On Thursday, Saikat Chakrabarti, chief of staff for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), sent out a tweet seeming to imply that the House Democrats who voted in favor of H.R.3401 were enablers of “a racist system.”
Can we stop calling the Blue Dog Caucus “fiscally conservative but socially liberal?” I missed the part of fiscal conservativeness or social liberalness that includes wasting $4.5 billion of taxpayer money to put kids in concentration camps.
They seem to consistently vote as a block to criminalize immigrants (though really only brown ones). What should I call that?
It’s the exact same dynamic as the old Southern Democrats fwiw. They also weren’t all Jim Crow supporters. They also felt they were representing their districts.
But the kinds of compromises we have to make right now is a block of “moderate” voters who believe that their districts will vote them out unless they criminalize more brown people. I haven’t seen evidence to the contrary.
Anyway I deleted the tweet since, yeah, I’m mad. But I do think if we don’t have progress on racial justice it will be because of the new Dems and blue dogs. Just like in 1940.
Didn’t realize this needed to be said, but: you can be someone who does not personally harbor ill will towards a race, but through your actions still enable a racist system. And a lot of New Democrats and Blue Dogs did that today.
This is in reference to my comparing Blue Dogs and New Democrats to 1940s Southern Democrats. Southern Democrats enabled a racist system too. I have no idea how personally racist they all were. And we’re seeing the same dynamic play out now.
The bill to which Chakrabarti is alluding, H.R.3401, “provides $4.5 billion in FY2019 emergency supplemental appropriations to federal departments and agencies for humanitarian assistance and security to respond to migrants attempting to enter the United States at the southern border,” according to a summary from Congress.gov.
Here are the bullet points from the legislation:
- $45,000,000 will go to hire approximately 30 more immigration judges.
- $144,849,000 will go to the Army, Marines, Air Force, and Army National Guard to help with “the significant rise in unaccompanied minors and family unit aliens at the southwest border.”
- $708,000,000 to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) “for establishing and operating migrant care and processing facilities,” and $111,950,000 “for consumables and medical care.”
- $11,981,000 to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) “for detainee transportation for medical needs, court proceedings, or relocation from U.S. Customs and Border Protection custody,” and $45,000,000 “for detainee medical care.” Additionally, $21,286,000 “for Homeland Security Investigations human trafficking investigations.”
- $30,000,000 to Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) “for the emergency food and shelter program … for the purposes of providing assistance to aliens released from the custody of the Department of Homeland Security.”
- $866,000,000 “for the provision of care in licensed shelters and for expanding the supply of shelters … of which not less than $27,000,000 shall be available for the purposes of adding shelter beds in State-licensed facilities … and of which not less than $185,000,000 shall be available for expansion grants to add beds in State-licensed facilities and open new State-licensed facilities.”
Read the text of the bill in its entirety here.
Now that the bill has passed both the House and Senate, it moves to the desk of the president, who is expected to sign it into law.