Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Oklahoma for yielding.

My, my, how times have changed.

How many times have we been sitting on the floor of the House listening to our colleagues on the other side of the aisle saying that a CR is the greatest thing since sliced bread; we must have the CR?

That is because when some of us were saying: Wait a minute, Mr. President, wait a minute, President Biden, maybe we should actually secure the border of the United States instead of letting millions of people flood in and kill Americans and let fentanyl flood into our communities.

So when we wanted to secure the border and we dared to say the funding should actually reflect that and we threatened to actually have a fight on spending, then my colleagues on the other side of the aisle said: CR, we have got to have a CR, our precious CR.

Mr. Speaker, here we are.

What are we doing?

Our colleagues oppose the CR.

Why?

It is because we would have spending frozen for 6 months down about $7 billion, but, importantly, allow DOGE and allow our friends in the administration to continue to expose the absurdity of Federal spending.

How about $1.5 billion to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion at Serbia's workplaces; $70,000 for a production of a DEI musical in Ireland; $2.5 million for electric vehicles in Vietnam; $47,000 for a transgender opera in Colombia; and $32,000 for a transgender comic book in Peru?

This is what our Democratic colleagues are fighting for, to continue to fund absurd programs rather than do the commonsense work of what we are trying to do to have more beds for ICE, secure the border of the United States, ensure that our defense is funded, and ensure that we are able to hold spending in check so we can actually have a chance of saving this great country.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 5, I call up the bill (H.R. 21) to amend title 18, United States Code, to prohibit a health care practitioner from failing to exercise the proper degree of care in the case of a child who survives an abortion or attempted abortion, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and insert extraneous material on H.R. 21.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act protects one of our most vulnerable populations; innocent children.

I am proud that at the beginning of the 119th Congress, we are taking this step toward protecting life and the fundamental rights of our most vulnerable American citizens.

We are all too familiar with the horrors of abortion and the unchecked power of the abortion industry. We know it is simply common sense to provide lifesaving care to those babies who survive an abortion.

In 2013, Jill Stanek testified before the House Committee on the Judiciary about the horrific realities of being a nurse and seeing children being aborted alive and left to die alone in a dirty utility closet.

I can hardly believe that those words are coming out of my mouth standing here on the floor of the House of Representatives, in this, the beacon of hope for people around the world.

She said: I was traumatized and changed forever by my experience of holding a little abortion survivor for 45 minutes until he died, a 21- or 22-week-old baby who had been aborted because he had Down syndrome. That is hard to believe.

One of my guests for the inauguration, one of my dear friends from Austin, Texas, a somewhat well-renowned musician and songwriter, brought his son who has Down syndrome and is such a blessing to this world.

That child, as well as this child that was left to die alone in a dirty utility closet, was and is a fellow human being, a fellow American whose right to life should have been protected by the law. Congress cannot stand by and allow this type of suffering. We have both a moral and a constitutional duty here.

This legislation is simple: The Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act requires that infants born alive under an attempted abortion receive the same protection under the law and degree of care of any newborn, combined with, by the way, the penalties associated with those who would ignore their duty under the law.

Mr. Speaker, it is a commonsense measure. Unfortunately, as evidenced by comments from many of my Democrat colleagues, not everyone believes that a child born alive should be protected.

In 2019, then-Virginia Governor Northam stated: ``The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that is what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother,'' said the Democrat Governor of Virginia.

This blatant disregard for human life has no place in the medical profession in our country.

Last Congress, unfortunately, only one Democrat voted in favor of the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act and another voted ``present.''

My Democrat colleagues send a clear message to the American people that these innocent lives are not worthy of protection and those who intentionally let infants die after birth should not be held accountable.

If a baby American, a fellow American, is lying on a table dying and we cannot, as Congress, as the leaders of this country and the leaders of the free world, cannot say that under the language of the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution, under the language of the Declaration of Independence that animates our Constitution, and under the privileges of immunities--the roots of which are found in English common law that create the bedrock of our entire justice system--then we need to make sure that that child is protected even and especially because of its defenseless nature.

Mr. Speaker, that is our duty. That is why I rise in support of this legislation. That is why I urge my colleagues to support this legislation, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I would note another abortion survivor, Melissa Ohden, testified before the House Judiciary Committee in 2015.

``You wouldn't know it by looking at me today, but in August of 1977, I survived a failed saline infusion abortion. . . . I know where children like me were left to die at St. Luke's hospital--a utility closet.''

Mr. Speaker, I now recognize the gentlewoman from Minnesota (Mrs. Fischbach) for 2 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from Missouri (Mrs. Wagner), the lead author of this legislation.

Madam Speaker, our heart goes out to our colleagues who have suffered personal tragedies. Unfortunately, none of the things that were just ascribed to this bill are true. The bill does none of those things.

Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith), my friend and co-chair of the Pro-Life Caucus.

Madam Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Murphy).

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the powerful words of my friend from North Carolina, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Onder).

Madam Speaker, I yield an additional 10 seconds to the gentleman from Missouri.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, my colleagues like to dismiss this as if it is not a real problem. Of course, those who have suffered through it, including the baby whom I described who was being held as it was dying for 45 minutes after such a grotesque procedure, beg to differ, as do the 143 babies whom the CDC, which is hardly a paragon of pro-life propaganda, writes that between 2003 and 2014 at least 143 babies died after being born alive.

This is hardly a fiction. This is hardly something that we should ignore.

Certainly, these are babies who are deserving of equal protection under the law. Our fellow Americans deserve protection.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, for those who were not here at the beginning, I would repeat the testimony of Jill Stanek. She testified before the House Judiciary Committee after seeing the horrific reality.

She was a nurse, and she saw a child being aborted who was alive and was left to die alone in a utility closet. She went over and held the little survivor for 45 minutes until the baby died. Again, the baby had been aborted because the baby had Down syndrome.

I want to remind Members that Virginia Governor Northam said: ``The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that's what the mother and the family desired.''

We are talking about a fellow living American baby. That is what we are talking about. We are not talking about abortion. We are talking about a child.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, there are a lot of strong women on this side of the aisle who beg to differ, including the lead author of the legislation.

I would note that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle refuse to focus on the main point, which is ``born alive.'' We are talking about, again, a fellow living human being, a fellow American who is alive.

My colleagues don't want to address that because they know the horrors of that will not be accepted by the American people. We are just simply saying

that when you have a living human being, it should be protected and be given the same equal protection as any other American.

The fact of the matter is this is real life that we are dealing with.

Mr. Speaker, 284 babies were reported to have been born alive between 1997 and 2024. Florida alone reported 14 babies born alive in 2023. This is a real issue.

We are just simply saying that these precious babies, fellow Americans, deserve protection because they are alive. Under the Hippocratic oath, doctors should care for these living, fellow Americans.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I was just handed by my pro-life, female legislative director information here about pregnancy centers.

Pregnancy resource centers nationwide serve millions of pregnant women and new mothers each year. These centers provide services and resources often at no charge and include ultrasounds, pregnancy testing, STD testing, diapers, clothing, and educational programs.

Private and public adoption agencies assisted approximately 115,000 adoptions in 2022. These are organizations and entities that want to protect life.

Again, I will note that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle will not address and do not want to address the simple purpose of this bill: protecting a living American from being allowed to die without having medical treatment provided to that child.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, if we are going to talk about jail and we are going to talk about who might be pardoned, then I am proud that President Trump seems to be on the verge of pardoning a large number of American citizens who have been put in jail at the hands of a weaponized Department of Justice against American citizens simply carrying out their First Amendment rights to speak out in defense of life.

For example, Lauren Handy, 31 years old--by the way, an active, progressive activist for human rights--was put in jail for 57 months.

I am glad that it seems that President Trump is on the verge of pardoning Lauren Handy. Even though I disagree with her on a whole lot of issues, I was proud to sit with her and meet with her when she was being targeted for prosecution by the weaponized Department of Justice under Joe Biden to be put in jail because she is pro-life.

I think great things are going to happen.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time is remaining.

Mr. Speaker, I simply say I am proud to have my colleague here from Minnesota (Mrs. Fischbach), who is coed the last time I checked.

The fact of the matter, as my friend from Maryland and the last speaker is

trying to allude to here, when we are talking about it is already against the law and it is murder on the books, here is the problem: Down here in the District of Columbia, we have the D.C. five, which were very clearly full-term abortions. We have the bodies of five babies discovered in Washington outside of a Washington clinic.

As subcommittee chairman, I sent a letter to Washington, D.C., authorities to preserve the records. Biden's Department of Justice refused to look into this information, but the D.C. five reveals the uncomfortable truth about abortion and a reality that we are all dealing with here.

Again, I go back to the point. Talking about murder, we are also talking about babies being allowed to die and babies being allowed to sit there and literally gasp out their last breath rather than have doctors resuscitate those infants.

That is the truth that our colleagues on the other side of the aisle just simply do not want to recognize.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Minnesota (Mrs. Fischbach), my good friend.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, Gianna Jessen, another adult survivor of abortion, testified to the House Judiciary Committee in 2015, stating:

`` . . . I was delivered alive in an abortion clinic in Los Angeles on April the 6th, 1977. . . . Thankfully the abortionist was not at work yet. Had he been there, he would have ended my life with strangulation, suffocation, or leaving me there to die.''

I will have plenty to answer for when I meet my maker and talk to the good Lord, for my life as a flawed and sinful human being, but I will not have to answer for not standing up in every which way that I possibly can to stop those kinds of horrors and to stand up for a fellow living American, a fellow living human being allowed to die, for the political whims of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I would just note that, in the very text of the legislation, Congress finds: ``One, if an abortion results in the live birth of an infant, the infant is a legal person for all purposes under the laws of the United States, and entitled to all the protections of such laws; two, any infant born alive after an abortion or within a hospital, clinic, or other facility has the same claim to the protection of the law that would arise for any newborn, or for any person who comes to a hospital, clinic, or other facility for screening and treatment or otherwise becomes a patient within its care.''

That is hardly anything to do with what my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are talking about. We just heard one of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle describe very specifically, yes, what we are trying to say we shouldn't do, which is, after a procedure, an abortion or otherwise, if you have a living human being, that, yes, you should try to resuscitate and save that child.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Cline).

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Clyde), my good friend.

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

Mr. Speaker, I started this about an hour ago, and I was moved to talk, as I said, about a woman who testified in front of the House Judiciary Committee.

She described having been a nurse, having witnessed what occurred where, in her testimony, the child was born after the abortion procedure. The child survived for 45 minutes having been discarded into a utility closet. This nurse held this 22-week-old child, a child of God, who had been aborted because the child had Down syndrome.

This legislation is very simple. If a fellow American, a fellow human being, who is afforded equal protection under the law, is alive in a hospital, in a clinic, frankly anywhere, where a doctor is there and present and can perform lifesaving treatment, it is our position that that child is deserving of the same equal protection under the law, under the Constitution of the United States, as any other living American, any of us in the Chamber, any of the Americans watching this now.

This child should not be left to die, should not be left in a utility closet without getting the care that a doctor, who is present, having taken the Hippocratic Oath, and could administer that care to save that child--that is what this bill is about, nothing more.

My colleagues on the other side of the aisle know this. It is why for the last hour they have literally refused to address those facts. They have literally refused to defend this grotesque procedure. In the greatest country in the history of mankind, we allow the most vulnerable of our citizens to be denied equal protection under the law and denied the care that they deserve.

Mr. Speaker, I urge support of this legislation, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, today, the President of the United States issued 21 very important pardons of individuals who had been put in jail, prosecuted, persecuted, for their religious beliefs and exercise of their speech. These are individuals who are pro-life who had been put in jail because a weaponized Department of Justice was unleashed against these individuals, very specifically and purposefully because they were espousing their pro-life views.

In the President's action to formally pardon these 21 individuals, he rights a wrong that was carried out against them. More importantly, he sends a loud message that the Department of Justice cannot and should not be targeted toward individuals for their political beliefs and their political actions. That is precisely what happened to those 21 individuals.

How do we know this? If you look at the application of the so-called FACE Act that was used to prosecute these individuals, to arrest and prosecute them, 97 percent of the FACE Act prosecutions between 1994 and 2024 were initiated against pro-life Americans.

I want you to pause and listen to that again. Ninety-seven percent of the prosecutions under this one act were carried out against pro-life Americans--this despite the fact that there have been numerous attacks on pro-life facilities and crisis pregnancy centers in the wake of Dobbs. Ninety-one pregnancy resource centers have been attacked since the Dobbs opinion was leaked.

In 2022, pro-life activist Mark Houck was arrested by the FBI for FACE Act violations related to an incident outside of an abortion facility. They didn't charge him in Pennsylvania--in fact, they passed--but the Feds went after him.

Mr. Speaker, you have to ask yourself: Why is that true?

There have been 411 recorded attacks on Catholic churches since 2020.

Was the FACE Act used once by the Department of Justice against any of these Catholic churches?

No.

So what does that look like for these 21 individuals?

By the way, I think this is really important in the context of the speeches that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle were just giving with respect to the treatment of those individuals incarcerated, charged, and prosecuted in the wake of January 6. I will come back to that in a minute.

Regarding these individuals whom I am talking about with respect to the pro-life prosecutions by the Department of Justice under Joe Biden, as one of the attorneys for one of the defendants put it:

``While Biden's prosecutors almost entirely ignored the firebombing and vandalism of hundreds of pro-life churches and pregnancy centers, they viciously pursued pro-life Americans.''

``And had they been opposing anything but abortion, Joe Biden would have given them medals. Instead Biden wanted them branded as convicted felons and imprisoned for years in a Federal penitentiary.''

Eva Edl is an 89-year-old survivor of a Soviet concentration camp who sat in front of the entrance to an abortion clinic in a wheelchair. She was one of those targeted by the Biden Department of Justice.

Let's be clear. She described how she was shipped off in cattle cars to concentration camps in Yugoslavia at age 9. They were packed in body to body with no food and no water. She lived through that. She is 89 years old.

Again, I want everybody to understand who is listening to this at home: An 89-year-old survivor of gulags in Europe was prosecuted by the Biden Department of Justice at age 89 for being in a wheelchair in front of an abortion clinic--a Federal crime, Federal Department of Justice.

Paulette Harlow is a 75-year-old grandmother from Kingston, Massachusetts. She has six children and is a grandmother to eight. She is suffering from health issues: liver disease and arthritis. She was prosecuted and sentenced to jail in a 25-month sentence in Texas, miles away from her home in Massachusetts. She is 75 years old.

Why?

It is because she was at an abortion clinic professing her faith and her hope

that they would not carry out abortions.

Lauren Handy is a peaceful, pro-life activist and was formally sentenced to 57 months, almost 5 years, plus 3 of supervision, for her efforts to peacefully save the lives of the unborn. I want to be very clear. Lauren, whom I met, is actually a progressive activist. She and I don't agree on a lot of issues, but she was out advocating for life, and she was sentenced by the Biden Department of Justice under Merrick Garland to 57 months in jail.

Again, I want everybody to think about that.

She was protesting an abortion clinic. Nobody here, Mr. Speaker, by the way, is saying that there isn't room for misdemeanor-type prosecutions if you are in the way and you won't listen to the calls for you to leave. Call it a misdemeanor, pay a fine, whatever it might be. It was a Federal prosecution and she was sentenced to 57 months.

John Hinshaw, 68 years old, was sentenced to 21 months. He said: ``People are having prayer services all over the place for us. The expression of support has just been tremendous.''

Today, the President of the United States righted those wrongs. He righted those wrongs for those four I have just described and 17 others for a total of 21. He also sent a loud message, as I said before, that the Department of Justice never again should be politicized to target people for their beliefs and to be used as a political weapon as it has been under the Joe Biden regime.

It is a new day, and it is an important day.

I want to follow up, though, on my colleagues here who took the floor regarding January 6. I was very clear on this House floor 4 years ago during January 6 that what occurred was wrong. What was occurring and what had occurred was wrong. Those who had broken the law should be prosecuted for breaking the law. I don't know anybody who disagrees with that. I really don't.

There are differing facts for each one of those 1,500 cases. Some of them are pretty bad facts, and regarding some of them there are absolutely no facts at all, but they were pursued anyway.

Therein lies the problem.

I want everybody to really listen to this point. There is going to be time for us to study all 1,500 cases, and we can look and we can judge what was the nature of how they were arrested, where they were arrested, where were they put in jail, how long were they in jail, what were the conditions in the jail, and how many of their loved ones could they talk to.

What was their access to defense counsel?

What was the nature of the prosecution?

What did the judges do?

What were the sentences?

We need to look at all those things.

Notably, the President commuted I think 14 individual sentences. I don't have it right in front of me, but I think it was 14, which tells me that the President and his team went through and tried to differentiate some of the worst, most egregious acts in their view that shouldn't be pardoned but rather commuted to time served.

I would also note this: we are now 48 months beyond the events. Many of these individuals were arrested early in the process, they have been in jail, they have been in the judicial system and have been dragged along. I have talked to dozens of parents, family members, wives, husbands, and spouses of the people who were jailed who were unable to talk to their loved ones. These are people without criminal records, people who had done nothing else.

Many of these people were charged with just parading here in the Capitol complex which then the court said: Well we are not sure about that, and then crossing a line and being in a place you are not supposed to be in, the obstruction issues.

What were you obstructing exactly?

Again, I think it is important to note that what occurred that day should not have occurred, that many of the acts that occurred should and have been punished. Some that were punished should have been punished, but when you completely ignore the rule of law, when you politically charge people, and when you use the Department of Justice as a political weapon, Mr. Speaker, then you undermine the rule of law and you turn it on its head, so that there is no differentiation between the right and the wrong.

Mr. Speaker, when you literally go prosecute an 89-year-old gulag survivor because she was exercising her pro-life views at an abortion clinic, what do you think one's view is of the righteousness of the other actions of the Department of Justice?

Mr. Speaker, how do you look at the 1,500 and go through and break them down in a way when 48 months later, as a father was on a news show today talking about his son and saying that his son had been moved from jail to jail, had had to filter the water through a sock because there was so much rust in the water, that they weren't able to talk to him for 3 weeks over Christmas, they didn't even know where he was and he couldn't get access to counsel during a lot of those times. What are we supposed to do with that?

Ignore it?

The President came in and made a judgment that these 1,500 people of varying forms, some sentenced and some not, some had taken plea deals and some not, had had 48 months of their life turned upside down by a Department of Justice who wanted to try to make an example out of them and the President of the United States said: Enough.

Do you know what, Mr. Speaker?

I agree.

That is because at the end of the day, 48 months later, many of them having been in jail for all or a lot of that time, many of them had their doors broken down, and many of them had FBI raids--I had two grandmas driving from Austin, Texas, out into the hill country just a few months ago who were arrested and jailed overnight because they were physically present here at the Capitol. They were not even inside, to the best of my knowledge. I think they might have just crossed one of the bike lines.

Three years later two grandmothers are arrested and put in jail?

Does anybody see what happens when we politicize the justice system and the scales of justice become something that we can't look at as blindfolded?

Again, why am I talking about this?

It is because today the President righted the wrongs of those 21 individuals who were literally protesting, in their view, and I share that view, the murdering of unborn children. I think that stuff matters. I think it matters a lot because had Joe Biden and had Merrick Garland not politicized the Department of Justice, then maybe 20 or 30 cases of individuals who had done something that were particularly egregious that were prosecuted, maybe those wouldn't have been pardoned. I don't know. I haven't studied every case.

However, Mr. Speaker, when you are looking at 1,500 cases and all the people who are being abused, I think the President did the right thing and again differentiated between those with the commuted sentences.

Meanwhile, what the President is doing besides, I think, trying to restore balance to the justice system is he is keeping his promises to secure our country.

One of my colleagues over there said that the first thing the President did was make us less safe.

Is he serious?

Is he serious?

He thinks reversing politicized political prosecutions 4 years later is making us less safe.

May I remind my Democratic colleagues that the individual who burned down a police station, a career criminal, got 27 months. That is the idea of justice from my colleagues on the other side of the aisle.

Let's put aside the $2 billion worth of damages nationwide in the wake of the Floyd riots, and let's put aside all the other damage that flowed from that.

Meanwhile, what is the President doing?

He is making our Nation much more safe. There was an executive order declaring a national emergency at the border.

In the first Congress that I was in office, I introduced the Border Visibility and Security Act to help regain operational control of the border. I put together a bill calling on the designation of cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, and I am pleased that that was one of the President's executive orders this week, declaring cartels as foreign terrorist organizations.

He issued an executive order requiring Homeland Security to deport aliens with orders of removal. There are over 1 million with orders of removal that Joe Biden wouldn't do.

Again, the lawlessness of the previous administration set the stage for the dangers that we have experienced, and now President Trump is undoing that damage.

There was an executive order saying categorical parole policies, undoing the CBP-1 app that was used to flood the zone with people who came into our country and were released and did things like kill Jocelyn Nungaray, whose mother Alexis I have gotten to know and who was with me for the inauguration this weekend.

There is an executive order to end the catch-and-release program and an executive order to resume the successful migrant protection protocols and return to Mexico, so we can stop the flow. To reinstate recognition of title 42 where you cannot travel through the country with communicable diseases. An executive order ending birthright citizenship, as it has been applied wrongly and incorrectly for years, to people who have manufactured or have used a manufactured cottage industry in which people pay money to get delivered into the country, have a baby, get the citizenship, and then it is what is known as anchor babies. It is real, it is pervasive, it is problematic, and it turns our country's system on its head.

By the way, yes, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle will say: Yeah, but a court today ruled that that is not constitutional, so they put an injunction on it.

We will see. We will see how this plays out in the legal system.

From my reading of the law, when the 14th Amendment was passed in 1868, a mere 4 years later, the United States Supreme Court in the Slaughterhouse Cases, explicitly said--4 years removed from the passage of an amendment to the United States Constitution, the then-sitting Supreme Court said that it did not apply to people who were here as the children that were being born here of people who were foreign citizens. Another court echoed that a decade or so later.

One court came in and said: Well, no, we think there is birthright citizenship if you are born here to a foreign national, but only if you are a legal permanent resident.

I believe the President's executive order is correct, I believe it is lawful, I believe it is constitutional, and I believe he ought to continue to enforce it.

We ought to be challenging this all the way up to the courts and immediately win this. I believe this Supreme Court will side on the right side, which is that you are a citizen if you are the child of an American citizen. Subject to the jurisdiction thereof has to matter.

The President is restoring our border, restoring law and order, and reversing the damage, and he should be. He should be thanked and congratulated for it.

What else has he been doing in the last, what am I adding up, 78 hours? President Trump, 78 hours in, has been withdrawing us from the disastrous World Health Organization, a globalist entity that has been undermining our sovereignty and wants to take away our own decisionmaking and make us subject to foreign powers on our health issues; withdrawing us from the disastrous Paris climate treaty that was making us beholden to China and foreign nationals and unable to advance and promote our own American energy.

By the way, had we not reversed all of that, we wouldn't have been adding fuel to the fire of Russia going into Ukraine, so to speak.

The President has been declaring a national energy emergency; unleashing American energy; opening up exploration; reversing Biden's ridiculous bans on offshore drilling; making it the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female; ending affirmative action and DEI in the Federal Government and trying to get us back to the actual view of a government that does not look through the lens of color or sex, but, rather, merit and hard work; and requiring that everybody actually shows up to work. Who knew?

All of those things are things that the President has been doing in a matter of 78 hours since getting sworn in a few feet from this Chamber and making our country immensely better off for it.

We have already seen a massive decline in the number of people trying to come across our border. Who knew? Who could have predicted that if the law is enforced maybe people will say: I guess we can't come now. Maybe the cartels will say: This may not be the profit center that we have at the moment.

Just last night, a guy was apprehended by ICE somewhere up in New York or somewhere in the northeast, and he lost his mind. He started swearing at Trump, F Trump, all this stuff. I am with Biden forever. I am not going back to Haiti, he said.

Yeah, he is. He is, and so are a lot of other people because prisons of the world shouldn't be dumped onto the streets of America, endangering our citizens. That is what Biden did, and that is what Trump is reversing.

Now we have to deliver. This is my message to my colleagues here. We have to deliver. My friends in the Freedom Caucus, other conservatives, we have put forward a plan that we believe would deliver and deliver quickly.

We don't have time to waste. The President needs resources. Tom Homan needs resources. The Border Patrol met with the union this last week. They need resources. ICE needs resources to do their job, so let's do it.

They want $86 billion. Let's find it. We can. The defense needs to be modernized, built up after getting undermined and focused on all sorts of ridiculous woke and DEI policies. We need a new, modern, robust military to beat China. We can do that.

We put forward $200 billion over 4 years under President Trump to modernize the military, an additional $50 billion a year. Let's do it. We can do it, and we can pay for it. We said we would raise the debt ceiling over 2 years, about $4 trillion. We are not inclined to want to raise the debt ceiling, if it hasn't been noticed, but we will do it.

The President wants us to get that aside so Chuck Schumer can't play games with the bond market, so let's get rid of the debt, or let's increase the debt ceiling. Let's get $86 billion for Border Patrol. Let's get $200 billion for defense. Then let's apply a handful of cuts to pay for those things. I don't know, how about we repeal the student loan fiasco? It is $100 billion to $270 billion.

How about let's just apply Medicaid work requirements so that, if citizens are on Medicaid for able-bodied Americans--not all, but the able-bodied Americans--that they must work? It is a pretty popular issue. Every Republican has voted for it, and it is $120 billion.

We can pay for defense, pay for Border Patrol, make our Medicaid system better, and reverse the ridiculous student loan bailouts which are giving money from one American to another.

The plumber who never went to college is subsidizing the sociology major sitting in their parents' basement tweeting about nonsense. How about we end that? The sociology major pays their student loans. They took the loans out. The plumber who didn't can go do their thing. Every American who I know who works hard agrees with that. We can do that.

Conservatives, the Freedom Caucus, have put that forward. We want to support President Trump. We want to make sure that President Trump can deliver on the border, get the debt ceiling away from being used politically by Chuck Schumer, and so we put that plan forward.

I think we should have already done it. As usual, we sit in this body, and we debate, and we continue to debate. Unfortunately, we are still debating. Unfortunately, in my opinion, we are going to continue to debate because there is a real debate going on about taxing and spending. I am blowing Republicans' minds when I say that I am all for tax cuts, but Members better cut the spending so that we can actually reduce deficits.

I have been pretty clear about that. A lot of my colleagues have been pretty clear about that. Some of my colleagues here seem to want nothing but tax cuts and no spending cuts.

I will also hear a lot of my colleagues say: Yeah, I am for the spending cuts. I will say: Okay. Well, how many? How much? Well, I mean, as many as we can get.

Okay. Are we going to reduce deficits, or not? I mean, that is the question I am going to be asking everybody. Can they do math, and are we going to reduce deficits? That is the question every American sent us here to do. Do the hard work. Sit at the table. Why don't we put the microphones down, put the cameras away, use these tables, roll our sleeves up, get the paper out, and do the math?

Yes, tax cuts can and do produce economic growth. It puts more money in the hands of the people. Yes, it is morally correct to leave more money in the hands of the American people. I would gladly vote to get rid of the income tax, zero it out, leave the money in the hands of the people, but guess what? Whether it is President Trump's vision or views on tariffs, whether it is something else, there has to be some amount of revenue to pay for all of the promises and all of the programs that every politician loves to go home and run on.

Now the rubber meets the road, or the piper needs to be paid, or whatever metaphor one wants to use. We cannot have our cake and eat it, too. We can't run around and beat up the CBO and blame the CBO and say: They never score anything right. That is probably correct. They are human beings, and maybe they are biased. Fine.

Okay. My colleagues think they are biased? Great. Come in with models. Come in with somebody else's models and show me how the math is going to work out, that if we do all of these tax cuts and do no spending cuts, that somehow we are magically going to have deficits going down because it is just not going to be true in the aggregate.

When Ronald Reagan cut taxes in 1981 from the confiscatory top rate of 70 percent under Jimmy Carter to 28 percent on the top marginal rate, there was a lot of good economic growth.

Corporations aren't these blobs. They are people. When we cut corporate rates 8 years ago from 35 percent to 21 percent, there was pretty significant economic growth. That was pretty meaningful in trying to keep more capital here.

Expensing, research and development, all of these things create growth. A lot of tax cuts don't. Take the child tax credits. I get how child tax credits can be argued to be good policy, pro-family policy, good for hardworking families that have kids. There are a lot of arguments for child tax credits.

They are not going to be massively stimulative. They cost about $800 billion over 10 years. So my point is, over here, it is like what are you cutting? What are we cutting because we can't continue to rack up deficits?

I think I am running close on time, and I just want to close with this: Right now, we have $36 point whatever trillion in debt. Right now, we are racking up about $1.8 trillion to $2 trillion a year in deficits.

When the interest on the bonds that we currently hold are getting refinanced over the next couple of years, those interest payments are going to go up, probably to the tune of another $200 billion to $300 billion a year.

If we renew all of the tax cuts, which I support, but we don't offer any cuts correspondingly, we will add hundreds of billions, if not several trillion dollars of deficit spending. The job for us, Republicans and Democrats, is to not do that.

I am asking for deficit neutrality on the tax bill. Let me just be clear. If all of my colleagues who want deficit neutrality or deficit reduction on the tax bill combined with spending cuts, being debated in reconciliation right now, if I win that fight that I am having right now with colleagues--because they are like, I don't know--the best we will get is the current deficit, that is how we would end up with exactly what we have right now of roughly $2 trillion deficits.

By the way, it will get worse because of the interest I mentioned if we keep financing and refinancing our debt, and interest goes up.

What I am trying to scrap for in this body is just trying not to make it worse. It is like ``Christmas Vacation.'' ``Worse? How can it get any worse?''

This is how it can get worse: Vote for more deficits. We shouldn't do that.

My actual last point with, I think, 1\1/2\ minutes remaining, is that, if we are going to do anything at all in reconciliation on policy, we should be fighting for healthcare freedom.

My office put out a report 2 days ago entitled: ``The Case for Healthcare Freedom.'' It is 48 pages that outlines all of the ways in which we are destroying the average American's access to healthcare; that we need to restore the doctor-patient relationship; that we need to break down the stranglehold that insurance companies and hospitals and pharma have on our healthcare. We need to free them up with expansive health savings accounts and allow them to decouple that so they can go out in the market and get actual insurance, go to direct primary care and actually get care for themselves instead of paying $25,000 a year between their employer and themselves to be able to go to an insurance company and be told that they can't get care.

If we want to transform this country, we need to reduce the deficits, give the President what he needs to secure the border, and give us healthcare freedom. That is my call to my colleagues.

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

Mr. Speaker, we are here to debate the rule. The rule that we have adopted will take up important legislation ensuring our forests are no longer such that they are going to catch fire, as we are seeing happen in California, and, importantly, to deal with the Laken Riley Act.

This is the bill we passed off the House floor last year. It was rejected by the Democrat-led Senate. They refused to move it. We moved it last week here on the House floor and sent it over to this Senate, now a Republican Senate, after the voters spoke. The Senate amended it, made it, I believe, better, and sent it to the House, and now that amended bill is on the floor of the United States House of Representatives.

Let's remember what we are talking about. This bill is named after Laken Riley. My friend from Georgia just discussed the facts involving the unfortunate death of Laken Riley at the hands of someone here illegally, someone here who had committed crimes.

I had as my guest this weekend at the inauguration a woman named Alexis Nungaray, a wonderful woman from Houston, Texas, whose 13-year- old little girl was murdered by people released into our country last year by the Biden administration.

Fortunately, those policies are ending under President Trump, but here is the truth: Never again should any American, any Texan, any Georgian, have to deal with what was thrust upon them by the Biden administration in terms of the damage, despair, death, destruction, murders, and rapes that were perpetrated against the people we represent.

This legislation would take a giant step forward to ensure that we can stop any future administration that is not just refusing to enforce Federal law but is actually abusing Federal law to endanger our people, our citizens who we represent.

This legislation would simply say that we must detain some of the worst people who are here illegally and ensure that they are not released. We are talking about serious bodily injury. We are talking about things that result in death, assaulting police officers. That is all in this legislation.

In addition, in this legislation is an important provision that I was proud to introduce with my friend Dan Bishop from North Carolina in the SUE Act to ensure that attorneys general can sue the Federal Government when the Federal Government is failing to do its job.

Imagine the ability of Texas, North Carolina, or Georgia, for my colleagues to be able to say: Do you know what? Enough.

The Federal Government does not get to ignore its fundamental duty under the Constitution to defend its citizens, and the attorneys general of States ought to be able to stop the Federal Government when it is endangering our people. This law would do that.

This law would honor the memory of Laken Riley. It would honor the memory of Jocelyn Nungaray. It would honor the memory of the countless Americans who have lost their loved ones and have been dealing with the scourge of illegal immigration, which is endangering our people. I proudly support it, and I proudly support this rule.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Utah for his remarks and all of the good stuff we have started off with as Republicans in this Congress and his remarks about athletics.

I was a walk-on in college. I hope all of us might be able to work together to figure out how to deal with this bit of a mess that the NIL is creating with respect to college athletics.

I watched significant fallout and wondered what it meant for good programs and coaches, like Tony Bennett at the University of Virginia and others, who have been raising red flags about what is happening with respect to the NIL. We can also figure out how to cut spending.

Mr. Speaker, I am not here to talk about the NIL. I will save that for another day, notwithstanding the national championships coming up around the country which the University of Texas should be playing in. Unfortunately, they are not.

Republicans were given the opportunity to have control of the United States House of Representatives, the United States Senate, and the White House. Come Monday, President Trump will be sworn in as the 47th President of the United States, and it can't come a moment too soon.

For everybody watching what is happening to our country, what this current administration is doing to our border, to our national security, to our spending, to the state of our culture, to the rule of law in the streets, the use of lawfare, the abuse of power, this can't come fast enough for most Americans.

The question before us right now as Republicans is whether or not we are going to deliver. Last time I checked, the American people did not send us to Washington and they did not give us the majority in the United States House of Representatives, the people's House, to rack up more deficits.

With all due respect to my Republican colleagues, we are currently on track to do just that. We are projected to have a $2 trillion-deficit next year. As we speak, interest rates are going up, our debt is getting refinanced at higher interest rates, and we have more debt that we are going to have to finance at higher rates. That means interest is going up. We have a job to do right now to cut spending, cut deficits, and save our country for our children.

I would wager that if I looked at the campaign materials or the speeches of

every single Republican in the House of Representatives and the Senate, they all ran on cutting spending and balancing budgets.

The question before this body is going to be: Will they do it?

I need to clear the record because my name has been invoked, and that of a number of my friends, for standing for things that are not true. My name has been invoked by people in this room, by colleagues about what I believe and don't believe.

Let me set the record straight right here, right now. Yes, I believe that we should make permanent the Trump tax cuts from 2017. I think that would be good for our economy. I think that would be good for the American people. I think that would help create more economic growth, and I think that economic growth would yield revenue to the Treasury.

I believe in what people call dynamic scoring; some people in this town say that I do not. What I do not believe in is making up numbers. What I do not believe in is magic fairy dust that says the budget will magically balance if you cut taxes and never cut spending because that is simply not true.

If I come to the floor and this Chamber is full and I ask any one of my colleagues to stand up and look the camera in the eye and tell their people back home on C-SPAN or on the news that, for example, child tax credits pay for themselves or changing certain rates pay for themselves, not one of them will stand up.

I promise you that we are going to be facing votes on this floor this year to extend the tax cuts that include, for example, child tax credits and other tax policies that in no way, shape, or form, economically speaking, pay for themselves.

We are going to be told to do that on faith, that the growth in the economy will magically produce revenue and cause deficits to go down. Nothing in our history would tell you that is true.

How do you think we got to $36 trillion in debt? It was by refusing to do basic math.

We are told we are not going to touch any kind of reforms in healthcare or Medicare to drive down the price of healthcare so that we can save Medicare from its clear insolvency, and Social Security from its clear insolvency. It is going to go bankrupt in, what, 8 years. So we are not going to talk about those things.

What we are going to talk about, we are told, is to extend the tax cuts and then sit around and try to figure out how to cut other mandatory spending without regard to whether or not that will be deficit reducing.

I think it is really important for the American people to understand this: There are games being played in Washington right now to put pressure on people to box them in, to box Members of this body in.

Right now, conservatives in the House Freedom Caucus are often maligned on the pages of publications as being the rightwing guys because oddly enough we believe in freedom, balanced budgets, and securing the border. Yes, we are the crazy ones. The House Freedom Caucus has proposed, put forward, a plan to raise the debt ceiling over $4 trillion over 2 years; fund the border at $86 billion, the request by the incoming administration and border czar Tom Homan; fund defense modernization at $200 billion plus-up, a separate fund through reconciliation, so we can modernize our defense and do what we need to do to beat China.

What we are asking for for that is to reverse some of Biden's policies, which are all things that the President campaigned on. Reversing the EV mandate is $117 billion. Medicaid work requirements and SNAP work requirements are $120 billion. Undo the student loan bailouts, which are an unfair shift of money from the working population to those who took on student loans, that is 100 to $270 billion of savings.

Again, I want to be very clear because here is what you are going to hear in the coming weeks: The House Freedom Caucus refuses to do a debt ceiling so reasonable Republicans are going to have to go cut a deal with Democrats to increase the debt ceiling, increase appropriations over our current spending levels, including defense and nondefense, and, oh, by the way, give a crud ton of money to California.

That is coming. That is coming.

They will try to blame the Freedom Caucus and conservatives like me who dare say, hold on a second, maybe we shouldn't do that. Maybe we should come up with another path forward to actually honor our commitments to cut spending and reduce the size and scope of government while we cut taxes, secure the border, and do the things we are supposed to do.

Again, we have put forward a plan. We have shared it with our colleagues. We have shared it with the incoming administration. We are making it public. That plan will increase the debt ceiling so that Chuck Schumer can't play games with the bond market, fund border, fund defense, cut some of the disastrous Biden policies to pay for those things the American people prioritize, and in so doing, free up defense to be modernized and built so that when we come to March we don't have to do what happens every year where defense hawks sell their souls to the devil to raise defense spending all driven by K Street lobbyists and the defense contractors in this town who define our defense policy so that Democrats can get increases in nondefense spending, which is an increase in programs, and our discretionary budget keeps going up and up and up and up, and you keep funding the very bureaucrats that the DOGE folks say they want to cut.

I have this wild idea for these crazy conservatives in the Freedom Caucus that maybe, just maybe, we should change the game. Maybe, just maybe, we should take that money, go build our defense through reconciliation, level the playing field, pass either a continuing resolution or spending at the caps that we put in place this last year, hold spending frozen for the rest of this year, go do the appropriations process, let DOGE do its work, cut spending to pre-COVID levels, save about a trillion dollars over a decade, do our job to actually deliver on the promises that we made, give wins to the President of the United States, give wins to Republicans, unite the party, unite the country, and demonstrate that we can do our job.

But you know why we can't? You know why we can't do that right now? Because the forces in this town who want nothing but tax cuts and no spending cuts are telling you, you can't do it. That is what is happening.

The lobbyists, the people in this town, Members of Congress are saying that we can't cut because there is some program, there is something in Medicaid, there is some reason, there is some excuse, but, gosh, we are definitely going to go ahead and reinstate all the tax policies because they read in some book a long time ago that they all pay for themselves irrespective, by the way, of the Laffer curve or any commonsense economics.

What I will say to you right now is that if any of my Republican colleagues want to come down to the floor and tell me that each one of those tax provisions pay for themselves, I want to see it. Show me that the child tax credits pay for themselves. I am not saying the child tax credits may not be decent policy. I will tell you right now I would love to vote on a bill right now to just eliminate the tax code and zero it out. Maybe we will do that before this year is over. Maybe everybody will have to put their money where their mouth is. Do you believe in taxation or not? Because if you think you can just freely print money and fund all the things you are too afraid to go back to your district and say that there is a limit on what you can spend while out of the other side of your mouth you talk about tax cuts, let's vote on a bill to zero out the tax code because if you're going to constantly live with $2 trillion deficits, which is where we are right now, why not $6 trillion? Why does it matter? That is a genuine question. Anybody in the complex can feel free to come down here and explain to me why my family, your family, my constituents' families should pay taxes into a system that is designed by this body to bleed 2 trillion-plus dollars a year.

They keep talking about tax policy that is good for economic growth. Okay. Yes, I agree. I support it. I started this speech by saying I support it, but I don't support it blindly. I don't support it without recognizing our responsibility and our need to cut spending. There ain't no free lunch. You

can't make up math. You can't just go blame it on the CBO or blame it on scores. Show the American people the math, and don't go run and hide behind a vote on a balanced budget amendment because I promise you that is what my colleagues will say. They will say, oh, man, we need a balanced budget amendment. Do you think they would follow it? That is a genuine question. Pass a balanced budget amendment.

By the way, when all the people out there on Twitter say Chip Roy is railing against a balanced budget amendment, I would respond, no, I am not. I am for a balanced budget amendment. Sign me up. I have cosponsored it. I will vote for it. In the odd event we pass it when it has whatever line it is going to have in it in an exception for national security, do you not believe that everything will be a national emergency?

Do you believe that the insatiable appetite of your Members of Congress to spend money on programs will end because you inserted an amendment in the Constitution that says we must balance the budget? I can promise you every time we hit a debt ceiling, what will happen is we are going to raise the debt ceiling.

The American people sent us here to actually change things. The American people didn't send us here to keep racking up debt. We are $36.3 trillion in debt. It is piling up around our ears. As my friend David Schweikert from Arizona points out every time he comes to the floor of the House, the interest is piling up. It is going up. We are refinancing our debt. We are paying a trillion dollars a year in interest, and that is about to be 1.2, about maybe 1.4. It is going to be $2 trillion pretty soon.

My colleagues are running around like chickens with their heads cut off squawking about what they need to do on tax policy--again, a policy I support--but without recognizing the mathematical need to have spending cuts at least or more than what you think will happen with respect to revenue when you change the tax policy.

The American people expect us to be adults. You cannot have your cake and eat it too. You cannot just go straight to the dessert of going home to your constituents and saying, I cut your taxes, aren't you proud? You can't just get on your donor calls and say, man, I really made sure that your corporate rates are great, and we are making sure your capital gains rates are great, and then not do the other side of the work. You have got to eat your vegetables. You have got to actually do the job.

As I said, I will vote to zero out taxes. We didn't have an income tax for the first half of this country's existence. I think that is great.

You know what else? We didn't take on every single issue in the Federal Government because the Constitution didn't contemplate it. Now we take on all the issues, and we don't pay for them. We sprinkle magic fairy dust around here, borrow money, print money, mortgage our kids' future, and pretend to be adults. I do not for the life of me believe that we can actually change this all in a year. This is the last argument I want to present, and then I am going to recognize my good friend from Pennsylvania.

I said there are people out there who are saying that I don't believe in the dynamic impact of tax policy. That is false. I very much believe in the dynamic impact of tax policy. If we leave money in the hands of the American people and we produce revenue, we produce growth, and that means some additional revenue will come into the Treasury because of the economic growth--yes, but not all of it.

Other people will say, well, gosh, you guys, dollar for dollar you want to make sure that all these cuts are going to add up to the debt ceiling. No, I just want some common damn sense. Just show me some actual cuts up front. Again, I want to reiterate, the House Freedom Caucus conservatives, have put forward a plan and shared it. It will accomplish the objectives. The media and our colleagues will say that they don't want to do that, they can't do that. Well, we have done it. We have put it forward.

Now I want to call on my colleagues and ask them: Well, what is your plan? Because we have a plan, and that plan is to deliver right out of the gate. The President gets sworn in on Monday. Let's secure the border. Let's fund it. You want to have a strong national defense that is not woke, fund it. Do it now, and take it off the ledger in March when we are going to be told that we must eat more spending in government and California money and a $10 trillion debt ceiling increase.

Let's do it right now. Let's do the hard work. Let's extend the debt ceiling 2 years, fund the border, fund defense, give the cuts and the EV mandates, put in Medicaid work requirements. These are all things the American people want us to do. Let's end the student loan bailouts, save money, end bad programs, advance good programs. Let's secure our country, help the President, give him wins, give the American people wins, give us a chance to actually freeze spending in March and in September to stop the growth of the bureaucracy. Let's give Elon and Vivek and DOGE the ability to do what they want to do, which is cut the bureaucracy, which they can't do if we keep funding it.

We can do that, but if my colleagues are going to insist on putting us in a box and telling the world because Chip says, you know what, I think we should put everything on the table, all taxes, until we make sure we are getting enough cuts with respect to the tax policy, and then they have the audacity to go out and say, Chip won't vote for a bill unless there is a corporate tax increase. That is a lie. Anybody who says that is a liar because that is not what I am saying. Anybody who says I don't believe in dynamic scoring is lying. That is the truth.

What I want to do is make sure we save our country. What I don't want to do is play games. Unfortunately, all too often too many of my colleagues want to play games.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Perry).

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

Mr. Speaker, he is right. The clock is ticking. We can't let another legislative day go and another legislative day go in which we don't deliver. The American people expect us to deliver.

We can and will deliver tax policy that is progrowth and that extends what we did in 2017. We will deliver spending cuts if we get in the room and work, but it is going to take time.

It is going to take time to undo the damage of the Biden administration and for us to go through everything that we need to go through to identify the cuts that we can all work through, but we will do it if we have the willpower to do it and if we can do math and understand that we need deficits to go down.

What we are saying is, let's deliver right now. Do not risk border security by pushing it off months into the future.

We could do that right now if the House would act. Right now, pass the budget, pass the instructions, and do exactly what we just laid out. Do the debt ceiling increase, do the funding for the border, and give it to Tom Homan tomorrow.

In a matter of 1 or 2 weeks, we can get that out of this Chamber and over to the Senate. By February, they would have money for defense, money for the border and a fence, and a debt ceiling that is gone.

We would have undone some of the worst Biden policies and paid for all of it. That is precisely what the American people sent us here to do.

Instead, this Chamber currently is locked in a cycle of talking about what we might do. We have to move for the American people. That is why we put forward an approach that we believe will work.

It is really important--really important--for the American people to understand that what is happening in this town is that games are being played by people who want to try to leverage those of us who want to cut spending. That is the bottom line.

I am speaking for myself right here. There are some of my colleagues who want to attach the border funding to the bills that we are moving forward without--they don't believe that we will get to the spending cuts that will make those of us who believe we need deficits to go down happy. They want to try to force us to eat increased deficits in order to achieve the border security funding.

I don't think we should play games with the border security. I don't think we should play games with defense. I don't think we should play games with getting the debt ceiling cleared off without giving more power to Chuck Schumer and Democrats to mess with us in March.

We can win across the board if we adopt this plan, and I would strongly recommend that we move forward with this plan so that we can deliver for the President and deliver for the American people.

Mr. Speaker, I would remind people that what happened before Christmas was precisely that, trying to cram down a bunch of stuff in a big bill, and it met with resounding failure.

Let's not do that. Let's make the 119th Congress be about success, delivering on the President's agenda and on the Republican agenda, the agenda we ran on, and, most importantly, delivering for our kids and grandkids a world in which they can actually live free from worrying about China, free from worrying about debt, and free from worrying about open borders and criminals on the streets.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Pennsylvania for his remarks, and 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 23 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Thursday, January 16, 2025, at 9 a.m.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Florida, the chairman, for his support on this legislation. I thank him for his statesmanship on this particular issue, which is critically important for not just our friendship with our ally, Israel, but also our own national security, the protection of our own men and women in uniform.

Let's be clear about what is happening at the so-called International Criminal Court right now. It has taken unprecedented action of issuing arrest warrants for the sitting Prime Minister and former Minister of Defense of our friend and ally, Israel. Let that sink in for a minute.

The International Criminal Court is an entity that has no jurisdiction over the people of the United States and should have no authority over our people, no authority over the Prime Minister of Israel, yet it is extending into the people of Israel's business in defending their interests against a violent attack by Hamas, which we define as a terrorist entity. As the chairman just pointed out, Hamas has killed American citizens and holds American citizens hostage as we sit here today.

Somehow, it is not a priority for the people of our country that we represent for us to be here on the floor of the House defending our men and women in uniform, defending our citizens, defending our ally, Israel, and the Prime Minister of Israel from a politicized witch hunt by the International Criminal Court which, again, should have and doesn't have any jurisdiction over our people or the people of Israel.

I would remind the gentleman from Massachusetts that 42 Democrats voted for this legislation last year. If this is such a crazy piece of legislation, perhaps the gentleman would like to have an inward-facing conference on his side of the aisle. It is very clearly a bipartisan interest to protect our people and the people of our friends in Israel.

I would note that our problems aren't just the dangerous terrorist organizations like Hamas, but these international organizations given power over our citizens and our way of life; not just the International Criminal Court, but, for example, UNRWA and other international organizations without which Hamas wouldn't have many of the resources it needs to conduct these violent attacks on Israel and our own people.

When the gentleman from Massachusetts talks about the plight of the people in Gaza, we should be reminded of the massive piles of pallets of food and relief that are stacked up because the United Nations is too incompetent to move those pallets and remind our friends of the extent to which Hamas has been taking those resources and not distributing them to the people in Gaza.

The fact of the matter here is, this legislation is inherently America first. We have had situations where we have had American soldiers and our people targeted by the ICC. It will happen again if the House of Representatives and the Senate and the President don't take action to sanction the ICC to prevent this from happening again in the future.

I appreciate the support of the chairman. I appreciate the support of virtually every Member on the Republican side of the aisle. I appreciate the support of the 42 Democrats last summer. I look forward to a larger amount of support from Democrats when we vote on this today.

Mr. Speaker, when I ran for Congress in 2018, the debt was $21 trillion.

I was just texting with my son back home in Austin, who I haven't seen in quite a long time because I am here trying to fight for him.

When I got through cancer about 12 years ago, I made a promise to my kids that I would do everything I can to save this country, and what we are doing right now is continuing to double down on the things that are destroying the Republic.

We are going to increase the debt ceiling, not just $4 trillion. That is false. We have spent $4.7 trillion in additional debt in the last 19 months. We are going to increase the debt by $5 trillion. That is what is going to happen right here by Republicans. We are increasing the debt by $5 trillion.

What are you doing in the same bill? Mr. Speaker, $110 billion is unpaid for because you never have an ounce of self-respect to go out and campaign, saying you are going to balance the budget, and then you come in here and pass $110 billion unpaid for, on top of the $200 billion you did for WEP. My colleagues won't agree with that, but the fact of the matter is, they have added $330 billion to the debt since you were given the majority again on November 5.

It is embarrassing. It is shameful. Yes, I think this bill is better than it was yesterday in certain respects, but to take this bill yesterday and congratulate themselves because it is shorter in pages but increases the debt by $5 trillion is asinine, and that is precisely what Republicans are doing.

I am absolutely sickened by a party that campaigns on fiscal responsibility and has the temerity to go forward to the American people and say they think this is fiscally responsible. It is absolutely ridiculous.

It also turns off paygo. It turns off the $1.7 trillion in automatic cuts under paygo because this side of the aisle is profoundly unserious about actually reducing deficits just as my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are profoundly unserious about reducing deficits.

The entire body has been racking up debt for my entire life. We are now at $36 trillion with a trillion dollars of interest. We rack up a trillion dollars every 100 days.

What are we going to do about it? We are going to run around and talk about cutting taxes, but not doing what is necessary to cut the spending along with the cut taxes.

On the other side of the aisle, my colleagues will say: Oh, no, we have got to increase taxes but won't do anything to cut spending. So here we sit in the same mess. I have to be honest, and I will remind people, this is Article I.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Texas for yielding.

I am here tonight, as we all are, to celebrate the career, the legacy, and the friendship of Chairman Dr. Michael Burgess. We are going to miss you.

It has been an honor to serve alongside you in two committees, the Rules Committee and the Budget Committee, and an honor to work with you on healthcare policies and any number of things.

I have learned from you. I have probably made your life a little more interesting than you would prefer on the Rules Committee, but it has been an honor to serve alongside you. I truly mean that.

There are a lot of words that are thrown around about people who have an impact on us when we are here, but I will always remember your grace in front of a number of circumstances, but particularly in the last couple of weeks.

I will just say, as you said this last week: ``And the peace of God which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus,'' Philippians 4:7.

Your faith stands as a testament to all of us.

Godspeed.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the time to come here in December. I am not sure if we will get time next week here on the floor.

As we look forward to Christmas, I think it is important to remember why we are here and why we are here in the House.

Christmas 1777 was one of the lowest and most desperate points of American

history. General Washington, fresh off defeats at Brandywine and Germantown had marched the battered Continental Army to winter quarters at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. Frozen rain, snow, and brutally cold temperatures tested not only the men's resolve to fight for freedom, but their bodies' ability to withstand the elements.

They showed up low on provisions. It was so bad that in a letter on December 23, General Washington wrote to Henry Laurens of the Continental Congress: ``I am now convinced beyond a doubt, that unless some great and capital change suddenly takes place . . . this Army must inevitably be reduced to one or other of these three things: Starve, dissolve, or disperse. . . . [This] is not an exaggerated picture. . . . `'

Historians estimate that as many as one-third of them didn't have boots or shoes. Washington ordered soldiers to build wooden huts for themselves to stave off the cold and search the surrounding countryside for straw to make bedding to keep them warm. They didn't have enough blankets to go around after all.

In the same letter, Washington also noted that his Army was in danger from the enemy. General Howe was nearby, and Washington needed his men ready to rock and roll, but they couldn't do it.

``I ordered the troops to be in readiness,'' for an attack, Washington wrote. ``When behold to my great mortification . . . the men were unable to stir on account of provision. . . . `'

``All I could do under these circumstances was to send out a few light parties to watch and harass the enemy. . . . `'

His officers were resigned to leaving the camp, and he fretted that without congressional action otherwise ``I much doubt the practicability of holding the Army together much longer.''

Mr. Speaker, how did we get here?

Twelve months earlier had been one of the high points of the Revolution and Washington's military career--victories at Trenton, victories at Princeton, the Crossing of the Delaware and the daring Christmas Day surprise attack on the Hessians.

This year it was burnt mutton and watered-down grog for an Army that was cold, starving, and on the brink.

Mr. Speaker, 2,100 out of 10,000 would die there from disease and exposure.

We know that is not the end of the story. We know that because I am standing here on this floor in the United States House of Representatives as a citizen of the greatest country in the world.

Baron Von Steuben got to camp in 1778 and started whipping the Continental Army into better shape, and Washington's men kept up the fight until Yorktown 3 long years later.

However, now, Mr. Speaker, to my friends and colleagues who are here in the Chamber, the few remaining, it is now our turn to fight. We are at a relatively speaking low point in our country's history due to the unbelievable but yet completely observable negligence, nay, I say purposeful actions of the current administration to undermine the safety, security, prosperity, and well-being of our people and our Nation.

We have millions of people who have been dumped into our country illegally, including criminals. We have $36 trillion in debt, another $2 trillion a year. It is really another $1 trillion every 100 days, a little over 3 months.

Americans are in record levels of personal debt because of the record levels of inflation and a hamstrung economy by bureaucrats and progressive radical Democrats who want to micromanage your life and regulate your life to death, tell you what stoves you can use, what cars you can drive, drive up the price of cars, your houses, your schools, your healthcare, and then thank you for the privilege.

The world around us is in chaos. We see what is happening in Syria. We saw what is happening in South Korea, and we see what is happening around the globe, Ukraine, and Russia, the empowerment of Iran, although, thankfully, the resolve of Israel is standing strong while our country has walked away from that fight.

That is all due to the weakness of the Biden administration that it has shown for 4 years. Now it is our calling in this Congress to stand up alongside President Trump to stand up and fix it. However, the calling for our Congress is not to simply walk back some of the failures of this administration. It is not to ask for some quick fixes. It is to fundamentally change the trajectory of our country.

It is to take bold action. It is to pass serious legislation. It is to fundamentally change our reliance on debt and profligate spending that is indebting our children and driving up inflation because we are spending money we don't have.

We have an obligation to fight for the American people. That is our calling as we wrap up this year. We have several really important fights and debates to continue to finish, such as the National Defense Authorization Act, which, unbelievably, our Democratic colleagues are resisting and saying they aren't going to support. Why? Because Republicans have taken the position that we shouldn't have taxpayer funding at the Pentagon for transgender surgeries for children.

Our Democratic colleagues are so committed to the mutilation of children that they would choose not to authorize the defense of the United States. That is the world in which we are currently operating, and it is Republicans who are standing here in defense of our children while trying to make sure our defense is strong.

The NDAA is not where it should be. Let me be clear, because of radical progressive Democrats in the Senate and the House, we have miles to go.

We have an obligation to do our job. We have an obligation to not spend money that we don't have. We have an obligation to pay for the disaster aid that so many of my colleagues understandably want and seek for their constituents in the wake of hurricane damage, drought, or issues that are facing our people. We have an obligation to pay for these things, or else we are no better than the people we criticize.

Come January, after we do whatever we are going to do here in December with respect to the funding of government, such as the disaster funding, the national defense bill, the farm bill, all issues that are still ripe before us--we have a new President, a new Congress coming in, a new Senate, all Republican--what will we do? I am here to suggest to you that, through the reconciliation tools, we can make serious change.

Now, here, I pause for a second. I have colleagues of mine who, rightly, on both sides of the aisle, will point out that reconciliation is supposed to be a budget tool for reconciling the budget and ensuring that we are, frankly, working to achieve balance and not spending more money than we should. That very much should be the priority of budget reconciliation, and I will endeavor to ensure that we follow that path.

I remind the American people that the reason they cannot afford healthcare, the reason they cannot go to the doctor of their choice, the reason they are frustrated with the American healthcare system today, and the reason insurance companies are making billions of dollars while they suffer is their Federal Government.

It is a Federal Government that has overpromised, overregulated, and is now telling you precisely what kind of healthcare you can have while then enriching insurance companies to administer it for you. You can't go to the doctor of your choice. You can't get the healthcare of your choice. We don't have robust health savings accounts. We haven't empowered you.

We have empowered bureaucrats in Washington at HHS and bureaucrats at CMS who are managing Medicare and managing Medicaid. We have empowered insurance bureaucrats. We have empowered corporate cronies. What we have not done is empowered you. What we have not done is empowered doctors.

We must do that if we are going to claim the mantle of not just healthcare freedom and making America healthy again, but if we are going to actually say that we are going to be fiscally responsible, we can't solve our $36 trillion of debt if we don't solve the burden of healthcare.

When we get to January, when we are sworn in, when we have counted the electors for President Trump, when the Senate is in session, we should act with dispatch to pass a reconciliation package right out of the gate that secures the border of the United States.

It was the fundamental promise of the Trump campaign but, more importantly, what President Trump has campaigned on all the way back since 2016, what President Trump did while he was in office from 2017 to 2021.

It was the fundamental failure of the Biden administration to purposefully flood our country with some 10-odd million human beings, including criminals, weakening our border, fentanyl, all the dangers that have been posed to the American people, including the murders of Americans, deaths from fentanyl poisoning, putting the burden on our social welfare state and our schools, jails, and hospitals.

Obligation number one for this Republican Congress is to ensure that we secure the border, or at least take step one to secure the border. What will that mean?

Well, we need to build the wall. President Trump ran on building the wall in 2016, so let's provide the funding through reconciliation to ensure that the wall is built.

Number two, the wall does no good if you have policies in place that allow people to be released into the United States. That is what the Biden administration has done, so we must fund and empower ICE to carry out the repatriation of millions of individuals who are illegally placed into the United States in violation of law, in violation of the statute, in violation of parole, in the name of parole, and in the name of asylum. These individuals must be removed and repatriated through funding to ICE and Border Patrol.

We need to fund the Migrant Protection Protocols that President Trump was using to ensure that Mexico was upholding its end of the bargain and not dumping people into our country. We need to pay back the States that have had to be on the front lines when our government failed us, like Texas, which has spent $12 billion over the last 4 years to stand in the breach. Other States also have a claim to having stood up to try to secure the border.

We should impose monthly and annual fees on those who have been paroled into the United States and those who have been given notices to appear in court. We have to pay for all that. Impose fees. Impose fees on applications for work permits. Ensure that welfare benefits only go to United States citizens and legal permanent residents and not parolees, not asylees, and not people who are illegally present.

Currently, that is costing us upwards of $160 billion over 10 years. Your tax dollars are going to fund welfare benefits for people who have been illegally placed into the United States or who illegally came here.

Additionally, let's make Mexico and other bad-actor states pay for the wall by imposing a tax on remittances sent by noncitizens here abroad.

Impose taxes or fees on nongovernmental organizations that have been taking taxpayer money just to use it against us and move people here illegally into the United States.

Require illegal aliens to cover the cost of background checks.

Impose fees on aliens who fail to provide approved, unexpired identification documents at ports of entry.

Increase financial penalties for visa overstays.

Increase fees on student visas to stop the foreign takeover of U.S. colleges.

Beef up 287(g) to allow local law enforcement to collaborate with Federal law enforcement to enforce our border security and immigration laws.

These are just some of the things, a pretty exhaustive list, that we can do, should do, and must do right out of the gate in January when we have the pen. We can do it--and by the way, we can pay for it--and we must.

Let me be clear: For all manners of our choices on reconciliation, we will pay for them. We will achieve deficit reduction, not deficit increase. That is our calling, and we must achieve it. Failure to do so will not succeed.

We can repeal the expanded Internal Revenue Service funding. I would rather pay for Border Patrol agents than to pay for Internal Revenue Service agents. There is some $50 billion sitting there. Let's use that to secure the border of the United States.

Let's repeal the student loan policy of the Biden administration in which Americans who never went to college or have paid off their student loans or don't qualify are paying off the student loans of other Americans. Why is that happening?

My wife's student loan hasn't been paid off. She has now been working on it for 20 years, the product of a single mom. She worked her butt off to go to school, had debt sitting there. She has been paying it down and working hard to pay it down.

There are thousands, millions of those people in this country who have followed the law, done their responsibility, worked hard to pay off their student loans. Joe Biden came in and said: Don't worry about that. I am going to take from you, and I am going to give to these other people.

End that. That could get us between $100 billion and $270 billion. Take that and fund the things we need to do and that the Constitution calls for us to do.

Repeal the SNAP Thrifty Food Plan. Do you know what that was? It was a massive expansion done by the stroke of the pen, just like the same stroke of the pen that Joe Biden used to expand the student loan bailouts, to expand food stamps, effectively, and to walk into just continuing to fund the worst form.

Huge percentages of the food stamps go to sugar drinks and all the things that are making us unhealthy, making us obese, and making us overweight so that we can then go to pharma, Big Insurance, and big hospitals and say: Please save us from ourselves.

The government subsidizes both. The Federal Government subsidizes the poison. The Federal Government subsidizes the overmedication. The Federal Government subsidizes the bureaucracy. Guess what? We are all worse off because of it, and we are $36 trillion in debt. How about we stop doing that?

Every Member of Congress is going to have some constituency telling them why they can't do that. They are going to have somebody saying: If you do that, my rural hospital might have a problem. If you do that, my local business, my local sugar growers, my local manufacturers--who cares? That is not our job.

Forgive me for channeling ``Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,'' but we are not supposed to be here to funnel printed money to our local districts. We are not. That is not why we are elected. Unfortunately, that is why too many of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle are here. Don't do that.

We could repeal the EPA EV mandate rule. We could save $113 billion by stopping the ridiculous rule to mandate that two-thirds of our fleet be changed to electric vehicles by 2032. That is absurd.

If you even converted the entire American fleet today to electric vehicles, you would diminish CO2 production by less than, I think, 2 percent, a fraction. I don't even think it is that high. It would be a minimal impact, and you can't even do that. Even if we wanted to, we couldn't do that.

Why would we drive up the cost of automobiles, make them less reliable, harm the economy, spend money subsidizing something that is not going to produce the result that it said it is going to produce, all so some people can run around, flying to Davos in their private jets, patting themselves on the back, which is precisely what my colleagues on the other side of the aisle and gasbags like John Kerry do.

I will probably get admonished for that one.

The fact of the matter is that we have an obligation here in Congress to do the job we said we would do. I give this speech, and I give it pretty regularly, but I am going to keep giving it because I have to be honest with you. This job has its pros and cons. The cons list tends to stack up. You are away from your family, and you are traveling and all of that, but it is a great honor and a great blessing.

One of the great blessings is when you are around the country and see somebody--or like the woman who I ran into on the street who was walking up the street and coming up to the Capitol, who just said: Thank you. Thank you for fighting for us. Thank you for giving us a voice for sanity.

The American people just want their country back. Do you want to know what the election was about in November? They just want their country back. They just want common sense back. They just want sanity.

Here we are again, sitting here on the eve of passing a National Defense Authorization Act, which many of my

Democratic colleagues are saying they don't want to support because, again, we are limiting the use of taxpayer dollars to go to transgender surgeries for children.

We have a defense authorization bill that is something like, I don't know, $900 billion to authorize the national defense of the United States.

Now, imagine George Washington and all of those men freezing to death. They didn't have socks. They didn't have shoes. They were suffering. General Washington thought he was going to lose the Army.

Fast-forward to Christmas of 1944 and our grandfathers, our great- grandfathers, some of our fathers were sitting in a foxhole in Bastogne freezing to death, and for what?

For a country that would take taxpayer dollars to fund, through the national defense of the United States, the mutilation of children. Now, my Democrat colleagues want to hold up the National Defense Authorization Act because we dare say that children shouldn't be mutilated.

That is the current Democratic Party. If you want to know why they were thrown out on their ear in November, that is why.

Now we should lead. We should lead farther.

I heard some rumbling on this side of the aisle that the Speaker shouldn't have included that language in the bill. The Speaker was exactly right to include that language in the bill. We have an obligation in the House of Representatives, the people's House, not to punt. I hear my colleagues saying, well, President Trump will come in and take care of it.

I understand that we believe that the policies adopted by the President will be much more to our liking.

But what about your constitutional obligation?

What about our job?

What about our use of the power of the purse?

The United States House of Representatives is supposed to be the closest to the people. The people didn't sign up for this. The people just want a military that is lethal again. They just want a military that is not woke, that isn't going through all sorts of nonsense trainings at the academies or at the Pentagon itself. They sure as hell don't want their taxpayer dollars going to the mutilation of children.

Let's not forget that this same National Defense Authorization Act will continue to allow and promote the use of taxpayer dollars for adult transgender surgeries.

Mr. Speaker, if we pass this bill, this horrible bill, according to our Democratic colleagues that shouldn't have this provision to protect children, our great win is to pull back the goalpost from full transgender surgeries being funded through our tax dollars through the Pentagon to, well, we will just do adults, but not children, we think.

We will still fund the chief diversity officer, whatever that is and whatever value that is providing for the Pentagon. We will still continue to authorize all manners of programs. We still have a bill that is larded up with conservation programs and all sorts of things, it is not just a specific defense bill.

There are a variety of reasons to oppose this legislation because we can do better. It could be more focused on lethality. It can be with fewer dollars.

Our job is to represent the people. It is not to represent the latest focus group at Yale University that sit around talking about what woke nonsense they want out of our Pentagon, but yet that is what our Democrat colleagues are doing.

We will see what happens tomorrow when we vote on this defense bill. I think it is useful for the American people to see precisely the values of our radical, progressive Democrat colleagues on this particular issue.

It is incumbent upon Republicans for us to advance the ball, to actually shrink the size of government. Don't hide behind DOGE. Don't hide behind Elon or Vivek. Don't say: Oh, isn't it great? They are going to do all this stuff. They are going to take this stuff in. They are going to use AI. They are going to crowdsource. Then what? What?

They are going to present recommendations to Secretaries. The Secretaries will implement some of that stuff. Meanwhile, Congress will continue to appropriate. Congress will continue to authorize.

What will we authorize? What will we appropriate?

Will it be responsible? Will we shrink the size of the bureaucracy? Will we make government more efficient and effective and focus on its actual constitutional provisions? Will we address the massive problem with the automatic spending that is Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, now increasingly, the Veterans Administration, which is on autopilot?

Mr. Speaker, 70 percent of the budget, 70 percent of what we spend every year, is on autopilot, and we don't touch it. My Democrat colleagues will say, you are going to push granny off the cliff. My Republican colleagues will say, we can't cut discretionary spending because we must focus on so-called mandatory, automatic spending. Yet then we never have a proposal. We never come to the floor.

One of my Democratic colleagues was walking by me earlier. I won't name this individual lest I get that individual in trouble. I was giving an interview and they asked me about whether ObamaCare subsidies should be on the chopping block for this round of debates on reconciliation later this year in tax policy.

Now my answer, as someone who opposed the implementation of ObamaCare, was to not focus on ObamaCare. My answer was simple: The American people deserve robust health savings accounts in which they can choose their healthcare, where they are empowered, their doctor is empowered, and insurance companies, bureaucrats, hospitals, and pharma are not in power.

This Democratic colleague was walking by and said, hey, I can support that. Those are the kinds of conversations, if we want to be serious about driving down the cost of healthcare, so we can actually balance our budget, that we must have in the context of reconciliation.

My message to my Republican colleagues is, if you think you are going to come in this Chamber and waltz in here and say that we are going to pass tax reform, extend the tax cuts without dealing with spending, you are mistaken. You are mistaken.

If K Street wants to come down here and make their case for all of the tax provisions they want--and look, there are a lot of small businesses and people across America who care strongly about getting the tax policies that I agree with that we ought to put in place: expensing, research and development, pass-through tax policy. To be very clear, tax policy is not going to move off of the House floor until we deal with spending.

We are going to cut spending. We are going to put us on a path to balance. We are going to reduce deficits, or I will be an opponent of tax policy and many of my colleagues will also because the time is now. No more games, no more gimmicks, no more short-term extensions to get a political win. This has to end on both sides of the aisle.

We need to get busy this Congress figuring out how to be fiscally responsible, dramatically cutting the bureaucracy, shrinking Washington, and empowering Americans.

Mr. Speaker, I am reminded as I wrap up here that Valley Forge was not the end of the story for this country when I opened up my remarks about General Washington and the suffering of those soldiers under his care and watch.

Those men freezing, starving, and uncertain of the future, not knowing what laid in front of them, they didn't give up.

General Washington wrote in that pre-Christmas letter, ``We have not more than 3 months to prepare a great deal of business in--if we let these slip or waste, we shall be laboring under the same difficulties all next campaign. . . .''

Washington knew that every low point was a time to prepare, to keep moving, to get things in place for the next fight, because those low points are where opportunity lives. That is what we can learn from and what we have to imitate here.

We have 4 years to make transformative change or we will squander everything that those men at Valley Forge fought for and gave us, all those men who fought in the Civil War in the 1860s, all of those men who stormed the

beaches of Normandy and ended up at Bastogne.

What are we going to have written on our headstone when this fight is over? Did we keep and preserve this republic for our kids and our grandkids?

That should be the question that guides everything we do as Republicans in charge of this House Chamber going forward.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Texas for yielding, and I appreciate his efforts to block this time for the Texas delegation to honor one of our own, Kay Granger, whom we will miss going forward.

So many of my colleagues have already touched on her biography and on her history as a teacher, businesswoman, mayor, Congresswoman, and, probably most importantly, wife and mother.

She is someone who has served Texas so ably and well, rising up to chair the Appropriations Committee and to do so with grace during a fairly tumultuous time in our Nation's history--this is not political; this is about honoring Kay--because of the nature of our disagreements with the current administration and the current state of things.

She managed the appropriations process and committee with grace and class. She has been a true joy to work with.

I don't always race to the floor to do these. I feel like you have to know someone pretty well or have a certain level of understanding and respect, but Kay was always very gracious and kind to me as a not- always soft-spoken member of the Conference or the delegation, as my friend from Texas knows. She was always one who would try to reach out and offer some advice, but not try to tell me what to do or say, but to come in and talk to me about what we need to do as Texans and how we can work together to do it.

She always cared about Texas. She always cared about service, and I was proud to serve with her. None of us in this body agree on everything at any given moment, but to work with someone who had such a fervor for public service from, as I said, the time of being a teacher, mayor, Congresswoman, and rising up to run the Appropriations Committee.

I will miss her. We were proud to have her in the Texas delegation as the chair of Appropriations, but she will be able to be back in Texas, which is a good thing.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Arizona. I didn't get a chance to get down here in time during the time that was set aside to honor her service, but I am glad I was down here and was able to get down at the tail end of it to hear her speech.

It has been an honor. We were classmates. We came in together, served together.

I remember when the gentlewoman told us that she wasn't running again. I found her on the floor, and I said: So, what is going on? Why aren't you staying with us? And she said one word, family. That is the right answer.

You have been a great patriot. Congress is far better for having had you in it, and we will miss you. We know you won't be too far away, and we hope to see you here.

God bless you. Spend time with your family. I feel the pain of being away as you do. I will be very happy for you, but I will give you a few floor speeches to watch every once in a while here just for fun.

Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor tonight because there is a lot of talk going on right now about what has been referred to as DOGE, this effort by our friends Elon and Vivek with respect to the Department of Government Efficiency.

I am not 100 percent clear yet what that looks like in terms of formality, how the incoming President, President Trump, plans to establish it and set it up.

We had some great meetings today with those two men and Members of Congress who are interested in facilitating their work.

My only problem with the named Department of Government Efficiency is I would refer to it as the department of government elimination. I think we would be a lot better off if we were eliminating large swaths of that which has been unconstitutionally created to rack up $36 trillion in debt.

I think what merits observation is what this body needs to do to actually deliver on what people are, I think, to some degree across the country, getting excited about with respect to the prospect of the brain power that has been assembled around this department, DOGE, or this effort. Congress has to actually do our part.

We had a meeting today. There was a lot of conversation back and forth, and there were a whole lot of Members of Congress who were looking to them to say to please do this. One Member said to please help give us the fortitude, the spine, to be able to deliver on removing and cutting this waste in government.

Look, to be very clear, the use of technology, crowdsourcing, AI by these guys and other smart people around the country, the use of technology, observe it, figure out what to do with it, great. I am for it.

I support their efforts. I support efforts by the incoming President and his staff, his administration, to, frankly, massively slash and burn the bureaucracy that is sucking away, frankly, the life of the American people through overregulation, overspending, and driving up inflation because we keep spending more and more money in this vast bureaucracy. You can't even keep up with it.

I have a bill that I introduced a few years ago, the Count the Crimes to Cut Act. Do you know why? Nobody can tell me how many crimes there are. Literally, nobody can tell me how many crimes there are in the Federal Government. Does anybody see that as a problem? We literally don't even know how many--forget cataloging them all, organizing them all, figuring out how much of them are repeated or overburdensome or perhaps out of line. We don't even know, and I can't even get that bill through the committee and down to the floor. Members of this body don't want to know how many crimes there are so we can maybe go observe and try to do something about it?

On this score is where I believe Elon and Vivek can add massive value. They don't necessarily need us to pass something to go count the crimes. They can just use technology, AI, crowdsourcing, work and put a whole lot of effort into doing that because, frankly, a lot of people don't understand this, but we are pretty short-staffed here as it relates to our offices on Capitol Hill dealing with constituents services, dealing with the stuff we deal with all the time. Having an army of people and being able to leverage that is going to be really important.

Now, let's cut to the chase. The fact of the matter is, too many Members of the United States Congress are all too excited to hide behind Elon and Vivek to do the work they are supposed to do. That is the truth. I saw colleagues going to the mike thanking them saying, oh, please save us from the scourge of bureaucracy.

Well, what the hell is our job? We actually do have separation of powers. We actually are Article I. We actually do have the ability to use the power of the purse to constrain the leviathan and the executive branch. We just never do it ever.

If we dare try, oh, the scorn, oh, the look from your colleagues when you dare come down and object to a consent request, as I did, for $19 billion. That seems trivial now, doesn't it? I objected to a consent request for $19 billion in 2019 for Hurricane Harvey relief predominantly heavily in my home State of Texas.

A unanimous consent request was being offered on the floor. I was at the airport. I got word that they were going to do this by consent. I thought, wait a minute, they are going to pass $19 billion by unanimous consent on the floor of the House, and we are not there, and it is not paid for.

Well, it might be meritorious in some respects. I don't know, but I would have to look at the funding and what it is going to be used for in Texas. There are people hurting in Texas, but we have to pay for it. We certainly don't pass things for $19 billion by consent.

Mr. Speaker, I got in my car, canceled the flight, got in a car, an Uber, came back here to the Hill, and ran down on the floor, and I objected.

Do you know what happened back in Texas? The usual suspects, the newspapers, the editorial boards, the people who like to have wailing and gnashing of teeth, and the wine-sipping crowds of the elites in the cities in Austin, they are all like: Oh, you are the devil. This is horrible. How could you do this?

A funny thing happened, and this is my message to my colleagues, my constituents, even though, again, my district wasn't as directly impacted by Harvey, fair, but my constituents and other people around the State of Texas took notice that maybe if a Member of Congress says there ought to be some principles that guide what we do and that there is a right way to do things, maybe our country would be better off. Maybe we wouldn't have $36 trillion of debt.

I would mention right now, in that very same context, we are currently considering a disaster supplemental bill again. Every year, we consider some sort of disaster supplemental bill. Why is that? That is because the world has events. They have always had events. Galveston was hit at the turn of the last century. It was wiped out. There have been floods. There have been fires. There have been constant issues, tornadoes. This isn't all related to climate change. It is over the course of the history of mankind. In fact, our use of technology makes us able to manage those better, our use of energy. We can manage that better by abundant, reliable energy.

What happens is every year there is something that strikes at our heart. There was Katrina in 2005, Ike, Harvey, what happened in Hawaii. Go down the list of things that we care about. We are in a massive drought in Texas, a massive drought.

We have all sorts of different things that pop up. So here we are, and we have $113 billion that has been put forward from the administration under the name of disaster relief.

There are all manners of things in that bill, and we are looking at those things: replenish the disaster relief fund, what we call the DRF, $40 billion; $16 billion for some stuff on defense; another pot of money for farmers who have had issues across the country related to disaster and otherwise; and go down the list to the tune of $111 billion or $113 billion.

It is not paid for. It is just another check-writing exercise, but it is the writing of a check by printing of money because that is what we do. There is no limiting principle.

My question for anybody watching this is: What do you think the limiting principle ought to be for the elected Representatives you send here to represent you? Is it, well, man, that is a really sympathetic thing; write the check. Is that our limiting principle? ``Chip, there are people hurting in North Carolina.'' Yes, I know. I pray for them. We try to support organizations like Samaritan's Purse and others that help.

I have had colleagues like Cory Mills who went in early trying to deal with disaster relief. The last time I checked, the State of North Carolina is not a Third World country that has no resources or abilities. They have a very robust economy and a very strong State.

Are they unable to issue bonds?

Are they unable to find ways to come up with their own dollars to build their own infrastructure and rebuild?

The State of Texas when we have a calamity--the State of Texas is literally the eighth biggest economy in the world. Just Texas is the eighth largest economy in the world. Other than immediate disaster relief using the resources of the National Guard or the resources at FEMA where you have an actual emergency, where you have got to move people and help them deal with being in floods, we all help each other out. Send the resources, yes, Governors, go help.

However, we are now 1 month later, 2 months later.

Why is the State of Texas not able to deal with a disaster?

Are we unable to deal with it?

We have, I think, almost a $400 billion biennial budget, i.e., roughly a $200 billion a year budget in Texas.

So is Texas, the eighth largest economy, are we not able to deal with disasters?

I think we can. I think most States in this country can. I think most of us can do what we need to do.

The Federal Government doesn't need to be an ATM, but that is what we are turning it into.

If there isn't a limiting principle on printing money, then how can DOGE be successful?

Someone explain to me how all the efforts by Elon, all of the efforts by Vivek, and all of the efforts of the incoming Office of Management and Budget and President Trump, if this body, if this Congress, if this Republican majority does nothing but do the same old thing we have always done, which is come down here and write checks that have no backing, we are literally the Fed just printing money, then how can we possibly limit the size, the scope, and the growth of the Federal Government?

In other words, Mr. Speaker, look in the mirror. Don't look for a fiscal savior. Don't look for salvation for the future of the country's well-being with some folks over in the executive branch or who are friends with the executive branch who are going to provide us great information. Be grateful for it, but remember when we go through the appropriations process, it is our job. They can make the executive branch more efficient, yes, but we are the ones who create these departments and create these programs. We are supposed to authorize them, but we don't.

The Homeland Security Department was created over 20 years ago. We have never reauthorized it. It is insane. There are 200 and something thousand employees at the Department of Homeland Security. We have never reauthorized it. That is our job, but all we do is sit around and shrug our shoulders and say: Well, man, have you been to the mountains of Western North Carolina? It is just awful.

We have to write that check.

What if I say: Okay, fine. God bless these awesome Americans. They need assistance. Yeah, fine, you don't have to pay for it. Write the check.

Then what?

Do we write the next check?

Do we just keep printing money for everybody's illness?

Mr. Speaker, do you know that right now under FEMA we are using FEMA emergency dollars to pay for COVID-related burials?

Why? Why?

It is because somebody declared an energy at some point, the administration was given large pots of money, and now everybody just shrugs and walks away.

The fact of the matter is the President, President Trump, was elected in, in today's time, what you could describe as a landslide. In today's divided world with what we call the trifecta, Republicans will control the House, and Republicans will control the Senate. They are pretty thin majorities in both Chambers.

The question that will be for Republicans is: What are we going to do? Will we deliver?

Mr. Speaker, I would suggest to you that we are not going to truly deliver unless at least two things are true, and I think there are three, four, or five, but at least two things are true.

One, we fully secure the border and undo the damage caused by the open borders of the last 4-plus years; and two, we stop spending money we don't have. If we can't do those two things, then we won't have a country left.

Mr. Speaker, I am not sitting here telling you that I think we can balance the $2 trillion deficit in 1 year. I think that would be difficult to continue to have economic growth and do what we need to do. However, I am telling you, Mr. Speaker, that we need to actually be serious because I would say to my fellow Republicans, I have said that we need to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act, which is subsidizing Chinese wind and solar. It is now putting American companies on the hook, and they are wanting to get the big drug high of getting more money and more subsidies.

We are now turning ourselves away from what is the strength of the reliable American oil and gas industry. We are driving up the cost of goods and driving up inflation all under the Inflation Reduction Act.

My view is, and the view of most Americans, and I promise you, virtually everybody in this Chamber--not all--we ran on repealing the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, ending those subsidies, returning to market forces determining the best reliable energy and, importantly, stop spending money we don't have for the subsidies to enrich the Chinese and enrich our enemies who undermine our own well-being.

A handful of my colleagues signed a letter saying that they don't want to do that.

Let me just posit: What if I am successful?

What if we are successful and we repeal it?

What have we done?

We have returned to the status quo of 2022.

Basically, on that issue I am begging to return to the halcyon days of old in 2022 when everything was great, deficits were great, and everything was wonderful.

I am being sarcastic.

So if I am successful, I fight, and I struggle for all the people who don't want to tell their big corporations ``no,'' who are now hooked on the subsidies, because that is what is going to happen, including Texas, I am looking at you, Texas, all your big oil and gas companies are getting on the hook because they like free money. It ain't free, by the way. They like subsidies they can turn into current-day profits at the expense of your children's future. It is because they don't care because they will get a good earnings report, and they will make money now.

However, the debt will keep going up and the dollar will keep getting weakened and inflation will keep being real.

So if we can do it, if we can repeal it, if we are successful, then all we will do is rewind the clock to 2022. If we return to pre-COVID spending, Mr. Speaker, all you do is return the clock to 2020. That would basically save us $200 billion a year.

Repealing the so-called Inflation Reduction Act and ending those subsidies would save us, oh, probably about $70 billion a year over 10 years.

What if we secure the border tomorrow?

Now, mind you, Mr. Speaker, securing the border even under President Trump meant we had 30,000 or so a month still coming across the border. Let's just say we secure the border.

Now what are we doing with the, what, 10 million people or so who are now in our country that weren't?

Okay, let's repatriate them.

How many will we repatriate?

We would have to repatriate them all just to return to the status quo.

Mr. Speaker, my point of all this is: If you want to transform the country, then we need transformative policies, and you need a Congress willing to do it. You need a Congress willing to actually deliver on what they said they would do.

This is a refrain I have offered in a number of speeches here on the floor of the House. They are not always that well received. I gave a speech saying: Name one thing. Some of my colleagues got a little mad, as I said, the best way to do that is to do the thing, deliver.

However, we are $36 trillion in debt. If we do everything I just said, if we renew the Trump tax cuts from 2017 and we extend them so that everybody's taxes--again, I am going back to my point, go to the status quo. If we do all of those things, then we will be struggling just to get to deficit neutrality on the issue, meaning we will still be at $2 trillion of debt a year.

Now, if Elon, Vivek and company can find a bunch of waste and we can cut that out and then we can use that to either bring back savings or maybe cut down on drugs or take that money and use it for additional things that would be better, say, the Pentagon. Okay, that is great, maybe we will save a little bit.

However, if you save 30 percent of our discretionary budget, let's say they go and they hack out just mountains of waste, fire bureaucrats, and one-third, 33 percent, of the discretionary budget just goes away, poof, that is about $600 billion. We are running about a $2 trillion deficit. I am just trying to put this in perspective.

I am for that.

Do you know why I am for it, Mr. Speaker?

Fire the bureaucrats, end the weaponization, end the waste, and end the people who are targeting us. Make them have to go out and get a real job. I am for all of those things, and our country would be better off. If we do it, then we will earn the right to deal with mandatory spending.

I said to some of my colleagues today in a meeting when Vivek and Elon were here, and I pointed out that we have a $113 billion bill on the floor for the disaster supplemental. I am pointing out that it is not going to be paid for. I am pointing out it is going to continue to perpetuate waste. I am talking about a bike path in Alaska, COVID spending across the country, and I think a church parking lot in Vermont. I mean, I could go down a laundry list of things that the current FEMA emergency funding is being used for, Mr. Speaker. Then we are going to just throw another $40 billion at it after we have been criticizing FEMA all through the fall about how incompetent they are and how bad they are.

We will say: Do you know what your reward is?

Here is more money, keep doing your bureaucratic thing. Don't worry, Elon and Vivek will save us. That is because we sure as hell aren't going to save us.

That is what we do.

My perspective is we should look in the mirror. We should do our job and constrain that spending. Don't give it to bureaucrats. Do our part. Find the savings and do what we can do to make it work.

However, do you know what my colleagues said?

My colleagues said: Well, Chip, the discretionary spending doesn't matter because of the point I said a minute ago. If you cut one-third of it, then you save $600 billion, and you still have a $2 trillion deficit.

Why?

It is because we have made promises for at least one-half a century on Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid and increasingly on veterans' benefits that we can't keep up with. Then Republicans go around pounding their chest on tax policy: We will cut taxes so we will create economic growth. We will bring in revenue, and we will ignore the deficits.

I am for the tax cuts, but if you are not doing the spending cuts, then you end up with $36 trillion in debt.

Republicans need to look in the mirror. If my colleagues think we are going to just waltz in to a reconciliation debate in January and it is all going to be kumbaya because K Street wants tax cuts and because certain people think that they are going to get their bread buttered, but we are not going to focus on deficits, then I would just suggest that maybe they think long and hard about the calendar that the House put out whereby we are only here 3 days a week, 3 weeks a month, and maybe we should follow the Senate calendar, which to his great credit the incoming leader put out, 5 days a week every week for the first 3 months of the year.

We were elected to do something different, and by goodness, we are going to do something different. We must. We have no choice. Failure is not an option.

I will make just one other point in closing here as we deal with all of that on the spending issue. I watched the Senate Republicans doing this dance of hand-wringing and concern about the President's nominees.

The President was elected by the American people to change this town. He has nominated people who want to change this town. Mr. Speaker, if you want to go turn over every rock of everybody's past and then say that they are not capable or they don't deserve to serve in a position like Secretary of Defense as is currently occurring with the targeted attacks on Pete Hegseth, then maybe you should take the board out of your eye.

I am not saying that we don't have standards that are appropriate in the advise-and-consent process. We do, and we should. I am a believer in that separation of powers. However, the President also is deserving of the courtesy and the respect of his own party, in particular, of the individuals he is nominating to change the town.

He was elected to change it.

You don't like Tulsi because she is a Democrat?

Get over it. She is not anymore. She is a Republican now, but she was. In this Chamber, I served with her, she was a Democrat.

You don't like Bobby Kennedy because he is from an iconic Democrat family?

Get over it. I don't agree with Bobby Kennedy on a lot of different things, but I agree with him that we need to fundamentally change our healthcare system and that we need to make America healthy again.

I agree with Tulsi that we have been involved in endless wars and endless conflict that is draining our resources and undermining our men and women in uniform.

I agree with Pete Hegseth that wokeism is destroying the United States military. I agree with Pete that we don't need to have endless wars. I agree with Pete that we ought to have somebody who has served in battle and understands it who is at the top of the Pentagon, rather than the brass, who, frankly, often like the ribbons more than actually doing the work that is necessary to defend this country.

I like the fact that we have people who the President is nominating who will take on the establishment and take on, for example, the FBI with Kash Patel.

The fact of the matter is we have Senators who are wanting to challenge it. For example, the Senator from Iowa who is going after Pete Hegseth, or seemingly, being critical. This is the same Senator, by the way, who voted for an NDAA that would draft our daughters and has been fighting to draft our daughters.

I tell her: You will do that over my dead body. There will be no draft of my daughter.

She voted for The Respect for Marriage Act to codify gay marriage. She went out to her constituents and talked about how the horrible Senate border bill was somehow a good bill and then scolded President Trump for opposing it. She voted for Garland for Attorney General, voted for Lloyd Austin for Defense, voted for Buttigieg for DOT, voted for Janet Yellen, voted for Ukraine's borders over America's borders.

With all due respect to the Senator from Iowa, she is not where the American people are. President Trump is, and Pete Hegseth is.

We have an obligation to change this town, or we are going to lose this country. If Republicans do not deliver and if we do not do what we said we would do, this party will end. There will not be a Republican Party if we fail in this term, this Congress, to deliver.

That is not hyperbole. It is true. We will go the way of the whigs. We will secure the border. We will return order to our streets. We will cut spending. We will move toward balancing our budgets.

As the President has nominated, we will confirm people who will change this town and take on the bureaucracy. We will listen to and work with Elon and Vivek, root out the waste and fraud, but do it ourselves.

We will pass bills that actually get the job done. We will undo the damage of the Biden administration, replace it with a legacy that our kids and grandkids can be proud of, root out the wokeism, root out all of the DEI and the critical race theory. Kill it. Kill it now.

We will do these things, or we will not exist. We will organize ourselves as a Conference to do those things, or we won't succeed.

Our job between now, the first week of December, and the first week of January is to get our heads in the right places. They currently aren't there.

We are not structured right now to deliver, and we have 1 month to do it. That is my calling. We are not here to take breaks. We are not here for codels. We are not here for trips. We are here to get the job done.

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 7 o'clock and 33 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Friday, December 6, 2024, at 9 a.m.

Mr. Speaker, I missed four votes today. Had I been present, I would have voted NAY on Roll Call No. 480, NAY on Roll Call No. 481, YEA on Roll Call No. 482, and YEA on Roll Call No. 483.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Arizona battling through as he is recuperating from illness to come down on the floor and make sure that the American people fully understand the fiscal state of our country. He does it well. He does it eloquently, but it is about time we turn it into action as I know the gentleman from Arizona agrees.

My friend from Arizona was holding a chart that said $36 trillion because our country is about to cross the Rubicon of $36 trillion of debt. We will be staring at well over $40 trillion of debt within the next year and a half.

If there is anything that should guide the Republican majority in the House of Representatives, the Republican majority in the United States Senate, and President Trump in the White House, it is that we must stop this disastrous spending of other people's money by the Federal Government in such a way that we are destroying the future of our kids and grandkids.

The problem is, I will say this here tonight and my friend from Arizona will say this, but what are we going to do about it?

Let me just lay out a couple of thoughts about this. As we come out of this historic win by President Trump with Republicans controlling the White House, the House, and the Senate, what are we going to do with it?

Well, I will tell you what we have to do, we have to actually deliver on the promises that we made that we campaigned upon. As my friend from Ohio, Congressman Jim Jordan likes to say, do what we said we would do. It is time. There is no room for excuses.

What are some of the excuses I am already hearing? We don't have 60 votes in the Senate. I was hearing that excuse last summer before we even had the elections. I heard one of my colleagues go on national television and talk about how we can't deport the people that have been released into the United States, backing away from the sign that was on the front of the building at the RNC that said mass deportations.

The American people will remember whether we respond and do what we said we would do.

In Britain, the Tories said we are going to stop all of the illegal immigration. We are going to remove people that came here illegally. They didn't do it, and they were sent to the ash bin of history. They were removed. The United Kingdom right now is struggling. That cannot be where we go as Americans.

President Trump was ushered in with a mandate. Republicans in the House were ushered in with a mandate. Republicans in the Senate were ushered in with a mandate. The mandate was to make the cost of living affordable again for the average American family so they can live their lives, pay their bills, afford a house, afford a car, afford healthcare, afford a school for their kids, and remove their kids from trapped, failing public schools.

The other part of the mandate was to secure the border of the United States, secure our country, restore sovereignty, and remove the people who are illegally and ill-legitimately dumped into the United States lawlessly, illegally by President Biden, Vice President, border czar Kamala Harris, and impeached, disgracefully, Homeland Secretary Mayorkas.

What will we do as Republicans?

It is my view and the view of many in this Chamber that we must immediately secure the border of the United States and provide President Trump what is necessary to do so, both in terms of resources, but also in terms of law.

We, I am proud to say, passed the strongest border security measure we

have ever passed a year and a half ago, H.R. 2. We should pass that bill in January. We should send it to the Senate. We should force that debate in the Senate. We should make those seven Democrats have to answer to their constituents about whether they want to secure the border of the United States. We should not be afraid of that.

We should send over a reconciliation package from the House of Representatives that immediately addresses remittances to Mexico. We should take fees on the remittances sent there and other countries around the world when people come to our country illegally and wire money back home, we should tax those remittances. Take that money and use it to pay for the wall, to pay for ICE agents, to pay for Border Patrol.

Apply fees, parole fees, to the parolees that were released unlawfully into the United States with notices to appear in court all the way into the 2030s, make them pay fees, and they can pay those fees and then go through the process or they can leave.

We are going to have to take all of those folks and remove them from the country and in the process, they can pay fees while we wait and figure out their notices to appear that were given to them, I believe, unlawfully. We can use that to pay for the process while we deport criminals, while we deport the people who came here who were got-aways, while we deport the 1 million people who have already been issued orders of removal. We can then line up the people who were given those notices to appear, take those fees, process those claims, and remove the vast majority of them.

We should do all of that as soon as we can in January, but we have got to do that here in the Chamber with a reconciliation package that will empower the President, give him the tools necessary to secure the border, and put pressure on those who are here illegally.

We also need to repeal these subsidies that were in the so-called Inflation Reduction Act that are jacking up the cost of energy and utilities for the vast majority of the American people, empowering our enemies, empowering China, actively engaging in corporate cronyism that are enriching the few at the expense of the many.

I look straight at big corporate America, including some of our folks in Texas in Big Oil and Big Gas that are now saddling up to the trough to take these great big subsidies. Your time is up. It has got to be up because while I have some colleagues here in the Chamber, including on my side of the aisle, who are running around to the microphone talking about how we are going to need to lift the caps, get rid of the caps that are currently in place on the deductions that people can take for State and local taxes, i.e., a Federal subsidy for high-tax jurisdictions, particularly in the northeast, but I will look in the mirror as that includes property taxes in Texas, which are off the charts, embarrassingly so, we shouldn't do that.

The Federal Government should not be subsidizing high-tax jurisdictions. While some of my colleagues here from States that have allowed it to fester to become high-tax jurisdictions, we shouldn't subsidize that.

If we get rid of the cap that was put in place in the 2017 deal that will cost over a trillion dollars over 10 years. Let me put that in perspective.

If we were to renew the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 from President Trump's agenda, according to the Congressional Budget Office, that would cost somewhere over $5 trillion over 10 years, or $500 billion a year for 10 years.

That does not factor in economic growth. There would be some, but the corporate rates are permanent. The provisions in the TCJA, by all objective measures, would not generate the revenue to pay for themselves, so we are going to have to cut spending so that we can leave that money in the hands of the American people as the TCJA set out to do. That means you are going to have to cut the Inflation Reduction Act. We are going to have to do it.

This isn't a debatable proposition, Mr. Speaker. If you want to have anything resembling a deficit neutral, tax reconciliation package, we must cut the Inflation Reduction Act. We must repeal it. We must roll back the abusive student loan forgiveness programs. We must make changes that were dotted throughout the discretionary spending with respect to the IRS expansion, leftover COVID moneys. We should restore nondefense spending to pre-COVID levels, which would save somewhere around $200 billion a year.

My point is, Republicans are going to have to actually put up or shut up. We cannot walk out of here, throw up a board, and say we are going to just pass all of these tax cuts or restore the existing tax cuts and then pretend like we don't need to cut spending at the same time.

We do. We must, and we mustn't remove the tax pay-fors that enabled that bill to pass in the first place, including those limits on the deduction for high-tax jurisdiction State and local tax deductions.

The fact of the matter is, if we are going to serve our country well--I think this is really important for everybody to know.

It is going to be pitched battle for some of us to convince our own Republican Party that we need to fight to get it to even deficit neutral. If we get it to deficit neutral, deficit neutrality, we are still losing $2 trillion a year.

We spend about $6.5 trillion, almost $7 trillion. We bring in about $4.5 trillion to $5 trillion.

My friend from Arizona put up all the charts on the mandatory spending. He is right. We need reforms. We need innovation, but most of all, we need a backbone and a willingness to actually address the problem.

However, if my friends are going to come in in January and say, we are just going to throw out all these tax policies but we are not going to deal with spending, then we are going to leave our country in a worse place.

There are a lot of things we could consider. President Trump has talked about doing tariffs. That would certainly bring in revenue. There are pros and cons to tariffs, and we certainly should consider the pro of significant revenue you can bring in.

Let's be very clear. If you are going to do a tariff, which is a tax, and you are going to tax goods and services that are coming in from overseas, fine. There might be some upsides to that in terms of American manufacturing.

Then we should consider what that impact is on the average, hardworking family. When tariffs were put in place 8 years ago, we then had to pass a bill for $45 billion to bail out farmers.

I am just trying to lay down a marker for my colleagues and for my constituents and for people viewing at home that we have to deliver. To deliver means being serious, and being serious means we must stop spending money we don't have.

We have to balance the budget of the United States, which we have been talking about for four decades. We need to enact good, sensible tax policy that will create growth. It can't be blind. When you are ignoring our duty to cut the size and scope of government and reduce spending, you can't just pretend, throw it out, and say: Oh, this will all pay for itself.

If taxes are cut all the way to zero, I am for it; but stop spending money. I will take bets right now on whether we have the willpower to do the actual cutting that is necessary.

Watch for the games that are played. Oh, we can't get it done in 10 years. Well, let's make it a 4-year deal. If it is a 4-year deal, then maybe you can pay for it. You can afford it. Then what does that do? That sets up another cliff in 4 years.

Do you want to get investment going in the United States? Make low tax rates permanent. Do you want to get capital formation moving? Stop letting the tax rates expire in 2 years, 4 years, or 6 years. Set sensible tax policy, make it permanent, and make it responsible. Then get the hell out of the way of America's innovators, entrepreneurs, inventors, and strong businessmen and businesswomen. I am not sure we are going to do that.

K Street would love to walk in here and say the TCJA has to get done. We need our R&D and expensing. We need to go cut some spending over here. No, no, no, don't cut my subsidies. You have Exxon and Big Oil and Big Gas companies in here saying: No, no, no, I want to keep those subsidies.

Why do they need subsidies? Why are we paying them to build inefficient,

nonreliable energy? Why are we subsidizing electronic vehicles which won't dent CO2 production, but we are subsidizing China and the battery production in China and the mining of minerals by China? That is what we are doing. Then nineteen Republicans signed a letter in August, saying we shouldn't repeal the Inflation Reduction Act.

I have multiple Members of this body saying we have got to lift the SALT cap. A lot of people are saying the tax cuts will pay for themselves. Some will. Some won't. Nobody is saying we should cut spending other than on the margins. That is not going to work. That math will not add up.

The fact is we have great news coming out of the President's transition team with Elon and Vivek and a lot of people around the President, talking about the Department of Government Efficiency. For what it is worth, I would prefer it be called the department of government elimination. I think that would be better. I am not looking for an efficient government. I am looking for a much smaller government.

I love what I am hearing out of Elon and Vivek and others that they want to slash and burn all the waste, fraud, and abuse. It is overdue. We need to fire the bureaucrats. We need to downsize and cut the bureaucracy.

Whatever programs should exist under the Constitution should be small, minimal. Blocks should be granted to the States. Get the Federal Government out of the way. Let the Federal Government do its job. Secure the border. Secure our communities by removing illegal aliens who are dangerous. Get people off of the social welfare States. Get every person who is here illegally, anybody who is here and not a citizen, off of the social welfare State. Strengthen our military. Destroy the woke policies and DEI and critical race theory that are killing the military. Get rid of it.

End endless wars. Rebuild our military to be modern but sparingly used. Take care of our veterans by giving them what they need to go to doctors and communities rather than a big, bloated bureaucracy that I think is now the fifth biggest line item on our budget.

These are all things we can do if we have the willpower to do it. Reform Medicaid. Reform Medicare. Do the things that we need to help the average American.

What are we going to do about healthcare? My friend, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who was nominated by the President, talks about making America healthy again. He is right. Much like the corruption in our energy world where big corporate America and the big wind and solar are getting big subsidies from the government to build inefficient energy, so, too, are insurance companies, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies getting rich off of taxpayers, getting subsidies, getting mandates, getting monopolies to roll right over the American people. All while we have collusion between USDA and NIH and CDC and all the rules and regulations they make that subsidies through the SNAP program, subsidizing sugary drinks, subsidizing processed food, making America unhealthy, making them sicker. Then they are prescribing medicine, overprescribing medicine, over-vaccinating so they get 50 shots by the time you are 20 for 14 or 15 vaccines--overmedicating people, medicating them for depression.

Then they are taking away their ability to go to the doctor of their choice because they have given all the power to insurance bureaucrats who tell them what their healthcare looks like. They have given all the power to big, monopolistic hospital corporations buying up regional hospitals and making it impossible for physicians to own hospitals while they allow private equity firms to own hospitals.

What are we doing? We are destroying the doctor-patient relationship. We are destroying American healthcare. If we want to save it, we need to embrace healthcare freedom.

In our reconciliation package, we must be aggressive in expansive health savings accounts, expansive direct primary care. Pull out the bias toward the employer-provided care by allowing employers to give employees the same subsidy for the same tax break into a health savings account and an American citizen who doesn't work for a big corporation can put their money for the same tax break in the same health savings account.

They can take that and go to the market and pay for a doctor and pay for medicine. They can go to direct primary care. They can get insurance in a market that is not overly regulated so they can actually get healthcare. Right now the American people aren't getting it. The American people are getting screwed. They are getting fatter. They are getting sicker. They are unhealthy because of government bureaucracy, because of government regulation, and because we refused, as Republicans, to deliver on what we have been saying for three decades: We would get government out of the way.

It is not about repealing ObamaCare. It is about repealing the alphabet soup of government regulation that is constraining the ability for innovation, the entrepreneurial spirit, the ability of doctors and patients to be able to provide the care that is necessary.

We can do it. We just have to decide to do it. We are going to have one or two or three bites at this apple early this year to deliver for the American people.

ObamaCare was passed on reconciliation. If you are familiar with COBRA, COBRA is that thing that allows you to extend between your employment, when you get a gap in employment, to get insurance coverage. Do you know why it is called COBRA? It is the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act.

COBRA was passed on a reconciliation bill. We do this all the time. Frankly, it is not the best way to make policy. We need to use the reconciliation tool in the House Chamber and send over to the Senate transformational policy changes, not nibbling around the edges.

It is time to transform this country. If we don't do it now, we are going to lose it. If we don't constrain spending now, if we don't set the trajectory of lower debt now, we will not have a dollar. We will not have a strong economy. If we don't set our country on the trajectory to healthcare freedom now, we will lose it. We will be jammed with single-payer healthcare and left with a life of begging some bureaucrat in an insurance company being run by people on Wall Street that are basically being told what to do by government bureaucrats. That is how you get your healthcare in a worse-than- single-payer system if we don't act right now.

If we don't act right now, we are not going to secure the border permanently. We are going to give lip service. We can't do that. It is not enough to reinstate remain in Mexico. It is not enough to reinstate title 42. It is not enough to stop the flow at the border to 30,000 instead of 180,000. If I recall, when President Trump ran in 2016, and he said build the wall, that is what the numbers were.

Republicans have to remember to not let them shift the Overton window and then beg for the crumbs to go partly back. If we repeal the Inflation Reduction Act fully right now, we just restore the status quo from 2022. I didn't run for Congress in 2018 to get my butt kicked in 2022 with a crappy bill and then beg to try to get it back to the place right before the crappy bill.

We can't do that. I didn't come here to say that we are $36 trillion in debt, man, God bless America. I really hope that we are only going to be $59 trillion in debt instead of $62 trillion in debt in 10 years.

I just made those numbers up. They are probably not even close.

My point is that we have to transform the country. We have American people right now who are inspired, inspired for change. They sent us here to secure the border, not to make excuses. They sent us here to stop the flow, deport the people illegitimately put in our country, freeze legal immigration, modernize our system, figure out what our labor supply is, and figure out what the workforce looks like.

We need to train American citizens. Let those citizens go to trade academies to learn how to do the jobs we need. We need to get all of these American workers who are sitting on the couch who are upside-down in the workforce while we import people but American citizens aren't working, fix that, and then talk to me about more immigration.

Don't come in here with your Chamber of Commerce talking points. I don't want to hear it. I am sick of it. The

Chamber of Commerce and all of big corporate America and Wall Street have been screwing this country for two or three decades. They have. It is because of them and the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal that we haven't fixed our border over the last three decades. If we don't do our job now, we are going to be sent to the ashbin of history as Republicans.

Secure the border--no excuses. Mass deportations--no excuses. Freeze immigration. Fix the system. Pass budgets that balance and cut spending. Reduce the debt. Reduce the bureaucracy. Cut the bureaucrats. Fire the people who need to be fired. Don't make excuses about why you can't do it.

Give the American people the healthcare freedom they deserve. Give them expanded health savings accounts. Give them access to direct primary care. Give them access to real insurance products. Allow them to choose.

Don't keep empowering big corporate America. Don't keep empowering pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies. Empower Americans. Empower doctors. Empower entrepreneurs. Empower small businesses. Empower American energy.

Repeal the Inflation Reduction Act. Stop subsidizing China. Stop subsidizing Big Oil with the subsidies they are taking on wind and solar.

President Trump is creating a team that wants to go through and dismantle the bureaucratic state. God bless him for it.

Tom Homan as the border czar, God bless him. He is a good friend, and I expect him to do a great job.

Bobby Kennedy, Jr., I don't agree with him on everything. I don't. He knows that. We talk about it. I do expect him to challenge the status quo. I expect him to try to make America healthy again. I expect him to try to make sure that the American people have the truth about the food they eat, the vaccines they take, and the medicine they take.

End the corruption and the revolving door between all the entities that are making money and the people in the government that are helping them make money while we don't get the truth on what food we are putting in our body, what medicines we are putting in our body, and then free up the American people.

Tulsi Gabbard, a good friend, was herself targeted by the intelligence community. I hope she will break that down.

We will have Mike Waltz as National Security Advisor.

Brendan Carr at the FCC--he believes in free speech, but more importantly in stopping Big Tech stomping on our rights.

Marco Rubio is nominated as Secretary of State.

Matt Gaetz at the Attorney General's Office in the Department of Justice.

We need people who are going to root out corruption, who are going to root out all of the weaponized state over in the bureaucracy.

However, the President can't do it alone. We are Article I. We are the people's House. We have an obligation in this body to do the job the American people sent us here to do. Each of us represents 750,000 people. I represent 750,000 Texans. I answer to them; I answer to God; and I answer to the Constitution. That is it. I don't answer to party leadership. I don't answer to the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. I answer to them.

That should guide us. We should come together so that we are all responding to the people who sent us here to change this town. No more doing the same old thing. The time is up. We cannot look at our kids and grandkids and believe that we are going to pass down a country to them if we continue to do the same old thing.

We have been given an opportunity, and we should take it. I do not want to have to give another speech on the floor of the House in which I say to ``name one thing.'' I want to be able to say: ``Name a 100 things that we have done for the American people. Name a 100 things that we have accomplished.''

Those things should be shrinking government, cutting spending, empowering people, restoring liberty, securing the country, doing the things the Constitution gave us the power to do--nothing more, nothing less. That is our obligation. That is our mandate.

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