Scalise: Biden Must End Self-Made Border Crisis
WASHINGTON, D.C.—House Republican Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) joined Fox Business Network's Mornings with Maria to discuss President Biden's self-made crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border. Whip Scalise emphasized the actions that need to be taken to end Biden's border crisis. Whip Scalise also blasted Speaker Pelosi for ramming her socialist agenda through Congress instead of providing targeted COVID relief to hardworking Americans.
On President Biden's self-made border crisis:
"What we're seeing is nothing short of a crisis at the border that some border patrol agents have described as total mayhem. This is Biden's border crisis, this is created exclusively by President Biden's policies. He immediately went in [on] day one, stopped building the wall, in fact ordered that they stopped construction on the wall that was going on and it actually cost more money to stop executing those contracts. That wall, by the way, that President Trump had put in place had been successful at securing our border and what President Biden did is put the open sign at America's border and they're coming in by the thousands every day. You know, Obama's Secretary of Homeland Security said if he saw over a thousand crossings in one day illegally that was a serious problem. Today we're seeing three and four thousand, and possibly more illegal crossings a day and, by the way, this is a major humanitarian crisis. These young kids that are being pulled across the border, many of them are being brought across by the cartels, by these coyotes who are being paid money, many sexually exploiting the young women that are coming across and they're not even being stored in proper conditions when they get here because the system is completely overwhelmed, and it's all been created by President Biden. He refuses to come see this himself. I think he wants to ignore that this problem is real. It's very real and it's such a crisis that these local communities on the border, Laredo, and others are completely overwhelmed and it was completely created by President Biden. It can be reversed, by the way, by President Biden if he just goes back to things like the remain in Mexico policy, ending catch and release, that are magnets telling people to come to America by the thousands, in many cases super spreader caravans."
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"You know, talk about trying to contort yourself into a pretzel to deny a problem exists. President Biden knows what's going on at the border and he thinks just by staying away from it, by hiding out, by not doing press conferences, that the problem will go away. It's getting worse because of President Biden's policies. What President Trump was doing was working, Biden might not like President Trump but if his policy was working at least continue on with that. If your policy failed, in this case President Biden's policy, that failed at the border, he can reverse it. It was completely put in place by him through executive order. He can reverse it by executive order. Now that he sees the devastation he's causing to these young children coming across. This humanitarian crisis can be stopped by President Biden. But also, when you look at what it's doing in these communities, they're overwhelming communities along the border and it seems like he doesn't care about their plight because he's carrying out some socialist agenda that the left wants. This isn't some social experiment; this is having a devastating impact on these young children coming across, without parents in many cases, left to just be fending for themselves after being exploited in many cases along the journey – the 20-plus day journey for some of them."
On Democrats' socialist agenda:
"America needs to be rescued from this socialist agenda that's been rammed through Congress and signed by President Biden - Speaker Pelosi's agenda that's very far left. Look at the bill, over 90 percent of this $1.9 trillion bill has nothing to do with health needs.We tried to put money in to double the number of vaccines for example and they rejected it. They have, in this bill, they have checks, $1400 checks, going to felons in federal prison. Does anybody really think that's a COVID related item? They banned states from cutting taxes in this bill, is that even constitutional? Those are the problems."
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"It's crazy. I mean [felons are] getting paid food and they're housed; they're getting free health care and then President Biden signed a bill to give them a $1400 check while they're in prison. This is psychotic, that money is being borrowed from our children, by the way, and then they're going to go and raise taxes on hard-working families to pay for this. I think people are getting outraged when they find out what's going on and then he creates a crisis at the border that, by the way, it's going to cost us billions of dollars more for this magnet that he's created to open up our southern border and bring thousands of people a day illegally when they can't even house them properly, and the children are being exploited and sexually assaulted along the journey. This has to end and he can end it. President Biden can end it himself today. Number one, admit that there's a problem, he refuses to do that. He won't even go to the southern border, but reverse this policy that has failed miserably where border patrol agents are calling it total mayhem."