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House Speaker Mike Johnson and other Republican leaders talked to reporters about FEMA funding and the legislative agenda for the new Congress.
The news conference came as Republicans are poised to retain their majority in the House and gain a majority in the Senate following the November 2024 elections.
Good morning, everyone.
Thank you for being here.
We're looking forward to being back here for another productive week before we break for Thanksgiving.
So happy Thanksgiving to everyone on the front end.
House Republicans are continuing our preparations for the 119th Congress so we can hit the ground running and leverage our unified Republican leadership in the White House, House, and Senate to deliver the American people, deliver for the American people in meaningful ways.
We're also staying busy during this lame duck period advancing important legislation, including two critical bills that I'll briefly highlight here.
My friend and colleague on the Ways and Means Committee, Claudia Tenney from New York, she is pushing the Stop the Terror Financing and Tax Penalty on American Hostages Act.
We'll put that on the floor this week.
This is a common sense piece of legislation that will prevent the IRS from charging late fees and penalties on American citizens who are wrongfully detained or held hostage abroad.
Again, a common sense piece of legislation.
This bill also revokes the tax-exempt status of American nonprofits that provide financial or material support to terrorist groups like Hamas.
This bill addresses critical gaps in our tax laws to hold organizations and support terrorism accountable and provide relief for hostages who are just trying to get home and reunite with their families.
Second bill, we're also bringing to the floor Congressman Russ Folcher's Committing Leases for Energy Access Now Act, the Clean Act, which will require the Department of Interior to increase the frequency of geothermal lease sales from every two years to every year, hold replacement sales if necessary, and create decision deadlines for permit applications for better transparency and communication.
We know that diverse and reliable energy sources are critical to our national security and American energy dominance, and geothermal energy provides clean, baseload power that utilizes the resources that we have here in the United States.
Again, two common sense pieces of legislation that I'm sure you all are chomping at the bit to talk about extensively today in this press conference.
Looking forward to supporting both these measures and I will now turn the time over to our whip, Mr. Tom Emmer.
Thank you, Blake.
18 minutes.
This is how long Lake and Riley fought for her life until she was ultimately murdered because of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and the Democrats' open border agenda.
Police found Lakin with her skull bashed in by a rock and her body exposed.
Yesterday, we learned that Democrats' failed policies resulted in Lakin's alleged killer receiving a taxpayer-funded flight from New York City to Georgia.
This is a slap in the face to the entire Riley family.
A slap in the face to every law-abiding, tax-paying American citizen.
And it confirms what we've known all along.
Lake and Riley's murder was entirely preventable, and the Biden-Harris administration is responsible.
Unfortunately, her story is not an isolated one.
There's 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungari.
There's 37-year-old Rachel Morin.
And these are just the cases we know about.
All of these young women were brutally murdered because the White House prioritized illegal immigrants over their safety.
Thankfully, on November 5th, voters said enough is enough.
They elected a Republican president, a Republican House, and a Republican Senate with a mandate to get this crisis under control and end the Democrats' open borders insanity once and for all.
And that's exactly what we're going to do.
With President Trump leading the way, our Republican trifecta is ready to hit the ground running on day one to secure our borders and ensure criminal, illegal aliens are removed from our communities.
January 20th cannot come fast enough.
And now our majority leader, Steve Scalise.
Thank you, Whip.
Blake laid out the bills that we're bringing to the floor again this week.
Yesterday, we passed a really important bill for our nation's veterans by Juan Siscomani, named after Elizabeth Dole.
It was good to get that bill passed overwhelmingly out of the House, now over to the Senate.
I'm going to talk a little bit about the planning that we're doing for January.
You know, we just got an overwhelming mandate from the voters of this country to, number one, reject the far-left policies that we've seen from the Biden-Harris administration the last four years, but especially to put the country on a different path.
And we laid out during the campaign what that path would be, but we're now planning for the policies that we would put in place as a Republican majority with a Republican Senate and the White House under President Trump to get our country back on track, to focus on lowering costs for family at the grocery store, at the gas pump, their energy bills, to secure America's border.
So once again, I assembled all the committee chairs last week to go through what we will be doing in budget reconciliation starting in January.
This is going to be a busy process next year.
We laid out a very aggressive first hundred-day agenda, addressing the things that would get our country moving again, that would focus on lowering costs and getting our economy moving, making sure there is no tax hike next year.
You know, if Congress takes no action, the tax cuts and jobs act under President Trump, many of those provisions from 2017 would expire, leading to a large tax hike on families.
We are going to work to prevent that from happening.
So ultimately, if you look at what we're focused on right now is being ready day one, starting in January, when we get not only that mandate, but that opportunity to get this country back on track with unified government in Washington to start addressing the problems that were created by President Biden and Vice President Harris, we are ready for that moment.
We're already making plans, working with President Trump to get our country moving again quickly so that families can finally get relief, the relief that they not only deserve, but the relief that they voted for just a few weeks ago.
And so leading that charge while he's not hanging out with Kid Rock at UFC fights and jellyroll is our Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson.
Thanks a lot.
Good morning to everybody.
Glad to see such a full crowd.
Every seat taken, almost standing room only in here.
It is almost like a UFC fight in Madison Square Garden, almost as fun.
All seriousness, we had a great weekend at Mar-a-Lago with President-elect Trump talking about the legislative plan, talking about the agenda going forward, lots of substantive discussions.
I met with President Trump and President-elect Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance and their senior policy leaders.
And there's no daylight between their agenda and what they envision and what we envision for the House.
And in order to accomplish all of that, the President needs an aggressive cabinet.
And he has put forward some extraordinary nominees.
I've met with many of them individually since those announcements have been made.
And we're excited about the days ahead.
House Republicans are committed to working with President Trump and his nominees and the administration as we prepare for what will be a breakneck 119th Congress.
The agenda will be fast-paced.
The first 100 days will be very full, as we have a lot to fix.
And as I've said many times, I believe President Trump could be the most consequential president of the modern era because we have to fix everything.
And by extension, Congress can be as well.
And the incoming administration is going to be filled with great men and women.
And I trust, we trust and hope that Senate Republicans and the whole Senate will perform their constitutional responsibility to advise and consent on President Trump's nominees and to do that in a speedy, expeditious manner.
And as I said, we have been working with the Senate as well on this big plan we have to hit the ground running in January.
We laid out this morning for the House Republicans what Leader Scalise was referring to, and that is kind of the overarching points, the overarching pieces of the reconciliation package.
And in quick summary, we want to grow our economy and defeat inflation.
We want to restore the border.
We want to restore America's energy dominance, provide educational freedom, and dismantle the deep state.
Now, lots of, of course, details on each of those categories, but we are working all that out together in a bicameral fashion with Senate Republicans, House Republicans working together, and, of course, coordinating with the new Trump administration.
In the meantime, we have some items we have to go through for the remainder of this year, as you all know.
We have a disaster relief package that has been presented by the Biden administration, their request.
And even before, I want to point out, even before Hurricanes Milton and Helene hit shore, House Republicans ensured that appropriate emergency funds would be provided to FEMA, as we did in that last funding package, as you know.
And now that we're back in session, we're going to continue to provide for the American people with the resources that are desperately needed.
So I saw firsthand, I went to the sites of the devastation.
I went to Florida, where Helene made landfall and looked at the devastation there all the way inland, even to the agricultural areas.
And then I spent a lot of time in Western North Carolina, where it looks like a bomb went off in most of those areas there.
So these communities can be rebuilt responsibly, and Congress has a role to play.
We'll be looking at all that.
On the floor this week, you heard a quick summary about some of these steps we're taking towards beginning to restore America's energy dominance.
And tomorrow we'll pass the CLEAN Act to increase our domestic power production and strengthen America's energy security.
We're going to pursue an all of the above energy policy, and geothermal is a big part of that.
It's just beneath our feet, and in the Mountain West states, this is a big thing.
We're not going to waste it like the Biden administration did.
We're going to use all the precious resources that we've been blessed as a nation to have.
We'll also vote on the Stop Terror Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act this week.
Common sense legislation, as you heard, it prevents the IRS from charging late fees on Americans who are held hostage or wrongfully detained abroad.
This is an obvious thing that everybody should be in support of.
We are going to make sure that we follow common sense legislation and these principles along the way, and House Republicans will fix that error this week and many, many errors in the days to come.
So we are excited about that.
I'll just say one quick note, and I'll take your questions.
We just had a great gathering of all the House Republicans, as we do each week, and we had many of our member-elect new members who will be coming in, Republican members in the 119th Congress, as an extraordinary group.
They've been on the Hill for the last week or so, having their orientation.
I'm really proud of this group.
They have an extraordinary set of skills and expertise that they bring to the table and life experiences.
A pound-for-pound, I think, is one of the strongest classes maybe that's ever come in for our party, and I'm really excited about what they'll contribute.
And I told them and all of our members this morning, as we approach Thanksgiving, it's an appropriate time for all of us, all of us, to be thankful, not just for the immediate blessings of our family and friends and the things that we enjoy, but for this great country.
And the fact that I believe that we've been given the great blessing of an opportunity to save America, and that's what we intend to do, and we have a very deliberate agenda to pursue to make sure that happens.
So we look forward to getting to work.
Yes, sir.
Mr. Speaker, is freshman-elect Sarah McBride a man or a woman?
Look, I'm not going to get into this.
We welcome all new members with open arms who are duly elected representatives of the people.
I believe it's a command that we treat all persons with dignity and respect, and we will.
And I'm not going to engage in silly debates about this.
There's a concern about the uses of restroom facilities and locker rooms and all that.
This is an issue that Congress has never had to address before.
And we're going to do that in a deliberate fashion with member consensus on it.
And we will accommodate the needs of every single person.
That's all I'm going to say about that.
Yes, sir.
Do you plan on bringing Nancy Mace's transgender bill and putting that into the wage package?
I'm not going to address the plans on any of that.
I just told you what I'm going to say about the issue.
I'm not going to engage in this.
We don't look down upon anyone.
We treat everybody with dignity and respect.
That's a principle that I've pursued my whole life.
And we will take care of this issue of first impression for Congress, as we will any other thing.
We will provide appropriate accommodation for every member of Congress.
Mr. Speaker, I want to ask you: so, you've repeatedly said that one way you want to try to invigorate the U.S. economy is through confronting China.
So, broadly, how do you envision confronting China economically?
And do you support specifically a bill like Congressman John Molinar's that was introduced last week that would strip China of preferred nation status?
Yeah, look, I think we have to be very aggressive on China, and I won't address specific measures, but we had a select committee, have a select committee on the Chinese Communist Party and the extraordinary threat that they are, not just to America, but to freedom around the world.
I think it's a very, very serious issue.
I mean, next to the national debt, I think it's our greatest threat to national security.
And we have to address it appropriately.
I expect that President Trump will be very aggressive on that matter.
You've heard him talk about it for quite some time.
And in fact, he started talking about that in 2015 before anyone else ever really was paying attention to it and recognizing the menace that China has become.
So, look, you're going to have a very aggressive approach to this in the new Congress.
Republicans are very serious about this, very sober-minded.
We have lots of legislation, lots of measures that we'd like to pursue, but I'm not going to get in front of that and tell you what all that will be yet.
Just know that we will take this very seriously.
I think we've got to address it.
Yes, Mr. Congress.
You left the doors open for Elise's appointment, but you said I hope that the Senate is going to do a good job.
My question, will the confirmation process be the ultimate test of the Republican Party unity or bipartisan cooperation?
Well, look, it all remains to be seen.
I mean, I genuinely believe that the Senate should do its job.
I think it is an important principle for us to maintain that an incoming President gets to select their own team.
I think that's an important principle.
The advising consent responsibility is given to the Senate and the Constitution.
They need to take that seriously, and they will.
They will properly vet nominees, and that process will play out.
But look, I will just say this about a number of the nominees that have been appointed.
I think President Trump is looking for persons who will shake up the status quo.
And we got a mandate in this election cycle to do that.
The status quo is not working for the American people.
And so these are persons who will go in and bring real reform, significant reform to the agencies that they lead.
If you poll the American people, they will agree that that is an appropriate objective.
And so I think that the Senate should do its job and, sure, take a look, do a deep dive, vet these persons, but move them along for confirmation so that the President has the team in place to do what the American people have elected him to do.