border. a crisis at the border starting to take shape. a surge of migrants crossing. fema stepping in to help with the more than 3,200 migrant children being housed in customs and border facilities as of last week. that figure is a new record. republicans are seizing on it. in a matter of hours, kevin mckathy and other congressional republicans will be at the border in texas. they are calling it a crisis. democrats are calling it a challenge that they inherited from the previous administration. that s where we start. garrett haake in el paso, texas, where a group of house republicans, including minority leader mccarthy, making the border visit. i want to bring in the former white house deputy chief of staff for operations under president obama. jacob is with us in california. we know that part of fema s role we don t have jacob yet. garrett is in el paso. congressional republicans making a visit to the border in a matter of hours. this visit coming as congress preparing to
package and it s this new child tax credit which is really revolutionary. it s very, very popular. 70% popular with the american people. what is the thinking behind this big kickoff this week to promote it nationwide? well, look, we are still in the midst of this pandemic, and we know that we can t get out of our economic crisis until we get through the health crisis. so the thinking behind the american rescue plan is that we need to address the problems caused by the pandemic. part of it is is to help get the vaccine eggs and get the shots in people s arms. we recognized since the beginning of the pandemic we ve lost 9.5 million jobs and we ve got over 4 million people who have been unemployed for at least a year. people are struggling and one in five adult renters are behind in their rent payments and millions of adults and children are struggling to eat and put food on the table. so it s important that the federal government provide the resources that people and business