste of time and does absolutely nothing to lower costs or solve any of the problems that our country faces. I urge my colleagues to vote no on this resolution. And, if they keep it up, I’m going to name all of the Republicans who took PPP money. Is that socialism? I’m going to name them, who are taking advantage of other programs that they call socialist. I’m going to do it if they keep this up. I urge my colleagues to vote no on this resolution.
I reserve the balance of my time.”
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