Practice English Speaking&Listening with: AOC castigates McConnell for sending the Senate home for the holidays
-We are here, convening in Washington,
and just a day or two ago, the Senate Majority Leader,
Senator McConnell, decided to break the Senate.
And he broke the Senate as there are thousands of people
in Texas lined up for food lines.
He broke the Senate while hospitals no longer have beds
to house the sick.
He broke the Senate and dismissed the Senate
while 30-million Americans are on the brink of eviction.
He dismissed the Senate when every single day,
when we go back to our communities,
people are asking us, where is there going to be help?
Is there going to be a second stimulus check?
Are we going to get the resources that we need?
He broke the Senate.
And in breaking the Senate, we are abandoning our people.
Thanksgiving is around the corner.
And there are millions of Americans
that won't be able to afford a meal to eat,
that don't know if they'll be kicked out of their home,
that are unsure if they're going to have to quit their job
to care for their child.
And we are having entire bodies, and the Senate prides itself
as one of the most deliberative bodies, they abandoned them.
This uncertainty in food reflects food hardship
across the country. 5.
6 million households with children struggling
to put enough food on the table in the last seven days.
Landlords filed at least 43,500 evictions
in 17 major cities from March until September.
An estimated 13.
4 million adults living in rental housing today,
nearly one in five renters were not caught up on rent.
Small businesses don't know if they are going to survive
or exist in a month, in a week, in January.
We cannot afford to wait for a new administration
or another election or a political state of play.
We need to get people help now, and the Senate broke.
They broke.
We are supposed to be here to work for everyday people.
We are not supposed to be here to work for political donors
or political favors or the powerful.
We are here to serve the people
who are most vulnerable all the way up to the top.
But we start with the people most in need.
Our country is going hungry on the week
before Thanksgiving, and the Senate broke.
I don't care what party you are.
It is an abandonment of our responsibilities
as elected officials who are charged
with acting in the public trust.
I was surprised to hear so many Republicans
now concerned about how we are going to pay for it
or using other people's money.
But the Senate Majority Leader
wasn't concerned about other people's money
when he authorized a $4 trillion leverage bailout
for Wall Street in March.
He wasn't concerned about where that money came from.
He wasn't concerned about how we were going to pay for it.
It is only when we are talking about relief for working people,
for children, for families, for parents, for education,
for healthcare, that all of a sudden,
we can't pay for any of these things.
But when it comes to tax subsidies for private jets,
we've got the money for that.
When it comes to the endless appropriations
towards more and more military spending when we aren't
even technically in growing elements of war,
according to some people, we have money for that.
But we don't have money to feed our own kids?
We don't have money to educate people?
We don't have money to provide healthcare?
But we have money for private jets.
We have money for tax loopholes for yachts.
We have money to incentivize stock buy-backs.
We have a billion dollars to invest in research
and development for a vaccine
which was proudly invested in and a good use of public funds
just for pharmaceutical companies
to take these publicly developed patents
or publicly developed drugs, rather,
and then sell them back to the public at no discount
so we don't even get a return on this investment.
How is that fiscally responsible?
So we are living in a world
and a state of play in our governance
where the party who is eager to help subsidize private jets
somehow can't find the dollars
and the cents to get people a $1,200 check.
It's unconscionable.
And it's wrong.
And the Senate broke.
And so I'm just rising today
because it is extraordinarily difficult
to represent a working class district,
not a private jet district,
and to go home every week, just as I am about to do again,
and feel as helpless in this body
because the majority of its members
and the majority of the Senate
can't seem to want to get it together
and get people the help that we need.
And the Senate broke.
So this is what I have to do.
This is what we are resorting to,
speaking to an empty room because the Senate broke.
So if there is anything I have left to say,
I want to know if there's anybody out there
that's listening, it's that if you are a working family,
if you are struggling to get the food that you need,
if you feel like you are on the brink of eviction,
we see you.
We see you.
And what I ask for the Senate and what I ask
of our Republican colleagues in the Senate
is to act as if you were the one that was going hungry.
Act as if it is you getting evicted from your house.
Act with that urgency.
