| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
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Committee Considers H.R. 1048
00:02:35
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|
unidentified
|
For what purpose does the gentleman from Michigan seek recognition? | |
| Mr. Chairman, I move that the committee now do rise. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It is on the motion that the committee rise. | |
| All those in favor say aye. | ||
| All those opposed say no. | ||
| The ayes have it. | ||
| The motion is adopted. | ||
| Accordingly, the committee rises. | ||
| Mr. Chairman. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mr. Speaker, the Committee of the Whole, House on the State of the Union, having had under consideration H.R. 1048, directs me to report that it has come to no resolution thereof. | |
| The Chair of the Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union reports that the Committee has had under consideration H.R. 1048 and has come to no resolution thereon. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The chair will now entertain requests for one-minute speeches. | |
| For what purpose does the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania, gentleman from Pennsylvania, seek recognition? | ||
| Mr. Speaker, the case request to address the House for one minute and to revise and extend my remarks. | ||
| The gentleman is recognized. | ||
| Well, thank you, Mr. Speaker. | ||
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Frozen Food Solutions
00:03:39
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| Mr. Speaker, I rise today to celebrate Frozen Food Month and recognize the vital role the frozen foods play in American households. | ||
| Frozen food is more than just a convenient option. | ||
| It's a solution to food waste and a way to save families hundreds of dollars. | ||
| Studies show that frozen produce is less likely to be wasted compared to fresh produce that spoils over time, giving consumers access to affordable, nutritious food year-round. | ||
| By freezing food at its peak, we preserve both flavor and nutrients, making it a smart choice for families looking to eat well while managing their budgets. | ||
| For millions of Americans, especially those facing time constraints, frozen food offers an affordable, easy way to enjoy balanced meals. | ||
| Nearly every American household relies on frozen foods, whether it's vegetables, fruits, breakfast items, or even complete meals. | ||
| This March, let's take a moment to recognize the hard work of our nation's frozen food producers and the critical role the frozen foods play in keeping America nourished. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I yield back the balance of my time. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Gentleman yields back. | |
| For what purpose does the gentleman from New York seek recognition? | ||
| Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to address the House for revise and extend my remote. | ||
| The gentleman is recognized. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Speaker. | ||
| At a time when food prices are rising and it is harder for families to make ends meet, we should not be cutting food assistance programs. | ||
| But that is exactly what is happening. | ||
| Earlier this month, the administration announced a billion-dollar tax, pardon me, a billion-dollar cut to local food purchasing for schools and food banks. | ||
| Local farms who rely on these programs for consistent purchases of their food no longer have an important market. | ||
| And it means that locally grown, more nutritious food is no longer available for food banks and schools. | ||
| And then just yesterday, USDA announced that it was ending part of the Farm to School program. | ||
| This program for years incentivized local food procurement for school meals. | ||
| Dozens of schools in Westchester and the Bronx rely on these programs as a way to provide healthy food to students. | ||
| Similarly, Feeding Westchester and City Harvest do yeoman's work to provide food for families and kids in need at the best value. | ||
| If fresh food is no longer available, our community will suffer. | ||
| These cuts must be reversed and quickly. | ||
| Time is of the essence when it comes to our children having enough to eat. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I yield back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The gentleman yields back. | |
| Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3rd, 2025, the gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr. DeLuzio, is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader. | ||
| Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent for all members to have five legislative days, revise, extend their remarks, and include extraneous material on the subject of my special order. | ||
| Without objection, so ordered. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Speaker. | ||
| I am honored and proud to represent the people of Western Pennsylvania, good, hardworking, patriotic people who are pretty frustrated. | ||
| We are not living in normal times. | ||
| This should not be a normal run-of-the-mill special order hour. | ||
| What I will convene today, my colleagues on the Democratic side of the aisle, who you'll hear from, these are people who know how to fight for their people. | ||
| They know how to win. | ||
| They're not shy or afraid about a righteous fight. | ||
|
A Fighting Spirit of Economic Populism
00:14:20
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|
unidentified
|
They are members of Congress in this chamber from across the country, across the ideological spectrum, and may not agree on everything. | |
| Certainly we don't. | ||
| But we agree that too many in our party have lost their way and it's time to wake the heck up. | ||
| Now, don't misunderstand me. | ||
| This administration and those helping them are wreaking havoc on so much of our country. | ||
| We see Social Security under attack, Social Security Administration workers, their ability to deliver the hard-earned benefits that seniors have worked their whole lives for. | ||
| We see VA employees on the chopping block, fired, contracts scrutinized, and then cut. | ||
| The promise of this country to care for veterans betrayed. | ||
| We see cancer research, life-saving medicine trials, clinical trials interfered with, threatened, funding on the chopping block. | ||
| The American people are mad. | ||
| They should be mad. | ||
| And look, this administration's approval ratings, they're in free fall. | ||
| American people are rejecting so much of what we see. | ||
| But too many on my side of the aisle aren't giving a strong enough alternative, a bold enough alternative. | ||
| And while the President's numbers may be in free fall, we also see favorability of the Democratic Party at record lows. | ||
| The lowest CNN has seen since 1992. | ||
| There has not been a strong enough vision from Democrats on this side of the aisle. | ||
| We have something to say. | ||
| Our party needs the change, and economic populism and patriotism should be where we go, standing up for people to revive the American dream. | ||
| Democrats should be fighting hard against corruption, corruption, and the giant corporations who fund so much of that. | ||
| We should be fighting against anyone else, any force, any company, you name it, that has made life a rip-off for our people. | ||
| Folks are mad, and they should be. | ||
| It's justifiable anger. | ||
| The American dream is gone for too many people. | ||
| People who work hard, who play by the rules and yet can't catch a break, who see life as too expensive. | ||
| People are right. | ||
| The American people understand that our economy has been rigged against so many. | ||
| And I say the American dream hasn't slipped away. | ||
| It has been ripped away. | ||
| I'm 40 years old. | ||
| My generation and those younger than me, the first generation in a long time since the Second World War, who now grows up and don't expect to be better off than their parents. | ||
| That's what the American Dream is all about. | ||
| It didn't just happen on accident. | ||
| There are villains here. | ||
| Corporate power and corruption have been eating away at the American dream. | ||
| Hedge funds, speculators buying up houses, jacking up the cost of that housing, becoming lousy landlords, pricing people out of what could be a nest egg for their retirement, their home. | ||
| Monopolies jacking up prices and killing small businesses every chance they can get. | ||
| Pharmacy benefit managers or PBMs raising the cost of medicine, killing local pharmacies. | ||
| The list goes on and on. | ||
| Now, this president and others on the other side have capitalized on this anger, used it to get power, lift up their efforts now to let robber barons plunder this government, to attack the fundamental bargain with our seniors and veterans and so many others. | ||
| Democrats need to wake up and stop defending elites and the establishment. | ||
| They have failed the American people. | ||
| Across both parties, those who have been in power have failed at the fundamental task of protecting and strengthening the American dream. | ||
| So today, a group of us are coming forward, coming to the floor, proposing a new way ahead for Democrats, a new way ahead for this country. | ||
| We need a fighting spirit of economic populism. | ||
| It is patriotic. | ||
| We need this patriotism to be at the heart of this fight, in our fight, against corruption and anyone else who's in the way of our people and who has wrecked the American dream. | ||
| So what does this mean, this economic populism? | ||
| In a sentence, it is fighting for a life that people can afford. | ||
| It's bringing corporate power to heal. | ||
| It is taking on the corruption that pervades this town, Washington. | ||
| And the economy and what life costs people should never be an afterthought for anyone who serves in a chamber like this. | ||
| And it ought to put the people who work their butts off front and center of what our government does and who we think about every day and every action. | ||
| It is fighting for a life that people can afford, and it is bringing corporate power to heal. | ||
| Because we know that out of control corporate power leads to higher costs. | ||
| It leads to worse safety. | ||
| It leads to lower quality. | ||
| And we see it play out across so much of our economy. | ||
| It's weakened our defense industrial base and thus it's weakened our military. | ||
| It's hurt small businesses across main streets, all over our districts. | ||
| It has crushed workers. | ||
| It has led to rising costs that we all live with. | ||
| And we should take on corruption no matter where we see it, no matter the party. | ||
| The last thing that we need is a bunch of wimps looking for a win-win every time. | ||
| Not every fight is going to have a win-win. | ||
| There are villains in this story, in this society of ours, who have made life miserable for so many. | ||
| You call them robber barons, you call them oligarchs, whatever you want, but we've got to be willing to take them on. | ||
| And this embrace of economic populism, it might sound and look different depending on where in the country or who the messenger is. | ||
| For me, I'm a Navy guy. | ||
| I served at sea. | ||
| I served in Iraq. | ||
| To me, this is a patriotic and righteous fight. | ||
| And I'm from Western Pennsylvania, the Rust Belt, a place where we saw the rich and powerful plot to strip us for parts. | ||
| We're the people who made the steal that built America. | ||
| We've always answered this country's call. | ||
| Those efforts to strip us, to wreck our way of life, no more. | ||
| You'll hear from members again across the ideological spectrum on the Democratic side today, but we're united in this. | ||
| The era of a spineless Democratic Party must end. | ||
| Now is not the time for wimpy concessions and then call it a win-win. | ||
| Not when the American dream has been killed for so many people in America. | ||
| And now is not the time to shy from a fight against corruption. | ||
| Our people see it and they know that our government has allowed the economy to be rigged against people. | ||
| Those villains, that corruption, they want you to think the problem is some woke college kid or some trans kid who wants their liberty, wants their freedom. | ||
| That's not why your prescription drugs are expensive. | ||
| It's not why housing is expensive. | ||
| It's that corruption and those villains who want you thinking that when they're the ones who've made life terrible for people. | ||
| We know the real root of the problem is corruption and corporate power run amok. | ||
| And too many have been pathetic at talking about corruption and showing that they're up for this fight. | ||
| And some on this side of the aisle have been complicit helping corporations plunder this country. | ||
| That should end. | ||
| And we have to be willing to go to the mat for an economy that works for people who work hard, who play by the rules and want the American dream back. | ||
| The roots of this party that I'm proud to be a part of go back to the New Deal. | ||
| It is a working-class party at its core. | ||
| Allowing somebody else to fake economic populism and win power is real and dangerous, and we are living through the cost of it right now. | ||
| But again, the people you're here from today work hard and fight hard for their districts. | ||
| They get this. | ||
| They're not faking populism, and they know how to win in places where you've got to win. | ||
| So I'm proud to start to introduce my colleague from the great state of Connecticut, the gentlelady from Connecticut, Ms. DeLaro, and yield five times, Mr. Speaker. | ||
| Five minutes, Mr. Speaker. | ||
| Let me just say a thank you to my colleague from Pennsylvania, who at his roots understands the plight of working Americans, middle-class families, working families, and the vulnerable, and stands tall on their behalf and wants to utilize the good offices of this institution to make sure that it does what the founding fathers intended it to do, and that is to provide opportunity for people in this nation. | ||
| That's what my friend Congressman DeLuzio is all about. | ||
| And one thing about this current administration is clear: they are doing nothing about the cost of living crisis in this nation, which is getting worse. | ||
| President Trump said he will fight for the working class, but instead put Elon Musk and billionaires in charge of our government. | ||
| I applaud again Representative DeLuzio for hosting this special order, economic patriotism, taking on corporate power, as well as for all his work supporting the right to organize, creating well-paying union jobs here in America. | ||
| High prices are devastating the middle class, working class, and the vulnerable. | ||
| Since my very first day in the Congress, I have been focused on lowering the cost of living for Americans who struggle to get by. | ||
| And I am appalled by how many families who are struggling to afford basics while corporations get bigger, richer, and more influential over our lives than ever. | ||
| President Trump, as I said, campaigned on lowering prices. | ||
| He pledged to, quote, bring food costs down on day one. | ||
| Instead, the opposite has happened. | ||
| Food costs are rising. | ||
| His own USDA Department of Agriculture recently reported egg prices could rise 41% over the next year. | ||
| Since taking office, he has done nothing to help families struggling at the grocery checkout. | ||
| As a result, big corporations are consolidating, creating monopolies, and making unbelievable profits. | ||
| Cal Maine, which controls about a fifth of the domestic egg market and is the largest producer and distributor of shell eggs in the United States, has reported that its profits through the second quarter of 2025 fiscal year are 342% higher than the same period last year. | ||
| Instead of doing anything to address this cost of living crisis, the President has stacked his cabinet with billionaire after billionaire, empowering them to slash the programs American families rely on with no oversight, no disclosures about their conflicts of interest. | ||
| Elon Musk, the unchecked billionaire leading the efforts to end Social Security as we know it, owes the success of his companies to billions in federal contracts and huge factories in China. | ||
| Yet he refuses to answer any questions from the Congress about his investments. | ||
| These issues concern every American. | ||
| Democrats are standing up for them, standing up against the blatant corporation of this administration, the giant corporations padding their profits at the expense of the middle class and the working class. | ||
| And the Republican focus is to rip away programs like Social Security and Medicaid. | ||
| The fact is that American families today are living paycheck to paycheck, and some of the biggest corporations in the country are taking advantage of it. | ||
| All while Americans are paying more for less due to corporate price gouging, shrinkflation, and while the CEOs of the nation's largest grocery stores and supermarkets rake in record salaries, I just came from a congressional hearing, our steering and policy committee, Democratic Steering and Policy Committee, on food prices and food stamps, | ||
| and listening to the stories of working Americans with families who are hard-pressed and who are frightened to death of a $230 billion cut to the food stamp program, which would end that lifeline for themselves and for their families. | ||
| And last year, the FTC identified the large grocery store chains exploited product shortages due to the pandemic by raising prices significantly, more than needed to cover their added costs, and they have continued to increase their profits. | ||
| What is the Republicans' response to this cost of living crisis, driven by corporate consolidation and power? | ||
| Why? | ||
| To give out even more corporate tax cuts, of course. | ||
| $4.5 trillion worth of them, to be precise, paid for by slashing Medicaid, which serves nearly a third of all Americans. | ||
| Enough is enough, and it is time for this Congress, and it is time for Democrats to act to rein in this habitual price gouging for massive corporations, rein in the unchecked billionaires enriching themselves while Americans suffer, and rein in the Republican spending cuts targeting Social Security and Medicaid. | ||
| If the Trump administration continues to prioritize tax cuts for the rich over price cuts for the middle class, then I will continue to stand with my colleagues as we call out their broken promises and fight back against their disastrous policies. | ||
| There is another path forward, one which Democrats and Republicans could take together, a path of economic patriotism, where we take on corporate monopolies and the self-serving billionaires who are squeezing the middle class, the working class, and the vulnerable. | ||
| A path that listens to the American people, protects programs like Medicaid and Social Security, while lowering the cost of living through proven policies like the expanded child tax credit, which lifted half of our children in this nation out of poverty, lowered the hunger rate, and provided a path forward and economic security for millions of families in the United States. | ||
|
Industry Exodus Insights
00:15:43
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| That's the path that I am taking. | ||
| It's the path that I know my colleague Congressman DeLuzio is taking. | ||
| And I hope that my colleagues on both sides of the aisle will join us in this effort. | ||
| And I thank you for organizing this effort. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, General Lieutenant. | |
| Not just for joining us today, but for your long commitment to the dignity of work, for fighting for people, for better trade policy, and so much else. | ||
| I'm honored now to welcome in a colleague from California, but who has strong Pennsylvania roots, which lends great credit to him. | ||
| The gentleman from California, Mr. Conno. | ||
| Well, thank you, Representative DeLuzia, for your leadership, for convening this group and focusing us on an agenda of economic patriotism. | ||
| The reality is in this country, and as you know from in Western Pennsylvania, we have watched industry after industry leave the country for China and Mexico. | ||
| Western Pennsylvania won us our freedom. | ||
| They produced more steel than Japan and Germany combined in World War II. | ||
| And yet today we've got 4% steel. | ||
| China, 50% of the world's steel. | ||
| Aluminum left. | ||
| Paper left. | ||
| Textiles left. | ||
| Town after town in this country was hollowed out since 2000. | ||
| 90,000 factories have closed. | ||
| And that doesn't just mean jobs leaving. | ||
| We've all heard the stories. | ||
| People whose families were destroyed. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The chair will receive a message. | |
| Mr. Speaker, message from the President of the United States. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mr. Speaker, Mr. Secretary, I am directed by the President of the United States to deliver to the House of Representatives a message in writing. | |
| The Chair recognizes the gentleman from California. | ||
| I thought President was going to endorse our plan here on economic patriotism. | ||
| The reality is these factories left, and you've had people who faced suicide. | ||
| They had, you know, one of the folks in Warren, Ohio, told me about 13 people because of these plant closures took their lives or faced severe depression. | ||
| And our country for 50 years watched. | ||
| Rosa DeLora didn't watch. | ||
| I mean, she was speaking out against these bad trade deals. | ||
| But for most part of American history in the last 50 years, we watched the hollowing out of these communities. | ||
| And we watched wealth pile up in districts like mine, in Silicon Valley and New York. | ||
| I mean, my district has $14 trillion of wealth. | ||
| But the income inequality in this country soared. | ||
| And so what this group wants to do, one of the things we want to do, is to renew economic revitalization and manufacturing, advanced manufacturing in these communities, to have a real plan for new semiconductors, new robotics, advanced steel, advanced automobiles, and have new factories, new industry come up. | ||
| Now, the President and JD Vance understood that the country was hollowed out, and they understood that people were angry, legitimately angry, and they understood that the ship of America had a huge hole in it. | ||
| The problem is they get there, and their plan to solve this is to hand the reins to a number of headstrong billionaires who are libertarians. | ||
| I've known these folks. | ||
| I've known Elon for 15 years. | ||
| I don't know what Elon knows about Johnstown, Pennsylvania, or Farrell, Pennsylvania, or Youngstown. | ||
| I mean, he's going to go out and they're making deals with UAE and they're supercharging the private sector deals. | ||
| The problem is that's not going to build the communities that have been hollowed out. | ||
| We know what builds communities from Hamilton to Lincoln to FDR. | ||
| We need a government that says if you make it in America, we will buy it. | ||
| That's what we did, by the way, for SpaceX. | ||
| That's what we did for Intel. | ||
| That's what we did in World War II. | ||
| We need a government that says, if you skill the factories here, we'll help finance it. | ||
| We need a government that says we're going to work to invest in the plumbers and electricians and machinists so that we can actually have a workforce that builds the new factories we need. | ||
| We need to say that we're going to have housing in this area to have economic revitalization. | ||
| We need a national economic development strategy. | ||
| And Senator Rubio and I actually co-authored a bill on that. | ||
| But that's not what the White House is doing. | ||
| Instead, they think that just having these billionaires cut deals with the private sector is going to help the working or middle class. | ||
| It'll help my district. | ||
| We'll make more money with AI. | ||
| It'll help more of the financial and technology elites. | ||
| I'll tell you what it's not going to do. | ||
| It's not going to rebuild the communities that have had a raw deal in America. | ||
| And what economic patriots believe, even though we have different ideologies, is that it is ordinary Americans who built this country. | ||
| It's working-class Americans and middle-class Americans who built the country. | ||
| The genius lies not with the billionaires and the technologists. | ||
| It lies with hardworking Americans, and we're going to build this country back from the bottom up. | ||
| That's our belief. | ||
| And I appreciate Representative DeLuzio's leadership on this. | ||
| If you give me, am I out of time, Representatives? | ||
| If we give me one more minute, because my friend Farig of Caria had this whole spiel on how manufacturing doesn't matter. | ||
| I like Farid usually, but on this, he's dead wrong. | ||
| He cited Japan and Germany as countries that did manufacturing and missed the tech boom. | ||
| And so he said, well, we should do the tech boom and the finance boom, and we don't need to do manufacturing. | ||
| Well, he didn't cite one country that did a bit of both, China. | ||
| China did a lot of manufacturing. | ||
| They took all of our manufacturing. | ||
| And America needs to understand if we're going to innovate, yes, we should innovate on technology. | ||
| Yes, we should innovate on finance. | ||
| But we also have to have advanced manufacturing in this country to remain the world's superpower. | ||
| People say comparative advantage, but comparative advantage. | ||
| You get to choose what your comparative advantage is in. | ||
| If China had just done comparative advantage, they would have been growing rice for 30 years. | ||
| That was their comparative advantage. | ||
| They said, no, we want to build things. | ||
| Well, it's time America realizes we want to be building things and realizes the value of advanced manufacturing. | ||
| And Representative DeLuzio certainly gets it. | ||
| He's one of the brightest voices in Congress. | ||
| I also want to recommend his op-ed that I thought was the best piece written on trade policy, fair piece, in the last 30 years, if anyone that I've read. | ||
| So I appreciate your leadership and appreciate your convening us. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sir, I thank the gentleman from California who understands this deeply of what we need to do, this economic patriotism, what it means for manufacturing, what it means for communities who saw these jobs not leave, but taken away, taken away by this ideology in Wall Street and the politicians around here who helped them, which said that all that mattered was chasing the cheapest labor, the weakest labor rules, non-existent environmental rules, and made them citizens of nowhere. | |
| They didn't care about this country. | ||
| or the communities and the people who worked hard to make them rich, whether they made the steel or anything else, as we did in America. | ||
| And it's a stain on our story in this country, and it's, frankly, it's not too patriotic. | ||
| We think our side of the aisle, our party, ought to be dominating the fight to supercharge American manufacturing and jobs, not peddling this crap of telling industrial workers, go learn to code or something. | ||
| That's nonsense. | ||
| Let's invest in the jobs here to make stuff. | ||
| Let's have a more muscular trade industrial policy. | ||
| That's how we get back on the road to economic freedom for people. | ||
| And members on both sides of the aisle here, both parties, have long embraced this wrong for decades neoliberal disaster of unlimited and free trade. | ||
| I think it's been a failure of government across the board. | ||
| We should push back on these lousy trade deals. | ||
| We trade. | ||
| We trade with our friends. | ||
| We trade with others, but we do it on fair terms. | ||
| And what's not fair is seeing American workers undercut by governments like Communist China that use the power of the state to dump artificially cheap products in our markets, that circumvent our trade rules, that let their workers be exploited. | ||
| We've got to beef up trade enforcement on Communist China and others like them. | ||
| There have to be meaningful consequences. | ||
| Let's have tariffs be part of that, but be smart and strategic. | ||
| What we've seen this administration do has been chaotic. | ||
| It's been reckless. | ||
| Businesses cannot plan. | ||
| There is no certainty day to day of what the trade environment will be. | ||
| And it is absent from any full strategic industrial policy that is the heart of economic patriotism. | ||
| To make more stuff in America, you've got to have a full policy that is centered by workers and industrial policy. | ||
| One of my colleagues who gets this deeply, this idea of economic patriotism, I'm proud to yield to Mr. Ryan of New York, a West Point grab, who won't hold that against you too much, but deeply understands this, understands the fight that we need, and understands that our core economic patriotism ought to be what we're all about. | ||
| A gentle gentleman from New York. | ||
| I want to thank my colleague, Mr. DeLuzio, for your leadership on this, for bringing this group together, for reminding us that as Americans who love this country, we need that strong, muscular economic patriotism to serve my constituents in my district, which is the Hudson Valley of New York State and across this country. | ||
| And Mr. Speaker, I rise today because I love this country. | ||
| I believe it is the greatest country in the history of the world, and I believe it is worth fighting for, and we must fight for it now. | ||
| I also believe when you see something that isn't working, you stand up and you do everything in your power to fix it. | ||
| Our country and our party are at a crossroads. | ||
| And it's up to us, the people with the incredible honor to stand on the floor of the United States House of Representatives in this chamber to forge the path forward. | ||
| Unlike some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, I won't try to deny the outcome of the election in November 2024. | ||
| Too many Americans felt Democrats had become the party of the elites and had stopped meeting people where they are, the pain that they're feeling in their lives and their families at their kitchen table when they get up in the morning and go to work and come home exhausted at night. | ||
| Democrats need to learn from our mistakes. | ||
| This moment is not ideological. | ||
| It's about who fights for the people and who fights for the elites. | ||
| I believe, first and foremost, if you're using labels like moderate or progressive, you're missing the entire point. | ||
| I gave former President Biden hell for failing to secure our border. | ||
| I think that's a nonpartisan issue. | ||
| That doesn't make me a quote, moderate. | ||
| I campaigned with my colleague AOC against big corporations screwing over my constituents and polluting the Hudson River in my district. | ||
| That doesn't make me a progressive. | ||
| If the last election made anything clear, its high costs and economic pain are first and foremost on our constituents' minds. | ||
| Donald Trump promised to help with that. | ||
| He has not, unequivocally. | ||
| In fact, everything he's done in office has helped his billionaire cronies, who, by the way, gave hundreds of millions of dollars to his campaign at the expense of families like the ones that I represent in my district across the Hudson Valley. | ||
| Trump's failure to bring down costs is handing Democrats the answer on a silver platter. | ||
| Our response cannot stop at Donald Trump works for the wealthy, though, which is true. | ||
| It must go further. | ||
| Donald Trump works for the wealthy, and Democrats work and fight for you, the working class and middle class of this country, the economic patriots of the United States of America. | ||
| Just over a year ago, I stood on this very floor and ultimately successfully called on the CEO of a local utility monopoly in my district, which had been screwing over my constituents, robbing them blind, literally emptying their savings accounts of their dwindling savings accounts due to a failure of their billing practices. | ||
| I called on him to resign, and he was held accountable and did. | ||
| That company ultimately paid $62 million back to my constituents in form of accountability. | ||
| Now, Optum, a healthcare company, which is a subsidiary of United Health Group, the single largest health insurer in our country, and really one of only three companies in the United States of America that controls the entire health care market, has been buying up medical practices across my district. | ||
| So, just a few weeks ago, I launched a community inquiry. | ||
| Thousands of my constituents and my neighbors and friends who have been hurt by Optum have responded detailing horrific stories of the declining health care quality, erroneous billing, and we're continuing to gather this evidence, the voices of the people, the American people, and to ultimately hold this big corporation who's been making record-breaking profits quarter after quarter accountable. | ||
| Another example, for months, broadcast companies, big telecoms in New York, were in a deadlock fight over streaming rights that left over a million New Yorkers, paying customers, staring at blank screens, trying to watch sports games to take their mind off of all the pressures in their lives. | ||
| Knicks fans and Rangers fans who'd paid couldn't see. | ||
| As one of those fans, I was mad as hell that I had paid and couldn't watch a game while a multi-billion dollar corporation kept raking in more profits and didn't seem to care at all about their paying customers. | ||
| Thankfully, under pressure, that blackout has ended, and we're now demanding Optimum, the telecom, the main perpetrator of this, pay back the customers who were harmed. | ||
| I've also introduced something called the Stop Sports Blackout Act. | ||
| So, if this ever happens again, there won't be a question that a company has to pay and give customers to refunds for games they couldn't watch. | ||
| Whether in their utility bills, their health care bills, or just trying to watch a sports game, that's putting money back in people's pockets when pressure is so high and that matters. | ||
| In closing, before I yield the balance back to my colleague, there is so much power now in the voices of our communities, but only if we, their elected representatives, listen and act and elevate it. | ||
| That's economic patriotism. | ||
| I'm proud that as a Democrat, our party stands with law enforcement and police officers, stands with small businesses, stands with veterans, stands with hardworking families, with nurses, teachers, truck drivers. | ||
|
Working People's Promise
00:06:29
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| Democrats stand with our constituents, whether they voted for us or not. | ||
| And yes, we stand against Donald Trump and his harmful policies, but we stand for so, so much more. | ||
| A group of patriots, unyielding and unwavering in their dedication to fighting for the people and against anyone who would do them harm. | ||
| That's the Democratic Party that I am proud to be a part of, and that is our path out of this moment. | ||
| Thank you, and I yield the balance of my time to Mr. DeLuzzio. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Mr. Ryan, and I thank the gentleman from New York for his fight, his stiff spine in this. | |
| I now want to recognize a colleague from Rhode Island who knows how to take on a good fight and win one, a gentleman from Rhode Island, Mr. Magazineer. | ||
| Thank you to my friend Mr. DeLuzio for bringing us together and helping us have an important conversation about how we restore the mantle of fighting for working people. | ||
| I was born and raised in the most patriotic town in the country, Bristol, Rhode Island. | ||
| We have the oldest and longest-running 4th of July celebration in the country. | ||
| So I learned from a young age to be patriotic. | ||
| But I also learned that patriotism is not just about parades and parties and barbecues. | ||
| It's about believing in a country where anything is possible for those who are willing to work hard. | ||
| And I know that because it's my family's story. | ||
| At the turn of the last century, my mother's family came to America from Ireland and Poland. | ||
| My grandfather fought in the Pacific, then came home and worked in a factory that made airplane parts. | ||
| His wife, my grandmother, worked in a department store. | ||
| Their jobs weren't glamorous, they weren't anything special, but they earned enough to buy a house, to raise four kids, and to build a stable middle-class life. | ||
| My father's side of the family had a similar story. | ||
| They came from Eastern Europe and settled in New York City. | ||
| My great-grandfather got involved in labor organizing, and my grandfather was a bookkeeper at a company that sold fruit. | ||
| They all came of age during the New Deal era, and they voted Democrat because they knew that the Democratic Party had the backs of working people. | ||
| And then my parents met, they started a small business together, they were successful, and now here I am in the United States Congress, thanks to the hard work of the generations that came before me. | ||
| Today in Rhode Island, I meet working people every day who remind me of my grandparents. | ||
| Factory workers, house cleaners, nurses, kitchen workers, grinding out a living, believing that if they work hard and do the right thing, that better days lie ahead. | ||
| But the more I hear from the working people I represent, they are frustrated with politics. | ||
| They don't think either party represents them. | ||
| They're working harder than ever and are having a hard time paying their bills. | ||
| They certainly can't afford to save money. | ||
| They see billionaires on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley get richer while they can't afford everything on their grocery list. | ||
| They see Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, gleefully cutting services for seniors and veterans, and Donald Trump pushing yet another tax cut for the very rich. | ||
| They see a Republican Party hell-bent on taking away people's health care and a Democratic Party that means well, but tries to be all things to all people and too often fails to deliver. | ||
| Our grandparents knew a Democratic Party that not only had good intentions, but that knew how to get things done. | ||
| The working people I represent don't want a handout, but they do expect a level playing field and a fair shot, and they want a Democratic Party with a real plan. | ||
| So what does that look like? | ||
| It looks like making billionaires like Elon Musk pay their fair share so that we can give tax relief to the middle class. | ||
| It looks like passing the PRO Act so that workers in retail and fast food can join a union and earn a ticket to the middle class, just like my grandfather did in his factory. | ||
| It looks like universal preschool and affordable child care, not just because it's good for kids, but because it helps parents work and build their savings. | ||
| And it means passing my bill to guarantee 10 days of paid vacation for all workers, because Americans work hard and they deserve to take some time off every once in a while and enjoy their lives without losing their jobs or their income. | ||
| For too long, the system in this town has been rigged for the wealthy and well-connected, but that does not have to be our future. | ||
| There is a new generation rising, people who are tired of being left behind and are ready for something better. | ||
| We don't need the Democratic Party to be all things to all people. | ||
| We just need to reclaim our position as the party for working people. | ||
| That work begins now. | ||
| And I want to thank my colleagues who are here tonight, who get it. | ||
| I want to thank Representative DeLuzio for bringing us together. | ||
| I am ready to roll up my sleeves alongside all of you, and I yield back to Mr. DeLuzio. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank the gentleman for Rhode Island. | |
| He gets it. | ||
| And this is not some hypothetical problem. | ||
| We're living through the cost of losing. | ||
| And what it is to see the chaos and harm that comes from it, the Democratic Party has to do better. | ||
| And so I'm very honored to introduce a colleague from the other side of the country who has been a bulldog in the fight against monopolies and so much else, a former chair of the Progressive Caucus. | ||
| Gentlelady from Washington, Ms. Jayapal. | ||
| Thank you so much, Congressman DeLuzio, for leading this conversation about how we can stand up for our people and unrig the economy. | ||
| That is economic patriotism. | ||
| I want to be very clear. | ||
| Our economy has been rigged by giant corporations and the wealthiest for way too long. | ||
| And as these corporations consolidate more power, the rich get richer, and everyone else is just struggling to get by just on the basics. | ||
| They need groceries, housing, health care, basic medications. | ||
|
Corporate Power and Worker Wages
00:15:36
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| Private insurance companies are now buying up your local health care clinics and doctors' offices. | ||
| In my home state of Washington, a handful of health care systems control 90% of hospital beds. | ||
| And what does that mean? | ||
| It means that people are seeing their costs triple while the quality of care goes down, all so that big pharma and corporate CEOs can pad their already overflowing pockets. | ||
| Mergers are pushing independent grocery stores out of business. | ||
| Today, just a few supermarket chains control all of the grocery stores in the country. | ||
| Albertsons and Kroger's, two of the big grocery chains, actually tried to merge, and I was so proud to lead the Amicus brief with other members of Congress to actually oppose that merger. | ||
| And thanks to Democrats and the FTC under Lena Kahn, we were able to stop that merger. | ||
| Because we know and we've seen that when these mergers happen, corporations shut down stores, they fire workers, and they raise prices. | ||
| Look at the housing market. | ||
| When rents are sky high and there literally is not a single place in the country where someone can afford rent on the minimum wage, private equity is coming in to buy up the apartments and colluding to drive up the rents so it's even more unaffordable to keep a roof over your head. | ||
| It wasn't always this way. | ||
| From World War II to the late 1970s, we actually rigorously enforced our antitrust laws to ensure that mom-and-pop businesses had a chance to compete against these mega companies. | ||
| Consumers had choices, and workers had good jobs. | ||
| And you know what? | ||
| Our economy actually grew. | ||
| But starting with Republican President Ronald Reagan, that antitrust enforcement dwindled down and large corporations took over. | ||
| And today, income and wealth inequality are higher than they have been in a century. | ||
| And two months into the Trump administration, wages are still low and prices are still high. | ||
| Does not need to be this way. | ||
| We do not, in the richest country in the world, we do not suffer from scarcity. | ||
| We suffer from greed. | ||
| And we have to be willing to take that on, take on corporate power and corruption and make a meaningful difference in the everyday lives of working people. | ||
| We have to lower prices so that everyone can have a roof over their heads, put food on the table, send their kids for an education, and retire with dignity. | ||
| We have to have living wages for every worker, and we have to tax the billionaires so that they just pay a little bit more of their fair share, like everyone else is doing. | ||
| We can and have to break up the largest corporations so they can't keep screwing regular people. | ||
| We got to stand up and fight back against corruption, against greed, against consolidation, and for the American people to have that American dream. | ||
| That is economic patriotism. | ||
| That's what we're going to fight for. | ||
| And I'm so grateful to my colleague from Pennsylvania for making sure we put that out there. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I thank the gentlelady from Washington spot on. | |
| And I'm reminded of a quote from President Franklin Roosevelt, who faced the same kind of complaints from them, who he called the economic royalists. | ||
| We can call them robber barons, oligarchs, you name it. | ||
| They complained that they said FDR was trying to overthrow the institutions of America. | ||
| And I'll quote President Roosevelt. | ||
| What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power. | ||
| Our allegiance to American institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power. | ||
| Here we are again. | ||
| I think we can no longer allow anyone over here to play footsies with the corporate overlords and robber barons who have their heels on the necks of the American people. | ||
| We need to restore competition and break the monopolies. | ||
| And my colleague from the Granite State gets this, having worked in the Justice Department to take on monopolies, has been in the trenches in the fight against this kind of corporate power run amok. | ||
| So I will yield, Mr. Speaker, to the gentlelady from New Hampshire, Ms. Goodlander. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Speaker. | ||
| Many thanks to my colleague from Pennsylvania for bringing us together this afternoon. | ||
| Economic patriotism. | ||
| We're coming from all across the country. | ||
| We're coming from different backgrounds with different ideas, but we're united by things that are really powerful. | ||
| We're united by a love of our country, by a belief in our country, by a belief fundamentally in the American people. | ||
| You know, I was born and raised in the greatest state in the nation, the state of New Hampshire, the state that made the nation. | ||
| We were the ninth to ratify the Constitution. | ||
| And I was born and raised down the road from the family farm that my great-grandfather built when he came to this country. | ||
| He was 16 years old. | ||
| He didn't speak a word of English, but he believed in the American dream, and he raised my grandfather, Sam, on that farm. | ||
| He was an economic patriot, my grandfather, Sam. | ||
| He really believed your word is your bond. | ||
| He believed that hustle was the name of the game. | ||
| He milked cows, he bailed hay, and he got his start as a businessman selling airplane rides at the Nashville airport. | ||
| His slogan was a million-dollar thrill for a $1 bill. | ||
| He went on to become a door-to-door salesman for Electrolux vacuum cleaners. | ||
| He worked hard because he believed in the American dream. | ||
| He was a lifelong Republican who loved with his whole heart one of our great presidents, I think maybe the greatest economic patriot we've seen in the White House, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. | ||
| And I was reminded today of a great speech that President Roosevelt gave 81 years ago, the Economic Bill of Rights, it's been called. | ||
| He talked about economic rights that are self-evident, but as with all self-evident rights that we know in this great document, our Constitution, they aren't self-executing. | ||
| I want to focus for a moment on one of the rights that President Roosevelt talked about. | ||
| He said that there's a right of every businessman, businesswoman too, large and small, to trade in the atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad. | ||
| Monopolies, it's been said on the floor of this House, on the floor of the United States Senate, that monopolies are inconsistent with our form of government. | ||
| And it's true. | ||
| The anti-monopoly spirit is as old as America. | ||
| It's rooted in a simple idea that power has got to be checked. | ||
| Just like political power, economic power has got to be checked too. | ||
| But the fact is, big corporations, monopolies, have too much power in America today. | ||
| I see it everywhere I go. | ||
| You know, I come to Congress having worked in the Department of Justice in the Antitrust Division. | ||
| And it's a division full of patriotic men and women, many of them nonpartisan, who come to this work with the basic belief in this country and in the power that must be checked by government. | ||
| So, what do we mean? | ||
| What kind of power are we checking? | ||
| Every day on this job, as I've traveled around the state of New Hampshire, I hear about big agricultural corporations that are screwing family farmers, like the family farm I grew up down the road from. | ||
| Big health insurers who are charging you more for less. | ||
| Big health insurers who are rolling up the entire industry, from providers to hospital beds to the prescription drugs that people rely on for their lives. | ||
| Big tech companies that are using your data, your valuable data for their own gain. | ||
| The list goes on. | ||
| As we look across our consolidated economy, we see that corporate power has reached its apex in industries big and small, from door locks to the defense industrial base. | ||
| We've always found common ground in this country around the basic idea that just like political power has got to be checked, economic power has got to be checked too. | ||
| And I'm so grateful to my colleague from Pennsylvania for bringing us together today. | ||
| What I'd say is our antitrust laws are alive and well, but they could use an update. | ||
| And I look forward to working with everyone here today and in the days ahead to make that dream a reality because it's core to the American dream. | ||
| So with that, I yield back to my friend from Pennsylvania. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Speaker, I thank the gentlelady from New Hampshire. | |
| And this corporate power we feel in so much of our economy, it's also what we feel that corrupts this place, our nation's capital. | ||
| We see it with the unlimited money that runs through our elections, unlimited super PAC spending that corporations can dump in to buy the favors they get from politicians. | ||
| People who we represent, Democrat, Republican, Independent, you name it, they hate this corruption. | ||
| They see it, they smell it, they know it's crooked. | ||
| It is why you have pharmacy benefit managers extracting profits on the backs of people's medicine, killing chain pharmacies. | ||
| It's why you can't even fix your own stuff, that we even have to fight for the right to repair. | ||
| I mean, what could be more American than the idea that you could fix your own stuff, whether it's a tractor, a car, an ice cream machine, you name it. | ||
| This right to repair goes to the heart of this. | ||
| It's why you see housing costs out of control with Wall Street buying up housing and then buying influence down here. | ||
| It's also why you see the obscene practice of people getting rich in Congress, trading stock on information they may learn in their job serving the people in Congress. | ||
| It's corrupt. | ||
| We ought to end it. | ||
| I'm proud to yield now to a colleague of mine who gets this fight against corruption, who's organized workers, who leads the Congressional Progressive Caucus. | ||
| Gentleman from Texas, Mr. Kassar. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. DeLuzio. | ||
| I'm Greg Kassar. | ||
| I'm proud to represent the heart of Texas in the United States Congress, to chair the Congressional Progressive Caucus. | ||
| But before all that, I started my career as a labor organizer. | ||
| And I saw up close how corporate lobbyists and corrupt politicians would trade campaign contributions for corporate tax breaks and how they would trade lower wages for workers for fatter paychecks for CEOs and their political friends. | ||
| They thought that working people could do nothing about this. | ||
| They thought their workers were too divided to push back. | ||
| But on construction sites, guys who spoke different languages and who came from different places were pissed off and they were willing to put their differences aside to come together and fight back, stop the corruption, and demand a fair paycheck. | ||
| We didn't win by going on bended knee and begging big corporations for better treatment. | ||
| We did it by unifying working people around some central ideas that Americans deserve a good pay for a full day's work and that taxpayer dollars are meant for the common good. | ||
| They are not for corporate welfare. | ||
| Those ideas brought workers together to win historic wage increases and better benefits in the heart of Texas. | ||
| And this is what we need today in America. | ||
| And this is what we need the Democratic Party to be all about. | ||
| The central goal of the Democratic Party should be to break the unholy alliance between corporate greed and corrupt government. | ||
| We can't just beg CEOs to please bring down prices. | ||
| We have to break up the giant monopolies that are screwing over consumers and small businesses alike. | ||
| We can't just beg big CEOs to say, please be nicer to us. | ||
| No, we have to get big money out of politics so that the ultra-rich don't have a bigger say in this country than the everyday person. | ||
| And we cannot just beg corporations to give people a raise. | ||
| We have to unionize workplaces and pass laws that protect the American worker and the American workers' wages. | ||
| And to get there, we have to transform the Democratic Party into a party that fights for working people first, no matter what, and into a party that is willing to stand up to the powerful special interests that are screwing over working people. | ||
| Because if we love our country, we have to be willing to fight for the people who make it work. | ||
| I yield back to my friend, Mr. DeLuzio. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank the gentleman from Texas. | |
| You want to respect hard work? | ||
| You've got to respect the people who do that hard work. | ||
| That's at the core of this. | ||
| And respecting the labor movement is so central. | ||
| I'm from Western Pennsylvania, which is sacred ground, that labor movement where people bled for the right to organize. | ||
| That fight continues. | ||
| I recognize now a colleague from Oregon who gets this, who understands about the dignity of work and fighting for our people. | ||
| A gentlelady from Oregon, Ms. Hoyle. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| I'm Val Hoyle, and I represent the central and south coast of Oregon. | ||
| I'm a proud third-generation union member with a background in sales and international trade, and I came to Congress to fight for working people. | ||
| My family's path to the middle class was made possible because of the labor movement. | ||
| My grandfather immigrated from Ireland and worked as a union laborer building bridges. | ||
| It was hard work in unsafe conditions, conditions that are significantly better because of the building trades unions. | ||
| My father was a firefighter and became president of his union to fight for better wages and safer working conditions. | ||
| The contract he and his team negotiated while management tried and failed to break his spirit took his members from poverty wages to a family wage job. | ||
| IAFF Local 789 is still working under that contract 40 years later. | ||
| I grew up going to union halls and picket lines and with my father fighting to elect pro-worker candidates. | ||
| So naturally, I became a member of Unite Here Local 26 as a union waitress during the AIDS crisis, where fellow union members had the dignity of health care and death benefits when they needed them because we belonged to a union. | ||
| And I'm proud to say my son's a Teamster. | ||
| I understand what's at stake for the working people of this country and my district because it's my story too. | ||
| And I came to Congress to fight for everyday people to have a fair shot, to live in dignity and make a fair wage while they work hard and provide for their families. | ||
| That's why I believe in economic populism, which is not just about talking at people. | ||
| It's about listening to them and truly representing them. | ||
| The fact is, workers feel left behind and that the two-party system doesn't represent them. | ||
| Republicans have tied in with billionaires and restricted the rights of workers to organize and have union representation wherever possible. | ||
| And while they're telling them that their enemy is their enemy is their neighbor. | ||
| And too many Democrats show up on a job site, seemingly from a sense of noble obligation, with wonky academic explanations about why everything's fine, even when everyday Americans can't make ends meet. | ||
| I had an operating engineer tell me last week that he thinks both parties are pissing on his leg and telling him it's raining. | ||
|
Working People's Pathway
00:04:58
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| We have to understand that working people do not want a handout. | ||
| They want a good job and a pathway to the middle class and a comfortable retirement. | ||
| And those opportunities have slipped away for too many people. | ||
| When people tell us they're struggling to afford prescription medications, we can't turn around and tell them that they're wrong. | ||
| We need to listen to them and hold big pharma accountable. | ||
| When people tell us they see government as overly bureaucratic and complex, we can't dismiss that experience and say it's all fine. | ||
| We need to ensure that taxpayer dollars are spent responsibly. | ||
| So of course addressing waste, fraud, and abuse is important. | ||
| We also need to make sure our veterans, our seniors, and the most vulnerable among us receive the benefits they've earned and not break government under the guise of efficiency. | ||
| Democrats are the party that championed and protected things that working people rely on, like the Affordable Care Act, Social Security, stronger unions and workplace protections, the 40-hour work week, overtime pay, public education, and strong consumer protections. | ||
| However, we need more Democrats whose filter for what they do in Congress is, will this help working people? | ||
| As opposed to giving lip service in some disconnected way, we should all be fighting hard against corruption and for a real path to the middle class. | ||
| Young people want to be able to work one job and afford to buy a home and raise a family. | ||
| And that is not the reality for too many Americans. | ||
| That's what Democrats should stand for and be working for every day. | ||
| Our party must embrace economic populism and fight to revive the American dream, standing up for working people and giving them a chance to succeed. | ||
| I yield back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I thank the gentlelady from Oregon, Mr. Speaker. | |
| Tonight, we've heard from members from my side of the party, Democrats from across the country, representing a lot of different districts, but who are all speaking out on ways that we're fighting corruption and the excess of corporate power and the ways the Democratic Party ought to move forward, not for Democrats, but for everyone in this country. | ||
| I want to thank my colleagues for joining me here today to say loud and clear that things need to change. | ||
| Excuse me, an economic populism and patriotism ought to be where we go. | ||
| Standing up for our people without apology to revive the American dream. | ||
| I have the honor of representing a battleground competitive district in Western Pennsylvania. | ||
| My time here in Congress, I've been dead set on lowering costs, battling corruption, confronting corporate power. | ||
| That means promoting competition and taking on monopolies, giving small businesses a shot to compete, fighting against these lousy trade deals that stripped communities for parts. | ||
| It means making more stuff in America, cracking down on junk fees and price gouging, and standing up without apology for the union way of life. | ||
| These are economic priorities to bring down costs, and they are good policy. | ||
| The American people support them. | ||
| We know that. | ||
| Everybody hates getting ripped off. | ||
| Everybody hates working hard and yet still not seeing a life that you can succeed in. | ||
| If you want American capitalism to succeed, you've got to have competition in our economy. | ||
| There's a tendency by some in politics to try and please everybody. | ||
| You should take pride in when the bad guys and the villains who are screwing over your people are your enemy. | ||
| It means you're doing something right. | ||
| And I'm sick and tired of folks in Washington or the think tanks or wherever else looking for a win-win when there is a villain hurting our people. | ||
| If a railroad sends a toxic fireball into the sky over a community, you don't look for a win-win, you fight them for your people. | ||
| When PBMs are killing pharmacies and jacking up drug costs, you fight them. | ||
| And sometimes there's a bad guy. | ||
| There is not a win-win because our way of life is on the line, our safety is at risk. | ||
| We have to stand up for our people. | ||
| You don't cower like wimps. | ||
| You don't go beg for donations from the people hurting yours. | ||
| The goal is simple and popular here. | ||
| It's to make life better. | ||
| Less of a ripoff and to take on the corporate power and corruption that's hurting people. | ||
| That is the path back to the American dream. | ||
| This is our vision of economic patriotism and populism. | ||
| And it's a winning one. | ||
| It's one that can resonate from the Rust Belt to the Sunbelt and everywhere in between, everywhere in this great country. | ||
| I thank you, Mr. Speaker, for your patience and time. | ||
| I yield down to my time. | ||
| The Chair lays before the House a message. | ||
| To the Congress of the United States, pursuant to the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, 50 United States Code 1701, et sec, I hereby report that I have issued an executive order that takes additional steps with respect to the National Emergency... | ||
|
Maduro Regime Tariffs Authorized
00:03:23
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| declaring Executive Order 13692 of March 8, 2015, blocking property and suspending entry of certain persons contributing to the situation in Venezuela. | ||
| The Maduro regime's refusal to cooperate with the United States on matters of illegal immigration exacerbates threats to public safety and border security. | ||
| The activities of the Trend de Arrogoya gang and transnational criminal organization originated in Venezuela and designated as a foreign terrorist organization and a specially designated global terrorist organization has intensified these threats. | ||
| Further, the Maduro regime's ongoing destabilizing actions, including its support of illicit activities such as narcotics trafficking, kidnapping, and human trafficking, necessitates further measures to protect United States interests. | ||
| All of these actions are due in part to the oil revenues that the Maduro regime and its network of criminals and cronies are able to earn. | ||
| Effective on April 2nd, 2025, the Secretary of State, in consultation with the Secretary of Treasury, the Secretary of Commerce, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and United States Trade Representative, is authorized to determine whether a tariff of 25% will be imposed on goods from any country that imports Venezuelan oil. | ||
| Once imposed at the Secretary of State's discretion, the tariff shall remain in effect for a period of one year after the last day a country imports Venezuelan oil or at an earlier date if the Secretary of Commerce, in consultation with other relevant heads of executive departments and agencies, determines it's appropriate. | ||
| To encourage full accountability for these actions, I have directed the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Commerce to submit periodic reports to me within 180 days of the date of this order and no less than every 180 days thereafter, assessing the effectiveness of the tariffs described in this order and the ongoing conduct of the Maduro regime. | ||
| My administration will continue to consult with the Congress on our efforts to address the ongoing problems in Venezuela that determine that undermine United States interests and look forward to working on these issues together. | ||
| I'm enclosing a copy of the executive order I have issued. | ||
| Signed, Donald J. Trump, the White House, March 25th, 2025. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Referred to the Committees on Foreign Affairs and Ways and Means and ordered printed. | |
| Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3rd, 2025, the gentleman from Arizona, Mr. Schweikert, is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Speaker, Pro Tem. | ||
| This one's going to be a little thick. | ||
| So, all right, put on your economics hats and let's have a ride here. | ||
| On Friday, the Congressional Budget Office responded to a request I made in my capacity as chairman of the Joint Economic Committee. | ||
| And what I was trying to get was an answer of were my projections, actually, the economists' projections from the Joint Economic Committee, were they correct? | ||
|
Borrowing And The Fiscal Yearbyss
00:15:18
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| Because you've got to understand, there's actually a weird little battle going on here between the Senate and those in the House and those who are on ways and means. | ||
| A number of our brothers and sisters over in this House of Lords have decided that, hey, we have current tax policy from 2017, TCJ, the tax reform, which I was on the committee. | ||
| I was one of the people that helped author that. | ||
| But they expire at the end of this year. | ||
| And they want to play this game and say, hey, we're just going to pretend that there's no cost, that the law is not the law, the policy is the law. | ||
| So this is when you hear people say, current policy baseline. | ||
| Just do it. | ||
| And we've been trying to do the math to say, all right, Congressional Budget Office, a couple months ago, you actually did a projection saying that if we want to maximize economic growth over the next 10 years, what you do is you extend those tax cuts, but you pay for them. | ||
| And the basic idea of that is by paying for them, you don't have government gobbling up the capital stack that's used to finance growth, to finance business, finance when you want to buy a truck or a new home or your business wants to expand. | ||
| So we got an updated letter from the Congressional Budget Office. | ||
| And apparently it didn't make me particularly popular with a few people, which that actually provides me a perverse joy. | ||
| But if you read it in the 30-year window, it looks like if we do all this without an attempt to pay for, if we drive up interest rates by 1%, in the 30-year window, it looks like you break CBO's budgetary model because you hit 250% of debt to GDP. | ||
| And if I'm reading one of the paragraphs here correctly, they're basically saying, hey, our computer model doesn't go beyond 250%. | ||
| But the point is you have a government that here's our baseline. | ||
| Let's see if I can make this make sense. | ||
| At the end of this fiscal year, $37 trillion, $200 billion is going to be the country's debt. | ||
| Over the next 10 years, we're expected to borrow an additional $22 trillion. | ||
| On top of that, if you play with these folks that say we don't really need to pay for things, just keep it going, that's about another $5, $5.5 billion, probably another $1.3, excuse me, $5.5 trillion, another $1.3 trillion in interest. | ||
| And then if we were to be able to make the president's wish list without finding offsets or modernizations, and I'm going to walk through a whole series of things where it's not cuts, it's modernization, legalizing the technology, it disrupts the cost, that makes our society better, happier, more efficient. | ||
| But if you were to do all those things without an attempt to pay for them, without an attempt to adopt policy to modernize the way we deliver services, the previous 240 years, we borrowed about $28 trillion from the public. | ||
| That's investors around the world, from your pension system, from everything. | ||
| It would mean over the next 10 years, we pretty much double. | ||
| So 240 years, we're going to double it, or come close to doubling it in the next 10 years. | ||
| That is the perversity of what you have going on around here. | ||
| Yet the people coming behind these microphones keep having a wish list and want more stuff and more stuff and more stuff. | ||
| The people walking through our hallways here are in our offices demanding more stuff. | ||
| They either want more carve-outs in the tax code, they want barriers to entry to their competition, or they just want another check. | ||
| And I'm going to walk you through just how dangerous a game we're playing right now. | ||
| Because when you look at these charts, and this is online, just go on CBO from last Friday and read it for yourself. | ||
| It's not a hard read. | ||
| Why are my brothers and sisters so terrified to tell the truth to the public? | ||
| You have a country that, and I'm going to show the charts, that in about seven and a half years, we have more deaths than births. | ||
| You have a country that when we get out of the extraordinary measures, remember right now we're borrowing from our different funds because we're up against the debt ceiling. | ||
| We may be borrowing almost $70,000 every second of every day. | ||
| For those of you who turn to me and say, David, I demand you balance the budget. | ||
| Okay, I can do it tomorrow. | ||
| Let's see, if I use the 2024 numbers, for every dollar we took in tax collections, we spent $1.39. | ||
| Tell me the 39 cents the government you want me to cut. | ||
| And their problem with that math is when you look at the charts. | ||
| Do you see what's in blue? | ||
| That's everything a member of Congress gets to vote on, defense and non-defense. | ||
| Your only problem is it's 26% of the spending. | ||
| So if you ask a member of Congress right now, balance the budget, we can do it. | ||
| We can do it. | ||
| Got to get rid of all defense, all non-defense discretionary. | ||
| That's basically the Park Service, the EPA, all the agencies. | ||
| And then tell me what portion, because you've got to pay your interest or you blow up the world economy. | ||
| Tell me what portion of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the other things you want to hack away at. | ||
| The reality of it is in this fiscal year, our projection is up till the recent, now we're starting to downgrade our growth, is for every dollar we take in tax collections, we're going to spend functionally $1.36. | ||
| Do you understand how screwed, excuse me, actually it's a technical economic term, how screwed we are when we don't tell the truth about the math? | ||
|
unidentified
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And it is not fixable, but it is possible to stabilize. | |
| We can stabilize this. | ||
| We just have to think and do things that are hard. | ||
| And so often around here, the thinking part is complex and it's hard, and we have to go home and tell our constituents the truth about math. | ||
| But remember, the math will win. | ||
| So how many of you have heard about, hey, we have people out protesting. | ||
| They're terrified there's going to be cuts. | ||
| Okay, let's actually have a moment of truth about math. | ||
| This was baseline. | ||
| Over the next 10 years, we're going to spend $86 trillion. | ||
| Next 10 years, CBO baseline, we're going to spend $86 trillion. | ||
| The reconciliation budget had, what, $1.3 trillion in cuts. | ||
| And if we got lucky and did everything, you might get to two. | ||
| So we're talking about $2 trillion of cuts over 10 years on $86 trillion of spending. | ||
| That's what the left over here is losing their minds over because they need something. | ||
| You know, they've lost the working middle class. | ||
| They've lost so much of American voters, no longer trust them because they've spent a decade, decades, not telling them the truth about the math. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Look, it's not hard. | |
| Except the problem is 30% of that's borrowed. | ||
| 30% of that's borrowed. | ||
| And people are losing their mind that we're trying to cut $2 trillion on $86 trillion of spending. | ||
| That's what this place has become. | ||
| This place has become a clown show of math. | ||
| Sorry, I hope not to hit you with those. | ||
| Once again, I need to disclose, I've had a stunning amount of coffee today, so forgive me if I'm a bit cranky. | ||
| We were trying to do projections of what our interest coverage would be this year. | ||
| Now, remember, let's see if I can make this make sense. | ||
| How many of you saw just Thursday, Friday? | ||
| The Federal Reserve actually lowered economic growth for this year and functionally for the next three years. | ||
| They lowered us down to 1.7, I think. | ||
| Just that lowering, if you do the math on the back of an envelope, it's not that hard. | ||
| It's just a little less than $200 billion of loss of tax receipts. | ||
| If you plug that into our committed spending, it basically means what we're going to have to borrow. | ||
| You may have interest this year of $1.1 trillion and a borrow and a borrow this year when the economy is fairly good of $2.2 trillion. | ||
| One of my folks has a number, it's up to $2.3, but let's stick with the $2.2 trillion of borrowing in a year when the economy is good. | ||
| So think about this. | ||
| We're functionally going to spend about $7 trillion this fiscal year. | ||
| We're going to take in about $5 trillion. | ||
| And this isn't a time when the economy is good. | ||
| We're not in a pandemic. | ||
| We're not in a war. | ||
| We're not in a recession. | ||
| And understand when you take some of these charts of interest exposure into the future, there's one of my charts that shows in nine budget years, interest, just interest, is over $2 trillion a year. | ||
| Just interest. | ||
| Why aren't we running around terrified here? | ||
| I mean, if you care about your retirement, or someone that's crazy like my wife and I, we're older parents. | ||
| I have a two and a half year old and a nine-year-old. | ||
| You do realize for my two and a half-year-old, when he turns like 24 or 23, 25, every tax in the United States has to have been doubled just to maintain baseline services. | ||
| This is the morality of this place. | ||
| And look, I'm going to, the last slide I'm going to pound on on just, it's called interest fragility. | ||
| We had Ray Dilio in one of our offices, and those of you who don't know him, please look him up. | ||
| You know, Bridgewater, CEO, founder. | ||
| I think he's now stepped down from that, but the biggest hedge fund in America happens to have 50 years of being one of the hyper experts on interest rate markets and debt markets, saying, you guys are screwed. | ||
| You guys have a real interesting problem. | ||
| The United States and other countries are borrowing, are binging on debt. | ||
| The United States borrows about 40% of all the world capital that goes into sovereign loans. | ||
| His argument is: your problem is there's not enough savings in the world. | ||
| We are consuming more money, us, China, Europe. | ||
| Now Germany is going into the debt markets as they're raising their spending caps. | ||
| What happens in a world when there's a shortage of borrowable money? | ||
| Remember, every day when we borrow, what, $6 billion a day, functionally, that debt has to be sold. | ||
| Most of it's actually financed domestically. | ||
| You know, it's in this pension, it's in this bank, it's this. | ||
| And then foreigners, except the foreigners, have been lowering their U.S. debt because they're having to finance their own governments. | ||
| And you start to look at our interest payments. | ||
| And there's this concept called a term premium. | ||
| When we make the bond markets nervous, we pay higher interest rates. | ||
| So the clown show will go around and say, well, let's just not pay our debts. | ||
| Hey, we're up against the debt ceiling. | ||
| Let's just not raise it. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Yeah, fine. | ||
| I mean, I enjoy your decade of world depression because when you collapse the U.S. currency, you also collapse the world. | ||
| Stability is our goal. | ||
| Stability is how you minimize interest rates. | ||
| And if you're financing $37 trillion and another $22 trillion, plus whatever else we're going to stack on top of that over the next decade, you really want the debt markets to think we're acting like adults. | ||
| Because in many ways, when you look at these charts and you see about our interest coverage and how fragile we are, the bond market basically may be the greatest influence on this government. | ||
| Though how many people have you seen come behind these microphones ever talk about debt? | ||
| And yet, the one thing we're not allowed to tell our voters, our public, our staff, each other, is the truth. | ||
| What drives debt? | ||
| Over the next 10 years, over the next 10 years, almost 100% of U.S. sovereign debt issue will be to cover interest and Medicare. | ||
| In seven, let's call it eight years, the Social Security Trust Fund is empty. | ||
| And that first year, we have to make a decision. | ||
| Are we going to let poverty of seniors double when they get a 21% cut in their checks? | ||
| Or how much are we going to raise taxes? | ||
| Are we actually going to do something complex of fix the system and make all the adjustments and those things? | ||
| Except the moment you actually talk about saving Social Security, they have a consultant on their side, on the Democrat side, writing an attack ad because they care so much more about winning the next election than the morality of not doubling senior poverty. | ||
|
Labor Force Demographics Decline
00:15:42
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| And the brain trust that runs around says, oh, just raise the cap. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Except you just covered 38% of the shortfall. | ||
| What do you want to do with the rest? | ||
| 38% of the shortfall is our math. | ||
| Meaning that first year, so if the trust fund of Social Security is empty on 2033, 2034, the full year, 600, I think $608 billion was our estimate on that first year. | ||
| Think about that. | ||
| Think about that scale. | ||
| And then you hold up a chart like this. | ||
| This is CBO's number of the next 30 years. | ||
| Non-defense and defense discretionary actually have a positive balance, meaning they grow slower than tax receipts. | ||
| Medicare, Social Security create $124 trillion of debt during that 30 years. | ||
| It's not Democrat, it's not Republican, it's just demographics. | ||
| We have a saying in our office, debt deficits and demographics. | ||
| Deal with the facts, deal with the math, tell the truth. | ||
| Except this place has been so busy spinning stories, as we were listening to the Democrats a few minutes ago tell stories. | ||
| Oh, we've got to have us, there's an enemy out there. | ||
|
unidentified
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No, these things are, we can fix it, we can stabilize it. | |
| But somebody cares so much more about winning the next election. | ||
| And you look at the next 10 years, as the point I'm trying to make is, okay, here's the growth. | ||
| 24% of the growth in spending over the next 10 years is interest. | ||
| 31% of the growth of spending over the next 10 years is Social Security and disability. | ||
| 28% of the growth of spending over the next 10 years is Medicare. | ||
| Other mandatory and discretionary growth is about 13%, but a portion of that is actually, you think, defense and other things in that. | ||
| The fact of the matter is your government is an insurance company with an army. | ||
| And now the other part that makes doing the math so incredibly difficult. | ||
| Every year there are fewer workers or working-aged people to support our older population. | ||
| This really seems to upset people, but understand, look at our fertility, look at our demographic charts, go back to 1990, the year we started to roll over. | ||
| There's a data set out there, I don't believe it yet, I haven't had the chance to try to proof it, saying even last year we may have had more deaths than births. | ||
| Okay, you want us to finance pay-as-you-go systems, which is Social Security and Medicare, at a time when we have a shortage of young people, there's a way to make it work. | ||
| Are you going to allow people like me, to people who are here willing to think, to refine the process, to modernize? | ||
| Look, we'll try to touch on this if I have time. | ||
| Here's the MedPAC report from last week. | ||
| A whole bunch of apparently really smart people examined Medicare and Medic and walked up and down through the growth in spending and what we could do to modernize it and use technology to stabilize the prices on some things, particularly on Medicare Advantage. | ||
| They have hundreds of billions of dollars in here that wouldn't require cutting any service, any access to health care. | ||
| It's just using technology and modernizing. | ||
| But you've got to understand, when we start to look at a chart like this, we're functionally here at, let's call it 2024. | ||
| We have 2.9 people working, or excuse me, 2.9 in the population. | ||
| There's another chart that's going to scare you even more. | ||
| For every one person receiving benefits. | ||
| And then you see it gets down to two people in society. | ||
| I'm going to bounce around just a little bit on some of these. | ||
| When you actually look at the Social Security trustees' data, something's happening out there where some of these numbers may be much worse than we expected. | ||
| Because it turns out people actually are taking retirement earlier than we expected, meaning the participation in the labor force is actually starting to get soft on the high-skilled populations, higher-income populations. | ||
| We actually, now, this one, we had a debate how upset this would make people. | ||
| So here we are. | ||
| We're going to start the 2026 budget year. | ||
| We're actually supposed to be working on that budget. | ||
| Without immigration, working-age people will start to disappear from the labor force. | ||
| And you go, huh? | ||
| Huh? | ||
| Basically, 2026 is the last year where the age population is functionally stable. | ||
| Then the next year, you start to actually fall in your number of working-age people in the population. | ||
| It's demographics. | ||
| It's not Republican or Democrat. | ||
| It's just math. | ||
| One more chart of this, and then I'm going to give you the one that scares me the most. | ||
| This is Social Security and Disability Benefits. | ||
| Here we functionally are. | ||
| Let's get about where we are. | ||
| So right now, if you both those programs together, you have 2.67 workers for every beneficiary. | ||
| At one point, it gets all the way down to just a little over two people working for every beneficiary. | ||
| But if you actually do the big chart, how many people are actually in the labor force compared to how many people receiving benefits? | ||
| And remember, I'm not talking about changing people's benefits. | ||
| I'm talking about dealing with the reality of our demographics and ways we can do it, particularly when we start talking about health care. | ||
| But let's take a look at 2023. | ||
| We functionally, for every 100 people receiving benefits, we functionally had for every 100 people we had working in America, we probably had 36, 37 people receiving benefits. | ||
| Because remember, the whole concept of labor force participation. | ||
| I've done presentations here about functionally the 7 million was my old number of prime age males that are missing from the labor force. | ||
| What do we do as a society to make it possible to encourage our brothers and sisters who are not working to actually get into the labor force? | ||
| And yet my colleagues on the left, oh, you're going to have work requirements. | ||
| You can't do that. | ||
| If you don't do it, tell me how I make these numbers actually work. | ||
| So that's some of the miserable stuff. | ||
| Let's actually sort of walk through how do I make it work? | ||
| Okay, I've come here and done a presentation showing that if this is our demographics, we're going to have to be willing to have a brutally honest conversation. | ||
| Let me walk through a concept. | ||
| Back in the 70s and 80s, what was the world conflict? | ||
| It was for hydrocarbons, oil. | ||
| Previous decade, much of the world conflicts were rare. | ||
| I will argue we're in the decade right now. | ||
| The conflict is for smart people, people with skill sets. | ||
| Yet the United States has barely shown up for the battle. | ||
| When you hear President Trump talk about the insanity that we educate people, we send them home to compete with us. | ||
| The president's absolutely right. | ||
| We have a whole presentation we've done here showing a talent-based, system-based immigration system turns out to be remarkably beneficial for tax receipts, for economic growth, and for prosperity. | ||
| Turns out you need that as one of an entire unified theory of things to do. | ||
| But I want to walk through just a handful of quirky things. | ||
| So When you hear people talk about Doge and how much upset they are, one of the primary things that's being discussed is the United States has a handful of huge databases. | ||
| The problem is they don't talk to each other. | ||
| So you saw the story last week of, hey, we just looked at some of the Social Security death files. | ||
| Oldest person in America is what, 114 years old. | ||
| So we took people over 114 years old and then wondered how they were getting loans at the Small Business Administration. | ||
| And forgive my math, I'm doing this from memory from last week. | ||
| It was like 3,300 people who are over 114 years old got SBA loans. | ||
| $300 million of loans. | ||
| Can you believe not a dollar's been paid back? | ||
| If you actually start to have your data talk to each other, what would happen if it's a way to eliminate waste and fraud without an army of lawyers, without an army of auditors, without an army of bureaucracy? | ||
| It turns out it's technology. | ||
| Is that really that scary? | ||
| Government already has the data. | ||
| Why can't they bounce against each other saying, hey, this person's on the death file. | ||
| Maybe they're not actually applying for a small business administration loan. | ||
| Yet, you see some of our Democrat colleagues, oh, waste and fraud, it doesn't really exist except for the billions of dollars we're identifying. | ||
| So let's walk through a couple other frustrating, frustrating things. | ||
| $42.5 billion provided for the broadband equity access and deployment program. | ||
| Okay, now walk me, stick with me on this one. | ||
| We have spent over $42.5 billion to get broadband to communities. | ||
| Not a single community, not a single house has been connected to that broadband. | ||
| But we spent $42 billion doing it. | ||
| Between Christmas and New Year's, I took my little girl and we went out and hung out on the Navajo Reservation. | ||
| If you're not from the southwest, Navajo Reservation is immense. | ||
| It's bigger than some states. | ||
| And we chased around and we met with a number of people who said they were tired. | ||
| They were tired waiting. | ||
| They were going to wait another decade to get that wire, that fiber, whatever it was, to their chapter house, to their community, so they could have broadband. | ||
| So they were doing something crazy. | ||
| They were running down ordering a satellite dish, and 48 hours later they had broadband. | ||
| And then they were sharing it with Wi-Fi repeaters. | ||
| And for a few hundred dollars, for a few hundred dollars, they were fixing something that was going to take another decade and how many hundreds of millions of dollars. | ||
| Think about adopting technology. | ||
| Is the morality that we want to spend lots of money to actually subsidize these people who should be running wire? | ||
| Or do we actually want these communities to be able to have telehealth, teleschools, telemoniting of their lives to help them adopt the technology? | ||
| Make it so you can actually use it saying, we're never going to get that damn wire out to our rural community. | ||
| Put up a satellite dish. | ||
| Why does this scare people? | ||
| It's because there's no good lobbyists running around here saying, hey, have you ever thought about doing this? | ||
| It's archaic what we do. | ||
| Another example, millions of taxpayers call the IRS for help. | ||
| Two-thirds don't get their phone answered. | ||
| So think of this. | ||
| The auditors of the IRS last year put out a report that only like 31% of the phone calls were getting answered at the IRS. | ||
| So you're trying to fill out your tax forms. | ||
| You're trying to give government money. | ||
| And you call and you can't get the phone answered. | ||
| So what would happen? | ||
| And so there was a little pilot program done, an experiment. | ||
| Let's actually do a chat, like a ChatGPT that picks up the phone 24 hours a day, will stay on the phone as long as you need, will actually help you fill out your tax forms, will actually email you or text you the PDF of the form, maybe even send you the YouTube video on how to fill out the form. | ||
| Why does this scare the hell out of the, oh, I know it's because the IRS is the second most unionized bureaucracy in the federal government. | ||
| Turns out the union loses its mind when you talk about using technology to take care of the American people. | ||
| Wouldn't you like to pick up the phone and call, whether it be the Social Security Administration, the IRS, and get your phone answered? | ||
| How do I get my brothers and sisters here to help us adopt this technology? | ||
| Look, and I have a handful of articles here using AI to functionally crash parts of the cost of delivering health care. | ||
| Here's one about, let's see, actually making the environment much cleaner, much faster, much cheaper, and actually identifying bad acts with almost no bureaucracy. | ||
| The ability to fix our logistics. | ||
| There are, we live in a time of miracles, and you actually start to look, and when we start to say just our baseline, just a couple of the pieces of legislation we have, we think we can get $100 billion a year just using technology and health care. | ||
|
Aligning Incentives for Healthier Populations
00:03:25
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| How about another $100, $150 billion? | ||
| It's going to actually step into supply chains and these others. | ||
| The adoption of technology, we can crash parts of the price of this government. | ||
| Is that a cut? | ||
| Is that a chainsaw? | ||
| It's just doing things that aren't scary. | ||
| Mr. Chairman, the last one I'll talk about is in the MedPAC report. | ||
| The majority of Medicare recipients in America now use Medicare Advantage. | ||
| And for those of us in the Scottsdale Phoenix area, we actually have a much higher penetration. | ||
| According to the report, and even when you do the adjustment of the portion of the population, it only takes the Medicare Part A, which is the hospital portion, which is the trust fund, which also runs out in like 12, 13 years. | ||
| It's 20 percent more expensive than fee for service. | ||
| If you take it back to the fact that when Medicare Advantage was designed, it was supposed to come in at 95 percent of fee for service, do that delta? | ||
| That's approaching a hundred billion dollars a year. | ||
| How about if, mr Speaker, We got together and we've been working on this for months and months and months, said, hey, we need to align the incentives with the insurance providers, with the health care providers, with the person receiving the benefits, saying, how about if you make your profit by helping your population be healthier? | ||
| A capitated model or something of that nature, which actually I think the capitated model makes most sense, is here's our cost and we make more money by helping our population be healthier than what's happening today, according to this report, saying we sign you up and then we spend lots of time and resources to score you as sicker and sicker and sicker because we get spiffs the sicker we score you. | ||
| Is that a cut? | ||
| I would actually, in today's world, when we know diabetes is 31% of all Medicare spending, let's get the incentives aligned so it cuts the cost, cuts the debt, but you end up with a healthier country. | ||
| There are solutions here. | ||
| The problem is it requires doing difficult things and thinking. | ||
| I beg my brothers and sisters, let's go do the hard stuff. | ||
| And if you have ideas, bring them to us. | ||
| We're working our hearts out right now on everything from technology to audit the Pentagon, because we just had, what, our eighth or ninth year where the Pentagon was unauditable, trying to design a talent-based immigration system that maximizes economic growth and tax receipts for the country. | ||
|
House Adjourns for Debate
00:01:38
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| How about a saving Medicare Advantage for everyone that loves it, but in a way where it also maybe provides hundreds of billions of dollars of savings? | ||
| We can do this. | ||
| We can do this. | ||
| We just have to do hard things. | ||
| And with that, Mr. Speaker, I'm going to yield back to you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The gentleman yields. | |
| Does the gentleman have a motion? | ||
| Mr. Speaker, I'd like to move that the House stand adjourned. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The question is on the motion to adjourn. | |
| Those in favor say aye. | ||
| Those opposed, no. | ||
| The ayes have it. | ||
| The motion is adopted. | ||
| Accordingly, the House stands adjourned until 10 a.m. tomorrow morning for a one-hour debate or for morning-hour debate. | ||
| Well, the House began debate on several bills today, including one requiring colleges to disclose funds from foreign sources and resolutions repealing Biden administration energy efficiency rules for commercial refrigerators and freezers, as well as walk-in coolers. | ||
| Members will not vote tomorrow due to the funeral for former Congressman Raul Grahalva, who passed away earlier this month. | ||
| Final votes on those bills are expected on Thursday. | ||
| Watch live coverage of the House here on C-SPAN online at C-SPAN.org or with the C-SPAN Now free video app. | ||
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