ICYMI: Sen. Schiff Meets State Legislators in Sacramento, Talks Advancing California Priorities through Cooperation with Congress

Schiff: "In order to mitigate some of the harms that are coming out of Washington, like these massive cuts to Medicaid, it's really helpful for me to hear from the state legislators."

Sacramento, CA - U.S. Senator Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) joined FOX40's Inside California Politics with Eytan Wallace, and ABC10's State Matters with Jenny Huh to discuss his visit last week to Sacramento to meet with California state legislators to discuss how they can work together to advance California's priorities in Washington.

Schiff, a former California State Senator, highlighted how Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans' tax cut for billionaires is hurting California families by driving up health care costs and forcing families to go hungry with drastic cuts to food assistance. He also gave an update on his visit to California's largest detention center alongside Senator Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), hearing firsthand concerns surrounding the conditions of detained individuals amid the Trump administration's mass detention and deportation campaign.

View the full FOX40 interview here, and the full ABC10 interview here.

Key Excerpts:

On meeting with state legislators in Sacramento to discuss advancing Californians' priorities:

[…] In order to mitigate some of the harms that are coming out of Washington, like these massive cuts to Medicaid, it's really helpful for me to hear from the state legislators. What are they working on that I can support? What am I working on that they can support? How do we protect Californians when the administration is canceling all renewable energy projects here, and they're canceling all funding for flood control here and they're canceling SNAP benefits for millions, how do we work together to try to mitigate those harms? So those are the kind of conversations we're having today, and I'm coming up with some good legislative ideas just talking to my colleagues.

On the impact California is facing from Donald Trump and Republicans' tax cut for billionaires which made devastating cuts to health care and food assistance:

[…] It's a real problem. People are going to go hungry. There's just no way individual states that don't have the budget flexibility of the federal government, they have to balance their budget. They can't be out of balance. So it's going to be in draconian cuts, and they're just, I think, going to do the very best they can.

[…] We got to try to mitigate the harms we've already done by providing some of those resources that we clawed back in the big government bill. So those discussions are going on as part of the appropriation process in Congress. We hope to restore some of the funding we've taken away from the states, but it's going to be very painful.

[…] The state is going to have to dig out from a big hole that the federal government has put them in. The passage of that Big, Beautiful Bill, as the President calls it, took a trillion dollars out of health care. It's going to mean millions of people lose access to health care.

On Sen. Schiff and Sen. Padilla's Congressional oversight visit to the California City detention center:

[…] We wanted to see what conditions were like. We have both served constituents who have been detained there, some who are still detained there, and we've been in touch through counsel to understand what conditions they're facing. But we wanted to go there and see with our own eyes and talk to people there. And we got a pretty thorough tour of the place. And most meaningfully, we sat down with people who were detained.

One of my primary concerns was, are people getting medical treatment when they need it? And in particular, I asked the detention facility private operation. What if you're diabetic? Are you getting your insulin on time? Are you making sure that people get the treatment they need? They said oh yes, yes, absolutely. But one of the first detainees I spoke with said she had been there for two months, she was diabetic, she had yet to get her medicine. That's very dangerous, and we heard repeatedly from detainees about their inability to get the medical care that they needed, medical care they were receiving before they were detained. So that's potentially life threatening, deep concern. We heard other concerns as well, but mostly just the heartbreak of meeting people - and the vast majority of those detained there had never committed a crime, let alone a violent offense, apart from being undocumented. The President had threatened, we're going to deport the worst of the worst about criminals. These were mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers, separated from their family, taken away from their jobs, never been in detention before, and it was heartbreaking to talk with them about what they were experiencing.

View additional photos of Senator Schiff's visit to Sacramento:

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