On Thursday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “The Beat,” Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA) said that bipartisanship will lead to the Trump administration “rolling over us as a country and destroying the social safety net.”
After Garcia said the Trump administration wants to cut the social safety net and give the wealthy tax cuts, host Katie Phang asked, “[Q]uickly, Congressman, how do you guys do that, then? How do the Democrats do that, when you have…Republicans holding all three branches of government, clearly signaling that they’re going to endanger social safety nets for Americans, how do Democrats do that, I know there’s a very slim margin in terms of just the numbers right now in D.C., but what’s it going to take for you guys?”
Garcia responded, “I think different folks have different ideas of how to get there. I’ll tell you mine, it’s not by holding hands with Republicans and kumbayaing at this moment and just wishing and hoping that everything is going to be okay and this big era of bipartisanship. That is just not the case in my opinion. Bipartisanship right now, and working with these Republicans, is going to lead to one thing, and that is them rolling over us as a country and destroying the social safety net. At this moment, what Democrats need to do is to fight back every single time. And look already how that has worked. Even with the majority in the Congress, Democrats were able to stop some of their worst laws. We did, I think, a really strong effort on derailing the Matt Gaetz nomination. We’ve continued to push, even in this last discussion on the budget, Democrats kept the government open, while giving Donald Trump a loss. … And so, if Democrats dig in, fight like hell, push hard, we can actually win some of these battles. Now, it’s going to be hard and tough, but what we shouldn’t be doing is all of a sudden rolling out the red carpet for Elon Musk and his DOGE committee. That’s not something that I’m going to engage in and I hope that we continue to fight back.”
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