Washington (AP) – there is no filibuster in the house, but the democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries essentially carried out one essentially.
Jeffries held for more than eight hours for more than eight hours on Thursday and took his “sweet time” with a marathon floor speech that delayed the packaging of the massive tax and expenditure of the Republicans, and gave his minority party a protracted limelight to surpass what he described as “inadequate” draft law.
As a democratic leader, Jeffries can speak as long as he wants during the debate about legislation – hence the nickname on the Capitol Hill, the “magical minute”, which takes as long as leaders speak.
He started speech at 4:53 a.m. Edt and ended at 1:37 p.m. Edt, 8 hours, 44 minutes later and broke the record that was previously set. Kevin McCarthy from California in 2021 when he was the GOP leader. McCarthy spoke 8 hours, 32 minutes when he annoyed that Democrats build the legislation of the Democrats and one of Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.
“I feel an obligation to stand on this house floor and take the time to stand on this house,” said Jeffries when he opened.
There was talk of a final vote on the tax draft of the Republican President, Donald Trump. The New York Democrat took advantage of the time to criticize the health and food aids of the draft law, tax relief for the luxurious and the rollback for renewable energy programs, including parts of the law to decipher the Democrats.
He also killed the time by raising hip-hop, King George III and his own life story. He called Republicans who expressed concerns about the legislative template, stories of people who were concerned about their health care for these GOP legislative districts, and praised his own members, some of whom sat and cheered behind him, slapped, laughed and joined hands.
“This ruthless Republican budget is an immoral document, and that’s why I stand here on the floor of the House of Representatives with my colleagues in the House Democratic Caucus to get up with everything we have,” said Jeffries.
He ended the speech in the cadence of a Sunday sermon, with the majority of the democratic caucus being in a narrow doward around him. A colleague called: “Bring it home, Hakeem!”
“We don’t work for President Donald Trump,” said Jeffries when a handful of Republicans quietly and occasionally giggled on the leader when he continued to speak.
In the 1960s, he called the delayed John Lewis, a civil rights activist and a long -standing democratic congress member from Georgia. “Make yourself in good difficulties, necessary difficulties,” said Jeffries. “We will continue to press until the victory is won.”
Jeffries beat compact bites of food and drank liquids to raise its energy, but neither left the chamber nor its podium. We would be over if he did it.
The Democrats were powerless to stop the huge legislative template that the Republicans passed with an unrecognized budgetary process that deals with the Senate’s filibuster. So they mainly used the forces they have to delay. In the Senate, the democratic chairman Chuck Schumer from New York forced the Senate employees to read the legislation on weekends for almost 16 hours.
Senator Cory Booker, Dn.J., excited in April in a similar way when he spoke more than 25 hours on the Senate about the first months of Trump’s presidency and broke the record for the longest continuous speech of the Senate in the history of the chamber. Booker was supported by Democrats who gave him a break from speaking by asking him questions about the Senate, but Jeffries’ “Magic Minute” did not allow any interaction with other members.
Republicans who were sitting on the ground export as a Jeffries and leave half of the chamber empty. When we ended, it called the chairman of the committee of the Committee of House and Means, Jason Smith, R-Mo., “A bunch of Hogwash”.
The speech “will not change the result that you will see shortly,” said Smith.
After the law was passed, Steve Scalisene, the majority leader of House, said that the Democrats “wanted to speak for hours and break records because they wanted to stand in the way of history”.
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Associated Press Writers Matt Brown, Kevin Freking, Lisa Mascaro and Leah Askrinam contributed to this report.
