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As we add the voice of Sean Caston, the Democratic Congressman from Illinois shares part of Chicago. He was with us at the DNC and Congressman, it's great to see you here. I hope you had a great holiday. Welcome back to Bloomberg TV and Radio. I have a lot of questions for you because you've been a busy guy lately with regard to government funding, with regard to the Ethics Committee report into Matt Gates. But I want to start with you on this issue that we're talking about now.
When you go to Chicago dot gov, your town says the city has shouldered the responsibility of caring for more than forty nine thousand immigrants new arrivals seeking asylum. Many flown to Chicago from states like Texas. What will happen to them when Donald Trump takes office.
Well, it's important to understand where these folks come from. There. You know, there were a surge of immigrants when Greg Abbott was bussing people up from Texas. But if you look nationally in check is no different. The overwhelming majority of the undocumented folks in our country are not people who snuck across the border, no matter how many, how much we might like to sort of fall for that lazy stereotype. They're people who came here legally and overstate
a visa. Maybe it's a student who studied here. Maybe they fell in love while they were studying here, it had a child. They're people who had temporary work visas and then the temporary work visas weren't renewed in many cases the prior guestment. Maybe they're less so in Chicago, but certainly downstate Illinois. They're farm workers who we depend on to grow our food. But our programs have not
provided support for these people. So to tell those people, you know, the average undocumented person in this country has been here for twelve years, and again most of that is visa overstays. To tell these people who are contributing to America, who are paying taxes, who in many cases may be married or living with American citizens, that were going to break up your family? I mean, you could
not be more anti family than that. And it's creating a lot of nervousness all across the country, not just in Chicago.
Well, so, what will be Democrats posture on the issue of Dreamers, then you're describing some of them in this conversation. Congress been knowing that Republicans were elected in part Donald Trump elected in part due to his approach to the border. Dreamers weren't even mentioned in the Senate deal on the border that never, of course, became law earlier this year, one that Donald Trump did not want to see passed. Will they be included in this debate in the new Congress.
Well, look, let me speak to this from the perspective of the House. Yes, Donald Trump won the election. The House can seats. We picked up two seats in the last election, and so you've got a lot of people on my side of the aisle who are pretty confident that what the people liked what we were selling, and we are in a rapidly growing economy. I have yet to meet an employer in the last three years who wasn't saying we have a real problem finding qualified people.
The CBO said that part of the reason why inflation of the United Dates came down so much faster than other countries is because we have had a growth in net immigration to this country. So if you want inflation to be down, if you want to make sure that employers can find workers. We need to make sure that we have a humane, robust immigration system that continues to attract the best and brightest. And what I think all of us are telling our Republican colleagues is to go
read Ronald Reagan's farewell speech. He said that I've always seen America is a great, shining city on a hill, and if it must have walls, make sure it has doors and windows so that those with the means and ability can come inside. That's the message we need to remind people of, because that's the only thing that has ever really made America great.
This is a conversation that will clearly continue in the new Congress, as will be the one about government funding.
Here.
You barely got this done to avoid a Christmas shutdown, Congressman. It was, of course, late Friday, the Continuing Resolution was passed to fund the government through the fourteenth of March. What happens on March fifteenth when this resolution has expired?
You know, I joked with one of my Republican colleagues in the elevator. He said, he said, what are we doing here today? And I said, well, that can doesn't kick itself down the road. That's why we had to
be here today. And it's sort of funny, but it's also not funny, right because the over the over the last two years of Republican control in Congress, they've never really managed to put together an appropriations package other than one where the terms were dictated by the Democrats, either through a continuing resolution that the Democrats carried across the line, or through the deal that McCarthy negotiated with Biden that essentially locked in the funding levels we had set in
the last term with some minor adjustments. And so the question will be with a much thinner Republican majority, can they get online between their sort of extreme right wing that would would happily shut the government down and wants to massively cut government services and they're they're more moderate and in many cases more numerous reasonable wing who who has opposed those tensions, and that that fight has been
leveled the Republican caucus for this whole term. I think you'll continue to find that Democrats are willing to work constructively with those Republicans on a bipartisan basis as we have, but we'll have to see what they bring together. There's you know, I like to remind people that there were
two fist fights in the House this last term. They all involved Republicans, and trying to figure out how they're going to get along together is going to be is going to be a challenge for this next term, at least in the House.
Well, when we consider what was left out, and you know, I know a lot of Democrats were heartened to see the request for emergency funding for hurricane relief put back in, but we didn't see year round sale of E fifteen gasoline, the crackdown on PBMs that we heard about, also restrictions
on investments in China. Congressmen, some Democrats like Rolson de Laurel, like Jim McGovern of Massachusetts said that's the real reason Elon Musk opposed this because of the amount of business that he does in China through Tesla and other entities.
Do you agree there's a lot of smoke there, you know, whether there's fire. I think we need to do some more investigating, but that you know, I serve on the Financial Services Committee and Patrick mckennery and Andy Barr were really great sponsors figuring out how to manage that outbound investment. There's a real concern on the Republican side of the aisle with what we are doing to send US technology to our adversaries and how are we controlling that, especially
technology that has national security implications. And yes, there is huge concern that mister Musk weighed in so heavily against that, and I would you know, I would hope that the fact that there was such a bipartisan support for that provision will also lead to some bipartisan oversight support to ask some questions understand what's going on there. But yes,
it is a it's concerning. We spend so much time in classified and unclassified settings trying to track where US generated IP is going, and I'd rather not get in a fight with the White House about whether we should give me that intellectual property to our adversaries.
Well, well, I'll tell you last time you were with us, Congressman, you were about to go to the floor of the House with the privileged resolution to force the release of the Ethics Committee report into now former Congressman Matt Gates. That report has been released. It came out Monday morning, and it is quite a salacious read. I can't say some of this stuff even on the air. As I read from the report, Gates is now threatening to show up next week to claim the seat for which he
was elected. If that happens, and I don't know if you're hearing anything about this congressman, should he be sworn in?
Gates doesn't have that option. Gates formally submitted his notice not to run in one hundred and nineteenth Congress. We call Ron DeSantis initiated the special election so that they can go through and hold that. The deadline to file to run that election has passed and they're printing ballots. So I mean, Matt Gates is trying to get on the new given as you mentioned, the salacious details in that report.
If I were met gates issues, I would be trying to keep a lower profile and not have people looking in to find out that, you know, he had, you know, he paid for sex with seventeen year old girls. If people want to talk about that, we'll talk about that. But he does not have a way to become a member of the next Congress. He just has a way to talk and get on television.
You must be glad that it's been released.
Now that it's public, I mean, I think lad is probably the wrong word. I'm glad that the Ethics Committee stood up for ethics in Congress. I'm glad that you know we're hearing that at least two Republicans on the Ethics Committee voted to release that. And it's not because we're trying to, you know, hurt one of our former colleagues. It's because the House has to comport itself in an ethical way that attracts the respect of the American people,
regardless of how they vote. And when we hold ourselves accountable, when we hold members accountable for these sorts of actions, we basically send a message to the American people that we care about this institution and we love this institution. And that's the important thing of releasing this work.
It's great to have you today, Congressman. I hope you had a great holiday. Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah to all of your constituents in the Chicago area.