House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Republicans don’t have a mandate to make sweeping changes in the upcoming spending agreement and later when President-elect Donald Trump returns to the White House with a Republican Congress.
“Despite the claims of some of my Republican colleagues who have spent a lot of time over the last two weeks talking about some big, massive mandate, I’m looking for it,” Rep. Jeffries, New York Democrat, said Tuesday at his weekly press conference.
“That doesn’t mean that we don’t have to make adjustments to make sure that we can get beyond fighting House Republicans with a national wave on top of us to withdraw.
“But the question about this notion of some mandate to make massive far-right extreme policy changes. It doesn’t exist,” he said, noting the new Republican majority will be thin and that any key spending bill will need Democrats to pass the lower chamber.
“In the new Congress for anything to happen, particularly as it relates to an enlightened spending agreement, or ensuring that America does not default on our debt and crash the economy … it’s clear House Republicans cannot do it on their own,” he said.
Democrats warned Republicans to heed political history. Ted Lieu, vice chairman of the Democratic Caucus, said, “There is no party that has any mandate for any extended period of time, and I know that in 2004 George Bush had a trifecta. And you may have remembered that back then, Republicans ran an anti-gay marriage platform.”
“Two years later, Democrats flipped the house. Four years later, President Obama had a trifecta. More recently, in 2016 Donald Trump came in with a trifecta. Two years later, Democrats took the house. Four years later, President Biden had a trifecta.”
When asked about President-elect Trump’s mass deportation plan and how Democrats plan to thwart such a policy, Mr. Jeffries replied, “We have a broken criminal justice system and broken immigration system. Obviously, we need to secure our border. We need a safe, a strong, a secure … main border.”
He continued, “We should secure the border in a bipartisan way that meets the needs of the American people, that right-sizes our immigration system and that ensures we can enact the type of comprehensive immigration reform that allows for legal pathways for citizenship.”
Trump pledged to begin mass deportations as soon as he returned to the White House.
“On Day 1, I will launch the largest deportation program in American history to get the criminals out,” he said during his rally at New York’s Madison Square Garden in late October.
“I will rescue every city and town that has been invaded and conquered, and we will put these vicious and bloodthirsty criminals in jail, then kick them the hell out of our country as fast as possible.”
Mr. Jeffries, when later asked by The Washington Times if he supported criminal immigrants being deported, responded, “I think that the focus of the incoming administration should be on removing anyone who threatens the health and the safety of the American people. … And of course, criminals and felons should be subject to deportation and the laws of the United States of America. It’s not complicated.”
• Kerry Picket can be reached at kpicket@washingtontimes.com.
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