just one year ago, you remember around christmastime the u.s. saw the longest ever shutdown. in addition to what he just mentioned regarding raising the legal tobacco age, other measures include a military and civilian federal worker pay raise to the tune of 3.1% particularly for military personnel, about $425 million in federal funding for election security grants, $25 million for gun research and a repeal of three health care taxes designed to help pay for the affordable health care tax. this is exactly in line with what was pencilled in for last year. the president has been demanding more, but it seems like that number is going to stay. this paves the way for it to pass the senate and eventually be signed into legislation by the president. i just want to take you to one company that s been under a lot of focus in the last couple of years. that is pg&e, the pacific gas and electric company.
impeached in front of all of us. frankly, rudy giuliani has just returned from ukraine where he was jing up fake dirt on president trump s opponents on the upcoming presidential election. my core concern is that there s lots of opportunities for president trump to invite interference by china or russia or continue to dig up and throw in the air distractions or, in the ways, efforts that will ntd mine my election. i hate coming onl and harassing your audience. i think there s $425 million in election security grants in this appropriation bill that i think we re going to pass this week. that s something i fought very hard for. came out of the subcommittee for appropriations. and trying to make sure our states have the most up-to-date
president trump s opponents in the upcoming presidential election. my core concern is that there is lots of opportunities for president trump to invite interference whether by china or russia or to continue to dig up and throw in the air distractions or in some ways efforts that will undermine our election. i want to add one encouraging note, chris. i hate coming on and always depressing your audience. i think it s just become public that there is going to be $425 million in election security grants in this appropriation bill that i think we are going to pass this week. that s something i fought very hard for. it came out of the subcommittee of appropriations where i m the senior democrat. and it is a small but important investment in trying to make sure that our states have the most up to date cyber secure machinery to make it harder to hack our next election. do you think there is a i mean, one thing that i hear from you and other folks is, look, our colleagues wouldn t actually
we have admiral rogers, who was the last one of the high profile cabinet officials to testify under oath, that he had never been directed by this president to do anything along the lines oh of what the president tweeted, to do anything to protect this country from russian intervention. let s watch and talk about it. as i understand, you said that president trump never ordered cyber com to take any actions to thwart russia meddling this the elections, is that correct? i ve never been given instructions to take additional steps outside my authority. i have taken steps within my authority. no one from the administration has asked you to take additional steps. i haven t been granted any additional authorities or capability, that s certainly true. that was from earlier this year. thursday of last week, republicans blocked a bid to extend election security grants. where is this coming from, the
russian ambassador in washington he didn t know about that meeting going into that meeting. he said if he would have known he would have thought it was a bad idea. he is the director of national intelligence. he is supposed to know about this stuff. that is an honest hoosier right there. the problem is if he does not have directives, if christopher wray does not have directives we are only as safe as the congress is willing to be by standing up to the president. today on the house floor nice tweets i saw, republicans voted to completely zero out the election security grants that just last year were funded at $300 million. if the director of national intelligence is out of the loop on some of these so sensitive national security related issues where does that leave u.s. national security? we are not helpless so what we can do is start to require