For Immediate Release: 3/13/2024
GOVERNOR KATHY HOCHUL
AUDIO & RUSH TRANSCRIPT: GOVERNOR HOCHUL IS A GUEST ON THE VIEW
Governor Hochul: We are doing the best we can to manage the influx, get people housing. It is very expensive, and the State of New York is in for about $4.3 billion. I would like federal money. And guess where the federal money is and why it's being held up? The Republicans in Congress and in the Senate said no because Donald Trump called them up one night.
Hochul: I want to be as bold and as audacious and courageous and a risk taker the way I've always been as the Governor of the State of New York, because this is a complicated State to govern but I cherish and love every single day of it.
Earlier today, Governor Kathy Hochul was a guest on The View.
AUDIO of the Governor's remarks is available here.
A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:
Whoopi Goldberg, The View: Welcome back. All the issues that impact the entire country come down especially hard on the Empire State of New York. And as we celebrate Women's History Month, we are happy to welcome for the first time, the first female Governor in New York history, Kathy Hochul.
Joy Behar, The View: Before we ask you some really important questions, I want to know if you would like to do a dentist commercial since you are a Governor of New York State, maybe in South Dakota?
Governor Hochul: You know, I have to say this, I would not go to Texas to have my teeth done and I would not take any compensation for it. And the most I can accept as a gift is $15 in the State of New York.
I don't think that gets me a cup of coffee. So, we're good. My teeth may not look as good as that, but I'm not going to violate any ethics laws. I assure you.
Sara Haines, The View: You took over as Governor at a very should we say precarious time. So, Andrew Cuomo had resigned amidst sexual harassment allegations. New York was the epicenter of COVID. And although you were Lieutenant Governor for six years, you could say that not a lot of people maybe even knew you by name. Now, you were elected in 2022, but take us back to the time of that appointment. How were you feeling?
Governor Hochul: Well, I found out with the rest of the nation that I'd be Governor. I didn't get any advance warning. I was told we kind of thought something could happen, but I officially learned by watching national television.
Sara Haines, The View: Oh, wow.
Governor Hochul: I immediately went into the next room, went down to my knees and prayed to God for strength and wisdom. I got up and said, I'm the Governor. I'm the Governor.
And that has helped me, and I'll tell you literally days later before I was sworn in I went to the county fair. I grew up in Buffalo, daughter of steelworkers, granddaughter of steelworkers; my family started very humbly. And it was always a big deal for us to go to the county fair. We didn't have any money, but you could go look at the animals, you could go on the rides.
So, I went there, and a mother came up to me with her probably four-year-old daughter and she said, Look, she's going to be a woman Governor. That means you can be anything. And all of a sudden, I realized: that weight was on me. That this was beyond governing a State. As the very first Governor in the State that launched the women's right movement back in 1848 still the first governor ever that was a woman, who was also a mom and now a grandma that it meant something to other people, so I knew I had to get it right.
People are going to have me under a microscope. I had to be perfect in every sense of the word. And I'm human. I make mistakes. But you get right back up and you go at it again. And I want to be as bold and as audacious and courageous and a risk taker the way I've always been as the Governor of the State of New York, because this is a complicated State to govern but I cherish and love every single day of it.
And every morning I get up and I do my makeup with my granddaughter watching me on FaceTime, she thinks her grandma is a makeup artist. That's okay. Sofia watches me, and I talk to her. She's almost two. She's listening to Grandma. And I have a picture of her in the Governor's Residence.
And it's a lot of space, she gets to run around there. But a picture of her above the mantle, I'm walking. You remember the picture with Jack Kennedy and John walking, just their backs walking? I have that picture of me walking down the Hall of Governors, which is all pictures of men staring down at us.
And I'm holding her little hand walking. And that's the image I want people to have.
Sunny Hostin, The View: And it's not photoshopped either.
Governor Hochul: I did, I waited until I got it back from the palace to make sure they got it right.
Alyssa Farah Griffin, The View: Governor, I want to ask you about one of the many issues that New Yorkers are facing and the whole country is. The issue around immigration. So, Governors across Mayors across the country, I should say, are pleading for more Federal Government assistance.
New York alone had 178,000 migrants who came into the State and there's been issues around housing, schooling, medicine for these people, and it's draining billions from City Budgets. Now, Mayor Adams has raised the idea of changing Sanctuary City Laws so that migrants aren't flocking to major cities.
Do you support this and what do you think needs to be done to fix this influx of migration?
Governor Hochul: Well, first of all, let's just say we are a nation of immigrants. I'm sitting here because my grandparents were teenagers in Ireland leaving great poverty. Grandpa started as a migrant farm worker himself in South Dakota in the wheat fields. They were domestic servants in Chicago until they heard about the promised land of Buffalo, New York. You could make steel with your hands and get a good paying union job.
And that's what changed my whole family's history. Those jobs are here in the State of New York. I have 460,000 open jobs today; I have 5,000 farm jobs that I need filled so we can plant the crops that will be feeding New Yorkers people all over the country. But there has to be a legal path. A path we can control because the surge and this is the largest migration of humanity since World War Two.
And this is unprecedented in the past we've had usually the man comes first, gets a job, maybe finds a little place to live and then sends money back and then brings the family. What we have now over half of the migrants that have arrived are moms with children who are so desperate for a better life for the kids they went through harm's way, and they arrived. Now, this is a federal problem. I worked on the last major immigration bill that was enacted when I was pregnant with my son, who's now the father of that little girl.
So, we're talking a long time ago. And there was a bipartisan bill. Remember Tip O'Neill and Ronald Reagan and Democrats and Republicans worked together? Remember that crazy time in our history? And that's why I'll never give up on our democracy because I was a young, impressionable attorney on Capitol Hill, and I saw that happen.
So, fast forward to today, which is your question we are doing the best we can to manage the influx, get people housing. It is very expensive, and the State of New York is in for about $4.3 billion.
I would like federal money. And guess where the federal money is and why it's being held up? The Republicans in Congress and in the Senate said no because Donald Trump called them up one night. The night before, they should have voted on this to send 2,000 more agents or border patrol people to the border.
I need some on the northern border, by the way. We border Canada. Money for States like New York, that would have helped us a lot. And just have a different path to citizenship and look at the asylum and whether it's too loose right now the way it's being used and probably abused.
So, I blame the Republicans now. The mess was bipartisan before that Democrats and Republicans have not successfully found a way to have a path to legal citizenship because the employers want this. And I've said to the ten Republicans in the House of Representatives who represent the great State of New York, saw them at the State of the Union.
I saw them. I said, Why don't you all march into Speaker Johnson's office tomorrow, because there's 10 of you. You know that crazy Freedom Caucus? There's only 11 of them. So, use your voice. Say, my State needs this. Pass the bill that was a bipartisan compromise between conservative Republicans and Democrats, the President. And all was going to happen just a couple of weeks ago, and Donald Trump said, No, I don't want Joe Biden to look good like he solved a problem.
Joy Behar, The View: Right.
Governor Hochul: And they admit that. And so, that's the answer to the problem long term. I still believe it can happen, but I want pressure on everyone's Republican members of Congress to get out there, do this for our country, if you represent the State of New York, my God, do it for your home State, the people who sent you that job.
Whoopi Goldberg, The View: So, we're going to go and come back with more with Governor Hochul. We'll be right back.
Hey, were back with Governor Kathy Hochul, Sunny has the question.
Sunny Hostin, The View: Thank you. Governor, after a series of questions involved in a number of high-profile crimes on New York City subways, right? You deployed hundreds of State Police and National Guard troops into the subway system. Since the pandemic, you have done a wonderful job. Overall crime is down in the City.
Governor Hochul: Yes, it is.
Sunny Hostin, The View: So, my question to you is, why now? Why deploy to the subway? And how do you respond to some of your fellow Democrats calling the move theatrics that play into Republican narratives that blue cities are poorly run war zones?
Governor Hochul: I'm not buying it. My job is to keep people safe. Any way I can, I'm going to keep New Yorkers safe. And I'll tell you who does that. I want to show appreciation for the people out there on the streets. I've been walking the streets. I walk into business. People are just saying thank you for taking such strong action.
Now you are correct that working with Mayor Adams we've had a spike in the number since I've been Governor. We have driven down crimes. Homicides are down about 30 percent, shootings down about 38 percent. The subways have been safer, but we had a spike recently. A 45 percent increase in subway crimes.
Now these are high profile crime
Joy Behar, The View: Can I interrupt you for a second? Because the CEO of the MTA says that one percent of subway suspects are responsible for more than 20 percent of the crime because of New York's bail reform laws, which allows them to go back out there and commit more crimes.
Governor Hochul: I'll get to bail in one second, I'm going to answer this one.
What happened is I needed to do something dramatic and quickly to send a message that you will not get away with committing crimes in our subways. You cannot slash the throat of a conductor, you cannot push someone out on the track, because people will not take the subway if they don't feel safe.
That's job number one. So, they are not there to harass anybody. I said, I don't like those long guns, they're kind of threatening to stand there. I said, smile at everybody, welcome them to the subway. These are moms and dads. The National Guards are citizens who've stepped up, so I will do that any day of the week.
I take criticism the second I wake up in the morning until I go to bed at night, and I don't care. My job is to protect New Yorkers, and that's one way to do it.
Joy Behar, The View: What about this? There's like a circle of
Governor Hochul: That's why last year, I inherited from my predecessor and the Legislature before. They took the bail laws and watered them down and made it impossible for judges to look at the whole picture of the crime and the person, what they're doing, so I worked hard last year. I held the budget up one month late. I wanted to be on time, you can brag about being on time. I was not going to be on time because I had more leverage after April 1.
So last year, I held up the budget, I got the changes I needed. Judges now have discretion. They can look at the whole issue. They can look at whether a gun was involved. Was there an order of protection? We have to protect the victims of domestic violence. My mother was a champion for victims of domestic violence.
Joy Behar, The View: But there was just a crime on Long Island where body parts were found all over Long Island. They had four suspects, they let them go, right? And now they're out there still. So, what is the deal here?
Governor Hochul: Right.
Joy Behar, The View: Sounds insane to me.
Governor Hochul: No, the crime that was brought was not what was bail eligible. Yes, murder is, yes, conspiracy to commit murder is, yes, assault is bail eligible. All those are. I know that the DA is working really hard with the Suffolk County Police Department to build the case they need to bring the charges that are necessary. The charges he brought, he did not have enough evidence of time to hold him.
Joy Behar, The View: So, you can't hold them?
Governor Hochul: Not on the charges he brought, but those are low level charges, they really were. And we can work to make those bail eligible in the next session, but I changed the law it only went into effect last May, by the way. So, we've had a real drop in recidivism since I've been Governor everyone talks about this down 45 percent.
Whoopi Goldberg, The View: Wow. So, here's my okay, this whole thing, this congestion pricing, I don't understand.
Governor Hochul: Okay. Lets go at it.
Whoopi Goldberg, The View: Because the Mayor because New Yorkers did not mess up the streets. We used to have four lane avenues. We had ways to get around. You could get it might have taken a long time because we have big trucks, but you could get around. The idea of having to pay I'm a lifelong New Yorker the idea of having to pay to go from point A to point B without really having the conversation, only to see those things go up anyway, it made me feel like nobody was listening. Nobody said, hey, maybe we should not have put all of these bike lanes we should not have parking lanes. And you can't get around now. You can't get to Broadway in time unless you leave the day before.
So, I know we don't have any more time. And I want to say thank you. And maybe you and I can talk about this. But this is a huge this is a huge deal because I can afford it. Don't get me wrong. I can afford it. But a lot of my friends who drive in every day, who left here because they couldn't afford to live here anymore, can't. And it's I know. I know.
Governor Hochul: Ive got the answers. Well have to do it another time, okay? We'll do it. I promise.
Whoopi Goldberg, The View: Thanks to Governor Kathy Hochul. We'll be right back.
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