Teresa Leger Fernandez Slams House GOP For Control Of DC: You’re ‘Not Respecting Local Decisions’

4 months ago

Last week, Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez (D-NM) delivered remarks on proposed legislation related to DC crime during a House Rules Committee hearing.

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Transcript

00:00 >> Thank you, madam chairwoman.

00:02 How nice to see you in that chair.

00:05 I walked in and I thought we were going to be talking about having the Congress dictate

00:12 to a local district what to do with the criminal laws so that people who are not elected by

00:18 those residents would be dictated.

00:20 Here we are talking about things like immigration around a D.C. sort of bill where we are not

00:26 respecting local decisions, right?

00:31 It strikes me that when my colleague kind of goes on about immigrants in his state,

00:39 he fails to realize that those immigrants in his state are basically keeping up the

00:45 economy, right?

00:46 They are working in the jobs that American citizens won't take, don't take.

00:52 And so, we have seen, we had recent reports from Social Security how thank you, immigrants,

01:02 because without your participation in Social Security, we would not be solvent for a few

01:08 more years.

01:09 We need to do a lot.

01:10 Social Security 2100, I am in on that bill so we could fix it.

01:15 But it also strikes me that I walked in on the debate just as, yeah, I just was wondering

01:22 what was being picked in your state.

01:24 It's turnips, collard greens, kale, those are the kinds of things that hardworking immigrants,

01:31 undocumented and undocumented pick, backbreaking work, backbreaking work.

01:36 But criminal conduct, it strikes me that the only reason you get indicted is because there

01:45 is probable cause and lots of hard work to say we think we might convict you in front

01:53 of a jury.

01:54 Now, some of those cases against the former president have not gone forward.

01:59 And I know that the work that you're doing in oversight and judiciary aren't going forward,

02:06 mostly because there just isn't any there there, right?

02:10 And we had a whole, they've had months and months to look at this and we haven't seen

02:16 anything.

02:17 I really don't have any questions because that-

02:19 Would you yield, Ms. Langel?

02:21 Sure, dear colleague.

02:23 Okay, let me just, you say they're carrying their own weight.

02:26 I really don't know how you're saying that.

02:28 In South Carolina, education costs alone is 586 million.

02:34 Police and legal corrections, 135 million.

02:38 There's an article in the Epoch Times, small towns, particularly in Texas, where all border

02:43 states are being deluged with, and in Mr. Nadler's state, New York.

02:48 Look at what they've done to education system there.

02:52 It's unsustainable.

02:54 And I don't know how you say they're carrying their own weight.

02:58 The fact that each household in South Carolina, they don't make these things up.

03:03 It's $377 per household annually.

03:08 So all I would say is, if you asked, you say that the, I can't imagine legal immigration

03:18 everybody is for.

03:20 You gotta have some way to, you can have some way to monitor who's coming in your house.

03:25 And as Mike Pompeo said, they're in the gates now.

03:28 We've got over 40,000 Chinese nationals.

03:31 Thank you, Mr. Norman.

03:32 And I would point out that we actually had a bill, bipartisan bill.

03:36 The modernization workforce bill, the farm worker modernization workforce bill, which

03:41 Republicans killed.

03:43 But going back to the issue at hand, like I said, I don't really have any questions.

03:48 We seem to have veered off from the topic, but I don't know if you want to respond to

03:52 anything you heard.

03:54 There is one thing, Congresswoman Leja Fernandez, thank you very kindly.

03:57 And I love the freewheeling nature of the Rules Committee.

04:00 I wasn't prepared to talk about the immigration issue, but the distinguished gentleman from

04:05 South Carolina raised an issue that is close to my heart, because it's something I worked

04:09 on when I was a state senator, which is organized rings of retail theft.

04:14 And in Maryland, we passed a law against directing organized retail theft.

04:22 And I suppose that's something you'd be interested in.

04:24 I mean, it's these criminal rings that are sending people in and robbing stores and coming

04:28 out.

04:30 I don't know if the gentleman is aware that that's precisely the kind of legislation that

04:35 would be invalidated by the bill before you.

04:39 The District of Columbia Council just passed that and created new criminal sentences under

04:44 it.

04:45 There's nothing in this legislation that deals with that particular offense, but that's something

04:50 that has come up and that's been something we've been troubled by in Maryland and I'm

04:55 sure other states.

04:56 You want to have the local government being able to respond to those things.

04:59 But what this legislation says is that the District of Columbia Council cannot alter

05:04 in any way, cannot increase criminal sentences, it can't reduce criminal sentences, it can't

05:10 create new crimes with sentences just because Congress knows best.

05:17 And that seems dubious to me and it seems like a massive intervention with home rule

05:22 and a real diss to the people of Washington who've been going through the process of responding

05:28 to these kinds of criminal events.

05:30 So I just thought you should know about that.

05:32 There are jurisdictions that are taking action on precisely the problem that you identified.

05:37 Please, by all means.

05:40 I yield you time, Mr. Norman.

05:45 How do you respond when the mayor, Merrill Bowser, would not intervene with, I forget

05:52 which campus, maybe it was George Washington, to stop the peaceful protests who were tearing

05:58 up buildings?

05:59 Why would she not lend the police force to help the college out?

06:04 Well, as I understand it, she sent the police in and they broke up the encampment.

06:10 That's my understanding.

06:11 We were going to have a hearing on the whole thing, but the chairman canceled it.

06:15 So I don't know any more details other than the D.C. police did go in.

06:20 It was after 14 days and only after we were going to hold a hearing and make her have

06:26 to answer questions to the American people as to why they weren't adhering to the request

06:33 of the university president.

06:34 The George Washington University president requested that the police go in and remove

06:39 the encampment.

06:41 These were peaceful protests, but they were trespassing.

06:44 They were intimidating Jewish students, and 20 plus percent of the student population

06:49 at George Washington is Jewish.

06:53 They were begging for help from the police department, and they didn't until the morning

06:57 of the hearing.

07:00 They finally cleared it out, which the hearing was going to be 100 percent about why Washington

07:05 hadn't cleared that encampment out.

07:09 That's why the hearing was canceled.

07:14 But I would be curious as to what the ranking member's position.

07:17 Did you support-

07:18 I thought the hearing was about anti-Semitism, too, which is why I was so disappointed.

07:21 I didn't think it was just about that one event.

07:24 That's why I was so disappointed that you canceled it.

07:27 Did you support the- whose side were you on, the university president's side requesting

07:33 help from Washington, D.C. police?

07:35 Or-

07:36 I'm happy to answer the question if someone else-

07:42 I think I'll explain my time on this.

07:45 But this is an example.

07:46 It is freewheeling, but it is an example of how we have moved beyond the idea that we

07:51 are imposing on D.C. from Congress what should be happening.

07:58 I think it's up to the local voters.

08:00 Do they want to continue electing council members and a mayor who are pursuing the policy?

08:07 In that specific case, there are, I think, something like 5,000 or 6,000 college and

08:13 university campuses across the country.

08:16 They and their security forces have relationships with the local governments and the county

08:20 governments and the state governments.

08:22 They can't be micromanaged by the U.S. Congress.

08:24 We're the federal legislature, and we're supposed to be engaged in federal lawmaking.

08:29 So if there was a request from a campus to the D.C. police and to the mayor, and they

08:39 engaged in a process that at first didn't give the university exactly what it wanted,

08:45 and then it did end up doing it, I'd be happy to look at it.

08:49 But that's how local government works, right?

08:52 And does the Congress really want to be superintending the relationship between every college and

08:57 university in all of our districts and the local and state governments?

09:01 I don't think so.

09:02 And to get back to the matter at hand, that's precisely the fatal flaw with this legislation,

09:09 which is it says for all time we're going to freeze criminal sentencing legislation

09:14 in the District of Columbia at what it is.

09:17 Again, I don't know whether that was deliberate or not, but that's what their legislation

09:21 says.

09:22 They're going to make it impossible for the D.C. Council to do what it just did, which

09:26 is to create new crimes like the crime of organized retail theft conspiracy rings.

09:33 And that's not something that the Congress of the United States is going to do for D.C.,

09:36 but it's something that D.C. did for itself.

09:38 But now we wouldn't allow them to, simply because we decided it's an election year and

09:44 it's convenient to kick D.C. around a little bit.

09:48 So thank you very much, Ranking Member.

09:51 And I would note, Madam Chairwoman, I'd like to enter into the record the Washington Post

09:56 article that points out how Social Security and Medicare taxes have been benefited by

10:02 immigrant participation.

10:06 Without objection.

10:07 And because it's not my word, these are actually several statistics.

10:15 We've also looked at, there was a recent GAO study, CBO, which pointed out that immigrants

10:23 and undocumented immigrants have produced about a trillion dollars of benefit to the

10:27 United States economy.

10:28 And we will also, I don't have that one on me right now, but I'll send it over to Mr.

10:33 Norman's office.

10:34 And with that, I yield back.

Teresa Leger Fernandez Slams House GOP For Control Of DC: You’re ‘Not Respecting Local Decisions’

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