Vice President Harris rallies House Democrats: Keep up ‘momentum’ of legislative wins

Vice President Kamala Harris told House Democrats in the Capitol on Wednesday they need to keep up the “momentum” from a productive two years of Democratic control of Washington, lawmakers said.

While Republicans now hold the House majority, Democrats can build off their successes through implementing bills they passed in the last Congress to fund infrastructure, manufacture computer chips and combat climate change, Harris told lawmakers.

“It’s implementation, and a lot of that implementation will be done by the administration. And our task is to support it in every way possible,” said Rep. John Garamendi, D-Calif., as he left the closed-door meeting with Harris.

Harris will meet families of Monterey Park mass shooting victims

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Harris urged them to keep the White House apprised of any infrastructure project groundbreakings and other events back in their districts where Democrats can showcase to voters some of their accomplishments.

The White House said Wednesday that Harris and President Joe Biden will do just that on Feb. 3, traveling to Philadelphia to “discuss the progress we have made and their work implementing the Biden-Harris economic agenda.”

The vice president also told Democrats they need to keep reproductive rights and voting rights at the forefront, according to Rep. Julia Brownley, D-Calif.

The meeting in the Capitol came shortly before Harris, a former California senator and attorney general, planned to fly to the Los Angeles region to meet with families of the victims of a mass shooting in the predominantly Asian American city of Monterey Park that killed 11 people. Just days later, another gunman opened fire on farm workers in the northern California community of Half Moon Bay, killing seven.

During a question-and-answer period Wednesday, Rep. Judy Chu, D-Calif., the head of the Asian congressional caucus and the former mayor of Monterey Park, stood up and thanked Harris for flying to her community to meet with the families of victims.

“She talked quite a bit about the different measures we could take to deal with gun violence,” Chu said in an interview, adding that Harris expressed support for assault weapons and high-capacity magazine ban legislation authored by Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. 

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“She felt that we just have to keep on pressing forward and that we’ve already seen positive results with our bipartisan gun safety bill that was passed last year.”

As she left the meeting with Democrats, NBC News asked Harris if Congress needed to do more to address gun violence. 

“Yes,” she replied as she moved through the Capitol basement.

Since last weekend’s mass shooting in Monterey Park, Chu has been in contact with White House officials on a daily basis. She said she expects Biden will visit California soon to meet with families of victims of recent mass shootings in the state.

“We believe President Biden will come at some point,” Chu said. “They’ve been paying a lot of attention to this. … It looks promising.”