Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) unleashed her fury at the announcement from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) that Democrats will pass a border funding bill without amendments to the Republican version.
She expressed her outrage on CNN on Thursday with Jake Tapper.
"Those are strong words against Speaker Pelosi," Tapper said, adding that bill passed 84 to 4 in the Senate, and many liberal Democrats voted for it. "Explain why you're taking such a strong stance here."
"Because, you know Jake, this is an issue not just of the substance of the bill but also of the process of how we got here," Ocasio-Cortez responded.
"We passed a House version of this bill which had far more humanitarian provisions, and accountability for the facilities that are abusing our kids at the border and [Senate Leader] Mitch McConnell [R-Ky.] immediately smacked it down in order to pass and ram through a Senate bill that has an enormous amount of funding for military, as well as no guardrails and no accountability for facilities that are abusing our kids," she explained.
"So that's the bill that's in front of us here in front of the the House," Ocasio-Cortez continued. "However, we didn't even bother to negotiate, there are house amendments we could have negotiated in, we could have conferenced, we could have tried to get amendments in, to get humanitarian provisions in, to get consequences for facilities that abuse kids in, and instead what we're doing is that we're immediately going to just saying yes to what got passed out of the Senate."
She went on to say that Democrats controlled the House despite the Senate being controlled by Republicans.
"Here, we are the House of Representatives, and we are a House majority and we need to act like it!" she concluded.
Tapper challenged Ocasio-Cortez by pointing out that she opposed the Democrats' House bill too. She explained that she believed they could pass a "pure humanitarian" bill.
Pelosi told Democrats on Thursday that she "reluctantly" supported the Republican bill.
"At the end of the day, we have to make sure that the resources needed to protect the children are available," Pelosi said in a statement. "In order to get resources to the children fastest, we will reluctantly pass the Senate bill."
Despite the spirited objections from Ocasio-Cortez, the House passed the bill with 305 votes to 102.
Here's the video of Ocasio-Cortez on CNN:
“We didn’t even bother to negotiate… we’re immediately going to just saying yes to what got passed out of the Senate,” says Rep. @AOC on Pelosi’s decision to pass the Senate border funding bill.— The Lead CNN (@TheLeadCNN) June 27, 2019
“We are a House majority and we need to act like it.” https://t.co/kBegQJcVo4 pic.twitter.com/dW8Fkdoxjc
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