During a town hall event on Tuesday, Rep. Bill Foster (D-IL) spoke on his actions to uphold democracy in the United States.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Alright, we've got a good one here. We've marched and rallied for democracy. What have you been doing?
00:05You've been giving money to Israel. That's what you've been doing.
00:36The first thing I did, I'm just trying to remember, you're probably talking about protests and things like that.
00:42Outside the treasury, when Elon Musk gave access to all of our private information of the treasury payment system,
00:53then that is a...
01:03Sir, we will get to that question. If you could please just wait a moment, we're talking about something else. Thank you.
01:08We're going to get to a lot of these questions if we have some order.
01:10Well, if you'll just start, mom and children, oh yeah, they just broke the ceasefire.
01:14It's an immediate question.
01:18Congressman, if you'd like to answer this question.
01:21Okay, so let's see, I'll just try to go through that.
01:23So there was a rally outside the treasury that said, you know, get Elon Musk's cotton-picking hands off of the treasury payment system.
01:31You know, I'm the lead democrat on the subcommittee with oversight over all banking.
01:36And when you mess with the treasury payment system, that is a mortal threat to our financial system.
01:45And that was a big deal to me immediately.
01:48Later on, when the Department of Education was threatened, I was one of a big group of members of Congress who showed up at the door,
01:56demanding a meeting with the acting head of the person in charge to say, okay, are you really going to shut this down, really?
02:03And they wouldn't meet with us, and there was an interesting large group of people there.
02:08More recently, I was honored to speak at the Stand Up for Science rally at the Lincoln Memorial.
02:16What was significant there is that you saw democrats and republicans.
02:24You saw Fred Upton, who was in charge of the most relevant committee, a republican, retired.
02:30You know, they're speaking passionately in support of science, and that's obviously a big deal to me.
02:38Because the long-term damage that's done when you defund science in this country,
02:43it's something I've been fighting for for a long time.
02:47So I do a certain amount of that, and also a certain amount of just trying to talk quiet sense to my republican colleagues,
02:55and try to identify those that have a core of decency.
03:01And you see that from time to time.
03:03Sometimes it shows up, okay, I've had it with today's republican party, I'm out of here.
03:08You know, you saw with Rob Manning or Adam Kinzinger, when they just say, okay, that's it, I'm done.
03:13It also shows up from time to time when they're willing to stand up.
03:17You know, Senator Tillis, who's, Senator Tillis, actually gave a very, very compassionate speech on behalf of the Ukrainians.
03:27On the floor of the Senate, he had pictures of slaughtered Ukrainians that were slaughtered by Russian troops,
03:33and said, what the heck are we doing here?
03:35And from time to time, you'll see this bubble up to the surface, and he was taking a risk doing that.
03:42Alright, and my hope is that as this goes on, more and more republicans will be thinking about that.
03:49I'm trying to do, with some of my time, just privately talk to them.
03:53One of the things I'm working on with other members of the financial services committee, republicans,
03:58is that there is 300 billion dollars of frozen Russian assets, most of it in Belgium.
04:04But other places in Europe, some in the United States, and that money should be turned over,
04:10taken away from Russia, and given to Ukraine, to rebuild Ukraine.
04:14Applause
04:22There was motion along that.
04:24You know, it was not moving fast, but when Donald Trump decided he was going to vote against Ukraine and the United Nations,
04:31and with, you know, all the bad countries you can name, that put a shock into the soul of the civilized world.
04:40And that was the motion.
04:42Applause