Thomas Breen photo
DeLauro: Prioritize pay equity and gun control, not impeachment.
U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro called on the media and her fellow House Democrats to ditch impeachment, which she considers a distraction, and to focus instead on pay equity, universal healthcare, gun safety, and closing down the child migrant detention camps at the border.
Even if the Trump Administration is “lawless,” led by a “naysayer” in the Oval Office who has “betrayed” his working-class constituents, she emphasized that his political opponents should focus on the ballot box rather than on premature removal to realize their legislative agenda.
DeLauro’s conference with local reporters.
DeLauro issued that call to back down from impeachment and to step up on social welfare policies Tuesday morning during an hour-long interview with local reporters at her second-story Downtown office at 59 Elm St.
The long-time Congresswoman from Connecticut’s Third Congressional District, which is centered in New Haven, convened the local press meet-up to talk about the accomplishments and frustrations of the 116th U.S. Congress during its first 200 days before its annual summer recess.
DeLauro, who has served in the House for nearly three decades, rose to the rank of chair of the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriations Subcommittee after Democrats took control of the U.S. House of Representatives during the November 2018 mid-term elections.
Time and again during Tuesday’s interview, DeLauro emphasized that the mandate that American voters gave to House Democrats last election was to protect and build upon social-economic welfare programs like the Affordable Care Act, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, the Civil Rights Act, and others long championed by the Democratic Party.
DeLauro’s Elm Street office.
That mandate was not to impeach President Donald Trump, she said, but rather to beat his oligarchic, anti-democratic ideas with federal assistance programs that Americans overwhelmingly support.
Even after Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report and Congressional testimony uncovered troves of evidence of the Trump campaign’s willful collaboration with Russian meddlers in the 2016 election and of the administration’s subsequent obstruction of the special counsel’s investigation, DeLauro was clear that, as of right now, she stands with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in opposing impeachment. Even as critics, including over 100 of her Democratic colleagues in the House, call on Congressional leadership to shirk short-term political concerns and pursue impeachment to protect American democracy.
“I see this ending up next November when we vote him out of office,” DeLauro said in her prediction of the fate of the Trump Administration.
When asked about support for impeachment, she replied, “Not from me.”
“You take a look at what happened last November,” she continued. “What were the issues? Healthcare. Jobs. Prescription drugs. Draining the swamp? I believe he has betrayed those people who said, ‘I need help. I don’t have any economic security in my life. My kids, I can’t get them to school. I can’t afford healthcare. I can’t afford childcare. How do I make it? This guy offers me a road.’ There is no road. There is no road.”
During her many meetings with local constituents, she said, she hears about the need for good-paying jobs, affordable housing, gun safety, lower prescription drug costs. Impeachment? Not so much.
“I believe we have a lawless administration,” she said, and that the findings of the Mueller investigation should spur all Americans, Democrat or not, to continue to fight for democracy. But that fight must happen, she said, through electoral politics.
“There’s no majority for impeachment,” she said. “There is a majority to deal with people’s everyday lives. That’s what they ask me about. ‘How are you gonna help me? What can you do? What can the Congress do to help me with my life?’ That’s where i want to focus my time and attention.”
Stymied By Mitch McConnell
And that’s exactly where the Congresswoman has dedicated her time and attention during the first 200 days of this Congressional term, she said.
She championed and helped pass a House bill that will raise the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2025.
She led House Democrats’ in their support for and ultimate passage of the Paycheck Fairness Act, a bill DeLauro first introduced in 1997, that mandates equal pay for women and men through such measures as prohibiting employers from asking job candidates about how much they made in previous jobs and require employers to be more transparent about much other employees make.
She’s co-introduced the Medicare for America Act, a universal healthcare program that aspires to expand Medicare coverage to all Americans while also preserving “gold-level” employer-sponsored health insurance.
Plus, she said, this year’s Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education House Appropriations bill that her committee passed includes $50 million for gun violence research funding: $25 million for the National Institutes of Health and $25 million for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
That appropriations bill also includes $14.5 billion in special education funding, a $1.05 billion increase above the 2019 enacted level; $16.9 billion for Title I grants, an increase of $1 billion above the current year’s enacted level; $2.6 billion for Supportive Effective Instruction State Grants (Title II‑A), an increase of $500 million over the current year’s enacted level; and $980 million for English Language Acquisition, an increase of $243 million over the current year’s enacted level.
“We’re able to pass legislation in the House,” she said.
That, however, comes with a key caveat. “Where the heck do you go when you get to a Mitch McConnell,” the Kentucky U.S. senator who leads the Republican-controlled upper chamber of Congress.
A framed photo of DeLauro in her Elm Street office.
Without a sympathetic president or Senate, she said, House Democrats have little to no change of passing any of these bills that American voters empowered her and her colleagues to support.
All she and fellow House Democrats can do is continuing fighting in the lower chamber, she said, and “set the table” with a raft of House-approved legislation for a future Democratic president and Senate to support.
Because of that Republican opposition, she said, she struggled to identify a single bill that passed both chambers and was signed into law by the president this session that she believes realizes the progressive mandate that House Democrats won last November.
DeLauro also doubled down during the interview in support of her decision to vote against a border supplemental appropriations bill, ultimately supported by Congressional Republicans and Democrats, that granted President Trump $4.6 billion in border security funding with little to no restrictions. House Speak Nancy Pelosi ultimately encouraged her colleagues to support the bill to prioritize getting relief funds to migrant children at the border.
DeLauro said she opposed the bill ultimately passed by her House colleagues because of how much flexibility the supplemental appropriations bill afforded the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), because of its preserved memorandum of understanding between DHHS and the Department of Homeland Security, and because of its lack of abidance by the Flores agreement that limits how long the country can detain unaccompanied minors.
Although DeLauro supported an initial House version of the bill that included those protections, she voted against the bill was ultimately signed into law.
“I said no,” she said. “And I’m very comfortable with that.”