Chairman Aguilar on Bloomberg: People are feeling the pinch, and the President hasn't offered any solution that would make life better.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar joined Bloomberg’s Balance of Power with host Joe Mathieu to discuss the State of the Union, affordability crisis, ongoing shutdown at the Department of Homeland Security and the possibility of a foreign war in Iran. You can watch the full interview here and read the transcript of the Chairman’s interview below.
JOE MATHIEU: I'm Joe Mathieu, and we're glad to have you with us here on a special edition of Balance of Power. Joined now by Democratic Congressman Pete Aguilar of California, who is Chair of the House Democratic Caucus. It's great to have a member of leadership to tee us off this evening. Congressman, welcome and happy State of the Union.
CHAIR AGUILAR: Good to be with you, Joe.
JOE MATHIEU: This is supposed to be a happy and exciting day, right? The speech before a joint session of Congress. The past couple of years, the State of the Union has devolved into a bit of a two-way conversation. Are you hoping for decorum, as Leader Jeffries has called for this evening from both sides of the aisle?
CHAIR AGUILAR: I'm hoping for decorum, but I'm also hoping for a good, aspirational speech that is about where the country should go, and unfortunately, I just don't know if the President's capable of doing that.
JOE MATHIEU: Okay, well, he says he's going to talk for the better part of two hours, is what we understand. He says there's a lot to talk about because of so much that's happened in the last year. I spoke with the guest you have this evening, Dr. Cameo Carter, who's a pediatrician. Does that mean you're hoping to get some insights into the future of ACA premiums?
CHAIR AGUILAR: Yeah, absolutely. I think that's something that was obviously cut out of the President's budget. He didn't put forward a solution. He let it expire at the end of the year. Congress, in a bipartisan way, in the House of Representatives, pushed back and passed a bill that would restore those premium tax credits. That's something that should be done. It's bipartisan, supported by folks uniformly around the country and we haven't been able to do that, and the President hasn't led on this. And in fact, everything he's done has made it more difficult for people to get help.
JOE MATHIEU: How did this debate die out? Isn’t there a bill waiting in the Senate? There was some momentum here. There was a deal to get a vote on the floor, and we're not even talking about it right now.
CHAIR AGUILAR: Yeah, I mean in the Senate, they just haven't moved on this. They always work in gangs over there. There are more gangs in the Senate than there are in New York. So, I don't know how that place works, but what I can tell you is, when people said it couldn't be done, Hakeem Jeffries and House Democrats put forward a plan, a three-year plan, that would do it, and 17 Republicans joined with us in order to get that done. That speaks volumes to the fact that this is bipartisan and that we want to see action on this, and so it's unfortunate that the Senate hasn't moved on it. It's our hope that they still could, they could open up the enrollment period, but the window is absolutely closing.
JOE MATHIEU: Sounds like this is a midterm election issue, one way or the other?
CHAIR AGUILAR: Well, I think many of these issues are going to be midterm election issues, and the public is going to have an opportunity to make that decision. Do they feel that the President has made their life more difficult or better? And we think with the $1,700 that people are paying more out of their pocket because of the President's tariffs—this is groceries, this is everyday goods. When they went to buy their kids' school expenses, when they went to buy their kids gifts for the holidays, they had to pay more. People are feeling that pinch, and the President hasn't offered any solution that would make life better.
JOE MATHIEU: I want to get into DHS funding and some of the other stuff here. But the President said, just in the last 48 hours, that not only has affordability been a Democrat issue, he said there's a reason why we haven't heard about it the last two weeks because he solved it. He said he won affordability. Is that what he's going to tell the room tonight?
CHAIR AGUILAR: I mean, he's going to get laughed out of the room if he says that. But look, he could say that. Democrats have been sounding this alarm for the entire year of the Trump presidency that we've had. In fact, we won the governor's mansions in Virginia and New Jersey, thank you Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger, as well as special elections across the country talking about affordability. This is the President who said affordability is a hoax, so now he's saying it's a real thing. And this is just a continued pattern where the President will say one thing in one room and then say another. The American people don't know what to believe, and that's an unfortunate place of our politics today.
JOE MATHIEU: You mentioned Governor Spanberger will be delivering the official Democratic response. And I know there are many, Congressman. We can't do a State of the Union without about a half dozen responses. Will she carry the mantle on affordability, or do you want to hear from her as well on foreign policy, as a former CIA officer?
CHAIR AGUIILAR: Look, I think Abigail Spanberger can run the gamut and speak to all of these issues, but she is going to talk about how life is more difficult in Virginia under the Trump Administration, and what she plans to do, and what other Democratic executives plan to do to make life better for their constituents and to rein in costs that people face. They have real strategies and real plans. She's led on that. Day one, she put out executive orders that will help make people's lives better. That's exactly what leadership looks like. Unfortunately, we don't see that out of the White House.
JOE MATHIEU: The President will be standing in front of a joint session of Congress with a partial government shutdown underway, which is a peculiar backdrop, and I'm not sure it's ever happened for a State of the Union address. Department of Homeland Security—we know the debate here, and I'm wondering what your thoughts were on the one-sheet that the White House put out to Democrats. I think it was sent to your office just a couple of days ago that had a list of items that the White House believes it has offered to Democrats to try to lower the temperature. They include, by the way, officers identifying themselves still masked. They include body cameras. You need to see de-masking, and you need to see action on judicial warrants to vote yes on that bill. Is that right?
CHAIR AGUILAR: What we need to see is a law enforcement agency that acts like our local law enforcement agencies act, and that means identifying yourself when you have an encounter with an individual. It means warrants when you go into someone's vehicle or in their home—that's what it means. All we want is a reasonable law enforcement agency that has rules and guidelines. And right now, under Kristi Noem, there are absolutely no rules and guidelines. And in fact, we see local police officers back home say this is something that we would never do. So that's what we want to bring parity. Democrats put 10 issues on the table. We know the White House has responded to one or two items, and we appreciate that, but they need to address the rest of these items, and they need to decide whether they want to look like a real law enforcement agency or whether they want to look like a rogue vigilante group that they have been where there are no rules, and they feel seemingly free to shoot U.S. citizens.
JOE MATHIEU: Well, wow, that's quite a statement. It doesn't sound like we're getting closer to a deal here. Do you expect any nuance from the President tonight? Or is this more of a shame Democrats kind of speech?
CHAIR AGUILAR: Well, look, on this particular issue, if the President wanted to lead, the President should tell Congress, look, separate these issues out, and there's no reason why we can't fund DHS for Coast Guard, TSA, FEMA, Secret Service.
JOE MATHIEU: Does every Democrat support that? Because we’ve heard some who were skeptical about that idea that you would effectively lose leverage.
CHAIR AGUILAR: This isn't about leverage. Democrats don't wake up every day thinking about what leverage is the best. This is about what helps the American people and what shines a bright light on the issues that we have in front of us.
JOE MATHIEU: So, do you have voters for that Rosa DeLauro bill?
CHAIR AGUILAR: Absolutely. Rosa DeLauro put this bill out, she’s the Chair of the Appropriations Committee. This is something that if the President really leaned in and wanted to make this happen, he could do. He could push John Thune into putting this bill on the floor. The President has said that he is the Speaker of the House, so he could call up this vote. But, I’ll tell you, I’ve supported and I think the majority of the House Democrats would support this bill and it would isolate CBP and ICE to say, look, these are the bad actors right now and until they are reined in, until they look like real law enforcement agencies and have rules and don’t want to detain U.S. citizens and use taxpayer money to wreak havoc on folks, then we’re just going to continue to keep talking about that and they can live off of the one-time money that they have.
JOE MATHIEU: We haven’t touched foreign policy. Before you leave us, on this fourth year of war in Ukraine, remarkable that we’re hitting that mark today, and the prospect of starting another war with strikes against Iran, are you concerned that the President will announce that strikes have been approved when he speaks tonight?
CHAIR AGUILAR: I don’t think this would be the proper venue for him to do that, but I do think it is something, based on public reporting, that we are hearing, obviously, and it’s something that we are monitoring closely, but I don’t think it would be the proper venue for the President to announce that on the House floor. And clearly there is some descension within the ranks of the military based on public reporting and the Pentagon and the leaders that he’s talking to. But we need more visibility into this and we need to know what the plans are. And more importantly, the American people need to know what the exit strategy is if he carries out a strike in Iran. This would be very, very different than anything else that we have done in the past and the President needs to come to Congress and to make us a partner within this. This isn’t about Venezuela and going in and grabbing somebody. This is about offensive strikes into a foreign country and Congress needs to be consulted.
JOE MATHIEU: Glad we could spend some time this evening. We’ll be watching the speech along with you, and the response. Democratic Congressman Pete Aguilar of California. He’s the Chair of the House Democratic Caucus and will be headed to the chamber shortly.
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