"Our Nation Is In Crisis" | Booker Speaks
"Great nations take care of their elders. They care about them."
As I sent this story out, Senator Cory Booker is starting his 18th consecutive hour of speech on the Senate floor (live on CSPAN2). It is an astounding feat of physical endurance and political conviction, regardless of partisan stripe. That said, Booker is making the kind of strong and forceful case that his party has lacked over the last 72 days.
Though this super-nerd’s TV was on all night, I must confess that I slept through several hours of Booker’s speech. While it is impossible to distill down what may become a record long Senate presentation (currently held by then-Democratic Senator Strom Thurmond (SC) who filibustered against the Civil Rights Act of 1957 for 24 hours and 18 minutes), I did transcribe a powerful Booker segment from his 15th hour:
We the people. And how can we create a more perfect union. And I will tell you this right now, our nation is in trouble. Compared to our global peers, we have higher disease rates, higher diabetes rates, higher cancer rates, higher maternal mortality rates, higher premature birth rates, higher infant mortality rates — there are so many things going on in this country that SHOULD NOT GO ON.
But yet we are a nation of utter abundance. We are a nation of incredible wealth and resources. And we’ve proven in our past that that we are a nation of incredible vision. And that’s why I don’t understand why we are PLAYING SO SMALL. Why we have a president that is playing so small — who’s not coming here like presidents of the past and saying ‘we together.’ Reagan, Clinton, Obama: ’There’s a big challenge America. We, together, are going to get in a room and do sausage-making. Republicans and Democrats, and we’re going to find a way to write great legislation.’
Whatever you want to say about Joe Biden, he was a big president because he didn’t try to do things by executive fiat, or as Donald Trump said, ‘the primacy of the executive.’ Ignoring the Constitution.
You know how many bipartisan bills were hammered out here? I see Senator Mark Warner, do you know how many bipartisan bills Mark Warner was at the table for? My senior senator, who is Chairman of the Intelligence Committee. We did the Bipartisan infrastructure Act, when Trump, in his first term, had ‘infrastructure week’ every other week!
We did a CHIPS and Science Bill, he’s trying to claw back the money, but we did this together. I still remember that classified SCIF where the whole Senate was there and our national security team. And Gina Raimondo put forward the crisis in our country, the vulnerabilities, and we came out of that room, we got into all our rooms, and we hammered out a great CHIPS and Science Bill.
So you and I both know that a big president would come here and say ‘let’s do some legislation.’ I quoted John McCain in the middle of the night. He voted against taking away healthcare from millions of Americans…Not Donald Trump. He’s repeating the mistake. But not just of the ACA, which affects tens of millions or Americans. But with MEDICAID! That affects 70 to 100 million Americans. Why? You ask why? Well, we know why. You said it. It is not just because he wants to RENEW the Trump tax cuts, but to expand them to have disproportionate benefits to the wealthiest in our country. Names that we know. People like, Elon Musk, who I wish would say, ‘I don’t want the tax cut.’ I wish he would say the truth: ’I don’t need a tax cut.’
But that’s not the only reason. There’s a cruelty in what (Trump) is doing. It’s so offensive. He seems to have no respect for people with disabilities. He seems to have no respect for people who are working hard and struggling and still can’t make ends meet. No respect for people who are afraid of his language, of his threats.
They think that what he’s doing to Social Security might mean that they won’t have it. They think that what he’s saying about Medicare and Medicaid are lies, because he has more registered lies than any president in my lifetime. They don’t think they can trust this president not to hurt them, because he already is.
And so, I was told by my parents that what defines you is not what happens to you but how you choose to respond. What happens to us as a nation is not what defines us. They can bomb us from Pearl Harbor to attack us at 9/11, the American character was defined by how we responded to those crises. And yes, there’ve been major political crises before but we responded by bending the arc of our nation more towards justice. Taking care of more people, saying that we belong to each other in America.
It is ‘we the people. We the people.’
I wasn't there for the whole thing but I found it about 4:00 this morning and it was amazing. Booker is something. Something worth our time