California Democratic Representative Maxine Waters showed her admiration to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi after she gave her eight-hour long speech on the House floor as a way to support the young immigrants protected by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA) program.
Waters said to the Washington Examiner reporters that Pelosi’s marathon speech which started by her using a House procedure called the “leadership minute” is one of the most memorable and profound speeches in the history of the U.S. Congress.
“We’ve had the opportunity to yield time to Leader Pelosi, and while she certainly came in to oppose this bill that we have before us, having yielded one minute to the leader is the most profound one minute probably in the history of this institution,” Waters stated.
According to The Hill, Pelosi’s use of the “leadership minute” delayed a vote on the Mortgage Choice Act in protest of Republican plans to vote on a budget without guaranteeing a vote to restore legislative protection to DACA recipients, who face a March 5 deadline for deportation protections to start ending.
Last year, President Donald Trump announced that he will eliminate the Obama-era program which will put millions of undocumented immigrants that came to the U.S. as children under the risk of deportation.
“That one minute that ended up eight hours where Leader Pelosi talked about the plight of DACA and the Dreamers,” Waters said Wednesday. “And I’m very proud in that yielding that one minute we had the opportunity to listen to Leader Pelosi deal with an issue and demand that we have an opportunity to have a real debate and a real discussion in the People’s House,” she added.
Pelosi’s eight-hour speech in front of Congress is the new longest speech before the House on record, with the previous one being set by House Speaker Champ Clark in 1909.
“Our Dreamers hang in limbo, with a cruel cloud of fear and uncertainty above them. The Republican moral cowardice must end,” Pelosi said Wednesday.
“I’m going to go on as long as my leadership minute allows,” she added.
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