Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, a recent vaccine trial for patients with pancreatic cancer using mRNA technology produced an astounding result: Pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest forms of cancer.

More than 90 percent of people diagnosed with pancreatic cancer die within 2 years, but among those who were in this vaccine trial, half are still alive today, more than 6 years later.

If these results continue in future rounds of the trial, we will have made an incredible breakthrough that could give new hope not only to those with pancreatic cancer but other forms of cancer, as well. This is just one of many ongoing studies showing great promise.

Unfortunately, right when we are on the cusp of making incredible advances in the fight against cancer, the funding for this research is under threat.

Last year, the White House proposed cutting funding for cancer research by 40 percent and canceled a number of research grants. Some of the biggest cuts have been to research of mRNA, the same technology used in the successful pancreatic cancer trial.

In August, the administration canceled grants for 22 mRNA vaccine research studies alone. This does not make America healthier.

My own family has been afflicted by cancer. I know the agony people feel when they receive that terrible diagnosis, the horrible process of chemo and radiation, the cost, and the sorrow that American families have had to live with because of a serious cancer diagnosis.

We cannot turn our backs on those families when we are so close to finding

real cures. We have to continue funding the research.

The truth is that, even before the current administration, we weren't doing enough. Last year, the Federal Government spent about $7 billion on cancer research. The war in Iran is costing us more than a billion dollars a day.

Think about that. We will spend more on the war in Iran in 1 week than we spend on cancer research in an entire year. Think about the lives that could be saved and the families who would get to spend more holidays and graduations with their loved ones if we had the right priorities.

We don't need to spend billions more on unnecessary wars in the Middle East or ballrooms or more ICE agents. Instead, let's do what we do best as a country and invest in innovation and science to save lives.

Stock-Trading Ban

Mr. Speaker, it has been exactly 1 year since Speaker Johnson said that he supports a stock-trading ban for Members of Congress. One year, and what has happened? Absolutely nothing.

We need to pass a congressional stock-trading ban because it is not fair that Members of Congress have access to inside information that influences major industries--the pharmaceutical industry, the tech industry, and others--and can trade off of that information that average Americans don't have.

By the way, Members of Congress should not be conflicted when making decisions about how to legislate. The overwhelming majority of the American people want this reform. They understand that we have a corruption problem in Washington.

If a bill were brought to the floor today, it would pass overwhelmingly. I have a bipartisan bill along with Chip Roy, and Members on both the left, right, and center: Pramila Jayapal, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Brian Fitzpatrick, and Tim Burchett. We have a great bill with over 100 cosponsors. We could vote on that today, and it would pass.

We have got a discharge petition. We can get this done. We need a Speaker with the courage to do the right thing and call a vote.

Mr. Speaker, the American people are tired of morally bankrupt politicians who are always saying that there is not enough money for healthcare, there is not enough money for education, and there is not enough money for housing but who are willing to spend more than $1 billion a day on an unnecessary war of choice. It is a war that has taken the lives of 13 American servicemembers and that has taken the lives of over 100 elementary school children, who were bombed in their school. Horrific. It is a war that has raised gas prices, home heating oil prices, and fertilizer prices on the American people.

Now, that may not matter in Mar-a-Lago, where everything looks good. Yet, to the average working American, they don't know why they are being asked to pay for this unnecessary war, and neither do any of us.

The administration has not given us any evidence--and I have gone to every briefing, classified briefings and otherwise--any evidence that Iran was plotting an imminent threat against the United States, an imminent attack, any evidence that they were close to getting a nuclear weapon--none.

This is an unnecessary war, a costly war. We have an opportunity to end it today, and I urge my colleagues to do that.

Mr. Speaker, here is how you know that Washington is broken. Instead of voting to end the war, end the tariffs, and lower healthcare costs, what are we doing? Yesterday, we debated 14 bills to rename post offices. This is why people think that Congress sucks.

Our Congress, our House, is supposed to be the envy of the world. Instead, our current leadership is doing everything that they can to make us irrelevant.

Why? Money. The oil companies are making money off the Iran war. The drug companies are making money. The President is getting money for his ballroom.

I wish that more people in Washington would figure out how to spend their time on lawmaking instead of moneymaking.

We need to end this corruption. We need to pass a congressional stock trading ban, get dark money out of elections, and make this city work for the people again so that working Americans can afford to pay their bills.

Mr. Speaker, however bad you think the corruption is in Washington, I promise you it is worse.

At the Department of Homeland Security, Corey Lewandowski allegedly demanded that companies pay him a fee in exchange for taxpayer contracts

and Tom Homan was caught on tape accepting $50,000 of cash in a paper bag from undercover FBI agents. The President himself has made billions selling cryptocurrencies since he took office. We don't even know who he sold it to.

Meta, X, and Paramount gave $63 million to the President's library fund, which was then dissolved. Where did that money go? It disappeared.

Meanwhile, Members of Congress can trade stocks of companies that we vote to regulate and can go to online prediction markets to bet on whether bills that we wrote are going to pass or not.

If you want to know why big corporations are given a free pass by Washington to jack up prices and gouge people, this is why. If you want to know why the oil and gas companies make billions while people can't heat their homes or why the cost of food and healthcare is out of control, it is because of the corruption.

Mr. Speaker, enough is enough. We need to crack down on this.

Mr. Speaker, big corporations continue to make billions and billions of dollars while working people can't afford the essentials, can't afford groceries, can't afford healthcare, can't afford to keep a roof over their heads. This happens because politicians in Washington let it happen.

If we want to do something about the fact that the oil and gas companies are making hundreds of billions of dollars a year while people can't afford their electric bills, if we want to do something about the drug companies making billions and billions of dollars while people can't afford the medicine they need to live, then we need to clean up our own house.

Until we get dark money out of elections, until we pass my bill to ban stock trading in Congress, until we take anticorruption seriously, then too many politicians will continue to work for the big, powerful corporations instead of for the American people who sent us here. It is time for a change.

Mr. Speaker, there are more than 60 million Americans aged 65 and older, nearly 20 percent of our population.

Older Americans face a range of challenges: dealing with rising costs on a fixed income; getting access to the care they need, housing, and transportation; dealing with scams and elder abuse; and more.

That is why we must reestablish the Select Committee on Aging in the House of Representatives, to ensure that older Americans' needs are being looked at holistically by this body.

The committee existed from 1974 to 1994. Its work led to the passage of legislation to make nursing homes safer, increase home care benefits, improve research and care of Alzheimer's, and more. It is time to bring it back.

Along with Republican Representative Maria Salazar of Florida, I am reintroducing a bipartisan bill to do just that. I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support it for today's seniors and for future generations.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to include this article in support of the bill in the Congressional Record.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that I may hereafter be considered to be the first sponsor of H.R. 537, INCREASE Housing Affordability Act, a bill originally introduced by Representative Sherrill of New Jersey, for the purpose of adding cosponsors and requesting reprintings pursuant to clause 7 of rule XII.

Mr. Speaker, on February 24, 2026, a historic blizzard and flight cancellations prevented me from making it to Washington, D.C. in time to vote in support of the ROTOR Act. Had I been present, I would have voted YEA on Roll Call No. 72, S. 2503--ROTOR Act.

Mr. Speaker, President Trump's tariffs are raising costs on working people. Just like everything else that Donald Trump does, his tariffs are all about helping himself and his rich friends at the expense of everyday people.

The Big Tech companies and the Big Oil companies have been donating millions of dollars to Trump's ballroom and lavishing him with gifts like a golden iPhone.

Wouldn't you know it, Mr. Speaker, he exempted them from the tariffs.

Who is not exempt?

They are the small businesses, the farmers, the restaurants, and the small manufacturers who can't afford to go to Mar-a-Lago to ask for special deals. They are the builders who are paying thousands of dollars more for materials to build new homes, and they are everyday people who are stuck with higher costs, working themselves to the bone and who can't keep up with their bills.

In Donald Trump's America, the rich and connected are always taken care of, and everyone else struggles.

For what, Mr. Speaker?

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' report that came out today, we lost more than 100,000 manufacturing jobs last year.

End these tariffs. Stop this madness, and lower costs for working people.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend and colleague, Representative Stansbury, for bringing us together tonight to discuss an important and alarming situation.

Every American should be outraged at the Trump administration's attempt to erase American history and specifically to erase the history of Black, Native American, Hispanic, and other people of color who have helped shape this country.

The Department of the Interior under this administration recently removed a slavery-related exhibit at Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia recognizing people enslaved by the Founders. They removed a sign from Wyoming's Grand Teton National Park mentioning Native American massacres. They have removed a sign at Bent's Old Fort National Historic Site in Colorado describing the forced removal of a Native Tribe and a family's slave ownership.

Why? Why are they doing this? When people try to erase history, they are often doing it because they want to shape the future. They want to shape a future in which America does not honor the full diversity that has made our country the beacon of light that it is in the world. They do not want people to know about the struggle that went into building this more perfect Union. They want to build a future that looks more like the past. We cannot allow that to happen.

This insidious plot to erase American history goes far beyond the national parks and the Department of the Interior. The Trump administration has given guidance to Federal agencies to limit the use of or avoid using 200 words, including ``Tribal,'' ``Native American,'' ``immigrants,'' ``racial,'' ``Black,'' and ``women.''

They are not trying to erase all of our history. In fact, they have restored a Confederate statue of General Albert Pike here in Washington, D.C., and ordered a portrait of Robert E. Lee to be placed in the Pentagon. These are men who committed treason against this country in the defense of slavery.

This administration has continued to allow its own employees to post white supremacist language on social media. A 25-year-old DOGE employee wrote: ``You could not pay me to marry outside my ethnicity,'' and, ``Normalize Indian hate.'' This came to light a year ago. He is still employed by the administration.

The assistant chief counsel for ICE had a social media account: ``America is a White nation,'' and ``'Migrants' are all criminals.'' He is still employed.

Mr. Speaker, this is not okay. We must fight back, and I thank my colleague for bringing attention to this matter.

Yesterday, at this time, Liam Ramos was at his preschool in Minneapolis, and today, as we speak, he is in a prison cell in Texas against the will of his parents.

Mr. Speaker, what are we doing here?

I am a member of the Committee on Homeland Security, and under the Biden administration, I pushed for more resources to secure the border. I know that we need to enforce immigration laws, but not like this.

They are sending masked agents into American neighborhoods. They are beating people in the streets. They are breaking into homes without a judicial warrant, profiling people based on their appearance or their accent, and detaining them if they don't have their citizenship papers on them.

Mr. Speaker, is this what we have become, a country where everyone has to carry their citizenship papers around in case masked men come and threaten to beat them, detain them, and throw them into a vehicle?

Is that what we have become?

By the Department of Homeland Security's own data, the vast majority of the people whom they have detained have no criminal record at all. They are detaining and deporting U.S. military veterans, children with cancer, and pregnant women. We don't have to do it like this. We can enforce immigration laws without this level of cruelty.

Now they are asking us to give them a blank check to continue funding this. We, as a Congress, need to start doing our jobs and put commonsense guardrails in place.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this bill until there are real guardrails in the way that DHS is behaving.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the ranking member for yielding. I rise in opposition to this bill, which will only hurt the retirement savings of millions of Americans.

Our Republican colleagues are once again prioritizing culture wars over working people and threatening the retirement savings of nurses, teachers, police officers, and healthcare workers, who are just trying to save for their future with peace of mind.

The bill before us today injects politics into investment decisions that should be guided by sound financial judgment.

Let me be clear. Environmental, social, and governance risks are material and pecuniary, and companies that adopt thoughtful policies on these risks outperform those that don't over the long term.

If an oil company is cutting corners, and it leads to a spill that is expensive to the company, that hurts shareholders. That hurts people who are saving for retirement. That is a failure to manage an environmental risk.

If a company maintains a culture in the office that allows rampant discrimination that causes lawsuits that are expensive to the company, that is a social factor. That is a material risk.

If executive pay is structured in a way where it is not tied to shareholder performance, that is a risk.

As a former State treasurer, I know that ignoring these risks does not make them disappear.

By the way, the proxy voting process is an important way for shareholders to tell executives at companies when they think that something needs to change. They are nonbinding. What this bill would do is make it harder for shareholders to vote to put even nonbinding items in front of a board to consider.

I have heard the other side say that this bill does not preclude ESG factors from being considered if they are material, but that is not true in practice. What will happen in practice is that SEC bureaucrats and political appointees will get to choose what is material and what is not.

Any time an executive, a corporate executive, doesn't like what a shareholder proposal is about, they can go to the SEC and say: ``Keep this off the ballot. I don't want to see it.'' It will be up to those bureaucrats and political appointees to decide what is material and what is not.

How about we trust the investors? How about we trust the people who are actually doing the work? How about we trust the plan participants, the workers, and the retirees? Anyone who has a 401(k) or an IRA will tell you that they can go on the website and pick from a range of different plans based on what they think is a good idea for them. Why don't we trust them instead of trusting bureaucrats and political appointees to make decisions for everybody else?

Understand why we are here and who this bill helps. This bill helps corporate executives who do not want to be held accountable by their own shareholders.

Mr. Speaker, this bill helps executives who do not want to be held accountable by their own shareholders for material ESG risks.

It all comes down to time horizons, as Mr. Casten said. When I was State treasurer, I had 60,000 people who were relying on me for their retirement. I had people who were 90- or 100-year-old retirees, and I had first-year teachers who were 23 years old. I owed just as much of a fiduciary duty to those 23-year-olds as the 90-year-olds.

So long-term factors and ESG factors matter even when corporate executives who are focused on the short term don't care about them.

This bill claims to be about free markets. It is the opposite. It is taking choice away from investors and away from retirees and plan participants and putting it in the hands of bureaucrats and political appointees.

Mr. Speaker, I urge a ``no'' vote.

Mr. Speaker, 2025 was one of the worst years for job growth in decades. In fact, if you don't count COVID, the United States created fewer jobs last year than any year since 2009. You don't need data. Just ask anyone who has been looking for a job. They will tell you no one is hiring.

This weak economy is a direct result of President Trump's policies: the crazy tariffs that are raising costs for businesses and consumers, massive cuts to healthcare, and the political attacks on clean energy that are driving up energy costs.

The President claimed that his tariffs would help American manufacturing, but instead we have lost 72,000 manufacturing jobs since Liberation Day, after years of gains.

What is the President focused on as working people struggle? He is focused on building himself a new ballroom, naming the Kennedy Center after himself, trying to take over Greenland, and selling cryptocurrency out of the White House to enrich himself. None of this creates jobs or lower costs for you or the millions of Americans who are struggling. It is time for the President to focus on the real needs of the American people.

Mr. Speaker, in Rhode Island and all across the country, people are being crushed by high healthcare costs because Republicans have refused to extend the Affordable Care Act funding. People are seeing their premiums go up by thousands of dollars a year, and many of them are having to make that hard choice to not go with insurance at all and hope that they won't end up with an emergency room bill that will bankrupt them.

Meanwhile, President Trump and the Republicans are talking about buying Greenland. They have the money to buy Greenland but not to help fund healthcare for the American people. They have the money. Donald Trump wants to expand the size of the military budget by $500 billion which he just posted today, but they don't have the money to fund healthcare for the American people. They have the money for ballrooms and lavish parties.

Here is an idea. How about we invest in providing relief to the American people who are being crushed by out-of-control healthcare costs. We have an opportunity now to do the right thing by the people who sent us here and to extend this Affordable Care Act funding now once and for all.

Mr. Speaker, do not let anyone rewrite the history of what happened on January 6, 2021. A mob tried to overturn a free and fair election and deny the American people of our God-given right to choose our own leaders. They attacked police officers with pipes, rocks, and other weapons. It was domestic terrorism. Let's call it what it is.

They did it because President Trump lied to them and repeatedly said that he did not lose the election when he, in fact, did. Democracy only survives when leaders put the will of the people ahead of their own selfish ambition and when the rule of law is enforced. We thank the hundreds of brave police officers who put their lives in harm's way to defend the Capitol and our democracy.

They know what it means to be patriotic Americans and their courage stands in sharp contrast to many of the Republican Members of this Congress who are too cowardly to tell the truth about what really happened on January 6.

We deserve leaders who stand for the Constitution, stand for our democracy, not only when it is convenient for them but always. We must defend American democracy.