Virtual Update from Washington

Introduction and Government Funding Update

Thank you for joining me today and for your questions, which helped inform this discussion. Many of the questions that were submitted were on the topics of the Israel-Hamas War, the state of our democracy, and immigration, all of which I will address today.

For those who had questions related to the upcoming election, please submit those to my campaign, as this update must focus on official legislative business.  

Many of you had questions on other topics, and you will receive an email response from my office by Friday.

Our new year in Congress has picked up where the last one left off – in Republican chaos and dysfunction that puts our families and our economy at risk.

This week, Republicans once again are on the brink of a possible government shutdown. The Republican House Majority continues to fight among themselves on how to fund the government.

Democrats will once again be needed to deliver the votes to keep our government and economy working. We must pass this Continuing Resolution to extend funding, in order to work towards a bipartisan path forward.

To give some context on how we got here, let’s go back to the beginning of the 118^th Congress. 2023 started with Republicans taking 15 ballots to elect a Speaker of the House. Speaker McCarthy and House Republicans then chose to hold the good faith and credit of our nation hostage in exchange for extreme social policy changes and damaging cuts to federal investments in priorities like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and funding veterans’ health care in the PACT Act.

President Biden met with Republican leadership and negotiated the bipartisan Fiscal Responsibility Act. I joined my colleagues from both sides of the aisle to pass this agreement to avoid economic disaster.

This was an agreement to cap annual Appropriations levels at $1.6 trillion dollars for the next two years, in order to avoid harsh cuts that Republicans sought.

Unfortunately, Speaker McCarthy and the MAGA wing controlling the Republican majority never intended to honor this deal. They went back on their word. They wasted the last seven months pushing for deeper cuts. They loaded up their funding bills with extreme social policy riders.

These radical partisan bills had no chance of passing the Senate or being signed into law by the president—and many couldn’t even be passed by House Republicans themselves! But for many extreme MAGA Republicans, this was their goal all along.

They tipped their hand when all but 5 House Republicans voted last year to pass legislation to slash funding across the federal government by 30%, gutting important programs, including:

• A 74% cut to the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (or LIHEAP), literally leaving families in the cold in Minnesota;
• A 30% cut to nutrition support for Women, Infants, and Children, taking away a lifeline for hungry families and pregnant women;
• The loss of thousands of research grants to cure Alzheimer’s disease, cancers, and heart disease; and
• Thousands fewer safety inspections for everything from railways to the food on our grocery store shelves.

Democrats stood united to oppose these drastic cuts and this extreme, partisan agenda. And when Republicans have been unable to keep government functioning on their own, Democrats have stepped up.

Twice, I joined my fellow Democrats to prevent shutdowns by voting to pass Continuing Resolutions. And last October, radical MAGA Republicans removed Speaker McCarthy for working with Democrats to keep the government open.

That Republican chaos stopped the House from functioning for a month while they struggled to find a replacement Speaker. And when their new Speaker Johnson put forward another Continuing Resolution, Democrats again delivered the votes to keep our government open.

I voted to end the Republican chaos, and prevent damaging shutdowns.

Last week, Speaker Johnson finally agreed to the same funding levels for Fiscal Year 2024 that Speaker McCarthy negotiated with President Biden last June!

If House Republicans allow Speaker Johnson to fulfill that commitment, we can finally do our jobs to fund the government for the rest of the fiscal year.

The agreement under discussion is far from perfect, but it at least honors the funding levels that Republicans negotiated and voted for.

But the question remains: Can Republicans keep their promise this time?

Congress must act by Friday to avoid a shutdown, and pass a Continuing Resolution that allows adequate time to negotiate the details of the 2024 spending bills to fund our priorities, including health care, infrastructure, and our national security.

There’s a lot to do and I’ll keep working to prevent damaging cuts to services that Americans rely on.

But there’s more chaos brewing: Like the previous speaker, Speaker Johnson’s job is on the line because of the same threats from MAGA extremists that ousted Speaker McCarthy.

It’s time for Republicans to stop their dangerous political games and join Democrats to keep the government open. Our families and our communities depend on it.

DELIVERING FOR YOU

So, that’s the update! The constant chaos and failure to govern by the Republican majority in the House of Representatives has resulted in the least productive session of Congress in modern history.

Here is a fact: In 2022, when Democrats led the House and Senate, 281 bills were signed into law by President Biden. By contrast, only 27 bills were signed into law last year under Republican control.

When Democrats were in the majority, over the course of the last Congress, we passed major bipartisan legislation that is making a difference in our communities and improving our economy today, like the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the CHIPS and Science Act.

Exciting things are happening right here in Minnesota – we are putting people to work building the infrastructure we need for today and tomorrow, and manufacturing the chips used in medical devices, our cars, scientific innovation—the list goes on.

Here are a few examples of what I was able to deliver when we worked together under Democratic leadership:

Thanks to the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, ReConnect Rondo has received a $2 million planning grant, a major step forward in revitalizing St. Paul’s Rondo community.

We took the first step forward on gun safety in a decade by enacting the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, and made the biggest investment ever to act on climate change through the Inflation Reduction Act.

And when it comes to mitigating the impacts of climate change, it's important that we all do our part. So I want to highlight an example of the investments I'm making in the Fourth District as a member of the House Appropriations Committee, and how those funds are having a positive impact on the climate crisis.

You might have even seen on the news that earlier this month, I visited the University of St. Thomas to see firsthand some of their key clean energy research programs receiving federal funding that I initiated.

Over the last two years, I've secured over $16 million in federal funds for St. Thomas' Center for Microgrid Research. Faculty and students at St. Thomas are using these funds to develop local electric energy systems that can operate with or without a central grid. These small, self-contained energy networks will be able to operate during power outages or natural disasters.

And that is going to help save lives in an emergency situation.

Localized electricity generation also increases the resiliency and robustness of our country's electric grid, and the work St. Thomas is doing in this field will help create a more sustainable energy future for our communities.

I also secured $15 million last Congress for St. Thomas’s Applied Renewable Technologies Center,
which will promote the development and use of clean energy technologies and work to decrease the impacts of fossil fuels. I am so proud of the work that St. Thomas is doing to utilize these federal funds right here at home.

Both of these programs will contribute to Minnesota's share of decreasing our nation's emissions output,
and advancing a sustainable clean energy future. This is also a down-payment on developing a local clean energy workforce that is critically necessary to sustaining our energy networks.

I look forward to continuing to work with St. Thomas this year and beyond to support our students and build a workforce that will keep Minnesota safe and strong.

CHAOS CAUCUS DRIVES GRIDLOCK

But today, Republicans are to come together to do our work for the American people. Let me give you an example of how even commonsense legislation with bipartisan support has been stopped in the MAGA-led House.

I am co-leading the Preventing Auto Recycling Theft Act (PART Act), a bill with over 70 bipartisan cosponsors to respond to and reduce catalytic converter theft on a national level. The violence surrounding catalytic converter theft has been devastating—even costing the life of one of our neighbors in Saint Paul. It seems like everybody has a personal connection to a catalytic converter theft.

This bill is about reducing crime and keeping our communities safe. Despite broad support from industry, law enforcement, and both sides of the aisle, the PART Act is not moving through regular order markups. Because this Republican majority has put aside the serious work of legislating and governing to focus on partisan demands and political stunts.

Soon I will be reintroducing my legislation to establish the Mississippi River Restoration and Resilience Initiative, or MRRRI, once again. This is a non-regulatory, locally-driven, grant-based initiative 
to improve the health of the Mighty Mississippi and the wildlife, people, and regional economies that depend on it.

The program would fund local projects to build resiliency to extreme weather events and improve water quality and habitat up and down the river corridor, similar to an existing popular regional program in the Great Lakes. Many of you might have seen a story in the newspaper recently about why I am so excited to work on this initiative.

Despite the GOP's chaos, I am focused on working for you and moving us forward. 

YOUR QUESTIONS

And now to get to some of the topics I received many questions about!

Crisis in Gaza

Many of you asked about the tragic situation unfolding in Gaza in the wake of the Hamas terrorist attacks of October 7 on civilians.

Like you, I am deeply concerned about the status of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, many of them children, and the tens of thousands of lives lost because of Israeli airstrikes.

On October 17, I called for a regional ceasefire to end the fighting.

And I want to be clear: it needs to be a regional ceasefire, because as you know, this conflict is not limited to Israel and Gaza. And as we’ve witnessed, my fears of what might occur in the region are coming true.

This war is expanding. Hezbollah continues to fire rockets and missiles into Israel, and Israel continues to shell Southern Lebanon. The Houthis in Yemen, a proxy for the Iranian government, have begun targeting civilian commercial ships in the Red Sea with missiles. And now that has drawn an international military response. The situation in the region is getting worse.

That is why I led a letter with Representatives Pocan and Ocasio-Cortez calling for the Administration to work with our allies and partners in the Middle East to de-escalate the conflict and achieve a sustainable ceasefire.

Today I signed another letter calling for a regional ceasefire.

I have been extraordinarily clear with the Biden administration that the violence must stop and that humanitarian aid must be delivered.

And—there must be no forced transfer of Palestinian civilians out of Gaza by the Israeli government.

The Administration must also continue to work to de-escalate the situation in the West Bank, and press the Israeli government to stop the extremist settler violence against Palestinian civilians.

Please know that I will continue to speak directly with the Administration, advocate for a sustainable regional ceasefire, and work to get critical lifesaving aid into Gaza.

I want to be crystal clear: any violation of international human rights law should not be tolerated by the United States.

Several people asked questions about immigration policy, and what is happening at the southern border.

We have all seen what is unfolding on our southern border, and the humanitarian and security issues it raises. No one policy is going to stop this immigration crisis, because no one thing is causing it.

The complex problems facing our immigration system need comprehensive reform, not more rhetoric and demonization of immigrants. It must be a compassionate and human-centered system. It cannot be an outright denial of asylum claims or walls and blockades that prevent assistance and lead to events like the drowning of a mother and her children near Texas last week.

Unfortunately, Republicans have blocked any meaningful reform efforts for decades. They have refused to even support DREAMers who were brought to the U.S. as very young children and only know this nation as home.

Speaker Johnson is refusing any discussion that does not embrace the cruel and extreme policies embodied in the MAGA Republican H.R. 2 bill. The bill would reinstate Trump-era detention centers that separated children from their parents, and it would force the construction of an ineffective border wall.

Once again, House Republican leadership is more interested in parroting talking points than doing the hard work of governing.

We need comprehensive immigration reform, we need to know who is coming into our country and why,
and Congress needs to write legislation and vote on it now. But that requires Republican leadership to sit down with Democrats and work toward a real solution—it is 30 years overdue.

Voting Rights/Democracy

We also received questions on the state of our democracy.

People need to know that their votes are counted, and that the election workers we entrust to do this are safe. I’m proud to have supported the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, which would restore key portions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and make it harder to restrict voter access. I’ve also cosponsored the Freedom to Vote Act, which will increase election security to ensure that everyone is confident in the integrity of our voting process.

People have also been asking my office about former President Trump and whether or not his name should appear on our ballots. Mr. Trump has not been convicted for his actions on January 6.

The Supreme Court has not yet determined his ballot eligibility. But there’s one thing that makes it clear to me why he is ineligible—the House Oversight Committee report on the former president’s business dealings makes it clear that Mr. Trump violated the Constitution’s Foreign Emoluments Clause.

Mr. Trump clearly abused his position as President to enrich himself and his family, receiving millions of dollars directly from China and other foreign governments.

By violating the Emoluments Clause alone, not to mention his role in inciting an insurrection—for which he was impeached—Mr. Trump has committed acts against the Constitution and he should never be allowed to hold power in our nation again.

HELPING YOU

As I said earlier, for those of you who submitted questions that we did not get to today, we will get back to you by Friday. Once again, thank you for the privilege of serving you in Congress. 

As a reminder, my office is here to help you navigate the federal government.

Whether you are visiting Washington, D.C., to tour historic sites throughout our nation’s capital and visit the many fabulous Smithsonian galleries and museums, or if you need help with a federal agency, my team is here to serve you.

And whether you’re looking to escape the cold weather or are planning a trip for the spring, please remember to check your passport expiration date before booking your trip. Some countries require 6 months of validity for travel. Last year we experienced an unprecedented demand for help with emergency passport issues. We successfully processed hundreds of cases. While things have settled down a bit, processing times are between 6-8 weeks for routine passports and 2-3 weeks for expedited processing—and that is not including mail time. So, it is always a good idea to double check and make sure your passport is up to date.

My casework team in Minnesota not only helps with passports but assists constituents experiencing issues with any federal agency including the IRS, Social Security, the United States Post Office, etc.

Here are some recent casework success stories:

Our office helped a constituent redeem tens of thousands of dollars in treasury EE savings bonds that had matured but found her account was frozen.

We helped a constituent receive much-needed Social Security Disability backpay and start receiving monthly Social Security benefits.

We recently helped a constituent receive thousands of dollars in Social Security widow’s benefits she was due and start receiving monthly Social Security widow’s benefits.

No matter how hard people try, it isn’t always easy, and we recently helped a constituent in Saint Paul get enrolled in Medicare Parts A and B after the constituent had had several unsuccessful attempts.

And finally, you all know the United States Post Service has been in the news lately. After a bit of a go around, we were just able to help a neighborhood in the district get their cluster mailbox unit replaced after it was destroyed in an accident. Initially this group of constituents were told their boxes could not be replaced until spring. We all depend on the Post Office, especially our seniors and others who receive medications and certain benefits through the mail. Thankfully, this matter was resolved quickly.

I remain committed to serving you, the people of Minnesota’s Fourth District. 

It is a great honor to do so. Thank you again for joining this update.  Again, please do not hesitate to reach out to my offices in Saint Paul or Washington! 

Visit mccollum.house.gov/contact to voice your policy opinion. Sign up for my e-newsletter here.