Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front-row seat to democracy.
Next, House Republican leaders brief reporters on their legislative agenda, including the annual defense programs and policy bill.
It cuts about $31 billion from the Department of Defense, and it includes a 14.5% pay increase for junior service members and improved housing for military service members.
Speaker Johnson says he looks forward to the bill coming to the floor for a vote later in the week.
Good morning, everyone.
Thanks for being here today.
This week, we are bringing to the floor the Service Member Quality of Life Improvement and National Defense Authorization Act, otherwise known, of course, as the NDAA.
This bill both invests in the quality of life for our service members and their families and strengthens our national security capabilities.
Those two aspects are what drove the negotiations and the effort for this entire bill: the quality of life of our service members and our national security capabilities.
The NDAA supports the deployment of the National Guard to our southern border, deters China, combats anti-Semitism, supports Israel, cuts inefficient programs and bureaucracy, and guts woke policies at the DOD.
It also cares for our service members and seeks to improve their quality of life by providing critical housing upgrades, pay raises, lower health care wait times, better access to child care, employment, support for spouses, and much more.
House Republicans take our responsibility to provide for our service members and their families and the mission seriously, and we look forward to working with President Trump and his administration to secure our border, bolster our national security, and support our military.
This comprehensive bill ensures that America can remain the most powerful in the world.
I thank the House and Senate Armed Services Committees for their work on this.
I thank for all those that are involved in getting it to this point to be able to complete that this week.
And with that, I will hand it over to our WIP, Mr. Tom Emmer.
America is back.
That was the message heard around the world following President-elect Donald Trump's successful trip to Paris over the weekend.
Watching America reassert its leadership on the global stage was both refreshing and reassuring.
It's clear that the world has been anticipating the return of a U.S. president who can, at the very least, stay fully engaged during important discussions.
Already, the impact of President Trump's leadership is being felt.
41 days before he is set to be inaugurated, he has restored respect for our country on the world stage.
This comes in stark contrast to the weak-need leadership Americans have been forced to endure under the Harris Biden administration over the last four years.
From their disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal to Russia's invasion of Ukraine to Iran and its proxies' attacks against Israel, we've seen what happens when we have leaders in the White House whose foreign policy strategy is to appease our adversaries and undermine our allies.
Thankfully, on November 5th, the voters said enough is enough.
The path forward under President Trump is quite clear.
He will usher in a new era of peace through strength, and I'm eager to hit the ground running on day one to enact his America First Agenda.
I congratulate President Trump on a successful trip to Paris, and I look forward to watching him restore our country's dominance on the world stage.
Steve Scalise.
Well, thank you, Whip.
This week, our members have been working for months on bringing to the floor Wednesday the National Defense Authorization Act.
As Blake pointed out, this is a bill that's really focused on improving the quality of life for our servicemen and women.
We've seen under the last three and a half years of the Biden-Harris administration, it's been hard to recruit and keep good service members in part because of the bad woke policies, the loss of focus by this administration on what the mission is.
And we start addressing that by rooting out more of the woke policies over at the DOD.
And of course, that ultimately is going to get fixed when President Trump takes office next month.
And he talked about those things during the campaign, what he would do to re-strengthen and reinvigorate our military.
But at least we give President Trump some really, really good tools and important tools to recruit and retain a strong military by improving their quality of life in this bill.
Something else we've been continuing to work on as we take care of the legislative business is to focus on what we will do day one to hit the ground running, to go to work delivering the promises that were made during the campaign to help those families who are struggling under the weight of the failed Biden-Harris policies.
You know, we talked a lot during the campaign about securing America's border, strengthening our energy security, lowering costs at the grocery store, at the pump for families who have been paying way too much under the failed Biden-Harris policies.
But we also talked about what we'd do to stabilize tax policy, to prevent a massive $4.5 trillion tax increase, which Kamala Harris wanted to impose.
She actually campaigned, bragging that she would allow tax cuts to expire, putting a massive tax increase on families.
And so we're already working on what we will do in those first few months to deliver on those promises and get our economy back on track to help provide real relief for families who are struggling.
And those talks are going really well, not only amongst House Republicans, House Senate Republicans, but also the Trump administration.
And Trump officials in the transition team have been part of those conversations because we want to make sure the day we start in January, President Trump's policies are going to be front and center, the things that we all campaigned on.
It wasn't just President Trump who talked about those things as he did.
We talked about those too.
And the good news is we got elected and we got a mandate from the American people who want to see a secure border, who want to see lower costs, who want to see us to finally confront those problems that Biden and Harris created.
And we're going to do just that.
The work has already started.
We cannot wait until January to not only take office, but as we're preparing, we're doing that work already today here, leading that effort for us as our speaker, Mike Johnson.
Thank you, Steve.
Leader, good morning to all of you.
I was here until late last night, about 13 hours ago.
All these seats were filled with midshipmen, about 40 midshipmen from the U.S. Naval Academy were here on a visit.
And we came into the room at the end of the Capitol tour.
My son brought a bunch of his classmates.
The first time many of them have been to the Capitol.
They sat here and I thank them all for their willingness to serve the country.
And they thanked me.
And then they said, sir, how do you take all these hostile questions from the press every week?
I said, oh, they're a bunch of teddy bears.
It's no big deal.
So they had a good time.
I'm really encouraged by all these young people and their willingness to step up and serve their country.
And I know we all are.
And this weekend is the Army-Navy game.
We're all looking forward to that.
I guess I got to say go Navy because my son's there.
But President Trump is coming to the game and others and we'll all be there together.
It'll be a lot of fun.
Speaking of President Trump, we have just 41 days until his oath of office is taken.
And as Whip Emmer said, there's a palpable sense out there that this is a new day in America.
It's not just a catchphrase.
We feel that.
We sense it everywhere we go.
And American families are ready to see an America First agenda.
And we're excited about that.
You hear a lot of talk about the agenda and how it will be formulated and come together right out of the gates in early January.
We're working on that right now.
In fact, House Republicans are already working to enact that agenda.
We met, as you know, last week.
We brought Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy here to discuss how we cut waste, fraud, and abuse from the federal government.
And it was a very productive series of meetings.
We had a smaller group discussion and then the larger one in the Congressional Auditorium.
Thank you all for being here for that.
We're continuing to lay the groundwork for our very aggressive first 100 days agenda in the Congress that we've all been planning for for a long time and talking about for a while.
But in the waning days of this Congress, and until President Trump is sworn in, we're still actively advancing conservative priorities.
You heard about the NDAA.
We're proud of this product.
It was released over the weekend and it includes critical wins for our troops and for our country at a very important time.
I want to thank Chairman Mike Rogers of the House Armed Services Committee and all the committee members and all the staff for their really hard work on the bill.
We spent a lot of time and effort working on it because our service members and their families deserve our best efforts.
That's why we made landmark investments in their quality of life, as you heard, with a 14.5 percent pay raise for junior service members.
It's really important right now.
And improved housing for our military families and other benefits.
And it's also why we stopped funds from going to CRT and our military academies.
We banned TRICARE from prescribing treatments that would ultimately sterilize our kids.
And we gutted the DEI bureaucracy.
And because we believe in peace through strength, we blocked the Biden administration's plan to reduce the number of U.S. special forces.
We supported the deployment of the National Guard at the border.
We expanded U.S. joint military exercises with Israel.
And we increased funding for U.S. defense initiatives in the Indo-Pacific, and that includes Taiwan.
At the same time, while we plussed up those other accounts, we cut $31 billion in bloated Pentagon bureaucracy, obsolete weapons, and inefficient programs.
A lot of that will continue into the new year, and those are some very important innovations.
The safety and security of the American people is our top priority, and this year's NDAA ensures our military has the resources and the capabilities needed to remain the most powerful fighting force on the planet.
I look forward to voting for it later this week, and I think you'll have a large vote on the House floor in affirmation of all this.
Also, this week we'll be voting on the Judges Act to ensure there's a sufficient number of federal judgeships for our growing population.
Look, Republicans believe in the rule of law, and we've got to uphold that principle.
We can't overburden the courts and our judges with these excessive caseloads, and that's what's been happening.
It's been 35 years since Congress has authorized a package like this, and our population and caseloads have grown, and we just have to address this for the judicial branch to keep peace.