Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding to give me this opportunity to speak.

I believe that the greatest issue that we face in this country is the extreme concentration of wealth and power at the very top. It is unprecedented and dangerous.

At the end of 2024, the 65 million Americans with the least amount of wealth had about $4 trillion in wealth combined. The 905 billionaires at the end of 2024 had nearly $8 trillion in wealth. So put another way, 900 people have nearly twice as much wealth as 65 million Americans. Mr. Speaker, 900 people is the size of a small high school. Mr. Speaker, 65 million is almost the population of the entire Midwest. And $8 trillion is double, double what every American owes in student loans, car loans, credit cards, and nearly every other type of debt combined, meaning that these 905 billionaires could pay for everyone's debt in the United States and still be superrich.

Now, this may have gotten worse in 2025 in large part because of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that spent trillions and trillions of dollars on tax cuts for the superwealthy at the expense of millions and millions of Americans and that cut over a trillion dollars in healthcare. Fifteen million Americans are going to lose their

healthcare to pay for tax cuts for the superwealthy. So that concentration of wealth and power got worse, probably worse in 1 single year, in one single vote than any other time in American history.

During my lifetime, since I was born, CEO pay has increased by over 1,000 percent, while worker pay has increased by 25 percent. On average, right now, a CEO makes more in a single day than a worker does in an entire year. The concentration of wealth and power has given a small group of superelites the ability to make all the big decisions in this country, and they have used their power and influence to further rig our economy and politics to benefit themselves at the expense of everyone else. This obviously got infinitely worse with Citizens United.

This was a multidecade campaign that big corporations and the superwealthy paid for to get a Supreme Court that would change the law so that they could spend whatever they wanted on their politicians. Now they can spend unlimited amounts of money on elections, on campaigns, and on politicians, and they don't have to report any of it.

Every major issue in this country, whether it is the attacks on our democracy, the issues with our economy, or healthcare, it all can be traced back to the concentration of wealth and power and Citizens United.

It is why the American Dream is out of touch for the vast majority of Americans by nearly every measure.

Mr. Speaker, look no further than the fact that most Americans can no longer buy a home, and one in four Americans have zero dollars saved for retirement.

This is a crisis and a moment of reckoning. All of the money is stuck at the top, and our big mission, the thing that our generation has to do, is reclaim that money, that power and wealth, back for the American people. That is the number one thing. At the end of the day, our generation has to reclaim that power and wealth on behalf of the American people and return it to them.

The first thing we have to do is fix our democracy and politics, returning power back to the people. This includes banning dark money, reversing Citizens United, and ending voter suppression and eliminating partisan gerrymandering once and for all. It also includes government reforms to actually get rid of waste, fraud, and abuse and corruption of every kind.

Once power is back with people, we will be able to address all of the other major issues in our country.

We will have leaders who are willing to fix our broken economy and overhaul our tax code so that hard work pays off for every American.

Fixing the tax code does two things. One, it will ensure that the superwealthy and big corporations pay all their taxes just like the rest of us, and two, it will generate trillions of dollars that will be invested back in the American people. There will be trillions to help people with housing, healthcare, and education. It will help us pay down the debt. It will fix nearly everything that is broken in this country.

The economy belongs to all of us, not just the superwealthy. Fixing and reversing Citizens United will allow us to fundamentally improve the lives of every American and fundamentally improve our economy.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for leading this work, and I appreciate him allowing me to say a few words.

Mr. Speaker, I have been watching this debate, and I will say just one thing, which is, Mr. Speaker, I remember when the Republican Party was about small government, local control, and personal liberties. Those were the foundations of the party that I grew up with.

I wasn't a Republican, but I admired those things about the party. It seems as if they all have strayed, Mr. Speaker, from those core tenets of personal liberty, States' rights, local control, leaving people alone.

We are talking about children here, kids who get bullied, who have the highest suicide rates of any other group of kids. Now, politicians are bullying them and saying that they are going to pick on them, too. It is wrong.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the Congresswoman for her incredible leadership and remarkable remarks.

I rise today on behalf of the children of Ukraine. More than 35,000 children from Ukraine have been stolen by Vladimir Putin. These children are being hidden in Russia and being sent to indoctrination camps. Some are even being trained as soldiers to fight against their own country.

We can't wait for a peace agreement to reunite these children with their families. They are not bargaining chips, and Putin must release them now.

As the father of two, I can't imagine the terror of having a child taken from our family, from our home.

Earlier this year, we uncovered a State Department program to track these abducted children had been terminated. We were able to get it back up and running.

Our bill, the Abducted Ukrainian Kids Recovery and Accountability Act, will restart this program so that we can keep tracking every single child. This bill was included in the NDAA and will be signed into law tonight. We can't stop until these children are back where they belong, which is home.

Mr. Speaker, of the 22 million Americans who rely on the Affordable Care Act subsidies, 32,000 live in my district. They are about to experience healthcare costs that are skyrocketing. They want one thing, that is it, Mr. Speaker. They want one thing. They want us to extend the Affordable Care Act subsidies. Eighty percent of Americans have said this is what they want. These are farmers, small businesses, and families. If they were in this Chamber today, they would point to the well and say: There are 218 signatures on this discharge petition. Just put it on the floor, vote for it, and give us the subsidies that help us pay for our healthcare.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the ranking member for yielding time.

Mr. Speaker, it is simple. The bill weakens States' rights and their ability to manage clean water. It essentially says: Look, we will send these pipelines through our communities and through our States. We don't want to hear anything from these communities. We don't want them to raise objections, even if it is around the quality of water and the quality of air.

It is also true that it doesn't fundamentally address the larger issue, or a big issue, of the rising costs of energy and the impact that the global trade wars that this administration has pursued has had on the rising costs of utility bills.

For this reason, at the appropriate time, I will offer a motion to recommit this bill back to committee. If the House rules had permitted, I would have offered an amendment to this bill, requiring the Department of Energy to tell the American people in a report how this administration's illegal tariffs, these trade wars, have raised prices on electricity and gas.

The Joint Economic Committee estimates that families have already paid $1,200 more this year because of the tariffs. The tariffs and the trade wars have jacked up prices, and that includes energy prices. We need accountability. The American people deserve to know how much this is costing them so that they can push on us to end these trade wars and the high cost of living, including energy costs.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to include in the Record the text of this amendment immediately prior to the vote on the motion to recommit.

Mr. SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Ohio?

Mr. Speaker, I hope my colleagues will join me in voting for the motion to recommit.

Mr. Speaker, I have a motion to recommit at the desk.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to call for a vote on the extension of the Affordable Care Act subsidies that help 22 million Americans afford their healthcare.

As you all know, they expire at the end of the year. If Congress does nothing, costs will skyrocket, and people will lose their healthcare.

In my district alone, 32,000 people will see their costs skyrocket, and 14,000 people will lose their healthcare entirely. This means that people will be unable to afford their medicine, kids will miss critical treatment, and people with serious conditions will lose access to care overnight.

There is still no commitment from the Speaker to extend these credits and no plan to prevent the healthcare crisis we know is coming.

There is a bipartisan effort and bipartisan support to extend these credits, and I urge my colleagues to join these efforts in getting this done and getting it done now.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor Marc Fisher, a constituent of mine who has spent more than 35 years leading our Jewish community in Cincinnati.

For the past 13 years, Marc has served as CEO of the Mayerson JCC. He has worked incredibly hard for the community in which he grew up, and because of his leadership, the J has thrived. Membership grew. Early childhood and senior programs expanded, and partnerships flourished. During the pandemic, the J was a reliable source of strength and connection.

That is what Marc brought to this work: a true effort to make sure everyone could find a place in our community.

He will retire at the end of the year, but the impact he has had will last for a very long time.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Marc for all he has done for the Mayerson JCC and for all of southwest Ohio.

Madam Speaker, I rise today on behalf of the girls and women in my district who just lost access to their healthcare because of this budget bill.

Just weeks after this bill passed, two Planned Parenthood clinics in southwest Ohio are closing. These are clinics thousands of girls and women rely on for things like cancer screenings and contraceptive care, their basic healthcare.

It is a direct attack on women, and it is just the start. Millions and millions of Americans will lose their healthcare. In the end, more than 15 million people could be left without care, all to pay for tax cuts for millionaires, billionaires, and big corporations.

All it takes is a Congress that it is willing to make the wealthiest in America pay their taxes like the rest of us and give those 15 million Americans their healthcare back. It is that simple.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Ohio (Mr. Latta) and Mr. Pallone.

This is, I think, a really important bipartisan piece of legislation. It is a very simple and straightforward bill. It is simpler than the name itself. H.R. 1709, the Understanding Cybersecurity of Mobile Networks Act, is a mouthful, but the bill is really quite simple, as Mr. Latta and Mr. Pallone described.

We have foreign adversaries like Russia and China that are attempting to get our data. There have been breaches, including our own personal data and personal devices, and so the goal of this bill is to require an interagency group to build out all the information we need to ensure that we understand where all of our vulnerabilities are and that we are dealing with those vulnerabilities--where are the gaps, how our foreign adversaries are accessing data, how could they be accessing our data, and how to further our ability to stop our enemies from attacking our individual devices.

This is an important step toward understanding and improving our cybersecurity for the safety and protection of all Americans. It passed overwhelmingly in the Energy and Commerce Committee. This is a bipartisan bill. I thank the staff on both sides of the Energy and Commerce Committee, Republican and Democratic, for helping us put this together.

Mr. Speaker, I urge all of my colleagues to support it today.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to amend the rule to make in order the amendment at the desk that protects against any cuts to Medicaid and SNAP.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today on behalf of my constituents and the thousands of folks that have called our office begging Congress not to cut their healthcare or their food assistance all to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy.

One of the calls came from a single mother who just moved to Cincinnati to escape domestic violence. She is raising a daughter with disabilities and relies on Medicaid and food assistance. She relies on both to survive.

There is a 62-year-old woman on a fixed income. Food assistance is the only way she has enough food.

These stories matter because Trump and congressional Republicans are pushing this bill that cuts $300 billion from food assistance and over $1 trillion from healthcare. Mr. Speaker, 16 million Americans will lose their healthcare. Why? To pay for tax cuts for the superwealthy and big corporate investors.

It is a terrible bill. It is deeply unpopular. It will cost people their lives. Kill the bill. Save Americans.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to share a story of a constituent and friend, Shane. Shane has a rare and painful disorder that makes the skin incredibly fragile and there is no cure.

Thanks to breakthrough gene therapy, one Shane helped to test, he and others finally have hope, but that hope is diminishing.

At Trump's urging, congressional Republicans are proposing a nearly $1 trillion cut in healthcare and have already slashed rare disease funding by over a billion dollars. They are blocking a policy that would allow Medicaid to cover out-of-State care essential for families with children or loved ones with this rare condition, especially since so few hospitals specialize in rare diseases.

Shane lives in Cincinnati, so he has Cincinnati Children's Hospital, but with these cuts, services at Children's will be undermined.

Shane told me recently: I want to use whatever time I have left to help others with this and other rare diseases.

I just wanted to come to the floor today to thank Shane. We are fighting for him and we are fighting with him and every family facing these terrible decisions with these healthcare cuts.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Ranking Member Pallone for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, the Securing Semiconductor Supply Chains Act, as has been said, is a very straightforward, commonsense bill. It will help strengthen our domestic semiconductor industry and grow U.S. manufacturing.

Semiconductors are the foundation of modern technology and core to our national security. They power everything from our cell phones, laptops, cars, medical devices, and critical infrastructure. They are key to the way in which we live our lives, and they are, in fact, very important in terms of national security.

The more we can build these semiconductors here the better. That means we don't rely on other countries.

What this bill does is it directs the Department of Commerce to work with State economic development agencies to better understand how to attract not just American investment but foreign investment into America's semiconductor industry.

It will help identify the gaps, barriers, and opportunities to bring these new investments and then inform Congress so that we can boost investments from our allies and partners.

There is way too much uncertainty in our economy right now. This bill is smart, bipartisan, and a good way to protect and grow our supply chains.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor a remarkable human being, a dear friend, Francie Pepper. Francie, at her core, was a mom and a grandmother but also an advocate, a philanthropist, and a champion for women and children.

Francie led enormous change for survivors of domestic violence. It is just one of many examples of the impact she had, but a critical one. She never stopped fighting for what she knew was right.

Her home in Cincinnati was a place for community and community change. She built coalitions and inspired generations of public servants, including me.

Francie wasn't just a leader. She was a force. I am who I am in part because of her. That is true for so many of us. We are the beneficiaries of her grit and her toughness and her love.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today because this administration, the folks who are in charge of this country, after promising lower prices and a better economy, are actively jacking up prices and tanking the economy.

Last year in Ohio, we imported $86 billion in goods. Now, nearly every country in the entire world is dealing with these tariffs because of a trade war that no one but one man wanted. The price of all of this will fall on us.

It is a tax on nearly everything we buy, everything we sell. Americans have watched their hard-earned savings vanish as the markets have tanked every day since the announcement.

Trump has now unilaterally placed the highest sales tax on Americans in the history of this country.

The impact? Higher prices across the board. The average family is expected to pay an extra $4,000 this year alone. They cannot afford that.

Trump says: ``I couldn't care less.''

Mr. Speaker, we need to end this chaos.