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President Biden speaking at Westchester Community College Wednesday morning.

Governor Kathy Hochul, flanked by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and U.S. Representative Jamaal Bowman

President Joe Biden in his 15-minute address to educators and local Westchester politcians took Republicans to task for putting the U.S.at risk of defaulting on its world debt for refusing to raise the debt ceiling unless the President agreed to spending cuts. He said Republican efforts to cut spending would hurt education and veterans. He assured Americans that inflation was coming down, pointing to 12.7 million jobs added was a sign of economic turnaround. He said no negotiations could start until the debt ceiling was raised.The President also took the occasion to advocate for junior college educations, and said how much he admired educators.

“It’s important for the American people to know what’s at stake. This isn’t just a theoretical debate going on in Washington. The decisions we make are going to have real impact on real people’s lives,” Biden said.

“They’re literally, not figuratively, holding the economy hostage,”

Governor Kathy Hochul in the text of her speech reinforced the President’s message:

“I am so delighted to be here once again with some extraordinary individuals, my partners in government. And you’ll be hearing from someone that we’re so proud is the President of the United States, and that is President Joe Biden  Our Senator, Kirsten Gillibrand has joined us. Congressman Jamaal Bowman has joined us as well.

 

We are also so fortunate to have the Majority Leader of the New York State Senate, Andrea Stewart-Cousins. I believe that we also have Congressman Mike Lawler in the house. County Executive George Latimer is here. The Mayor of White Plains, Tom Roach is here. Mayor of Mount Vernon, Shawyn Patterson-Howard is here. Brian Sullivan, teacher at Highlands Middle School  (White Plains) is here. (Editor’s Note: Mr. Sullivan addressed the gathering, introducing the President .) I want to thank Dr. Belinda Miles for hosting us here today. Thank you.

We also know that the Majority Leader of the United States Senate, Chuck Schumer is working right now – working right now with the future Speaker of the House Representatives, so that would be our very own, from Brooklyn as well, Hakeem Jeffries. 

They’re both working together, working with our President – working being the operative word here. You get elected, you work together to do the job. And having to encounter a lot of opposition – from guess who? Republicans don’t want us to work together. They don’t want us to do what we’re required to do, and that’s called paying your bills.

I’m sure a lot of you would like the chance to like, run up some debt, pay for things you need. You’ve got to pay for your house, you’ve got to pay for your electric bill, you’ve got to pay for the diapers, and tuition, all these other things.

And if you could walk away from paying your bills after just having a couple of fights, probably be interesting wouldn’t it? But we don’t do that. We’re responsible. We do what we’re supposed to do.

And so, you come to New York, New York is the beating heart of the U.S. economy. So, you mess around with the debt ceiling, you’re hurting New York. You’re hitting us hard. And not just the state in general, but let’s think about who. How about the students right here at SUNY Westchester who will have their financial assistance unavailable to them.

 

It’ll put us closer to a recession, cause unemployment to go up. It’ll be devastating. It also shakes the confidence of the rest of the world in the United States of America. And we don’t need that at this time. We need friends. We don’t want people to question our ability to govern.

 

And brinkmanship is their attempt, Republicans attempt, to just bring it right to the edge. Make everybody all anxious – affect the stock market because they don’t care. They don’t care. This is going to play out in their political games. And I’ve got a message for them, it doesn’t work.

 

In 2011, I was elected as a Democrat in the most Republican district in the State of New York. Clearly there were a lot more Republicans than Democrats in that district. How did I do that? I talked about issues that people cared about regardless of their party.

 

Because here’s the message to Republicans, when you think you have a great political strategy, I’m telling you now it’s going to backfire. There actually are Republican seniors who don’t want you to mess with Medicare and Social Security. There are Republican veterans who don’t want you to affect their benefits. There are Republican students who don’t want you to mess with their student loans. There are Republican businesspeople in particular who aren’t real excited about you playing around with this.

 

So the message is, you might think it’s a political strategy, I’m here to tell you it is going to backfire because the people in this nation and in this state, Democrats and Republicans, want you go and do the job you’re elected to do. And that’s exactly what President Biden wants to do.

 

Let’s get this done. What’s the big deal? This is what we’re supposed to do. And so, this is an attempt to focus attention, to say ‘You have to do what we want you to do.’ But it’s going to fail. It’s going to be a cataclysmic failure because the longer this plays out, the more uncertainty, the more volatility, the more anxiety – not just in the markets, not just around the world, but in people’s houses, at their kitchen table. Because they need to know that the confidence that their government is actually going to work together.

 

So that’s what we’re just saying. That’s what President Biden is saying. Come on. Let’s roll up our sleeves, we can get this done. It’s not complicated and there’s no reason to play these games at this time.

 

So here we go. My message is: Stop playing games with the American people. Stop playing games with the American economy. Stop playing games with our farmers. Stop playing games with our citizens. Stop playing games with our small businesses and just do your jobs. Thank you, President Biden for being our leader. Thank you very much.