Democrat leaders may have to make Chuck Schumer wash his mouth out with soap.
The Senate Minority Leader conceded Monday that the President “deserves praise” for engineering the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) to replace NAFTA, inadvertently highlighting the fact that his own party has consistently failed to advance the best interests of American workers.
“As someone who voted against NAFTA and opposed it for many years, I knew it needed fixing. The president deserves praise for taking large steps to improve it,” Schumer said. “However, any final agreement must be judged on how it benefits and protects middle-class families and the working people in our country.”
Even in his equivocation, Schumer showed that he fears alienating the working-class voters who stand to gain the most from the restructured trade agreement.
But then, he has every reason to be scared because, after less than two years in office, President Trump has delivered the sort of results that Schumer has been promising his constituents for decades.
As the President pointed out in a tweet earlier this year, the Democrats “did NOTHING” to address unfair trade practices during the Obama years, even when they controlled both houses of Congress.
President Trump acknowledged that “Chuck & I have long agreed on this issue,” but he posed a fair question when he asked Schumer why his party refused to “do something about Trade with China, including Theft of Intellectual Property etc.”
Another fair question would have been why Schumer consistently supports policies that hurt American workers on virtually every other issue.
He voted for Obamacare, which saddled middle-class families with skyrocketing health insurance premiums, and left many businesses unable to provide health insurance for their employees.
He also routinely opposes efforts to enforce America’s duly-enacted immigration laws, loudly demanding that DACA be made permanent. When Arizona tried to pick up some of the Obama administration’s slack when it came to identifying illegal immigrants, Schumer proposed legislation to prohibit states from taking any steps to assist federal immigration enforcement efforts.
No one who truly cares about American workers would support policies like these that help flood our country with cheap labor, driving down wages for American workers and depriving them of job opportunities in the process.
The most telling betrayal of all, though, came when Schumer insisted that Senate Democrats unanimously oppose President Trump’s historic Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which is saving the typical American family more than $2,000 per year and allowing businesses to create new jobs at a torrid pace. He even went so far as to call the bill a “disgrace.”
Chuck Schumer might think higher pay, bigger bonuses, and more job openings for American workers make bad policy since President Trump is winning with them, but American workers know better.
The reality is that no politician who is a true friend to working families in America would consistently support policies that hurt working families in America.
Senator Schumer is right about who deserves praise for new trade deals in America, but he couldn’t be more wrong about the interests of hard-working American men and women. The real disgrace is Schumer’s weak record of delivering for the American worker.
Mark Serrano is president of ProActive Communications and a senior media adviser to Donald J. Trump for President Inc.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of The Daily Caller.
