Schumer Attacks the Koch Brothers After They Announce Plan to Work on Both Sides of the Aisle

SCHUMER: “Finally, Madam President, a comment on the Koch brothers. I read a column with interest today in ‘The Washington Post.’ The Koch network has been trying to rebrand itself as less partisan. They are saying, ‘Let’s bring us together. Let’s work with both sides.’ That’s a good instinct, but color me skeptical. The Koch brothers may sit out the presidential contest as they did in 2016, but their political arm, Americans for Prosperity, continues to support candidates who are divisive, who do not bring us together. Some of the ads that you see, the very candidates they support are dividing us. You can’t on the one hand say you want to bring us together and use your political arm to tear us apart, yet that is what the Koch brothers are doing. And they support the kinds of judges who agree with them on all the corporate stuff, they don’t want regulation, but who are against voting rights. How does that bring us together? Are against immigrants. How does that bring us together? At the state level, the Koch brothers network of affiliates continues to support so many different initiatives that divide us through support for shadowy think tanks and psuedoacademic institutions. The Koch brothers continue to fund studies that sow doubt about climate change, evangelize deregulation. And so it seems that still the highest priority is to help the rich and powerful no matter how divisive it is. As long as we can get our corporate taxes cut even further, cut the taxes for the wealthy, stop the protections by preventing government regulations for average folks, we’ll — as long as they do that, all this talk about coming together and supporting an occasional bill here and there doesn’t mean much. I hope that this beginning of what the Koch brothers say spreads. I hope it’s not just sort of a fig leaf because their getting such bad publicity in America is moving so far away from what they believe. I yield the floor.”