Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Minnesota for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, here we are on September 19, House Republicans passed legislation which would have funded government through November 20. Here we are on November 12, and we are basically where we would have been had we just passed the bill that we passed in September.

What did we get for all of that? What happened over all these days? Well, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle were searching for a reason for voters to support them next November. They were searching for a cause.

We know this because there were intervening elections and a lot of rhetoric but no results. We are here right now, with Democrats having joined Republican Senators to send a bill over here to fund government through the end of January with three appropriations bills, which we worked through regular order, to keep spending relatively flat. It advances the priorities the American people sent us here to advance, to back up the President who is securing the border, which he was sent to Washington to do; to restore military to focusing on defending this Nation rather than advancing woke priorities, which the American people sent him here to do; for us to continue to work, to grow, and to build this economy after 4 years of being wrecked with reckless spending but also abhorrent policies. The American people are now saying: What on Earth were Democrats doing?

My Democrat colleagues' response is healthcare. That is the only default position they have is the default to healthcare. The fact is, it is because they broke the system so badly that they are now coming and asking us to have the Treasury print money to then give out in order to enrich insurance companies with massive subsidies. That is the actual fact.

The American people understand this and they recognize that they don't want insurance companies to be enriched, but they want to be able to go get the doctor of their choice. The American people understand this and so do we.

We are here to open the government, and we are here to stand up for doctors and patients instead of insurance companies and big regulators. I support this legislation. I know my Republican colleagues do. The question really is: Will Democrats support this legislation, or will they wish to perpetuate the shutting down of government to enrich insurance companies?

Mr. Speaker, I would note just an observation: One of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle who is a cancer survivor--and God bless him for it--was raising issues about government funding and about what funding should or shouldn't exist and what this administration may or may not be doing to make sure our bureaucracies are running efficiently and effectively and not wasting money.

I say this as a cancer survivor, stage III, Hodgkin's lymphoma, 13 years ago: I think research is important. I think we need to make sure there is solid research. I think it can be driven heavily by the private-sector businesses who are incentivized to make money for developing lifesaving drugs, but it could be done in concert with governments and universities. What we don't need is continued profligate Federal funding in order to achieve greatness.

The Wright brothers, Henry Ford, the great inventors, the great industrialists, the great innovators in technology, the entrepreneurs out there, for the most part, are not doing that based on government funding and action. They are doing it based on innovation and hard work. That should be our model and approach.

While I appreciate those who have gone through a terrible disease like cancer, as I did, as a number of people in this Chamber, and as millions of Americans across this country have done, it is not always a rationale for more government spending, more government action, and more government bureaucracy.

I would note that the other colleague who came down and talked about high and rising energy prices, I too share some frustration about foreign-owned energy companies and utility companies.

I would remind my colleagues on the other side of the aisle that our energy prices wouldn't be skyrocketing and off the charts had we not gone down the foolish road of massive subsidies for the so-called Green New Deal, which is more rightly called the green new scam, in which foreign companies, Chinese companies, have been enriched because my colleagues on the other side of the aisle wanted to pursue their radical agenda.

Do you want to know why the price of energy is going up? It is because of Democratic policies and mandates, EV mandates, and mandates about solar panels and wind farms that are far less efficient than nuclear and clean-burning natural gas. Those things are driving up the price of energy for the average American and putting that money into the pockets of a handful of wealthy people and the Chinese. I congratulate them, but my colleagues on the other side of the aisle shouldn't come whining to Congress about what they need in order to deal with high energy prices that my Democratic colleagues caused.

That is the truth.

The fact of the matter is that we need to do a lot better job of speaking truth here in this Chamber. As a number of my colleagues were debating a resolution honoring a friend to many of us, Charlie Kirk, who, as is well known now, lost his life last week, I am reminded of the importance of truth. Truth matters.

Charlie stood for the proposition that you should go into the public square and put forward your ideas and put forward what you believe is truth and then hash it out. He did so eloquently, thoughtfully, and engagingly with people of all stripes: Black, White, straight, gay, male, female, whatever it was. He would engage with people on campuses and around this country to pursue truth.

Mr. Speaker, one of my favorite quotes is from Thomas Jefferson where he said that for here, we are willing to pursue truth wherever it may lead. We need to follow truth wherever it may lead, but you also have to have the courage to speak truth.

Charlie Kirk, when he was engaging with Bill Maher, a skeptic, just earlier this year, said: ``In China and, of course, in the Soviet Union, there was an anti-Christian movement. Very hardcore. What book do you think is best for humanity to live by? I say the Bible. The entire arc of the Bible is a story of love and a need for humanity's redemption. The Bible has wisdom in ways you might not ever imagine. Humanity will seek to find a book. They will seek to find a code to live by, and I think it is incumbent upon atheists to tell us what that should be.''

Charlie Kirk earlier this year in April: ``The mechanisms of a religious society are good for everybody. When somebody walks around and thinks that you were created and that you are not God, you tend to have better citizens.'' Charlie was not wrong.

Earlier this year, Charlie Kirk, in a debate with an atheist: ``I would argue you have a lot more faith than I do. You have a lot more blind faith to believe that everything around you, love, joy, peace, sadness, is all just a construct of neurons firing in your brain. We, as Christians, have hope that we are going to see our loved ones again and that we will be in Heaven and that we will be in perfect peace and that this is not it. In fact, there is something even better awaiting us.''

Also earlier this year with Bill Maher: ``The greatest minds of history have been mesmerized by the Scriptures: Isaac Newton, Thomas Aquinas. Isaac Newton wrote more about biblical prophecy than even physics. And so there is something about the Scriptures that are intellectual, that does push your limits. And that is what I think is so beautiful about our faith is it can be accessible to everyone, but infinitely nourishing in exploration.''

Earlier this year, Charlie said about his goal of conservatism. He said: ``You have to try to point them toward ultimate purposes and toward getting back to the church, getting back to faith, getting married, having children. That is the type of conservatism that I represent, and I am trying to paint a picture of virtue, of lifting people up. . . .''

In another exchange with Bill Maher: ``It defies reason to think that this is just a roll of the dice. When you see a baby come into the world, when you see how we naturally heal, when you see even consciousness itself, I think it is a pretty miraculous thing. To think that it is all just a bunch of happy accidents, I think it is more rational to think that it is a byproduct of design.''

Four days before Charlie was shot, I think he tweeted out: ``Jesus defeated death so you can live.''

Earlier this year, Charlie said: ``I want to be remembered for courage for my faith. That would be the most important thing. The most important thing is my faith.''

I can go further.

My point of sharing these things is the importance of us standing up and speaking truth. People say, Well, Chip, how can you say it is truth? It is just what you believe when you talk about your faith.

Well, I, of course, believe it to be true. It is truth. Jesus did die so that we may live and Jesus lives.

It is important that we remember our Nation's founding and our Nation's convictions and the spirit that binds us together as a Nation, actual spirit, in God we trust. We cannot be bound together as a Nation if we do not adhere to a commonsense set of principles and values, rooted in a collective faith, a collective faith in God Almighty.

It does not mean that every individual has to believe anything specific. It doesn't mean that anybody has to go to church. It doesn't mean that we have to go around doing something in violation of the First Amendment, which says you can believe what you want to believe, but the First Amendment also does not stand for the proposition that we should walk away from our collective faith. It does not do that. Nowhere in the First Amendment does it say that.

How does a Nation conquer evil? How does a nation conquer Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, the Soviet Union? Was it all because we just got together and decided to put together a military, or was there something bigger? Was there something more important? Was there a collective faith in the Almighty that bound us together and gave us the courage for those young men to walk into a wall of bullets at Normandy?

People always ask me what is wrong with our country. Why is there so much division? When the Nation turns its back on God, when the Nation walks away from that collective faith, then do we really even have a Nation?

A lot of people keep branding Charlie as a conservative activist. Sure. He unapologetically advanced his definition of conservatism, but remember, as I said, when he tried to define that conservatism, he talked about it in the context of faith. He said, as I said a minute ago: ``You have to try to point them toward ultimate purposes and toward getting back to the church, getting back to faith, getting married, having children. That is the type of conservatism that I represent.''

I got to be honest, that should be the essence of conservatism and the essence of who we are. What point is there to living free if you are not advancing toward the kingdom of God?

Charlie had courage to speak to this, to raise these issues to a lost generation, consumed into devices that are destroying the minds of our youth, devices that I would wipe away from the face of the planet tomorrow if I could. I would, God's honest truth. The Amish are on to something, but since I can't do that, can we not at least recognize that these are poisoning our children?

The first thought I had after I had received word that Charlie was shot was to call my wife and to figure out how to get word to my son, also named Charlie, who I knew was an enormous fan of Charlie Kirk and who does not have social media or access to it on his telephone but is around a lot of friends who do. I wanted to get word to him not to look at anything because I knew immediately that the horrific images would be spread around instantly, and no children should be watching that.

That is just one example of millions every day polluting the minds of our children, coarsening our culture, breaking us down, addicting our children to devices instead of engagement, conversation, life, family, and being outside.

We are at each other's throats because we have turned our backs on God. We are at each other's throats because nonstop there is a deluge of imagery and horrific thoughts that are flooding into the in-boxes and into the visibility of our children and, frankly, ourselves.

Charlie Kirk was correct, that we have to focus on getting back to church, getting our Nation, our families, and our communities back to church. Would that this Sunday everybody that is going to be at a National Football League game or parked in front of a TV watching an NFL game, would that every single American doing that would be in church with devices off, TVs off, having supper with their families, which society would be stronger?

The fact of the matter is, when I had to tell my son that, unfortunately, Charlie had passed, and he asked if that was formally known in public, and I said: Yes, he is gone. I am sorry, buddy.

He said: I would have loved to have met him one day. Then he sent me a Bible verse that said: Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain. First Corinthians 15:58.

Well, thank goodness his mom is doing something right.

A lot of people have asked me why one of my first reactions in light of all this was to raise the prospect of an organized, radical left that has been fomenting the targeting of people that I care about, people like Charlie Kirk, groups like the Family Research Council, targeting families and communities and our way of life, Chip, why would you do that? Aren't you just sowing more division in calling for a select committee to investigate the organized efforts of the radical left?

Actually, I think it is the opposite of that. I started this talking about the

need to pursue truth. Our job in Congress, in part, is oversight and investigation, and pursuing truth and exposing it to the American people.

It is a problem that organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center creates hate maps in which they targeted the Family Research Council a decade ago resulting in an individual shooting it up and a security guard getting shot right here in D.C. or Charlie Kirk's organization, TPUSA, being put on that same map with a target being put on their backs. Antifa is known to be radicalized and engaging in terrorist activities, which the President recognized just yesterday, I believe rightfully.

The extent to which there is an extraordinary network funded not just by George Soros but a large number of radical billionaires that are funding organizations dedicated to putting into office DAs and judges who put criminals on the street, who allow dangerous criminals to walk among us in our communities, on trains in Charlotte, North Carolina, where a young woman from Ukraine was butchered by someone who had been in and out of jail, arrested 14 times.

It is not just an accident. It is not just one random DA or judge or, oh, George Soros funded one election. It is a coordinated effort to put DAs and judges and other law enforcement officials into places in communities--including in the communities I represent in Austin and San Antonio and throughout Texas--purposely to then have organizations like the Wren Collective, which is now known through reporting just this week from the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund, putting out the known networks where they are going in and telling these DAs and prosecutors precisely what to do, precisely how to get people back on the streets sooner or not prosecute them at all. The result of this is that dangerous individuals are walking among us and hurting us and our loved ones, which is a direct threat to the security of our Nation.

Yes, I think we should investigate that. Yes, I think we should get to the bottom of that. Yes, I want to know how those dollars are flowing. Yes, I want to know why the people of San Antonio have to be turned upside down or the people of Charlotte, North Carolina, have to be turned upside down because a radical group of billionaires are funding organizations that are funding these people to be put on our streets.

How about our borders? Should we not know the flow of the dollars, of the coordinated network through the United Nations and through international organizations and through supposedly religious organizations, or the 250 organizations that our friends at the Center for Immigration Studies put out, demonstrating the network that was responsible for dumping millions of people into our communities, including violent gang members from around the world that resulted in the death of Americans, Americans like Jocelyn Nungaray, Americans like Laken Riley, Americans like Rachel Morin? I could go down the list of people who were killed, abused, assaulted, or harmed because a radical group of leftists decided that open borders for their political purposes was more important than your safety and security as Americans.

Yes, I think we should have a select committee or an organized effort among the Judiciary Committee and the Oversight Committee to expose this network, to expose the funders, to expose the people who are doing this purposely to undermine your security as a nation. Yes, we should know that. The only question is why isn't every single Representative in this body standing up and saying: Yes, I agree?

I agree with Vice President JD Vance and Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller. They put forward plans to go after leftist nongovernmental organizations in the wake of Charlie Kirk's murder. The Vice President said: We are going to go after the NGO networks that foment, facilitate, and engage in violence. We are going to channel all the anger that we have over the organized campaign that led to this assassination to uproot and dismantle these terrorist networks.

The Vice President is correct. My friend, Stephen Miller, is correct. The President is correct to be declaring antifa a terrorist organization. Enough is enough. Enough with the disruption of our Nation. For those who say this is somehow clamping down on speech: Wrong. You can say virtually anything you want to say in this country, but number one, there is consequences to that, including getting fired and having television shows canceled because there is a limit to what a society should have to take.

If you are going to say crazy things, then there can be a consequence to saying those crazy things. That is okay.

No, it is not interfering with your First Amendment rights to say that you cannot engage in effecting a conspiracy to foment violence-- including, by the way, the riots in 2020--in the false name of supposedly healing racial division or in the name of certain lives mattering because we want to divide our country further.

Organizations funded for a specific purpose, to create instability and to undermine our way of life and our freedoms, should be investigated. Leftwing groups that are providing material support to that kind of violence should be investigated.

They say, ``Chip, why just leftwing groups? Why not rightwing groups?'' Fine. Go look at any groups fomenting said violence.

All I know is, in the wake of Charlie Kirk getting shot, I didn't see the streets around this country burning. I didn't see people's businesses and livelihoods getting looted, destroyed, and burned, from Minneapolis to California to our Nation's Capital. I didn't see statues getting toppled and tossed into water. I didn't see spray-painting and destruction of public monuments and statues.

What I saw was prayer. What I saw was people coming together in defense of their collective belief in God and their belief in this country, but willing to not just say we need unity for the sake of it.

I am tired of that. I am tired of this nonsense where they say, ``Come together. We must unite. We need unity.'' Unity for what? Unity under what? Unity under a Constitution, under a flag, and under God, yes. In defense of a country with shared values, yes. Not unity for the sake of it, not turning the other cheek to a lawless bunch of organizations designed to take down and destroy our way of life and our country, to undermine our faith, undermine our country, undermine our freedoms, because that is what we see.

You have to be blind to ignore it, and you have to be willful in that blindness to ignore the conspiracy and coordination to dismantle so much of what made this country great, to target institutions of faith; to target people for their conservative views and beliefs; to destabilize our society; to put criminals on the streets; to import people from around the world with criminal backgrounds and gang members for your own crass political purposes, to try to pack your districts and try to expand your voter base.

It is not working because this administration and those of us who have stood up to fight and expose this are seeing to it that we are removing people from this country who should be removed, securing the border so that people aren't flowing across it, standing with law enforcement, securing our communities, backing the blue, restoring safety and security, not just in our Nation's Capital but around the country, making this country a place where you can achieve the American Dream again, but only if we are willing to take on these organizations that are still causing the lawless to be walking among us.

That resulted directly in the death of a Ukrainian refugee who thought she could live the American Dream. It was taken away from her because people were purposely put on the street who are dangerous. There is no other way to look at that. That is literally what happened.

I know that there is going to be a lot more conversation and speeches about Charlie coming up, but I will close with this. In a 1981 speech, which is hard to believe was almost 45 years ago, President Reagan declared liberal pro-criminal policies rooted in ``utopian presumptions about human nature.'' ``For all our science and sophistication, for all our justified pride in intellectual accomplishment, we must never forget the jungle is always there waiting to take us over.''

He observed that the liberal belief that criminal justice is solely for rehabilitation instead of incapacitation and deterrence is rooted in ``a belief that there was nothing permanent or absolute about any man's nature . . . and that by changing his environment, we could permanently change man and usher in a great new era.''

President Reagan was right. There is a place appropriately for forgiveness and rehabilitation, but there is not a place for allowing the rampant, lawless, and dangerous to be walking among our families and our communities, and our borders to be wide open to endanger our societies for this crazy notion of some utopian nonsense or, worse yet, a purposeful use of this tool for political purposes.

I applaud the President for what he is doing for trying to secure our country.

I call on my colleagues to band together to expose to the American people these organized efforts that are undermining our security and our way of life--targeted specifically at us. It is high time that we expose it. It is high time that we do something about it.

If we learned anything from what we saw unfold that resulted in the murder of Charlie, it is that we go find the people that are just as guilty as the young man that pulled that trigger, the people who are just as guilty because they created that environment. They fomented the radicalization and the creation of an environment where that occurred knowingly, knowingly destabilizing our society in the process.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from New York. I am proud to work with him and others of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle and to stand for a simple proposition that, 23 years after this Chamber authorized force, at a time when most of the Members who did so aren't even here, at a time when numerous facts have changed, after Saddam Hussein was captured in 2003 and was executed in 2006, when troops were withdrawn and the hostilities were over in 2011, and then we went back in--regarding ISIS--and then out by 2021, that we should not be operating under a 23-year-old authorization of the use of military force. We can do better than that.

We are not touching 2001. We are touching 2002 and 1991. Come on. Mr. Chair, we don't need to have Congress effectively, modern day, declaring war and leaving it in place for one-quarter of a freakin' century or, in this case, 34 years since 1991.

We can do better. If we want to actually authorize force, we should deliberate, vote, and authorize force, but Article I has to mean something. Please support this amendment to end an endless authorization of force.

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity, as always, to be here in the House Chamber and try to be a voice for the people across this country.

The people that I represent, of course, as does the Speaker and my colleagues, we each represent three-quarters of a million people, give or take, but we also try to be a voice for everybody. We try to be a voice for the people who don't have a voice.

The people that I represent and the people across this country that I talk to are sick and tired. They are sick and tired of being put in danger because radical, progressive Democrats, radical progressive politicians, radical progressive judges, radical progressive district attorneys, radical progressive NGOs, George Soros, the people funding all of these entities are pushing criminals onto the streets of our country and causing harm to Americans, Americans who have been here for generations or Americans who came here seeking refugee from, for example, Ukraine.

How many of my colleagues come to the floor of the House wearing a blue and yellow ribbon or a blue and yellow pin? They wear it for show, and they wear it to pat themselves on the back. They wear it to seem like they are the ones with a heart when other people question whether we should fund endless war. They wear it to say that they care.

But where were they when Iryna Zartuska was being brutally stabbed in public transit in North Carolina? Where is the media who were outraged when Daniel Penny, a marine, stopped a violent offender on a New York subway and then was the one being charged and prosecuted for a crime?

What if Iryna Zartuska had Daniel Penny sitting next to her so that she wouldn't have lost her life? As a refugee from Ukraine, she was coming to supposedly the freest and strongest and greatest country on Earth. She was brutally murdered because feel-good radical liberals with their jailbreak, let-all-the-criminals-out, open borders, take money from George Soros, DAs, and judges put these criminals on the streets. You have a guy who was a 14-time offender, 14-time offender sitting behind this beautiful girl, and he just stabs her to death on a train car.

Where is all the wailing and the gnashing of teeth from my colleagues on the other side of the aisle? Where are their blue and yellow ribbons today?

All the sanctimonious preaching sure is silent because they can't bear to acknowledge that if you don't enforce the law, if you invite criminals from around the world into our country with open borders, if you let criminals on our streets with foolish policies by radical judges and district attorneys, then, as my friend from Louisiana knows as a former law enforcement officer, our streets are no longer safe and the American Dream is no longer able to be achieved. The freedom we are supposed to enjoy is not possible without the security you are supposed to have under the rule of law.

We used a lot of big words from the Declaration of Independence all the way through today. We talk about a lot of great words: ``equal justice under the law,'' ``liberty,'' ``rights,'' ``freedom,'' but if you don't have the rule of law, none of it matters.

The reason people come to the United States, the reason they flock to our country from around the world, is because of the rule of law. Enforcing our constitutional rights, given to us by God, recognized by our Founders, defended with the blood of patriots, but enforced under the law.

They come here knowing they can invest their capital, build a business, and not have it taken away by the State. They know that they can walk the streets freely, or they think that they can walk the streets freely, and not be assaulted. They believe that they can raise a family, grow and develop a community, and live the American Dream that they have seen play out.

They want to come here, but then when people with their fake ribbons and their feel-good propaganda let criminals on the streets, ignore the rule of law, and walk away from the men and women in blue as they did in the summer of 2020 when our cities were burning and our law enforcement were being attacked, when they defunded the police in Austin, Texas, as the radical city council did there, then real people suffer. Americans get hurt, and the American Dream dies.

The suspect that I talked about with the brutal stabbing in North Carolina was 34 years old with a history of mental illness and a long rap sheet: multiple convictions for armed robbery, felony larceny, breaking and entering; more than 5 years in prison; and 14 criminal cases.

His own family had warned of his history of schizophrenia. His own sister said that ``he didn't seem like himself,'' when he was released from prison. He assaulted his sister, and now that guy is roaming the public.

His release from this incident was conditioned on a written promise that he would appear for his next hearing, only for him to be charged with murdering this young woman.

Why would North Carolina officeholders, politicians, and judges not confine or institutionalize this young man? Because a radical ideology has taken root, particularly in my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, but my colleagues on this side of the aisle are not immune to the belief that you can put criminals on the street and not undermine the American Dream.

The so-called progressive prosecutor movement advocates for less incarceration and less policing: decarceration, procriminal policies that undermine public safety.

On January 22, 2025, San Antonio Police Department officers responded to calls at a San Antonio apartment complex reporting a suicidal individual who was armed and firing his weapon. When officers arrived, the suspect, Brandon Scott Poulos, fired upon the officers, striking one of them in the leg. Poulos wound up barricading himself in an hours-long standoff and shot an additional six officers before San Antonio PD neutralized the situation. Thankfully, all seven officers survived.

He was a 46-year-old with a history of erratic behavior. He was charged with DWI and assault. A few days before the shooting, he had been arrested for two charges of injury to an elderly person; one charge of assault, family violence causing bodily injury; and one charge of driving while intoxicated.

The Bexar County Magistrate's Office--Bexar County is where San Antonio is--issued a protective order against Poulos with instructions not to contact the family members. Three days later and less than 24 hours before the January 22 shooting of seven San Antonio cops, Poulos violated his protective order by visiting a prohibited residence and threatening to kill himself and to shoot at any officer.

The Bexar County D.A. in San Antonio, led by a progressive prosecutor, has imposed criminal leniency initiatives that have not only put law-abiding Americans in danger but also police officers, too.

The fact is, we are letting the inmates not just run the asylum, but letting the inmates run our communities. Then, under the Biden administration, we are inviting other countries to dump their prisons out into our communities. The radical progressives who allowed that to happen, supported it, and encouraged it are now attacking President Trump for daring to undo the damage, reverse the open borders and secure them, and then try to remove the dangerous criminals who are walking the streets of the United States because of the radical progressives and their open-border policies.

I know my friend from Louisiana has a lifetime of service, not just as a Congressman, but also in law enforcement. I wonder if my brother from Louisiana would like to expand upon my thesis that the rule of law is the central element of a strong and prosperous United States and that when our radical progressive friends undermine it by releasing criminals, leaving our borders open, refusing to enforce the law, and handing down light sentences, it endangers our people and undermines the very American Dream that people seek to achieve when they come to our land.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Higgins), my friend.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to see if my friend from Louisiana can stick around a little bit longer.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my friend from Louisiana because of his long history of distinguished service, and he knows what he is talking about.

I know that the gentleman from Louisiana came to my home State of Texas when the people that I represent were ravaged by the floods that affected our community in Kerrville, Texas, the gentleman dropped what he was doing to come up and help when we were in the search and in the rescue.

I just want to say to the gentleman, as a representative of the thousands of people who came to our State to try to help at a time when our people were hurting, but also people around the Nation were affected because of what happened to the camps--that I am proud to represent and that we will rebuild and that we will have going forward to have these wonderful children be able to learn the gospel and spread the gospel and become lights into the world.

I know that my friend from Louisiana would allow us to indulge a favor to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Carter) to have a 1-minute remark about something that is important to him, but I wanted to take a moment to share my prayerful solidarity with my brother from Georgia because he had a family member, a young girl who was unfortunately lost in that terrible flood, and I bring that up because we were all affected by it. We had so many loved ones who were impacted, but the faith of that community and the faith of the people in this Nation and the faith of the people in Texas who have come together under the cross that stands up on that hill in Kerrville and the people who have generously contributed now $150 million and counting that are going in to help those people, and the first responders who showed up on the scene and the people like my friend and the former sheriff, my buddy from Louisiana, who dropped everything to come up represents all that is good and great about this great Nation, who show up to help each other when we need to.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Carter) for a different topic, but I wanted to tell him how much my family has been praying for him and all the families affected.

Honoring Judith Jurgensen Melroy

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Georgia.

Mr. Speaker, since we are talking about the rule of law, I will not regale you with stories of my misspent youth on St. Patrick's Day in his fair city of Savannah.

I will say that earlier my friend from Louisiana was talking about the importance of the rule of law. We were talking about the context of criminals being let out prematurely, not giving them the ability to actually come to a place where they can again interact with society. We can talk about the mix with mind-altering drugs. We can talk about the misdiagnoses. We can talk about all of the things that we can and should do better. I know that my friend from Louisiana, a devout Catholic, a devout believer in the healing power and the grace of our Saviour, I know that he, like I, believe in the power of forgiveness and being able to work to rehabilitate and that we are called to do that. However, that is not an excuse for irresponsibly, programmatically, and politically putting individuals on the street who have no business being there.

In that same vein, I know that my friend from Louisiana is a staunch believer in a secure border, as most Americans are. I want to make a couple of points and see what the gentleman thinks. So when you look at the damage that was being done by the previous administration, not as most people think, by just ignoring the border and letting people get in, but rather encouraging and purposefully pulling people into the United States by virtue of the misapplication, misinterpretation, and straight-out disregard of the law to abuse our compassionate parole and asylum policies meant and reserved for those in dire need of protection from political persecution and other areas defined in the law for special purposes. For instance, you might be granted parole to care for a sick loved one legally in the United States. You might be granted some specific purpose for that one individual because we are a compassionate Nation.

Our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, led by the previous President, led by the previous Secretary, led by the previous Vice President, purposely bastardized the law for political purposes, endangering children who were

raped on the journey, using this human chattel callously for political purposes, flooding our communities with criminals from other countries.

Now, the President of the United States who ran on reversing that is doing so, and President Trump, Steve Miller, Tom Homan, Secretary Noem, the brave men and women of ICE, the brave men and women of Border Patrol, all of our law enforcement should be roundly commended for doing their job. I can tell you the relief of those great men and women to have a President and a Secretary that has their back and that believes in them and has allowed them to carry out their mission under the law, rather than accusing them of whipping someone they fully knew did not happen.

It is a new day in America where the flow across the border is statistically zero, as it should be, compared to the millions that flowed in for 4 years under Joe Biden. The Trump administration has, to the best of my understanding, arrested some 359,000 individuals for removal in the first 7 months of this administration, 70 percent of whom had pending criminal charges or convictions contrary to the allegations of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle.

Why are our colleagues on the other side of the aisle protesting the removal of murderers, sex offenders, drug traffickers, child abusers, gun criminals, gang members threatening our communities, killing our citizens like Jocelyn Nungaray or Rachel Moran, Laken Riley?

For the other 30 percent, they are illegal aliens who broke our immigration laws. They literally broke our laws.

I know that the gentleman from Louisiana feels so strongly that we should back up our law enforcement community that he raised a privileged matter on the floor of the House involving one of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle who has been indicted for interfering with law enforcement, and not just interfering with law enforcement, interfering with ICE, the law enforcement personnel which she is charged with overseeing in her service on the Committee on Homeland Security.

I know the gentleman rightfully brought that matter before the House. My colleagues will continue to address that matter in the future.

I wonder if the gentleman could speak to the importance--to this body and our leaders of this country, the 435 people in this Chamber, the 100 on the other side of the building, the President, and the people who report to him, the judges in the Supreme Court and throughout our courts in the country--the importance of enforcing the law, of standing alongside, not blindly, but standing alongside our law enforcement community to protect the rule of law that he so artfully described with respect to our jails and the enforcement of laws in our communities, but also to enforce our border in concert with local law enforcement and how important it is that we stand alongside them, that we stand up and hold ourselves accountable for doing that work and the proper oversight and the proper leadership to secure our Nation.

I yield to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Higgins), my good friend.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from (Louisiana) Mr. Higgins.

Mr. Speaker, I want to put a name and a face on the environment that was created by our colleagues and by the previous administration in endangering people.

We talk about: Say his name. Say the name of Jimmy Friesenhahn. In San Antonio, a father of a young daughter, a veteran of the Marine Corps, Jimmy fell victim to the pro-criminal policies and the open border that my friend from Louisiana just described.

On May 4, 2025, a mere 4 months ago, he was working as a security guard at a restaurant on the west side of San Antonio. The perpetrator, Wilmer Vladimir Ruiz-Ortega, attempted to enter the bar. He was stopped by Jimmy to be searched for contraband.

Jimmy identified a handgun. It led to a struggle, which resulted in the suspect gaining control of it, firing it, and striking Jimmy at least once. Jimmy medically died on the scene but was revived. It struck him in the neck, leaving him with a spinal injury, along with a ruptured esophagus and vocal cords.

He was in the ICU at San Antonio Military Medical Center with life-

threatening injuries for months. Doctors say he will never fully recover.

The suspect is a 29-year-old illegal alien who entered the United States as a got-away. He was arrested in San Antonio and charged with a DWI in 2020. He was let go on a personal reconnaissance bond but failed to show up.

The Bexar County DA downgraded the DWI. He pled guilty to obstructing a passageway, but he violated the probation. He got arrested again. He was let go after posting a bond of $1,500. He failed to show up.

He was arrested a fourth time in November of 2024. He was sentenced to time served. He assaulted a girlfriend and fled the scene. After shooting Jimmy, then the Bexar County DA only pursued aggravated assault charges and set his bond at $200,000. He is not in jail. He was granted house arrest.

Jimmy was a father and a veteran. His brother said Jimmy always put himself before others. Why do the people entrusted with securing our communities and enforcing the law not put Jimmy before the illegal alien who shouldn't have been here, should have been removed, and shouldn't have been let out five times to carry out and perpetrate this kind of crime?

The American people are asking: What happened? What happened to our country?

As far as a refugee from Ukraine, do you remember when our colleagues waved all the Ukrainian flags on the House floor?

Where were they today, Mr. Speaker? Were they waving the Ukrainian flag to honor that young girl who was brutally murdered by a criminal released by a radical progressive funded by radical progressives?

They are nowhere to be found. They are MIA.

The legacy media, also run by radical progressives, can't even bring it up. They can't even put it on the television. They don't dare to talk about it because it doesn't fit the narrative.

The American people are sick of having their way of life that their forefathers fought, bled, and died for, and that their brothers, sisters, moms, and dads worked to build for them and to pass down to their kids, ripped to shreds by people who don't give a rip about the rule of law, the Constitution, or our way of life as God-fearing Americans who say that we put our trust in God right above the flag that those brave men and women wore into combat so that we could be here and live supposedly free.

We are unable to live free because we are not secure. We are not secure because radical politicians, judges, and NGOs are working furiously for political gain and political purposes to advance a radical Marxist ideology to undermine our security.

It is a war on our way of life. It is a war on Western civilization itself. It is a war on the Constitution and the rule of law.

Every day that goes by is another day in which the very things that built this country are under assault, including, I might add, and in no doubt controversially, our belief in the Almighty God and His Son punished for our transgressions on the cross and our collective belief in Him as a nation that built this country.

This country and too many of its citizens have turned their backs on that truth.

The fact is, and the last point I will make, is that those radical progressives with their remaking of America with wide-open borders--and open borders include unfettered visas from all corners of the world--is purposely driven for economic, political, and other purposes, but usually involving the buck and power.

There are people who are advancing sharia law and advancing an Islamist political worldview directly and purposely in conflict with our Western values and our Constitution. It is a declaration of war on our way of life.

In Houston, just this weekend, an imam affiliated with the Nation of Islam was going around claiming to be patrolling Muslim-owned shops, telling them to stop selling alcohol and lottery tickets because they violate Islamic law. As communities in Texas are built upon large pieces of land, hundreds of acres, they are building up Muslim-only cities. This is purposeful.

We had Nigel Farage and others testifying in the Judiciary Committee this past week.

I asked Mr. Farage if the advance of Islam and the importation of sharia law are consistent with Western civilization, the Western civilization responsible for providing more peace, more prosperity, better living conditions, and more freedom for more people than the world has ever seen. His answer was, of course, no, it is not.

Our friends across the pond can barely find themselves able to defend what little free speech remains on their island. A comic, a comedian, came to the United States and made a joke about transgenderism. I don't even know what the joke was. He flies home to the U.K. and is arrested for hate speech even as the Parliament is advancing an Islamophobia bill, to which I ask: Who is going to win that war? Who is going to win that fight? We either believe and uphold the values of Western civilization or we don't.

Mr. Speaker, you can believe what you want. You can believe in God or not. You can go to church or not. What you cannot do is advance a radical ideology deeply at odds, directly in conflict, and purely designed to undermine the very values that have built this Nation and the advance of freedom around the world because, at our core, our values are built on our faith.

This Nation is more likely to crumble under its own weight, its own errors, than it is by invasion unless we meet the moment, unless we stand up, and unless we say never again.

Never again will we allow the power of government to be rained down upon the American people with mandates of masks and vaccines in the name of fear and in the name of healthcare.

Never again will we allow open borders to trample our community, endanger our citizens, and filter dangerous narcotics into our communities.

Never again will we allow the Chinese Communist Party to buy up our lands, our meatpacking facilities, and our critical medical production companies.

Never again will we allow our communities to get overrun with forced Marxist, DEI, and critical race theory ideology that undermines the very fabric of our community.

Never again will we allow the lawless and dangerous criminals to be on the streets because a faraway judge or bureaucrat getting paid off by an NGO says so.

Never again. Never again.

This moment of reprieve and this moment of common sense in which President Trump is restoring a modicum of what we need to restore the rule of law and secure borders and enforcement of the law and removal of criminals is meeting resistance at every turn. Even this moment of reprieve in which the President, President Trump, is restoring common sense by eliminating DEI, CRT, and all this stuff in our agencies and our Pentagon, even this moment of reprieve is just that, a moment of reprieve from the march of the Marxist, tyrannical ideology that is deeply at odds with our founding principles and who we are as a Judeo- Christian nation and as people who believe in something bigger and better for our kids and grandkids that is rooted in the sacrifice of the millions who came before us.

This reprieve must be met with the energy and the resolve of those who died before us: the men of the Alamo, the men who stormed the beaches of Normandy, the men on the fields of Lexington and Concord, the men and women who have answered the call to defeat terror, the men and women in blue who actually stand on that thin blue line even when they are abandoned.

All of those who have answered the call deserve Members of this body, Members of the Senate, elected leaders across the country to risk even an ounce of what those men and women are willing to risk. They must risk the election certificate upon which they hold like a death grip.

I say to my colleagues: Do something bigger and better. Take this moment of reprieve and say never again. Never again will we endanger our citizens; never again with open borders; never again with criminals on our streets; never again with drugs; never again

with tyrannical mandates, vaccines stuck in the arm; never again with radical ideology and transgender ideology politically motivated harming our young women, undermining their advancement; never again.

Never again do we yield to the corporatists who gobble up our small businesses and undermine our way of life. Never again will we yield to ideology in the name of political expediency, but rather, stand up and defend this the greatest country that the world has ever known without which people will be relegated to a world without the American Dream backed by the security and safety of the people willing to lay it all on the line to defend it.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 5 o'clock and 23 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Wednesday, September 10, 2025, at 10 a.m. for morning-hour debate.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairwoman for yielding.

So here we are. Democrats couldn't seem to find a single thing to say about Epstein when President Biden was in office, but now they want to make this the centerpiece of their entire conversation.

The fact of the matter is right now they know it is true, and right now what they don't want to do is have the American people focusing on the Republicans in Congress who are doing the thing they sent us here to do, which is end wasteful spending, to stop the ridiculous spending of a bureaucratic government that has been weaponized against the people. These are dollars that are being used and wasted and sent around the world for $32,000 for transgender comic books in Peru. That is how they want to use taxpayer money.

We are over here trying to make sure we are saving that money instead of having $6 million to fund tourism in Egypt or $2 million for sex changes and LGBT activism in Guatemala.

Why should the people of Texas be paying for that instead of paying to clean up the flood in Texas?

The fact of the matter is the people of Texas want their money to be used for the things they care about.

We have listened to the minority leader come to the floor and lecture us about the virtues of public radio and public broadcasting.

Yet, nevertheless, the truth is it took NPR through Texas public radio 19 hours to post anything about the flooding on its social media pages after the floods hit in Texas.

What was NPR and Texas public radio doing that morning?

They weren't breaking to talk about what was happening in Texas. They were running ads saying people should call Congress to fund them, but the private stations in Texas were breaking to release reports and tell people what to do because that is what private stations can do. They can respond to the people because they are locally owned, they are locally run, and they are not run by bureaucrats from this town.

The fact is, we are going to save money for the American people and end the absurdity of this leftist propaganda being put under public radio.

Mr. Speaker, I unfortunately missed one Roll Call vote due to travel delays.

Had I been present, I would have voted NAY on Roll Call No. 191.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today mourning the loss of life in the State of Texas that touched profoundly everybody across this great country and so many people who are visiting this part of Texas.

Obviously, we have been struck by the loss of life, particularly for those young girls associated with Camp Mystic.

It has been grueling. It was a rough week.

There has been a lot of destruction, and a lot of beautiful parts of our State have been destroyed, but we will rebuild.

Here is the thing that I want to say. When people talk about destruction, what will not be destroyed is the spirit of the people of Texas; the spirit of the people that those camps represent; the spirit of the little girls who are already talking about wanting to go back; the spirit of the people associated with Dick Eastland, the camp director of Camp Mystic who gave his life trying to save those little girls; the spirit of Jane Ragsdale, who lost her life saving five little girls--her guitar was found down the Guadalupe River just yesterday; and the spirit of all the little girls who were riding in the bus as they left Camp Mystic, singing hymns and expressing their faith. They were looking at the destruction that they couldn't possibly comprehend as they left that camp, but they were still putting their faith in their Lord and their Savior.

If there is anything we can take out of this, it is that sense of community, that sense of pride that we have in knowing that we will rebuild and that we will come together, and that sense that we know the power of the cross that stands on the hills over the city of Kerrville, the power of the faith of the people of Texas, and the power of the faith of the people of this Nation who have responded. Millions of dollars have come into the Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country, $30 million last week, and I think that number is rising.

I thank all the members here in this delegation. Most of them have reached out to me personally.

To my friends and colleagues in this delegation: It is not just Kerr County. It is the State of Texas. Many of my colleagues have been affected across the State, but I thank them for their prayers and their well-wishes.

Just know, Mr. Speaker, that their spirit endures. I cannot tell you how proud I am of the people of Texas, the people of Kerr County, Texas, and the first responders who are today back in the floodwaters, resuming the search for the missing. There are still over 100 missing in that part of our State.

Mr. Speaker, I ask for a moment of silence.

Mr. Speaker, if I may, there are some little girls from Camp Mystic in the gallery, and I thank them for being here.

Mr. Speaker, earlier today here on the House floor, I rose to lead the Texas delegation, my friends, and this entire body in a moment of silence for all of those who have been affected by the floods in Texas, particularly those that were affected in the district in which I am proud to represent in central Texas.

It has always been an honor, as I often say out on the campaign trail, to represent the best part of the best State in the best country in the history of the world. That particular part of the State is, as one of my staffers describe it, Heaven on Earth. At least that is how many of us have viewed it historically.

For now a century, it is the reason why there have been multiple camps for children along this beautiful part of the Texas Hill Country, the centerpiece of which is the Guadalupe River.

Those people who live along it cherish it. Those people who go there for camp cherish it. We have been experiencing the tragedy and the loss of life that now so many across the country have associated with it.

I will turn time over to my colleagues because I have certainly been able to express a lot of my views about this. I want to say just a couple of things in kicking this off.

I view things through the lens of the stories of heroism, the stories of courage, the lives that were saved, the people that were airlifted, the Coast Guard that responded, the sheriffs and the local law enforcement that showed up, the first responders that helped, the State that was on the scene, the camp counselors who showed up, the camp directors who gave their lives, all of the people who showed up and the spirit and the strong faith of a community bonded together by faith that now endures.

That, to me, is the enduring legacy. I tend to look through that lens. From those of us who understand Texas best, I don't think we should miss this moment for the people of this Nation to understand how horrific this truly was.

When I went on the scene--and several of us were there quickly for a variety of reasons, which we will all hear about in a minute. When I went on the scene on the night of July 4 and then again on the 5th and the 6th, and then driving out to go look at the damage and meet with my constituents and meet with people affected, it looked like an F5 tornado had just rolled down the river.

Mr. Speaker, 100-year-old trees were leveled and flattened. Houses were totally destroyed and lifted off the foundation. There was debris. Pickup trucks were fully buried with a little part of them sticking out of the ground.

Of course, as we have been talking about, there is the extraordinary loss of life. We are now at well over 100 individuals who are now deceased that are officially known in Kerr County, but many more are expected. There are well over 100 individuals who are missing.

Of course, now somewhat of note for the entire country are these wonderful little girls associated with Camp Mystic. My children are 15 and 14. They are a rising sophomore and freshman. Many of their schoolmates and many of their friends go to Camp Mystic or go to Camp La Junta or one of the other wonderful camps up and down this area and this part of Texas.

It is hard to put into words how much this is a part of the fabric of our community in central Texas but really particularly the entire State of Texas and even nationwide.

Many of our colleagues were impacted by this. We have colleagues from Georgia and other colleagues across the entire Nation. I had colleagues from Alabama reach out because they had constituents who were lost. It is a wonderful vacation spot that was obviously turned on its head.

The extraordinary impact is going to be felt for a long time, and we are going to have to rebuild. We will have to take the time and the energy necessary to do it. It is, as I believe, the spirit of the entire community that will endure.

As I said earlier--and I will talk about more of this later--it is for me the enduring image of those little girls leaving the camp, singing hymns, while they surveyed the damage.

It is the people who showed up with crosses and the people who showed up in prayer groups. It is the people who showed up from churches.

They are the Samaritans and first volunteers who showed up within days to clean out mud and the people who have rallied around this community.

They are the people across this country who have done so through faith and belief and the power of what these little girls represent and the charm bracelets that they wear. These bracelets were made by the local jewelry store, James Avery, which is a part of the rich history and tradition.

I could go on, but my colleague from West Texas has personal experience with this because his family has been associated with these camps for generations. I am going to let my friend, Mr. Pfluger, fill in a little bit of the personal nature of this. I look forward to hearing from the remainder of my colleagues.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Pfluger).

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from west Texas. I appreciate his sharing with the country and with all of us and our colleagues the testimony of his little girls and his family and their connection to Camp Mystic. He has been an extraordinary representative of Camp Mystic and those camps and has shown great leadership himself as we are all looking forward to finding ways to make sure that these camps rebuild.

Mr. Speaker, before I recognize the next speaker from Texas, Coach Roger Williams, I want to note that our colleague, Buddy Carter, is in Dallas as we speak at the funeral of a little girl in his family. Buddy Carter represents Georgia down there in Savannah. His grandniece is being buried in Dallas-Fort Worth, and he is there with his family now. To show how far-reaching this was and how many people it touched, Buddy's granddaughter was also at Camp Mystic but survived. This is touching almost everybody in this Chamber in one way or another.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Williams), who is my esteemed coach and friend.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend for his remarks.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Crenshaw), my friend from Houston and my congressional classmate.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Houston and appreciate his sober remarks in recognition of so many heroic actions.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Self).

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend and appreciate his kind remarks.

I am going to ask Judge Carter from my neighboring district just north of Austin to come deliver a few remarks. His district has also been directly impacted by flooding, and I am sure he will have something to say about that.

Right before he begins, I do want to reiterate something that I believe Mr. Self referred to and maybe Mr. Crenshaw. That is our colleagues who have stepped up, guys like our friend Morgan Luttrell, who has not been in front of cameras. He has not been doing anything other than his training to do diving and looking for bodies in the river. Morgan is doing the hard work and joining in and stepping up. I believe his brother is with him and other great patriots who have joined that effort. There have been people from all over the country who have joined that effort.

Our friend, Mr. Clay Higgins from Louisiana, came over. He engaged as a former sheriff who has training that was on point. We have had a lot of folks from our community step up to try to help, and I am deeply grateful.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Carter).

Mr. Speaker, I thank Judge Carter for his leadership and for representing his district so well and looking out for those impacted by the storms and the floods in his own area. I deeply appreciate his remarks.

Mr. Speaker, next is a colleague of mine who is deeply familiar with storms and flooding because he represents the southeast part of the State of Texas, although that is a different kind of flooding typically.

I want to personally offer my thanks and gratitude to my friend, Brian Babin. All of my colleagues have stepped up and called and offered support and help. In particular, I would say my friend, Mr. Babin, and his team have been there picking up phone calls from our office, helping out, doing whatever is needed, and offering guidance. They have experienced this kind of thing a little more often than we have, but we are deeply grateful.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Babin).

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his steadfast leadership and friendship.

Thank you, brother. I appreciate you.

Mr. Speaker, I am going to invite another friend of mine, no stranger to floods, from the southeast part of the State, my friend, Randy Weber.

As the gentleman is coming up to the microphone, I point out the extent to which this delegation, I know, is grateful for the leadership of our Governor, Governor Abbott; the head of the Texas Department of Emergency Management, Nim Kidd; the countless individuals and public servants affiliated with the Department of Public Safety and its head, Freeman Martin; the folks who are associated with the Sheriff's Department in Kerr County and throughout the region, the other areas affected by floods. I can't name everybody.

The city manager in Kerrville has done a fantastic job. We have just had so much fantastic leadership of people in the State of Texas stepping up and, as Brian said, so many volunteers from across the State. We continue to. We want to be very clear. All of this is current and present. The search continues. It continues today. They are engaged right now, and we are deeply appreciative for it.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Weber), my good friend.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend Randy Weber for his leadership and his kind words.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to Nathaniel Moran, who represents a good number of my family in east Texas and is just one of the great lights in our delegation, a good man and friend with whom I am very proud to serve.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from east Texas for his remarks.

Mr. Speaker, while I wait for my friend Mr. Gill to come up to the microphone, I do want to note--because there has been so much unnecessary politicization of all this and finger pointing. I will have more to say about that in a minute, but I just will be very clear that on Friday, July Fourth, I called the President to tell him what was happening in the district that I represent, that I am proud to represent, the flooding and it was terrible, because we were going to have a bill signing that day. The President could not have been more gracious. He could not have offered more in terms of his willingness to act quickly. I called that same day over to the Secretary's office, Secretary Noem, and she got back to me within 15 minutes offering us anything we needed. She had folks on the ground. She moved quickly to get the Army Corps of Engineers activated, moved quickly to get fixed- wing aircraft mobilized--this is all prior to a disaster declaration-- and then had the boots on the ground ready to go when the disaster declaration was ready.

There is a lot of stuff flying around, so let's be very clear. In a nonpolitical statement, but just the reality of what has happened, this administration was on the ground in the district that I represent helping people. I think that should be noted. I think that the record should be clear. The people that I represent are deeply grateful for it and are deeply proud to acknowledge it.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to Brandon Gill, who represents the district in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex area and just a little North of that. I deeply appreciate his service as a freshman member of the delegation and his strong words of encouragement throughout this.

Mr. Speaker, I deeply appreciate and thank Brandon for his kind words and remarks, his presence and that of the entire delegation.

There were a number of other of my colleagues who wanted to be here this evening, but they couldn't make it because they had other obligations. We don't always get to control the timing of the House floor. I thank those individuals for their support during this whole time.

I want to conclude with a few thoughts. I gave way earlier to make sure that all of my colleagues had a chance to speak.

I want to give some flavor to what we have experienced, particularly in Kerrville and in the Hill Country and that part of our great State, over the last 10 days or so.

Remember that, on July Fourth in Kerrville, there is an area in the center of town, a park where thousands of people go every year to listen to music, to Texas country music, typically. Robert Earl Keen is a local artist from Kerrville who plays every year, typically.

My children, my family, my wife and I, we have been going there every year for the better part of a decade. You will sit down there on the river and canoe and tube up and down the river while you are waiting for the concert. Then, the concert is at night with fireworks down there at the park.

It is often attended by the people who are coming down to camp on the Guadalupe, just a little west of Kerrville, in the area that has now become more known, for people across the country, in Hunt, Texas, where these kids' camps are located.

There are about 18 or 20 camps right there on the water and 40 camps or so in that general area for kids in the summer. Many of these camps have been there for decades, some as long as a century.

Camp Mystic is one of those that would celebrate its 100th anniversary next year. That is an all-girls camp, as my colleagues have noted. My colleague August Pfluger's daughters were there last week. It is an all-girls Christian camp.

Camp La Junta, right down the river, is also a Christ-centered camp. That is an all-boys camp. It had massive damage, massive flooding. Fortunately, they had no loss of life.

There are multiple camps. I can go through it. I am going to leave some out if I keep going up and down the river.

People ask why. People ask these questions of me and say: Why are these camps, all of these houses, all of these campgrounds so close to the river? Well, because the river is awesome. I mean, why are there houses on the beach? Because people like to be on the beach.

This is not something that should be that surprising, and it shouldn't be something that we shift away from. It is a great blessing that the Lord has given us this part of the country that you can go to and experience and live with these clear waters and the limestone that is cut through there after thousands of years. This whole area was an area where the Comanches were known to collect, in that part of the country, and also take part and enjoy those particularly beautiful waters and springs.

It draws people from all over the country, and that is why these camps are there.

I noted earlier on the floor, when we had the moment of silence, the extent to which faith is the central part of everything we are experiencing. It is the reason these camps, for the most part, exist. It is the reason for the spirit that we have seen coming out of Kerrville, as so many people mourn and so many people across the country are taken by the stories of these little girls.

Fredericksburg is also an awesome town, just down the river from Luckenbach, from the famous country song.

The fact is, Mr. Speaker, as I mentioned, when you come into Kerrville and are coming in on Highway 16, coming down from Fredericksburg, you come in on 16 into Kerrville. Up on the hill as you enter, Mr. Speaker, there is a giant cross, and there is a garden there. It is filled with a bunch of the important symbols of our Christian faith, not just the cross, but other things. It was all done by an artist named Max Greiner, and he has done a fantastic job laying it out. It gets hundreds of thousands of visitors every year.

This cross sits up on the hill over Kerrville. I noticed, and I said this in an interview this weekend, that there were numerous crosses just showing up throughout the town. There was an interview one of the reporters was doing on the river, and there were three crosses sitting on the bank of the river.

I was driving down the highway, Highway 39, which goes from Kerrville out west through Ingram and then Hunt and out by where these camps are. I went out to Camp La Junta after the President came in. It was my, I think, third or fourth journey over the last 10 days.

I noticed the changes from the days I first went over there, when the floods had just occurred, all the damage, debris, and cars, and just absolute devastation that destroyed houses, the roofs. The flood lines were 30 feet up in these tall cypress trees. You couldn't even believe it.

There were trees stuck in the tops of trees. There was metal roofing that was up in the tops of these trees. There was a dumpster wrapped around a tree.

When I was down in Kerrville, the stage from the Fourth of July setup was wrapped around trees probably 500 yards down from where the stage had been set. This is a massive, heavy stage on a truck bed. That was where the President got his briefing. Mr. Speaker, if you saw the pictures, that is where the President was located. That was a stage, that rubble that was there.

There was a massive dumpster wrapped around trees, a heavy metal dumpster, just shredded like aluminum foil. That was the force of this water.

Somebody told me that it was 1.6 million gallons of water per second rushing through this corridor. That is what we were dealing with.

Going back to the cross, Samaritan's Purse showed up on the ground immediately. It is a great organization headed by Franklin Graham out of North Carolina. They show up to deal with disasters all across the country and all around the world. Here they are in my own backyard, not something I had necessarily anticipated.

This organization is there cleaning out mud from the Lowe family's house. They are a fantastic family, and I had known them. We went and visited. I can't say that I participated in the clean-out. I intend to do that when we get out of this session in August.

We were going around and looking at the damage. They were explaining and walking through it for the average viewer out there asking how this could happen. They looked down and saw the flooding waters, but they were way down. They woke up at 1 in the morning to some alerts. They kept listening and watching the water come up. Then, they realized they had to move.

By the time they realized they were going to move, it moved from 15 feet below the level up to the level of their house in a matter of minutes. It just came rushing in. They were able to get out just before and get up to high ground.

Another family friend of mine whose kids were there--there were about 30 of them. There were several families, parents, and kids from my kids' school. They were all on a piece of property with three houses. Same thing--they woke up at 3-something in the morning. The river was way down a good 15 or 20 feet below the house. They were watching the water rush and go: Well, maybe we ought to think about moving.

They started moving people out of the three houses on the piece of property, these rental properties. They were sitting there and cleaned out the first house, got the kids ready. By the time they did that over 15 or 20 minutes, thinking they had hours, the water was already up to the house.

They moved to the second house, and the water was up to their knees. The third house, the water was up to their waist. They had to get up and ride the storm out for 3 hours on top of another house, 30 people, including kids.

They were fortunate to survive, and they are okay. All seven of their cars are down the river. The remaining of their houses are down the river.

When I went to the Lowe's house, they were explaining it to me. They are great people of faith. Next to their house was a foundation, all that was left of a home. There were several of those in a row.

There was one man sitting out in a chair by that foundation. That man, I was told, was the father of a 20-year-old boy who he had lost. He was trying to find him, trying to find his body.

They had found three girls who had been there in their vacation home. The dad wasn't there. He was back home in Houston.

I walked over. I saw the man and offered him my condolences and listened to his story. This was maybe 4 days after it happened. He walked me through how, at 4 in the morning, the son had called him and explained that it was a bad spot. The water had already engulfed the house. It had come up so quickly. He was walking through it and trying to figure out how to get out. The son was trying to get the three girls out of the house.

He is talking to his dad and then hands the phone off to one of the girls. The son is trying to get the other girls out of the house and get through the water. About that time, a very large cypress tree-- huge; I saw the remnants of it still there--came through, hit them and the house, and took it out.

The one girl who was left on the phone saw it and basically said to the young man's dad: ``Tell my parents I love them.'' That was the last thing she said and the last thing he heard.

There are dozens of these stories. People act like something should have been done differently. Maybe it should have. Maybe there can be better systems. We will go through all that, and we will figure it out. That is what we do as people. We don't point fingers.

I will close with this, going back to the cross, going back to the spirit of the people of Kerrville and of the Hill Country who showed up, the first responders who have shown up, the people of the State, the Governor, the Texas Department of Emergency Management, all the prayer warriors, all the churches, and the now $30 million to $40 million of contributions that have poured in and millions more, all the people showing up, bringing food--every single food vendor called my phone. Thousands of people said: What can I do to help? Morgan Luttrell used his training, along with his brother and others, to go into the water to try to find people.

Important are the stories of these camp directors and camp counselors who did everything they could to save lives. Dick Eastland lost his life trying to save those little girls.

I spent time with his daughter, Mary Liz, over the last week. I met Mary Liz in a church, Trinity Baptist Church, in Kerrville on Saturday night, the day after July Fourth, on July 5. I didn't know Mary Liz. Mary Liz asked me for my number. I gave it to her. We started talking, and I realized that she was Dick's daughter-in-law.

Mary Liz was there in the church with all of the families who still hadn't found their little girls. Mary Liz wasn't running away from it, as the director of the camp, or one of the remaining directors of the camp after Dick had passed away. Mary Liz was there.

Mary Liz has been constantly on the phone with all of these families, trying to find everything they can. We have now found every one of those little girls except for one, and they are not going to rest until they find her. They are not going to rest until they find the other 100 who are still missing.

This is the message that comes out of this: The power of community, the power of faith, the power of the cross that brings people together, the enduring legacy of the little girls singing the hymns as they left Camp Mystic looking at the damage.

The people who will now know the power of Christ because of these little girls' stories, the stories of the charm bracelets, the stories of the James Avery jewelry store, the stories of a century-long tradition where children come together to learn the power of the gospel, to spread the gospel, and to learn that there is more to life than these things. There is more to life than the temporary things of life as opposed to friendship and as opposed to being one with what God gave us. That is what these camps are about.

My staff, I learned, worked at Camp Mystic. The young man who is sitting down here next to me right now worked as a cook in the back of Camp Mystic 4 years ago. He told me that Dick Eastland was like a grandfather figure to him, that Dick Eastland helped teach him how to fish, fly fish, and the basics of life.

That is what every person affiliated with these camps has told me, that is what Dick Eastland and all these other camp directors, like Jane Ragsdale, did. I said earlier that Jane gave her life to save several little girls before she lost hers. I ran into her pastor just randomly on the side of the river. He walked me through her story. It is extraordinary. You heard some of my colleagues talking about it.

The fact of the matter is that is what is touching everybody about this because this spirit is unique, and it transcends, and it will be the enduring story of all of this.

These camps are going to be rebuilt. They are going to reopen. I said on the radio I would send my kids there next summer because that is what we should do. These camps, these things, these people, this community are more important than fear. Because those of us who have faith in the Lord Almighty and have faith in the Lord's son Jesus Christ, we don't fear earthly loss because the thing that transcends that is our faith in our Lord and Savior and the need to spread that message, and for people to know that.

I am so deeply and profoundly grateful for all of the outpouring of support from this Chamber, from my Texas colleagues joining me here on the floor. I am deeply appreciative for all the people who have been risking their lives to help others, to save others, to find these bodies, to find closure for the families.

We are going to continue to do that. We are going to continue to heal. It is just the beginning.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 6 o'clock and 33 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Wednesday, July 16, 2025, at 10 a.m. for morning-hour debate.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my friend from Texas, and I wish him safe travels back home to our great State.

I yield to the gentleman from Texas.

I appreciate those kind remarks from the gentleman. I consider the gentleman from Texas a friend, and I am sincere in wishing him safe travels and well wishes heading back home. We throw a lot of barbs around this Chamber, for good reason, we are here. Everybody always says how crazy it is and how divided we are, and I always remind people that when was the last time you had a Secretary of the Treasury and Vice President dueling in the street?

That has happened in our past, not now, that was 200-and-change years ago. We have differences of opinion, and that is the reason this body exists. We represent our constituents, and we are supposed to express on their behalf our views consistent with the Constitution in our republican form of government.

I am here today to do that.

Mr. Speaker, I am here to talk about what has been known now as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act which is, in simple speak, a reconciliation package which is supposed to be designed to reconcile current policies, tax and spending, to achieve a reduction in deficits, or make sure that we are not adding to the deficit.

Mr. Speaker, here we are.

The House of Representatives worked together and passed a bill. We passed a budget, we then passed a new budget, and then we passed a bill. We sent it to the Senate.

The House bill was not perfect by any stretch of the imagination from my perspective. The House bill didn't do enough on many things that I think are important. However, the House bill had core components of tax-cut extensions for hardworking Americans. The House bill had core components to give resources to the President, the administration, Tom Homan, Stephen Miller, and Secretary Noem to secure the border, and, importantly, to remove people through ICE and enforcement.

The House bill had core components to make sure our defense can modernize. The House bill had core components--and this is where it gets important--to terminate the green new scam subsidies, but not all of them. That is why I said the bill wasn't perfect.

I think we should repeal them all and save over $1 trillion. We should stop subsidizing China. We should stop subsidizing big corporations. We should stop subsidizing unreliable energy, and stop interfering with the market. We only terminated about 60 percent of the green new scam. I think we should have done better.

The House had core components in it to reform Medicaid. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle were saying we are going to be taking Medicaid away from people. Medicaid goes up between 20 and 30 percent under our budget over the next 10 years.

Medicaid under our bill would be focused primarily on the vulnerable population more than the able-bodied. I think the bill should have gone farther. I think we should reform more of the money laundering scam that the FMAP seven times multiple giving more money to the able-bodied than the vulnerable. I think we should stop the scam of blue States taking more money from red States and nonexpansion States and giving it to hospitals and insurance companies. I think we should have ended that and done more.

We took a giant step forward to have work requirements to ensure that Medicaid could actually be solvent. It has gone up another $1 trillion just under the Biden administration in terms of overall baseline costs.

That is all in the weeds. People watching this at home don't know what is going on. They are going about their lives. All they know is that there a big bill, there is some tax stuff in it, there is some spending stuff in it, and there is some border stuff in it. That is about all they know.

Mr. Speaker, so why am I here?

It is because the House passed that bill--imperfect but I will call it passable by definition. We sent it to the Senate. The Senate is making the bill worse as we speak. The Senate is making decisions, both policy decisions and what is called going through a process over there to see if it is language that is supposed to be in a budget-related reconciliation package. We call it the Byrd process. They are pulling pieces out of it. The bill is getting worse.

Let me see if I can put it in basic terms.

This chart is not going to mean much to most people back home. Mr. Speaker, you don't even need to look at all the bars. It gets kind of complex. I just want to be real simple. This orange line on this chart--people in the gallery can't see it, but imagine an orange line on an X-Y graph.

That orange line says that under the House bill on a dynamic basis-- what does that mean?

It means, that accounting for economic growth, accounting for the tax policies, and accounting for what we believe will happen, we would have about an additional $72 billion of deficit spending over 10 years. Sadly, $72 billion is kind of a rounding error when we are talking about 10 years.

In other words, it is close to breakeven. We would cut taxes, we would reduce spending, and we would get economic growth. We believe we would add nothing more to the deficit.

Here is the problem. Adding nothing more to the deficit means we still have deficits. We still have $1.8 trillion to $2 trillion a year in deficits.

I voted for a bill that will perpetuate $1.8 trillion deficits, and I hated doing it. I did it because in this process, in this political environment, to get the reforms that we were getting to Medicaid, to get the reforms that we were getting to terminate 60 percent of the green new scam subsidies undermining our grid, and to get the tax cut extensions for hardworking Americans, to me it was worth doing that when I thought credibly and believably we would not be adding to the deficit and get those important reforms.

Here we are. The Senate, in its infinite wisdom over in the house of lords, they are embarking on focusing on what we would have anticipated they would focus on, which is just the tax-cut side, for the most part. They are backing away from the spending cuts, the spending restraints. They are backing away from the reforms that we think makes the math work, and therein lies the problem.

Mr. Speaker, do you want to know why we are $37 trillion in debt as a nation?

It is because too often my Republican colleagues have never met a tax cut they didn't want to advance while then campaigning on balancing the budget and cutting spending that they never want to vote for.

We can't do that.

We have to actually lead. In a Republican form of government there are 435 of us representing 300 and, what, 30-something million Americans. I represent about three-quarters of a million people. In a Republican form of government I am supposed to take the hard votes. I am supposed to go back to my constituents and say: Well, we are doing this and this and this. We think it is good. I know you wanted this, but we can't have that because we are $37 trillion in debt.

I go back to this chart. There is a big yellow bar over here with flames on top. It shows almost a trillion dollars of additional deficit that the Senate bill would add if the policies they are currently debating in the Senate are adhered to. That means they got rid of a lot of our savings, and they made certain tax cuts more permanent. They extended them. I support making those tax cuts permanent and extending them but not without the spending reductions necessary to get us back to deficit neutrality or deficit savings.

Why does this matter? It matters because Republicans will go around all the time and say: Don't worry. All tax cuts pay for themselves.

Let me be very clear. Not all tax cuts pay for themselves. They just don't.

I grew up a child of the eighties. I grew up on studying supply-side economics. I believe in leaving money in the hands of the American people to produce wealth. I believe that does create more revenue the Treasury can bring in with lower rates on a bigger pie. I think that is important.

You still have to do basic math. If you reduce the rate, which I want to do to be perfectly clear, for the worker, for the family, for the business, you are going to get a revenue reduction to the Treasury. Your hope is the economic growth will offset part of that.

When we do the math and we talk to every outside group and we listen to the CBO--the Congressional Budget Office gets a lot wrong--but every outside group who looks at this tells us that our assumptions that we baked in of $2.5 trillion of economic growth is a kind of reasonable sweet spot, meaning we are assuming the growth. We are already baking in that you are going to get more revenue, but when you keep extending these tax cuts and you don't do enough spending cuts and you weaken the spending cuts that we put in place, you end up with this chart. You end up with a trillion dollars of additional deficit on top of the roughly $18 trillion we are not even touching.

My question for my colleagues is: Was even the House bill good enough? Not really; it really wasn't. I held my nose and voted for it. I want to help the President. I want to move the agenda forward. I want tax cuts. I want the green new scam subsidies terminated. I want Medicaid reform. However, we were leaving in place adding another $18 trillion to $20 trillion of deficit spending, if we are lucky for it to be that low, over the next 10 years.

If the Senate is going to send the bill back to us that is going to add a trillion dollars more and not reform Medicaid properly and not terminate the green new scam that the President campaigned on terminating, then there is no way I can vote for that bill when it comes back. That needs to be said, and it needs to be clear.

The fact of the matter is our country is hanging on by a very thin fiscal thread. The bond markets are recognizing this. There was a headline in the Financial Times today that foreign markets are starting to pull out of Federal treasuries. Interest rates are doing what they are doing. You can change the Fed chairman all you want, but if you don't fix the fiscal mess we are in, the outer part of that curve, which is what sets our mortgage rates, our long-term borrowing rates, that is still going to be a mess, and the American people aren't going to be able to afford homes.

The average age of the American homeowner today is as high as it has ever been. It is up about 10 years. Now you are in your upper thirties before you are buying a home instead of your upper twenties, which it was not long ago.

We are ripping the American Dream out of the hands of our kids and grandkids because of people in this Chamber and people in the other Chamber who refuse to do the hard work of governing responsibly. I should say representing; we don't govern, but do our job.

I am blessed to be alive. I am a cancer survivor. I have talked about that before. I was blessed to have treatment at MD Anderson, and that was 14 years ago. I think it was 14 years ago this next month.

Why do I bring that up? I bring that up because I get cancer groups that come into my office all the time. Mr. Speaker, you get cancer groups, you get ALS groups, you get people who have a heart to solve a problem, and they want money. They want funding. I have to say no. If they don't come in and say: Well, we know that we are $37 trillion in debt, so we are proposing this plan, and we are proposing cuts over here in order to achieve what we want, which is $100 million for some research--they usually don't do that. They just come in and say: We need $100 million for research or $500 million for research or $1 billion for some program, and I have to say no. I always say no.

I tell my farmers who come in and are just dying for relief because we have messed up their livelihoods so much, Congress has, with a failed system. Crop insurance is important. All the things we do are important, but we include a bloated food stamp program, which is exploding off the charts in the farm bill every 5 years, and they expect me to vote to continue a food stamp program, which is often going to the able-bodied, often corrupted, often feeding our children and people in this

country sugary, terrible foods that are making our healthcare system more expensive, and they want me to keep paying for that. I have to tell my farmers: Sorry, guys, I am not voting for the farm bill.

I have got to say there are only a handful of us in this Chamber who are willing to say no. ``No'' is the most powerful and important word in the English language when it is used the right way, which I would say in this body should be used most of the time.

Ronald Reagan famously said, I think it was on Johnny Carson's ``The Tonight Show'' interview, and they were talking and Reagan said--and Reagan hated taxes--Reagan said: That every new program that a Member of Congress brings to the floor should have a tax increase attached to it. He is correct. He was correct.

Why? He was correct because if you bring a billion-dollar program to the floor, we vote for it because the headline will say: Chip Roy opposes puppies or Chip Roy opposes cancer research or Chip Roy opposes something for veterans or for the elderly. Who can vote against that?

If the bill was billion-dollar program and needed a tax increase on every American to pay for it, well, now that vote is a little different. We don't do that. We never do that.

Now what is going to happen? Well, there is going to be a lot of posturing over the next week.

Here is something that everybody should get a bit of a chuckle out of. We had to pass the budget right before Easter. We had to pass the bill right before Memorial Day. Now, we are supposed to pass the final bill, get it through the Senate by July 4.

We had to pass the government funding bill right before Christmas. The speaker knows. Mr. Speaker, why do you think that is? Do you think that is just because everybody says, well, wouldn't it be nice to do that right at those great holidays? No. It is something called jet fumes.

Every Member of Congress has a trip, personal, business, government, whatever. They all are going to take a trip, so they always want to have these bills right before that so that everybody comes in and says: ``Yes, I will vote for it. Let's get out of here.'' Boom, they get out of town.

Mr. Speaker, here we are. Over the next week, there is going to be an enormous amount of pressure brought to bear from the White House and our leadership on both sides to get in line and say: ``We have to pass it. If we don't pass it, the taxes are going to go up. If we don't pass it, we are not going to get the border funding. If we don't pass it, we won't have a debt ceiling increase, and the bond markets are going to freak out.''

We are not going to default on our debt.

We are not going to let taxes go up in the end before this year is over. They don't go up until December. We are going to do what we need to do on the border.

I would like to do it in this bill, but I am not going to do it in this bill if this bill is adding to the debt, not doing what it needs to do on the green new scam, not doing what it needs to do on Medicaid, and not doing what it needs to do on countless other issues.

I am not going to do it if it is going to be a big giveaway to blue State tax jurisdictions in State and local taxes. My friends in this Conference who represent big tax States like New York and California want a bigger deduction for their State taxes. Why the hell should I subsidize their stupid decisions in their States for their expensive taxes? Why should my constituents have to do that?

Why should we continue to allow food stamps to go to the able-bodied? Why should we continue to have Medicaid go to the able-bodied and not have work requirements or not deal with the money laundering scam?

Why shouldn't we, by the way, have health savings accounts? The Senate bill took our health savings accounts out of the House bill.

Why should we continue to have taxpayer-funded sex-change operations? The Senate bill puts that back in.

Why should we not tax these big university endowments and these universities that are engaging in political activism and taking massive Federal money and Federal student loan support? Why shouldn't we tax them on it? The Senate reduces our tax on university endowments to raise revenue by 20 percent.

Why shouldn't we stop China from getting taxpayer dollars through the green new scam subsidies? Our bill prevented China from getting rich off of our tax dollars. The Senate bill takes it out. Why?

Why shouldn't we tax the remittances of illegal aliens who are sending money back to their home countries? Our bill did that. The Senate bill takes it out.

We are at a critical juncture in our history as a country, and the question here is: Will Republicans step up and put forward transformational reforms when we have the majority in the House, the majority in the Senate, and the White House?

Will we deliver on the President's agenda responsibly? Will we actually take this moment to change the trajectory of debt that is killing our country for our kids and grandkids, or will we continue the same game of tax cuts for everyone but spending and more spending for everyone?

We can't keep doing the same thing. We can't.

I know the American people are frustrated. I know they expect us to deliver, and we must deliver. Failure is not an option, but we shouldn't deliver for the sake of it. We shouldn't pass a bill just to check a box.

We shouldn't pass a bill that increases the deficit; doesn't terminate the green new scam; doesn't reform Medicaid; doesn't prevent tax subsidies for high State tax jurisdictions; doesn't prevent China from continuing to get subsidies for solar panels with taxpayer dollars; doesn't curb the waste, fraud, and abuse in food stamps; doesn't tax remittances for illegals who are sending money back home; doesn't include health savings account expansions for the American people; and, frankly, even in the House bill, doesn't do enough to reduce deficits.

The Senate bill was supposed to make the bill better, not worse. I voted for the House bill to move it along in the process for incremental gains and expected the Senate to step up to the plate. Right now, they are striking out.

If the Senate sends a bill over that makes this bill worse, adds to the deficit, and adds all the things I just talked about, I will vote ``no.''

No, Mr. President, it is not grandstanding. It is not grandstanding to say that I think we ought to be fiscally responsible. It is not grandstanding to say that we should honor the campaign commitment to terminate the green new scam in full. It is not grandstanding to say that we should reform Medicaid so that the able-bodied are not being subsidized by the vulnerable. It is not grandstanding. It is not grandstanding.

Mr. Speaker, I am going to make one final comment, and then I will save everybody from listening to my destroyed voice.

Mr. Speaker, 1 year ago today, Rhonda Massie, wife of my colleague and good friend Thomas Massie, passed away suddenly.

Thomas is a dear friend. Thomas happens to be taking some heat politically because Thomas believes, as I do, that we are not doing enough on spending and on the legislation we are talking about, but that is politics. Thomas is thick-skinned. He will take the arrows. He will keep representing his constituents.

I believe he will get reelected, and I will support him in that endeavor because he is a good man and a good friend.

I just want everyone to know that my friend is hurting today because he lost his wife 1 year ago suddenly. My prayers are with Thomas. My prayers are with his family. I know Rhonda is in Heaven looking down on Thomas, probably laughing at him a little.

I know my colleagues all wish Thomas well. He is a dear friend, and we will be thinking and praying about him today even as we go about doing our jobs.

I am proud to call Thomas a friend. I am proud to stand alongside Thomas, and I will stand alongside Thomas as a man of principle who is trying to do the right thing. I don't always agree, but I agree most of the time.

God bless him, and God bless the memory of Rhonda and Thomas' entire family.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, wrong-patient, wrong-site, and wrong-procedure surgeries are rare, but can be life-altering for patients. Members of the Association of PeriOperative Registered Nurses (AORN) are committed to safe surgery. Since 2004, AORN and the Joint Commission have recognized National Time Out Day to bring greater awareness to the safe surgery practice of taking a ``time out'' before operative and other invasive procedures to prevent wrong-site, wrong-patient, wrong- procedure surgery.

The National Time Out Day initiative supports the Joint Commission's Universal Protocol and builds greater awareness among surgical and procedural team members about the critical steps that keep patients safe. This initiative's goal is to prevent errors by ensuring that all members of the surgical team pause before invasive procedures, so they can communicate as a group and confirm key information about the patient and the procedure.

I commend perioperative and procedural teams in hospitals across Texas' 21st Congressional District for their hard work and dedication every day to ensure safe environments for procedural and surgical patients. I also applaud their efforts to reduce unnecessary healthcare costs.

Today, I recognize these efforts on behalf of my constituents, celebrating June 11, 2025, as National Time Out Day in District 21 and across Texas.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairwoman, my friend from North Carolina, for yielding me time.

Mr. Speaker, I support this rule, and I rise in support of the rule.

For the American people watching back home, we are here because, on June 3, the House of Representatives received a rescissions request from the White House to eliminate $9 billion in unobligated spending. Let's just say there is much more to go. This is step one.

Under the Impoundment Control Act, once a request is received, Congress has

45 days to act. The House is now acting. These rescissions are, in part, due to what DOGE was able to uncover and bring forward in terms of wasteful government spending.

Just look at what we have been funding with taxpayer dollars: $6 million for net-zero cities in Mexico; $5.1 million for programs to strengthen the resilience of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer--good grief--global movements; $1.5 million to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion in Serbia's workplaces; $2 million for Moroccan pottery classes; $2 million for sex changes and LGBT activism in Guatemala; $33,000 for being LGBTI--I can't even keep up with this stuff; $6 million to fund tourism in Egypt; $32,000 for transgender comic books in Peru; and $1 million to help disabled people in Tajikistan become climate leaders.

Is that what Democrats think their taxpayer dollars should go toward? I can promise the minority that the people I represent think that this is absolute garbage.

How on Earth can my Democratic friends possibly defend that? My friends on the other side of the aisle would like you to believe, seriously, that if you don't use your taxpayer dollars to fund this absurd list of projects and thousands of others that I didn't even list, somehow people will die and our global standing in the world will crumble.

Let's just reject this now. The White House is right to send up this rescissions package. This should be just step one. There should be numerous other steps.

We should rescind billions upon billions of dollars of wasteful spending that is destroying our country through inflation and increasing the size and scope of government, undermining the safety and security of the American people.

How about the $160 million we can save by not giving more money to UNRWA, the organization whose own employees participated in Hamas' slaughter of Israeli citizens on October 7, which we now know to be verifiably and completely true?

Why would we continue to shovel money to an organization that is funding terrorism against our allies and against our American citizens? Yet, that is precisely what my colleagues on the other side of the aisle would wish us to continue to do.

Mr. Speaker, let's address the One Big Beautiful Bill Act issue. My friends on the other side of the aisle are raising the prospect of $3 trillion of additional deficits. I have been very open in my belief that this bill should be better, that we should cut more spending and be more mindful of reducing the size of government to get deficits down much further than we are seeing in this bill.

To be very clear--and we had this debate in the Committee on Rules-- what my friends on the other side of the aisle are forgetting and not putting forward here in this debate, when they say $3 trillion of additional deficits, is what you believe the growth rate will be if you adopt policies that will actually increase economic growth. That is putting more money into the pockets of the American people and deregulating so that businesses can create wealth.

We assumed 2.6 percent economic growth. That is higher than the CBO's expectation of 1.8 but lower than the historic growth of 3.2 percent.

We hit the sweet spot. We believe that if you get that growth, you will have deficit neutrality on this bill so that you will end up creating wealth, creating jobs, putting more money into people's pockets, and trying to deliver on the spending cuts, reversal and termination of the green new scam, and the application of Medicaid work requirements to make sure that people aren't getting benefits when they should be working.

Mr. Speaker, I believe it is a good bill.

Mr. Speaker, I believe it is a good bill, and I will say it again: I think the bill can get better. I think the Senate should improve it. I think that we should find more savings, but to say to the American people that it is creating deficits, ignoring economic growth, is just simply not true.

Madam Speaker, I recognize that today is an important day in the history of our country. As we all know, 81 years ago, on June 6, 1944, we had over 150,000 Allied troops who attacked the beaches at Normandy, knowing full well what they were walking into.

You had 150,000 Allied forces, tens of thousands of Americans who stormed the beaches, jumped out of boats into stormy waters, walked into a virtual wall of bullets, went through the fire, went to the cliffs, got shot at on the cliffs, scaled the cliffs, to then have to fight for every yard for the privilege of then getting all the way to Bastogne to sit in foxholes in the freezing cold on Christmas of 1944 while being bombarded by Germans as they were mounting their last offensive.

What would cause young men from all over this country to do that? Why would they do that, knowing a huge number of them would not make it through the day? They knew that, but they did it anyway. They knew that when they were jumping out of planes in the middle of the night, many of them wouldn't survive.

I saw yesterday on social media photos of dozens of young men who didn't make it through that day, photos from them. They lead up to that morning and the day before in training. What would cause these young men to do that?

The reason is that they knew that this country was worth fighting for, not simply because of the existence of the country but because of what this country represents in terms of opportunity to live free and prosper according to your own talents and to be able to live according to your own conscience under our Constitution and under the principles that were advanced in the Declaration and that are central to Western civilization.

That is what those young men did. We had 400,000-plus Americans who lost their lives to defend this country in World War II. Precious few who survived that conflict are still alive.

Madam Speaker, if you go down to the memorial here in Washington, the World War II Memorial, there are 4,000-plus stars that are across the monument, each representing 100 young men who did what I just described or who did something similar in Iwo Jima or did something similar in the Doolittle Raid.

Again, what would cause them to do it? It is to live free. That is what it is about.

I have a letter from a dear friend of mine named Victoria Coates, who served in the first Trump administration, from her grandfather Howard. I want to read the letter really quickly.

``Jane darling, yep, honey, it is true. Your boyfriend is in it now. I can't tell you how long I have been here or where I am. That will have to come later when I get home. It is the most serious thing I have been in during all of my life.

``I am well, though, darling, and still all in one piece. As you said in the last letter I got from you, the one you wrote on invasion day, I am well-trained and will take care of myself.

``Of course, the men come first, and our mission, but I am not taking any chances personally, except those in the line of duty. Most all of our officers and men are reacting fine to these new conditions. I have my own platoon and my own headquarters out in the field.

``Fact is, I am sitting in my CP now writing this letter. I have Charlie Mugford here as my executive officer, and he is very capable in the field. My staff sergeant is a boy by name of Varebok from Pittsburgh. He is Polish and a darn good man. The Germans killed his grandparents in their invasion into Poland, so you can well imagine his reaction to all of this.

``The morale of the men is good, and that makes the job easier. Golly, I like my little field setup. Have good radio equipment, also a nice switchboard. . . . I have a Jeep and weapons carrier for my CP, plus my CP personnel. . . . We get a special dehydrated ration that requires only the adding of a little water. . . . For supper last night, we had, as an example, baked beans, sausage, cold-packed tomatoes, rice pudding, biscuits, jam and butter, coffee.

``I haven't received the picture yet but am very anxiously awaiting it. Please write regularly. I need it. We haven't received any mail since coming to France but hope to get some soon. That helps plenty.

``Well, darling, you are ever in my thoughts over here and are my big driving force. I, like the thousands of other Americans, am doing my damn best to get this war over with and get home safely to my family.''

What did they fight for? I can tell you what they didn't fight for. They didn't fight for a Congress to come here and continue $36 trillion of debt and mortgage their children, their grandchildren, and their great-grandchildren's futures.

They didn't come here for this Congress to run away from the fight of policy. They didn't risk everything and walk into a wall of bullets so that people in this Chamber can be afraid of tweets or constituents that come in and talk about, oh, but you are cutting some program. They expected us to actually defend this country in this Chamber.

A trillion dollars of interest every year--we are spending more on interest than on the entirety of our national defense.

I have to be honest with you, I don't know whether the big, beautiful bill is beautiful enough to support. I have to be honest.

I voted for it off of the floor to send it to the Senate. There were a lot of important provisions in it, and I need to level set some of those provisions right now because it is not appropriate for us to run away from the fight now that these young men 80 years ago ran into the fight to preserve.

This country will not survive if we mortgage it away, and that is what we are doing. President Reagan was correct when he said that every Member of Congress when they come to this floor and they offer a new bill for a new program should all bring a tax increase to go alongside of it.

Because everybody in this Chamber, particularly on this side of the aisle, are all too fine offering tax cuts because it is like selling dessert, but refuse to put forward the spending cuts so that people have to eat the broccoli. That is why we are $36 trillion in debt and growing. That is why we have a trillion dollars of interest.

By the way, as interest rates go up, the price of that debt goes up. We are going to be at $1.5 trillion, $2 trillion of interest payments because we can't do our job correctly.

Now, let's go through the big, beautiful bill. The bill is what I would call the good, the bad, and the ugly because that is the truth.

I am not going to get into personalities and squabbles and back and forth. The President is right that we need to move a bill through here with tax cuts and spending restraint so that he can get the agenda done that he campaigned on. He is 100 percent right, and we should do that. Elon is right that this bill doesn't cut enough. That is the truth.

Two things can be true at the same time. The barrier to actually achieving the greatness of moving the big, beautiful bill through and that would achieve the President's agenda and achieving what Elon is rightly saying, which is that we should cut more, the barrier is right here in this Chamber. It is right over there in the Senate.

We have people unwilling to face their constituents and tell them the truth. Well, I am going to try to sit here on the floor and tell the truth.

I had to hold my nose to vote for this bill 2 weeks ago off the House floor to the Senate. Why? It does not cut enough, and it is not even close to cutting enough.

My colleagues say: Oh, but Chip, it is the biggest spending decrease in history. Let's be very clear: It is a reduction in future increases of about $1.6 trillion.

Yes. That is the biggest amount ever. But guess what? We have sizably more debt and sizably more spending than ever, so, of course, it should be, but it should be more.

Madam Speaker, $1.6 trillion in cuts on future reductions is really about

$160 billion a year over 10 years. That is the truth. The truth is that our whole budget has grown from about $3.6 trillion a decade ago to $7.2 trillion now. It has doubled.

Everybody wants to applaud themselves for $160 billion of reductions in increases. I am sorry. I don't think that is good enough. The fact is, our budget, the budget we passed to get the big, beautiful bill through says that we should be at $6.5 trillion for 2026, but after this bill, if it is passed this way out of the Senate, we would be at $7.2 trillion.

That is a lot of numbers. You want me to tell you back home--the fact of the matter is, unless we have record economic growth for an entire decade, deficits will go up. That is the truth.

This bill front-loads all of the cost for the first 4 years, 2026, 2027, 2028, 2029 deficits are up. That is, by the way, on a dynamic basis. You are going to hear a lot of people taking shots at the CBO, and they should.

The CBO is biased. The CBO is left leaning, and the CBO doesn't always get it right. But guess what? No economist ever gets it right. The fact is, we took care of that, at least in part, in the Budget Committee by assuming growth. We assumed economic growth of 2.6 percent, higher than the last two decades averaged, lower than the historic average.

Why does that matter? Because we have already accounted for what you call dynamic scoring, meaning the impact of the tax cuts on revenue.

What does that mean in simple terms? It means that if you look at our analysis, even assuming economic growth and more revenue from that growth, we will still have $400 billion of deficits added to the existing $2 trillion deficit in 2026 because of the bill.

Those deficits will go up even more and will be another $400 billion or so in 2027 and 2028, we add to the deficits, 2029 we add to the deficits.

Finally in 2030, the deficits go down. If you look across the entirety of the 10 years under this bill, you are basically--it is somewhere around breakeven on the impact on deficits.

Now, again, everybody understand what I am saying. The deficits of roughly around $1.8 trillion to $2 trillion a year will continue. This bill will adjust taxes and adjust spending, will increase deficits for 3 or 4 or 5 years, and then cut deficits in the outer 5 years if you believe that will ever happen. Only in this town do you assume that the good things will happen in 5 years and accept the bad things in the first years, but that is what we are doing.

Now to be clear and to be fair, this does not account for tariff revenue, which is up. Of course, tariff revenue has to be factored into the economic impact of the tariffs. You have got to stir all that in the pot and decide what you think is going to happen. If you ask me to weigh all of this, I will tell you that on the simple question of whether this bill will add to or decrease deficits, I think it will add to the deficits.

Because for the first 5 years, even dynamically scored, they add to the deficits. Even if you assume the current rate of about--I don't know--$250 billion of tariff revenue, which you can't assume because they change, you are still going to be adding to the deficits even factoring in for the economic impact of growth.

Okay. That is all a lot of nerdy speak. Everyone sent us here to save the country. You can't save the country if you are adding to the deficits. You can't save the country if interest rates aren't going to be able to go down because you are being fiscally responsible and the bond markets respond.

That is the simple truth, but here we are. Why are we here? Why, despite what I just said, did I hold my nose and vote for the bill?

Well, A, as part of the process and I am hopeful the Senate might work its will to make the bill better. Probably not a good bet. The Senate rarely makes things better.

Okay. B, we did get some serious reforms to Medicaid. I am proud of those reforms, but I do have to be honest with you, they are kind of like breathing.

When I tell you the reforms, you are going to be, like, wait. We don't do that already. We are simply going to reverse a lot of the damage of the Biden administration and reverse a lot of the damage of the expansion of ObamaCare by simply saying this: You shouldn't be on Medicaid if you are able-bodied and can work and you are not working.

Now, Democrats will say: Oh, you are slashing Medicaid. No, we are not. They are not telling you the truth about that. What we are doing is simply saying you should have to work. It is the same thing for food stamps. My Republican colleagues will say: Oh, my gosh, these are the biggest savings in history. This is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Every American I talk to says: Why weren't you doing that already? It is like the basic business of commerce. Why would you do that? Why would you provide benefits to people who are able to work and don't? It is insane.

We are going to say: Oh, my gosh, we saved hundreds of billions of dollars on Medicaid reform by tightening and making sure we are enforcing eligibility and that only the vulnerable get it instead of the able-bodied.

But we are not doing anything to stop the money laundering scam. We are not doing anything to stop the fact that expansion States under ObamaCare get seven times more money for the able-bodied than the vulnerable. We are going to do nothing about that.

We are going to do nothing about the provider taxes that are part of that scam, that have blue States getting money to give money to illegals and to people at Planned Parenthood and other things because they launder the money through Washington to get a multiple to give it to hospitals and insurance companies and then give them a tax break on the back end.

It is well documented, well reported, and this body is doing not a damn thing about it because they are too afraid. They are too afraid to take on the insurance lobby. They are too afraid to take on the hospital lobby. They are too afraid to be honest with the American people.

Yet, I voted for the bill. Why? Because if we don't, we keep operating under the current system, which means we keep giving Medicaid to people without work requirements.

Therefore, I am faced with a conundrum: Do I vote for the bill so I can actually have the common sense of a Medicaid work requirement start in 2026 or do I vote ``no'' on the bill because I think deficits are going to go up and I think this is the bare basics of reform we should do while we are not doing anything to stop the money laundering scam that will likely encourage the 10 nonexpansion States to expand and cement ObamaCare permanently?

This is the Hobson's choice that someone like me or some of my other colleagues face, all under the bluster of what this bill does or does not do, which 90 percent of the people in this body can't even explain, much less the American people or anybody in the media. That is the truth.

We add lots of new tax cuts. Here is the little secret that everybody should understand: All of the new tax cuts expire after 4 years or 5 years. You want to know a classic Washington gimmick? That is one. You are getting absolutely the bait-and-switch by Republicans in the House and the Senate by saying we are going to have these tax cuts only be applied for 4 years because they will expire, don't you know, in 4 years, so you don't have to score them now. They always say: Don't worry, over 10 years this thing, man, it reduces deficits. However, they don't score the last 5 years because the tax cuts expire.

Now, let me ask you a question. If you are watching this, all 12 of you on C-SPAN, tell me whether you think if we put in place the $500 enhanced child tax credit--I don't care whether you like the policy or not. I have my concerns with the policy. I think it is a giveaway. I don't think it is actually all that helpful. I don't think it creates economic growth, but, okay, we are all in the giveaway business in this Chamber. We are going to give away another $500 for every child in this country, even though it costs thousands to raise them, but we are only going to do it for 4 years.

I am not allowed to speak and address the audience, I have to address the Speaker, but for anybody who happens to be listening in the Chamber or

on C-SPAN, would you go to Vegas and bet yes or no that those tax credits would be expanded in 5 years? You know damn well they will be expanded in 5 years, but we don't score that. That is a Washington gimmick.

There are seven of those, I think, or more of these tax cuts that expire in 4 or 5 years but are not then scored for the outer 5 years so that everything can balance, but it doesn't. That is $1.6 trillion of additional lost revenue.

Now, again, let me be clear: I support a lot of those policies. I don't think we should be taxing Social Security on seniors either at all or certainly as much. I don't think we should have taxes--let me restate it.

I think we should give tax benefits for moving manufacturing to the United States and give rapid depreciation expensing for those companies. I am for that policy. That might actually be one of the few that might pay for themselves with the growth.

How about the auto loan tax deduction? We have got that in there now. Well, do you think that is going to pay for itself? Do you think they will let that expire in 4 years when everybody is used to deducting their auto interest? Maybe it is fine policy, but shouldn't we pay for it?

Shouldn't we have more spending reductions, or are we going to keep up the fiction that we can continue to do these policies? All my Republican colleagues go: Chip, they all pay for themselves. Are you a tax raiser? That is what they do. They go: Chip, you are out there, you are saying we have got to raise taxes.

There is a reason, as I said a minute ago, Ronald Reagan said if you come down here with a new idea, you ought to have a tax increase attached to it. Everybody in this Chamber cannot say no to the Farm Bureau when they come in and they want more money, when the ALS people come in and say they need more research, when the cancer people come in and say they need more research.

I am a cancer survivor, and I tell them no because, damn it, we don't have any more money. But everybody in this Chamber just says: Okay, we are going to authorize more spending, and I am going to go do a tax cut because, oh, that is your money, you get to keep your taxes, I agree.

Let me be clear: They are all going to sit there and play some clip; Chip Roy is for tax increases. It is all crap. The truth is everybody in this Chamber says every tax cut pays for itself. What if I cut taxes to 1 percent? Do those all pay for themselves? No, they don't. And we owe $36 trillion.

Everybody watching this: Your kids, your grandkids, your great- grandkids are holding the bag because you wanted all your free crap. As I have said before in a speech, this is always the United States House of free crap, and that is what we do, we just write checks.

The Inflation Reduction Act, the green new scam, I am going to tell you the one reason I voted for this bill--one. Yes, I like the Medicaid requirements; yes, I like a lot of the extensions of the tax cuts; yes, I like some of the policies that stop funding Planned Parenthood; yes, I like some of the policies that stop funding transgender surgeries. All of those are good, but in my opinion, we needed more spending restraint, if you want to be honest about deficits.

I voted for this bill for one reason, and this is why I am on the floor today, because I need the United States Senate to hear this as clearly as I can say it: We got restrictions on the green new scam to ensure that about 55 or 60 percent of those subsidies that are going to enrich billion dollar corporations to put money in the pockets of the Chinese, to undermine our grid with unreliable energy and undermine natural gas and undermine nuclear, all while bolstering wind and solar, which is littering our fields and littering our landscape, all to provide unreliable energy.

We fought like hell to get restrictions on that, to get 60 percent of the green new scam basically terminated. The President campaigned on terminating all of it, but this weak-ass Congress and Senate are going to not do that because, oh, we can't disrupt the existing flow of the $400 billion of subsidies going into the pockets of all those big companies raking in the money so they can get free money. While you guys all subsidize, they are getting rich, and your grid gets weaker.

This Congress is going to do that, and we fought like cats and dogs to get that 60 percent. Everybody in town, the K Street lobbyists are freaking out: Oh, no, we are not going to be able to have our subsidies to build more wind farms and solar farms. We are going to have more giveaways because their energy won't compete. That is the one reason I voted for this bill.

My message to the Senate: This will get clipped. It will get sent to the Senate. I am looking at you, Thom Tillis. I am looking at you over there in the Senate, you backslide one inch on those IRA subsidies, and I am voting against this bill. I want the White House to hear it. I want the Senate to hear it because it is the only reason I voted for this bill. Those God-forsaken subsidies are killing our energy, killing our grid, making us weaker, destroying our landscape, undermining our freedom, and I am not going to have it.

You do what you want to do in the Senate, House of Lords, have your fun, but if you mess up the Inflation Reduction Act green new scam subsidies, I ain't voting for that bill. We have a duty to actually honor those who fought 81 years later.

All these colleagues of mine, both sides of the aisle, they will go out. You watch, today, D-day, there will be a tweet from everybody. June 14, the 250th birthday of the Army, there will be a tweet from everybody. July 4, they will get in their parades, they will walk around with the flag. They will kiss babies. Yay.

What will they do on Veterans Day?

What did they do on Memorial Day?

What are we doing to actually honor the memory of those who gave the last full measure of devotion, who walked into the wall of bullets, who died for this country? So that we can be $36 trillion in debt? So that we can subsidize the green new scam? So that we can run away from the fight of having a tough conversation with constituents that there, in fact, is no more room in the inn, that we are out of money?

I have got to tell you; this bill does not meet the moment. I voted for it because I believe strongly in stopping those green new scam subsidies and for a variety of other good provisions, but we ought to do better. The Senate ought to do better. If the Senate weakens it, shame on the Senate. If the House just takes it, shame on the House.

The President of the United States campaigned on terminating the green new scam. We should terminate it.

The President of the United States said that we should get rid of waste, fraud, and abuse in Medicaid. Well, we should, including the money laundering scam enriching blue States at the expense of red States, expansion States at the expense of nonexpansion States, and enriching the able-bodied at the expense of the vulnerable.

The President campaigned on tax relief. We should deliver it. But we should have the commensurate spending cuts to go alongside of it to ensure that deficits go down to do what the President also campaigned on, which is balancing the budget of the United States.

I do not believe this bill yet will do that. We will see what the Senate does over the next week, but we will do a disservice to the memories of those that we are celebrating today on the 81st anniversary of D-day, and we will do a disservice to the memory of all those who came before us who fought and died and bled for this country. But more importantly, we will do a disservice to their ancestors, a disservice to our kids and our grandkids, who are the ones left holding the bag of rampant inflation, high interest rates, and a bond market that is teetering on the edge of a knife's edge because we refuse to do our job.

Mr. Speaker, we have an obligation to do it. I hope the Senate will step up and make this bill better.

If they leave it the same, they can send it to the President's desk. If they leave it basically the same and they send it back, I guess a lot of us will hold our nose again and say: Well, I guess that is the best this Congress is capable of doing.

It is like General Patton's quote in the movie:

`` `What did you do in the great World War II'? You won't have to say, `Well, I shoveled crap in Louisiana.' ''

What is Congress going to say that they did at this moment in time and in history to save this country? I hope the Senate will listen and make this bill better. I hope they will make it deserving of the President's campaign and mandate and deliver for the American people. They better darn well not backslide.

Frankly, it was hard to hold my nose to vote for that bill in the first place because I am over a barrel. I am trying to actually make Medicaid work, trying to make these subsidies get repealed, and trying to do the job that the President campaigned on, while we are too inclined to want to have giveaways that don't simply add up.

This is a moment for us to rise up and deliver. I hope the Senate will do it, and I hope the House will follow.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 1 o'clock and 2 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until Monday, June 9, 2025, at noon for morning-hour debate.