Nearly two weeks and counting, the federal government remains shut down.
Senate Democrats want $1.5 trillion in healthcare spending added to the spending bill the U.S. House passed last month, which Republican leaders strongly oppose. U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo. 5th District, told Missourinet the healthcare funding is sorely needed.
“The failure to pass the enhanced tax credits for the ACA will cause all kinds of medical chaos,” Cleaver said. “There will be a large number of Americans who would lose their insurance and a large number of hospitals, particularly in the rural areas, that may not even be able to keep (their) doors open.”
Those Affordable Care Act tax credits expire December 1st, thus the urgency from Democrats to get them renewed. Cleaver also says TSA workers at America’s airports are now on the verge of working without pay.
“That’s going to cripple the whole transportation system,” he said. “I don’t think it will be in danger in terms of airplanes, you know, the equipment not functioning. But I do think that we’re going to have backup (workers) at TSA. They’re going to be the — they’re the lowest paid and they’re gonna be the first fired.”
Meanwhile, the Trump Administration continues to deploy Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in its nationwide crackdown on illegal immigration. Cleaver believes the formation of ICE was necessary to protect the country and to curb illegal immigration. But he also said the federal law enforcement agency is being misused by the Trump Administration.
“I think we never, ever, ever imagined that those agents would be used to terrorize Americans,” he told Missourinet.
Cleaver accuses the Trump Administration of using ICE agents to carry out a political agenda that’s threatening to all immigrants, including those who are in the country legally.
“Ice agents with masks on, jumping out of black cars and black helicopters and collecting people upon the street and throwing them in the back seat of a car,” he said. “And nobody knows where they’re taking them or who exactly they are.”
Several U.S. cities, including St. Louis, has seen an increase in ICE agents as efforts to find and deport illegal immigrants are stepped up.
Republicans, including Missouri U.S. Sen. Eric Schmitt, defend ICE’s record and claims that there’s been a 700% surge in attacks on ICE agents. He’s sponsoring a bill that would double federal penalties for assaulting an ICE agent.
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