Durbin Statement on Trump Address to Congress
WASHINGTON—U.S. Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) released the following statement on President Trump’s address to a Joint Session of Congress:
Tonight, President Trump continued to make big promises but didn’t offer any real plans to achieve them. He has yet to propose a concrete strategy to create jobs in America, which jeopardizes the historic job growth of the past eight years.
The policies he has put forward have already had tragic human costs—tearing families apart and threatening to cripple America’s workforce by designating millions as priorities for deportation. His ban on refugees and immigrants from Muslim-majority countries plays right into the hands of our enemies and makes America less safe. The President’s crusade to repeal health care would throw tens of millions of people off the insurance rolls, plunge markets into chaos, and blow a massive hole in the deficit—an idea that loses more and more public support by the day.
He again called out the terrible gun violence in the city of Chicago without offering a single solution to help stop it. And he made no mention of Russia’s acts of cyberwar against our democracy that helped deliver him into office—that is telling as the evidence mounts and the need for an independent investigation grows more urgent.
President Trump’s priorities are out of line with the working families he claims to support—I will continue to work every day to ensure their voices are heard.