Representative Tom Suozzi
Appearances
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
Yeah, Don Young.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
Well, they hire people who are professional people who have full-time jobs, whose job is to understand the intricacies of Congress, not only the laws and the regulations, but the people and the politics as well. And that's their full-time job is to work on trying to have influence on particular pieces of legislation. Now, a lot of lobbyists
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
you know, bring a lot of intellect and ability to the conversations about the impacts of different laws. But it also, you know, why have we not been able to fix a lot of big things for so many years? Because someone's benefiting from the status quo. In every instance, somebody benefits from the status quo. So if you want to try and change the status quo,
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
the people that benefit from the status quo are gonna use all of their effort to do everything to make you look like a jackass and beat you for trying to change the way it is. So like, you know, Donald Trump, when he first was elected president in 2016, before he became president, said, these pharmaceutical drug companies, they're getting away with murder, these guys.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
You know, the way they charge so much more in America than they charge in other countries. And then when it came time to do a law to negotiate prescription drug prices, it was no longer a priority for him. I think that that'll come back soon because people want to start saving money in Medicaid and Medicare and negotiating drug prices using the purchasing power of the U.S.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
government, the largest drug purchaser in the world. through Medicare and Medicaid, using our power to negotiate prices will save us a lot of money. So it's such common sense. We passed the bill in the Biden administration where, you know, we can negotiate the prices for like 10 drugs. I mean, we should be doing this with all the drugs.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
Or not function.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
Let me just follow up on one thing about the primary system, what the problem is. We have 435 seats in Congress. Of the 435 seats in Congress, 380 of those seats are safe seats you can't lose because they're gerrymandered, they're drawn. You pack all the Republicans in 190 seats over here.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
You could lose a primary. That's the only way you could lose is a scandal or a primary.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
And nobody votes in the primaries, as Brian just pointed out. Less than 15% of the people vote in the primaries. So when you hear the crazy stuff coming out of Republicans' voices or the crazy stuff coming out of Democrats' voices.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
They're usually pandering to that small base of people that vote in the primary because they don't have to listen to the people, the whole population, because they're going to win the general election. They only have to listen to this small group that can kick them out in the one way they can lose, which is in a primary. So they pander to those extremes instead of talking to the people generally.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
One of the reasons that Brian and I are the way we are is because we're constitutionally made this way. But also politically, we have to listen to both sides because we wouldn't win otherwise.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
Well, they're popular, but they're going to be proven, I think, in most cases to be illegal.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
Right, in the next couple of years. And you'll see a response from the people for the things that are not popular, because some of the things that are happening right now, as we've seen, are not popular. People don't like to see the prices going up. They don't like to see the stock market going down.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
They want a secure border, and the border is more secure now than it was before, but they don't like people being shipped away without going through due process. They don't like us treating our allies the same as we treat our adversaries. So these certain things are unpopular.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
There are Republicans that are speaking up. And I choose, as a Democrat, as hard as it is, because I've got people in my ear saying, this is the end of the world, you gotta fight more. I've got other people saying, you gotta crack some eggs to make an omelet. But there are Republicans that are speaking up.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
Brian speaks out all the time about the wrongheadedness of the approach to Ukraine of this administration. There's a Freedom Caucus guy named Gary Palmer from Alabama who says the president can't get rid of the Department of Education. Only the Congress could do that. He has to go through Congress.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
There's a guy from Florida, Mario Diaz-Balart, he's a chairman of a subcommittee on appropriations, says, the Congress has the power of the purse. I zealously will guard the power of the purse. What the president is doing is inappropriate. So there are Republicans that are speaking, Don Bacon that was just mentioned by Brian earlier, a member of the problem solvers.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
There are people speaking out, but it's not easy in this environment that is so toxic It's not easy in the environment where everybody's afraid about losing a primary, and all the people that vote in the Republican primaries are really a lot of MAGA people to go against the president. But we've got to keep on encouraging those people that are doing the right thing to speak out more forcefully.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
A lot of them are, yeah.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
Well, it depends on the issue and it depends on the member of Congress. So, you know, each member of Congress, we have like, you know, 15 people who work for us. I've got half of them in my district office. They deal with a lot of casework.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
They deal with a lot of people calling up who have a problem with like Social Security or IRS or immigration or something like that, that we help to resolve their issues. We have a press person. We have a scheduler. we have people that mainly do casework. Down in Washington, I've got a press person and three people that work on legislation.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
A lot of the heavy lifting on the big issues that you hear about are done by committees and not caucuses, committees that are the formal- Senate Veteran Affairs, House Veteran Affairs, et cetera, et cetera. Ways and means, appropriation. And they have massive staffs. And those staffs are the ones that often write the legislation.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
So over the two people that went to you and said, can you write this, were probably not on the committees of jurisdiction that had the staff available to write the legislation.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
The House Veterans Affairs Committee.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
There's only two countries in the world that allow drug advertising on TV, the US and New Zealand. We're the only places in the world that allow it. Everywhere else, it's prohibited.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
I want to be careful, though, that, you know, I don't want to just feed into this whole thing. Everybody sucks and everybody's corrupt and the whole thing blows. Most of the people in Congress are trying to do the right thing. And I think that, you know, the problem that exists is a human nature problem.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
When John F. Kennedy was the president of the United States of America, before he was president, he wrote a book called Profiles in Courage after 175 years of American history. There was only eight people in that book. So it's not that easy to stand up to your own party or to the structure and say, I'm sick of this shit and I want to change it.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
And so what you need is the people to hold you accountable. The problem is the primary system where so few people actually participate in the primaries, the only people holding you accountable are often people on the fringes, the far right or the far left. They're the ones with all the energy and activity holding people accountable.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
So if you want to get politicians to do the people's will, you need more people to participate in these primary elections. Brian's idea of open primaries is a great example of a way to do that. Mandatory voting like they have in Australia would be a way to do that.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
If everybody voted, I guarantee our politics would completely moderate because the people would most normal people want the things you think about every day and you talk about every day. They just don't. They're so busy with their jobs. We don't get it. They're busy with their jobs. They're busy with their families. They don't take the time to get involved.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
Most, you know, the far left is like 8% of America. The far right is about 8% of America. Then you have traditional conservatives, traditional progressives. 50 some odd percent of the people are the politically disengaged and the politically disenchanted. Ah, the whole thing sucks. It's rigged. It's no good.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
Yeah, so now people can't sign up for the programs that they have available to them. And so- That's what I'm saying. So the problem solvers, Brian and I talked about the problem solvers are going to work on helping to reinstate those people.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
So the program you were talking about is called NIOSH, right? National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. And they fired the guy who was the doctor that oversaw the whole thing named Howard a while ago.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
And a guy named Andrew Garbarino on Long Island and some others. And we all support him.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
He's a Republican. He said, hey, you can't fire this guy. It doesn't make any sense. And they reinstated the guy and said, oh, we're going to give him from now until June 2nd and we'll make another decision on June 2nd. So everybody's like, okay, you know, the Republicans and Democrats, for the New Yorkers especially, are standing up and they're not going to do this again.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
Well, now they just did it again like literally a couple days ago and they fired these 16 more people again. That's right.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
You know, when everything's said and done, this whole thing's been very reckless. Yeah. You know, they said we're going to cut $2 trillion. And they said we're going to cut $1 trillion. Billion, yeah. Now they're down to $150 trillion. And it's going to end up costing them $150 trillion in lawsuits and rehiring people and loss of productivity. But forget about that. It's reckless.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
So- I think that what we can do is Brian and I can get our colleagues, Democrats and Republicans. This is a kind of a no brainer. I think Brian would agree with me. Brian, you agree, right? I do. We would team up together. We'd get our 50 members to come out and say, you know, you got to bring these people back and bring some heft to hold the administration account.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
Now the president is going to say, I didn't mean to fire these guys. They shouldn't have fired these guys. I'm sure he's saying that. I didn't know that happened. But unless we can bring, there's so much going on out here, flood the zone, that it's hard to bring attention to individual issues.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
So by getting the 50 of us to work together to bring attention to this, I think that we can help to reinstate.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
Then you end up with hunger and you end up with AIDS and you end up with other problems.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
And then the terrorists come in and use that as a vehicle to come in and provide assistance to people in their desperate conditions. And then they get a foothold in it. The symbol of Elon Musk with a chainsaw, which they thought was so positive, he thought was so positive at the time, is really a symbol of what they did. They came in with a chainsaw to cut stuff which required a scaffold.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
So with everything said and done, this is not popular for me to say amongst my own party. It's not popular for me to say with my family even. I think it's going to work out.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
I think that the American people responding and saying they are dissatisfied with the way things are going is going to be reflected in every district throughout the country where the politicians are going to have to respond to their people. They're going to be more afraid of the people than they are of Donald Trump picking them out.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
I think there are enough people of goodwill and I think there are enough.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
And I think there are.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
But that's the way democracy is supposed to work. The government, the government is supposed to be afraid of the people. It's not that people are supposed to be afraid of the government.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
And the tax cuts that are coming from the Republican Party is going to cause a massive bigger deficit than we've ever had, bigger than anything else.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
But we still got to pay these bills back at some point. There's a tremendous amount of energy around doing something on immigration. I mean, it's just like everybody knows this has to be done.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
There are 435 members of the House of Representatives. There are 100 senators. Both of them together make up the Congress. The Senate is two senators from each state. Times 50 is 100. And the 435 members of Congress each represent about 750,000 people.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
Right now, half the farm workers in America are probably undocumented.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
The first step is if you want to get the Republicans to help and some Democrats, the first step is really we have to really secure the border for real. So now the president has done a lot of that, but that stuff's all temporary based upon executive order. We have to have congressional action so that it'll be permitted to secure the border for the long term. The asylum system has to be fixed.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
The asylum system is the main. In 1980, we loved asylum. You remember when Robin Williams did the movie Moscow on the Hudson and everybody's like, I defect. Yes, we win.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
We loved asylum, but we have to stop the Democrats and Republicans from fighting each other, and we have to pick our common enemy. Our common enemy are the cartels and the organized crime and the coyotes that get paid $10,000 a person to bring people to the southern border and tell them what to say to try and game the system.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
So that even though 85 percent of the people who claim asylum ultimately get denied, it takes six or eight years for those cases to be adjudicated.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
So you don't have a unique situation. I'm a Democrat. I'm supporting strong border security. Brian is a Republican. He's supporting legalizing the dreamers and the farm workers and trying to bring people into the country to support our economy.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
Trying to solve problems, John. What the heck?
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
Thanks, man. Thanks, guys.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
I ran for governor of New York, got my butt kicked, and then George Santos took my place.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
So then they kicked him out, and then I came back.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
Yeah.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
There's about 50 of us.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
That's a correct deception. Right now, it's been very much my way or the highway with the president and the Republicans trying to cobble this thing together on their own without any reaching across the aisle to the Democrats.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
And if they don't succeed in this or at some point when they're trying to get something else done, they don't succeed, then we hope that we'll be available as a group to work together to try and find compromise on things. But right now, you know, Democrats and Republicans have used the reconciliation process when they're in power.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
The main reason they do the reconciliation process is because it's a provision that doesn't require 60 votes in the Senate. It only requires 50 votes in the Senate.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
I mean, the bottom line is that it's very hard to change the laws as part of reconciliation. It's much more about the budget. So, for example, you know, there's a lot of stuff that's debated about immigration right now. And one of the things the problem solvers is working on, we have seven working groups. One of our working groups, one of the ones that has the most energy is behind immigration.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
so that we could try and make a bipartisan deal that will secure the border for the long term, that will fix the broken asylum system, and will modernize the legal immigration system so that the dreamers and the farm workers and the healthcare workers and other people that are essential to the United States of America and who've been here for 10 or 20 or 30 years, we could figure out how to legalize them.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
I don't want to say substantially different. A lot of the elements from that are in there, but it's not that bill. And we're using a lot of different bipartisan bills that have been worked on over the years, like on the Dreamers, for example, and on the farm workers, the Farm Workers Modernization Act.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
We're using those and trying to cobble together something that's been bipartisan for many years, but never got over the finish line. And we're hoping that, you know, when the push comes to shove and the administration needs some help to get something done, this will be one of the things that we can make one of the first things we're trying to push through.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
Yeah, I don't share that vision, obviously. I'm the Democrat here. Brian's the Republican.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
I'm reasonably sure that Brian doesn't share that vision either because it's a vision of the United States competition with three branches of government that have equal power. And, you know, America's founded on the idea all men are created equal. It's founded on that we all have inalienable human rights to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Are You There, Congress? with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi
But it's also founded on you can't trust each other, which is why we have these different branches to stop any one branch from taking over because they're always going to fight for their own self-interest.