| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
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Everybody around us seemed to have internet, but we did not. | |
| When I found out that Comcast was coming, I ran down the road and I said, welcome. | ||
| High-speed internet is one of those good things that we needed to help us move our farming, our small businesses, our recreation forward. | ||
| And now future generations will thrive here in Sussex County. | ||
| Comcast supports C-SPAN as a public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front-row seat to democracy. | ||
| Well, coming up, House Republican leaders will be speaking to reporters about President Trump's agenda and pending legislation this after their weekly caucus meeting on Capitol Hill. | ||
| Well, good morning, everybody. | ||
| So glad to have you here today. | ||
| This weekend marked six months since President Donald Trump returned to the Oval Office. | ||
| And boy, has it been historic. | ||
| Together, we have secured the border, restored peace through strength, squashed inflation, supercharged our economy, and delivered on the one big beautiful bill. | ||
| America is safe, prosperous, and great again. | ||
| But Democrats continue their dangerous rhetoric. | ||
| That is endangering law enforcement agents. | ||
| I mean, an officer gets shot by an illegal alien in New York. | ||
| Do you think that's a coincidence? | ||
| Because I don't. | ||
| It's their policies, it's their rhetoric. | ||
| You know, my question is, did their policies lead to this rhetoric and all this rhetoric lead to this attack? | ||
| Ask yourself that. | ||
| I'll let you be the judge of that. | ||
| Do you think their policies and their rhetoric hurt law enforcement agents or help them? | ||
| Just ponder on that for a minute. | ||
| This week, House Republicans will return home for our annual work piece, work period. | ||
| And during this work period, we are going to work with our members to take our message coast to coast, and we're going to make sure that we have the Democrats own their message because we all know they like to weasel out of their message. | ||
| And we're going to take our message from Long Island to the suburbs of Los Angeles. | ||
| The American people will hear how the One Big Beautiful bill will benefit them. | ||
| We are going to correct the truth with the other half of the truth because all Democrats have right now is fear-mongering. | ||
| They have no plan, no vision, and no leader. | ||
| I'm planning to be in my district this week to speak with Michiganders, but I'm also going to be traveling with some of our frontline members from Pennsylvania to New Jersey. | ||
| We will visit actual manufacturing facilities where the workers, the American taxpayer, will benefit from the One Big Beautiful bill, and we'll be having conversations with that. | ||
| I'm sure along the way, we're going to stop at a few restaurants, maybe get some takeout, where their staff or delivery drivers will enjoy the benefits of no tax on tips. | ||
| The bottom line is this. | ||
| The impact of the One Big Beautiful bill will be felt positively everywhere. | ||
| And working families, their bottom lines will be increased. | ||
| Imagine how Democrat district visits are going to go. | ||
| That's if they stay in their own districts. | ||
| But remind the Democrats, the Democrats voted against securing the border. | ||
| Remember that? | ||
| They said, Biden said, we can't do that. | ||
| No, we just needed a president who actually could do that. | ||
| So remind the Democrats, remind the Democrats that it's the Republicans who are actually unleashing American energy. | ||
| You know, putting money back into our economy, making us energy independent again, expanding the child credit tax credit. | ||
| And you hear all that fear-mongering about, oh, the rural hospitals are going to shut down. | ||
| We actually created a rural hospital fund that can actually, the monies go to these hospitals. | ||
| They don't have all this bureaucracy in between. | ||
| Wow, that's a solution for a change. | ||
| But you won't hear the Democrats talk about that. | ||
| Generational investments. | ||
| We made generational investments in our national security. | ||
| No tax on overtime, no tax on tips. | ||
| Every single Democrat voted to kill millions of jobs. | ||
| Give federal benefits to those who never should receive those benefits before. | ||
| Remember, the Democrats are making sure that Medicaid is not there for the people who need it most by allowing the waste, the fraud, the abuse to actually continue and to give it to illegals over Americans who need it more than anything. | ||
| And take those thousand dollars of paychecks from hardworking Americans. | ||
| Remember, they increased, they voted to increase every single working family's tax rate. | ||
| I'm so sick and tired of hearing, oh my gosh, it's a tax rate for the rich. | ||
| No, it's not. | ||
| Think about this. | ||
| This is a fact, and I'm curious if you've asked any of the Democrats this. | ||
| They voted to raise a taxpayer's income who makes $48,000, which would be in the 12% tax bracket. | ||
| They voted to raise the tax bracket from 12% to 25%. | ||
| On 40,000, if you make $48,000. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Any of you think $48,000, is that a tax break for the rich? | ||
| A tax incentive for the rich? | ||
| No, you're taking money from working class families. | ||
| Make the Democrats own. | ||
| Ask them why they voted for the biggest tax increase in history. | ||
| Ask them why. | ||
| I don't think these meetings are going to go very well. | ||
| Now, I hope the Democrats are home and the local press will hold them accountable. | ||
| And to explain why they voted to kill American jobs, especially when they're already somebody who voted no, but notice every Democrat takes the dough. | ||
| It's ridiculous, ridiculous, and we will continue to bring these fallacies to life. | ||
| We will continue to correct the truth with the other half of the truth. | ||
| And the fear-mongering from the Democrats has got to stop. | ||
| Now, to talk about this and the importance of the One Big Beautiful Bill for people in her district with me is Congresswoman Jen Kiggins. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Well, thank you so much for including me this morning in your press conference. | ||
| I'm Congresswoman Jen Kiggins, and I proudly represent Virginia's 2nd District, which is home to a large percent of veteran population. | ||
| In the country, we have about 6% of our population who has served in our great military. | ||
| And in my district, we have more than twice that, about 13%. | ||
| So I'm here today to talk about the veteran perspective and the wins for the veteran community in the One Big Beautiful Bill. | ||
| I am a veteran. | ||
| I served as a Navy helicopter pilot for 10 years of my life. | ||
| I am married to an F-18 pilot who served for 20 years. | ||
| And I'm also very proudly a Navy mom to a future Naval Aviator. | ||
| So the people in my district, we are regular everyday Americans. | ||
| We just put service to country first. | ||
| And not only if you are a veteran, but if you work with the veteran community and the defense community in my district, the wins in the One Big Beautiful bill are important to us. | ||
| We are hardworking. | ||
| We are business owners. | ||
| We are small business owners. | ||
| We are parents. | ||
| We are moms and dads. | ||
| We are people who care about community safety. | ||
| So the wins in this One Big Beautiful bill from the economy side, the extension of the tax breaks, the no tax on tips and overtime, the wins that we know our veterans will feel more in their bank accounts. | ||
| We're used to living on fixed income like we did in the military. | ||
| We know that each and every penny counts and how hard we have to work to earn our money. | ||
| We want to keep more of our paychecks. | ||
| We want our veterans and all Americans to feel like they have more in their pocketbooks. | ||
| So those are the biggest wins for the veteran community. | ||
| The border security piece is important because we care about community safety. | ||
| And we know that every state is a border state, even Virginia. | ||
| So we care about the people that are around our neighborhoods, that are around our kids' schools, that are watching our families. | ||
| That community safety piece is important. | ||
| And knowing that we have a secure border, knowing that we're not letting people from the terrorist watch list that as veterans, we have concerns about who is in our country, who is here to do us harm. | ||
| But I think most importantly, the biggest wins for a lot of us in the veteran community was that $150 billion defense plus-up. | ||
| So many of us joined and signed up to serve again in our great military for our great country because of the chaotic withdrawal in Afghanistan. | ||
| We saw weakness on the world stage. | ||
| We saw what it looks like when our country doesn't prioritize peace through strength. | ||
| The world is a very dangerous place. | ||
| And now, as a military mom, really, I care about that issue. | ||
| And so many people in my district, so many of our children are serving, so many of my neighbors and friends. | ||
| So for me, that peace through strength piece is the most important piece. | ||
| And we're seeing Republicans put our money where our mouth is and prioritize quality of life, quality of service initiatives for our military. | ||
| We're seeing next generation strike fighter funding. | ||
| We're seeing money for 16 more ships being built. | ||
| There's $9 billion for quality of life, $29 billion for shipbuilding, $16 billion for shipyards and depot, which we know are in need of repair, $9 billion for air superiority. | ||
| We need to prioritize this peace through strength part. | ||
| And that's what this one, Big Beautiful bill does. | ||
| During the Biden administration, we had defense spending at an all-time low. | ||
| We know that in times of our greatest peace, defense spending is about 5% to 6%. | ||
| President Trump has not only agreed to do that for our country and for our military, but also he's encouraging our allies to do that. | ||
| And we're seeing them get on board with that too. | ||
| So I can't just emphasize enough the importance of prioritizing defense spending and what this big beautiful bill does for that. | ||
| You know, as Republicans and as veterans who care about how much money we have, we also want to make sure that we are not wasting money in the programs, the reforms that we've put in place for Medicaid is important. | ||
| We know that we want to keep that program for people who need it the most. | ||
| We have plenty of veterans who are disabled, who are Medicaid recipients. | ||
| I want to make sure that program is there for them. | ||
| So the reforms we put in place are so important. | ||
| But it's certainly a privilege to be able to represent, again, a district that has one of the largest veteran populations. | ||
| These are great wins for the American public, great wins for the veteran community, and I'm very proud to be a part of this effort. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| Great job, Jeff. | ||
| Over the weekend in New York City, an off-duty customs and border protection officer was shot in the face during an attempted robbery by two illegal aliens. | ||
| These two criminals were allowed into our country by the Biden administration, where they both have gone on to commit multiple crimes. | ||
| Assault, kidnapping, larceny, and now attempted murder make up their rap sheet. | ||
| Senseless, dangerous sanctuary policies put these criminals back on the streets after their numerous arrests, enabling them to wreak havoc on innocent Americans. | ||
| The damage done by the Biden administration's deliberate open border policies cannot be understated. | ||
| We are still feeling the consequences of it today. | ||
| But President Trump, DH Secretary Noam, and Border Czar Tom Holman are turning the tide. | ||
| In my state of Minnesota, ICE arrests of illegal aliens have doubled since President Trump took office. | ||
| And while the local, worthless media in my home state tries to spin that as a bad thing, the brave men and women of ICE are getting the worst of the worst illegal aliens off the streets of Minnesota in America, restoring safety and security to our communities. | ||
| As these officers enforce the laws, they face an 830% increase in assaults. | ||
| To the ICE agents risking their lives to keep us all safe, thank you. | ||
| To the Border Patrol agents and custom officers securing our border, thank you. | ||
| The One Big Beautiful bill supports their efforts by giving them the tools they need to continue this critical work, including more ICE officers, more border patrol agents, more border wall, and more detention space. | ||
| These resources strengthen and make permanent the great success that President Trump has already had securing the border and deporting criminal illegal aliens. | ||
| The One Big Beautiful bill delivers historic border security wins. | ||
| It delivers historic border security wins, and we're all safer for it. | ||
| With that, the Majority Leader. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Whip. | |
| Well, it's been a very busy first six months working with the Trump administration to deliver critical wins for hardworking families across America, to deliver wins on those issues that we all ran on, the things we said we would do if we got a Republican White House, Republican Senate, and Republican House. | ||
| And of course, the One Big Beautiful bill really is the epitome of so many of those victories, but that's not all we've done. | ||
| The President has already signed or has on his desk 31 different bills that have been passed by the House and Senate on the desk of the President, almost all of which have been signed into law. | ||
| After today, maybe all 31 will have been signed into law to continue delivering and getting our country back on track, reversing the damage that was done by Joe Biden in four years. | ||
| What the Democrats did working with Joe Biden, not just to increase inflation, increase interest rates, to increase regulations and rules that stifled the ability for small businesses to grow. | ||
| We've been working hard to reverse all of that. | ||
| And while we are celebrating all of these wins, we are not tired of winning. | ||
| And the American people aren't either. | ||
| That's why this week we still have more bills on the House floor, but we also have a lot of work being done in our committees. | ||
| The Appropriations Committee this week is taking up three more appropriations bills in full committee. | ||
| Tom Cole and his members have been doing an incredible job of getting their bills out of committee. | ||
| The House has already passed over 60% of all government funding over to the Senate. | ||
| And this week we're going to see something that hasn't happened in years. | ||
| The United States Senate is finally taking up a House Appropriations Bill. | ||
| That should be something that's always going on in Congress where you see the House and Senate doing their jobs together. | ||
| But Chuck Schumer for years refused to participate in an normal appropriations process because he wanted shutdowns. | ||
| He wanted chaos. | ||
| It's one of the reasons the Democrats lost the Senate is because the American people didn't want that dysfunction. | ||
| And John Thune promised there would be a new day in the United States Senate and Leader Thune is delivering on that. | ||
| And one of those commitments he made is that we would have a normal working appropriations process and they're actually doing that this week, moving the MILCON VA appropriations bill and continuing to move more of the bills that we're sending over from the House. | ||
| And so as the American people see Washington working for them for a change, we're also going to be going during this district work period and explaining to the American people what's been in a lot of those bills because the Democrats have been lying over and over and over again about tax cuts for billionaires. | ||
| They're talking about hospitals closing. | ||
| Everybody in America is going to die, according to every Democrat. | ||
| And of course, when the American people look at what's in those bills, they're going, wait a minute, you know, the waiter and waitress in America who averages $32,000 a year is going to get about $1,700 more in their pockets. | ||
| That's real money for working people. | ||
| And every Democrat voted no. | ||
| So while they're going back home and explaining and lying about the bills, we're going to start panning out across the country, telling the truth about what really is happening in the economy for working families. | ||
| And we're proud of that. | ||
| We're not done delivering, but I think it's important that we take some time to talk about what we've already done and delivered as we continue to move more bills. | ||
| Like I said, a lot of work being done this week in committees. | ||
| Energy and Commerce has taken up the NIL bill. | ||
| You're seeing judiciary focus on that report. | ||
| It's been covered pretty well, but I think there's a lot more to the story about the Russian collusion hoax that started under President Obama. | ||
| And some of those facts are finally starting to come out. | ||
| You know, it's interesting to see Democrats want to talk about Jeffrey Epstein all of a sudden. | ||
| For four years, Democrats hid and covered up the Epstein files. | ||
| They did. | ||
| They had it for four years. | ||
| And Trump's in the courts right now trying to get a lot of that information unsealed so the American public can see it. | ||
| But we're going to continue pushing for that transparency. | ||
| Our committees are going to keep working to deliver more results for American families. | ||
| That's what we've been doing. | ||
| That's what we're going to continue to do while Democrats just vote no. | ||
| They hide. | ||
| They lie. | ||
| They try to talk about what they would do if they were in power. | ||
| But of course, everybody knows what they did when they were in power. | ||
| They moved a far-left socialist agenda. | ||
| They're about to elect as their new party leader a socialist Marxist mayor of New York City. | ||
| And half the Democrats, they all want to meet him and take selfies with them, and yet they're not sure if they're going to endorse him or not. | ||
| But the bottom line is that's where their party has moved in Washington, in New York. | ||
| But that's not where America is. | ||
| Republicans are delivering for Americans, for hardworking families, all across the political spectrum. | ||
| And that's why this economy is finally starting to move in the right direction. | ||
| Our Speaker, who's never slowned down, who's never accepted failure as an option, the man who continues to work and is so patient, listening to our members and then ultimately delivering with President Trump on this great agenda is our Speaker Mike Johnson. | ||
| Thank this leadership team and all of you. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Representative Kiggin's doing an extraordinary job for Virginia and our military families and all of the issues she works so hard on. | ||
| Thank you for all that hard work. | ||
| I tell you what, it's been an exciting six months. | ||
| Sunday, as you all probably know, marked the first six months of the Trump presidency, the second term. | ||
| The 47th president has had an incredible run. | ||
| We're on a winning streak. | ||
| America's hot again. | ||
| We're bringing back strength and prosperity and capitalizing and delivering on all the campaign promises that President Trump made on the campaign trail and that all Republicans did by extension. | ||
| We're really proud of that. | ||
| And I'll tell you what, history is going to record this to be one of the most consequential, extraordinary first six months of any administration ever because we have unified government. | ||
| The voters in this country gave Republicans the chance to turn this mess around, and we are. | ||
| So we have the White House and the Senate and the House, and we're using it effectively every single day. | ||
| And here in the House, we've kept pace with President Trump's extraordinary momentum. | ||
| He never sleeps, and so we don't get to either. | ||
| We've been codifying his executive orders at a record pace. | ||
| We're cementing America first policies into law. | ||
| We're enacting the full scale of the Trump administration's agenda with the passage, of course, of the One Big Beautiful bill, sort of a capstone of the first six months. | ||
| And we've accomplished so much in just that time period. | ||
| And I think the key is we've done that with unity. | ||
| As you all have noticed, it's very deliberate. | ||
| We work very closely hand in hand, the Senate and House Republicans, as one united team. | ||
| That's kind of an innovation in Washington, but a very important one. | ||
| And we've demonstrated that that unity is how we deliver. | ||
| There is no majority in the history of this body that can wield power unless it stands together. | ||
| And so I work really hard. | ||
| We all do. | ||
| This leadership team does every day to keep everybody rowing in the same direction. | ||
| This morning at our weekly conference meeting, we discussed the upcoming schedule, given the Democrats' endless efforts to politicize the Epstein controversy and that whole investigation. | ||
| I want to be clear about this. | ||
| There is a reason behind what we are doing here. | ||
| We have a responsibility, actually a dual responsibility here. | ||
| I've been on record very clearly that I believe in maximum transparency. | ||
| I think every single House Republican will say the same thing. | ||
| In fact, they've told me that publicly and privately. | ||
| They talk about this. | ||
| We want maximum transparency. | ||
| We also understand the other part of that duty is that we have to protect innocent victims. | ||
| We have to do both things at the same time. | ||
| What do we mean by that? | ||
| Look, involved in the Epstein evil, okay, which is what it was. | ||
| Let's call it what it was. | ||
| There are innocent victims of those unspeakable sex crimes. | ||
| Some of them were minors. | ||
| Some of them were not. | ||
| When the Epstein records are turned over to the public, which we must do as quickly as possible, we have to also be very judicious and careful about protecting the innocent. | ||
| I think everybody in the country should understand the necessity of that. | ||
| It is the standard. | ||
| I used to be a litigator. | ||
| It's the standard in the court of law and the courts. | ||
| It's the standard in law enforcement. | ||
| Anyone who's served in law enforcement understands the necessity of that. | ||
| It is the standard with government agencies. | ||
| We protect the innocent. | ||
| So we cannot be careless in an open release like that. | ||
| You have to be very careful. | ||
| The President himself has said that he wants maximum transparency and all credible evidence to be turned over to the American public so that everyone can make their own decisions. | ||
| We're owed that. | ||
| And we want any individual who has been involved in any way in the Epstein evils to be brought to justice as quickly as possible. | ||
| And the law should be brought down upon their head. | ||
| We're unequivocal about that. | ||
| We have to make sure that the credible evidence is revealed, and we're doing that. | ||
| The President has made a request to the courts and the grand jury testimony and the files there, for example. | ||
| And the court should turn that over, and that will be a continuing and ongoing quest. | ||
| Now, what we refuse to do is participate in another one of the Democrats' political games. | ||
| This is a serious matter. | ||
| We are not going to let them use this as a political battering ram. | ||
| The Rules Committee became the ground for them to do that. | ||
| We're not going to allow them to engage in that charade anymore. | ||
| Why do I call it a charade? | ||
| Because the Democrats are trying to play gotcha politics right now when, as the leader just pointed out, they don't have any moral high ground on this at all. | ||
| They controlled the Department of Justice for the last four years. | ||
| Has anyone forgotten? | ||
| They had all these files the entire time. | ||
| They sat on everything Epstein related for four long years while President Biden was in office. | ||
| You could draw your own conclusions as to why, but we've been intellectually consistent the entire time. | ||
| And I want to say this about my colleagues RoConna and Jim McGovern and Hakeem Jeffries and so many others. | ||
| They've tweeted about Epstein countless times in the last two weeks, but go back and look at their social media accounts. | ||
| We have, and their public comments. | ||
| They had exactly zero posts on the subject for the last four years of the Biden administration. | ||
| Interesting, isn't it? | ||
| We all understand that the America First Agenda and the American people are best served by putting an end to the Democrats' sideshows, and that's what we're doing by not allowing the Rules Committee to continue with that nonsense this week. | ||
| As was noted, we've got tons of very important work going on here. | ||
| The leader just gave you a small sampling of it. | ||
| But we're done being lectured on transparency by the same party that orchestrated one of the most shameless, dangerous political cover-ups in the history of this country or any government on the face of planet Earth. | ||
| If the Democrats want to talk transparency, I'm happy to rewind the tape. | ||
| 366 days ago, President Joe Biden was unceremoniously forced off the Democrat ticket. | ||
| Everybody knows why. |