Ayanna Pressley

Today is a truly historic day for Congress, for this committee, for the people of Washington, DC, and for our democracy.

As President Abraham Lincoln declared in the Gettysburg Address, 'A true democracy is government of the people, by the people, and for the people.'

The right to democracy should not be contingent on party registration.

The truth is that most of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle oppose statehood because they believe it could dilute their power.

In June, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called D.C. Statehood 'full-bore socialism.' I don't know what this means.

Unfortunately, there is not one Republican cosponsor of this bill.

Today, more than 60 years after President Eisenhower said those words, D.C. residents overwhelmingly support Statehood.

There is nothing more fundamental in a democracy than the right to vote.

These fundamental disparities for hundreds of thousands of Americans are inconsistent with the core principles embodied in our Constitution.

D.C. residents are American citizens. They fight honorably to protect our Nation overseas. They pay taxes.

I don't want us to set a new precedent, because a moment ago, you said that it's been your experience that you do respond by deadline.

To any of them? To any of the questions that I asked.

It does seem we're missing each other here and, you know, I'm----

Thirty-three days is certainly not enough time to arrange for travel, housing, medical equipment, translating medical records or the many other steps that would be needed to transport a critically ill child to another country.

This is not about your answering just to this committee. You're answering to the American people.

Whatever inconvenience you may have experienced certainly pales in comparison to the trauma and the fear and the inconvenience your medical deferred action denial letters have imposed on immigrant children and families.

Now that USCIS has been publicly shamed into processing the deferred action request that you had originally denied.

I'll just make my request again that you respond to the letter by the deadline that we've already submitted.

So, just when I think that the occupant of this White House and his xenophobic administration cannot reach any new lows, they go even lower...

No drama, just hard facts. And that is that, repeatedly, people have been asked to weaponize their lived experiences and their pain...

You cannot overstate $1.6 trillion in debt crushing close to 45 million borrowers. You cannot describe that as anything less than a crisis.

I just want to say I'm very disturbed as we perpetuate the fiction that we live in a meritocracy.

The facts of this crisis, and again it is a crisis, require no exaggeration. We are past the point of just paying attention. It's time to act.

This debt is not just choking at our ability to build wealth or our purchasing power; it is quite literally choking people.

The fact that from hospitalizations to stock piling or buying insulin on the black market, too many Americans are cutting corners in their medical care simply to stay alive, and that is just unacceptable.