At some point it will occur to Paul Ryan that he may not want to reply to every tweet the President-elect of his own party sends, but there are Democrats in his chamber who are only too happy to do so.
(Rep Jim McDermott is retiring in January, to be replaced by Pramila Jayapal.)
JIM MCDERMOTT:
Mr. Speaker, I just got a call from a reporter about a tweet which the President-elect has made cancelling the contract with the Boeing company with the federal government to build Air Force One. Now, the last time I looked, I think that the President of the United States is still Barack Obama. He will be President of this country until the 20th of January. What we have right now is a President-elect running around the world with his tweet bar making statements that are disruptive and distracting for the American public. He calls Taiwan and raises questions about our relationship with China as though he were the Secretary of State, but he has not even found anyone to do that job. He should be in the transition office figuring out how he makes a smooth transition of the American government from the efficiently run government of Mr. Obama to his administration, not making the decisions himself and going out and announcing them through his tweet at 3:00 in the morning because he can't sleep. This kind of operation is the operation of somebody who's used to running a big business. When he's President of Trump Casino or Trump Towers, he can act like that. He can come in and say, do this, do that, do this, do that. I don't know if he understands, Mr. Speaker, that you and the House of Representatives are the ones who made the contract and put -- appropriated the money for that plane. That's the process. That's the democratic process of this country.
It's not done by the President getting up in the morning and tweeting out 140 characters and ending a contract with hundreds of jobs at risk, of people in my district-- good, hardworking Americans. He'll go down to Indianapolis, Indiana, and walk around and say, I saved a thousand jobs. We still haven't seen the contract. We don't know what the deal is, how long the jobs have to last, how many of them have to last. We don't know anything. We just know a tweet went out that we have -- and then he went and did a big rally down there and did a victory lap, but there is no piece of paper.
The people in Indianapolis, if I were to make a recommendation to them, Mr. Speaker, would be, talk to the Indians, to the native Americans about the treaties that have been made with the United States of America and how good they are and how hard you have to fight to make those treaties work. He made a treaty with Carrier. We'll get $7 million from Indiana, my assistant, Mr. Vice President, Mr. Pence, he will get $7 million from Indiana to Carrier and then maybe there will be some kind of -- I don't -- no one knows what's going on.
But the President-elect should spend his time in the transition office deciding who is going to hold the jobs that will make this country run. This is not going to be run by one man in the White House making pronouncements and thinking that all the world is going to throw themselves down on the ground and worship him. .
In some ways, I'm sorry to be leaving because I think it's going to be a very tough session, in helping the new President understand how a democracy actually works. ***
It's not a big business. It is a business of the people. The 435 members of this House take the money that comes in in taxes and they appropriate them out as they see fit for the country. The President doesn't do that. When the Congress is done, they pass the bill to him, and then he spends the money as the Congress has decided it should be spent. If you look at the Constitution , perhaps -- I'm sure -- the new President-elect has looked at the Constitution***, the First Article is the Congress. We are the pre-eminent body in this government because we are elected by the people, and we have the power. Stop tweeting, Mr. President-elect.
***Is the Congressman trolling? We think he is.
