U.S. House of Representatives U.S. House of Representatives
The U.S. House debate features Speaker Mike Johnson pushing six Republican bills—including the SCORE Act (redistributing college sports revenue to women’s and Olympic programs) and HR 2965 (capping SBA regulatory costs at zero)—via closed rules, blocking 80% of amendments. Rep. Beth Van Duyne defends deregulation, citing $3T in annual compliance costs, while Democrats like Jim McGovern and Unknown 59 argue it stifles oversight, ignores inflation, and lacks emergency exemptions. Amid election fraud claims and the attack on National Guardsmen Sarah Bergstrom and Andrew Wolf, Johnson ties Thanksgiving to legislative priorities, urging support for Matt Van Epps in Tennessee’s 7th District against a "radical" opponent. The clash underscores partisan divides over regulation, affordability, and congressional process. [Automatically generated summary]
Thank you uh, Mike is in Illinois, Independent LINE.
Good morning hey, four or five stories are underreported.
The new regulations on Snap and Medicare as they take off, the regulations for utilities and insurance is a little shocking.
Um also, could uh election interference be when the president tries a primary elected official?
Also, could uh uh elect uh election interference be where he asks a company to move here with all their employees into one of these seven swing states that Americans now brainwash, that it's okay for seven states to uh take our presidents and uh by flying.
You can continue watching this event if you go to our website, C-span.org.
Back now to the U.s Capitol, where the House is about to gavel in live coverage on C-span.
Providing for consideration of the bill hr 4312 to protect the name, image and likeness rights of student athletes and to promote fair competition with respect to intercollegiate athletics, and for other purposes.
Providing for consideration of the bill hr 1005 to prohibit elementary and secondary schools from accepting funds from or entering to contracts with the government of the People's Republic Of China and the Chinese Communist Party and for other purposes.
Providing for consideration of the bill hr 1049 to ensure that parents are aware of foreign influence in their child's public school and for other purposes.
Providing for consideration of the bill hr 1069 to prohibit the availability of the federal education funds for elementary and secondary education schools that receive direct or indirect support from the government of the People's Republic Of China.
Providing for consideration of the bill hr 2965 to require the administrator of the Small Business Administration to ensure that the small business regulatory budget for a small business concern in a fiscal year is not greater than zero and for other purposes.
And providing for consideration of the bill hr 4305 to direct the chief counsel for advocacy of the Small Business Administration, to establish a red tape hotline to receive notifications of burdensome agency rules and for other purposes.
The question is on ordering the previous question.
Members will record their vote by electronic device.
unidentified
This is a 15-minute vote and lawmakers have been working on the debate rules for six bills involving small businesses and school policies.
One of the measures addresses how college athletes are paid by setting national standards for charging for the use of their name, image and likeness, or nil.
This is a procedural vote.
Up next, members are expected to vote on approval of the debate rules.
While votes are being tallied here, we'll show you a news conference by House Republican, and also a news conference some Democratic leaders, if we can squeeze it in from earlier today.
They buried families under regulations, spent trillions on pet projects, and siphoned off Americans' hard-earned money to appease their radical base.
We're not letting that stand.
House Republicans are actually cleaning up Bidenomics.
We're ending Biden inflation and restoring an America that working families can afford to thrive again.
Thank you.
unidentified
Mr. Nan?
Hey, thank you very much, Chairwoman.
This week we're going to be running some very important legislation, particularly dealing with the Communist Party of China.
I'm so thankful for our leadership team standing up to this.
And let me tell you a little bit about what's happening in the heart of the heartland, right here in Iowa.
Look, I started off my career as a counterintelligence officer for 20 years.
I worked directly inside China, and we saw what Communist China brought to the United States, not just in the buying of farmland, but literally sending agents to my district and pulling cornseed out of the ground so they could replicate it back home.
But now they're not just growing or coming after what we grow in our fields, they're coming after what we grow in our classrooms.
Most recently, a group from Des Moines Public Schools was taken on an all-expense paid trip to be inside China.
But the Chinese weren't there under the facade of friendship.
They were there to collect information, to exploit, and to manipulate.
They forced these kids to hand over their digital information, required them to use WeChat, an internal public server for China, started an early process of cultivation, and in the counter-espionage world, we consider this source recruitment.
Consistently, I've had parents across Iowa say, how is this allowed to happen?
And the simple truth is, there's no law preventing it.
The Chinese government is creating a series of shell organizations to recruit kids to come to China and then exploit them the moment they set down in soil inside Beijing.
This has to stop.
I'm so proud of this team for helping us stand up to what the Pull-up Bureau in Beijing is trying to do to kids in Des Moines, Iowa, and across our country.
We have the opportunity not only to push back, but to send a strong signal that we have a friendship opportunity with China that is real, but we will not stand by while Chinese communist agents attempt to recruit kids for future exploitation.
Whether it's an ag or whether it's in the classroom, we have the opportunity to say no, and this team has stood up to do it.
Largest Pandemic Fraud Case00:03:39
unidentified
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker, for your leadership.
That's how much money has been stolen from the hardworking taxpayers in my home state of Minnesota.
And if that's not egregious enough, some of these taxpayer dollars have allegedly been diverted to al-Shabaab terrorists.
Under the failed leadership of Tim Walz, Minnesota has become a hotbed for fraud.
We knew it was bad, but now, thanks to the work of our new U.S. Attorney for Minnesota, the true size and scope of the crimes is being brought to light finally.
$250 million in the Feeding Our Children scandal.
The largest pandemic fraud case, by the way, in the country.
$14 million robbed by a woman who fraudulently diagnosed Somali children with autism, then billed the taxpayer for the services that were never provided.
Over 5 million stolen by individuals falsely claiming to provide housing assistance to those in need.
These are just some of the fraud schemes that have been federally charged.
And I want to emphasize that because our failed governor tried to claim that he's been prosecuting.
He hasn't even investigated.
There are even more, by the way, that are under investigation, including 80 autism clinics that are currently under investigation.
Career fraud prosecutor and former acting U.S. attorney for Minnesota Joe Thompson said the amount of fraud, quote, takes my breath away.
Even the New York Times admitted that the fraud in Minnesota is, quote, staggering in its scale and its brazenness.
Between the meals, housing, and autism therapy fraud cases, 86 people have been charged.
Of those 86, 78 are of Somali descent.
Let me be clear: it is not racist to call out criminal behavior.
And we're going to not cower to baseless labels while Minnesotans, including law-abiding Somali Americans, get robbed blind.
While Tim Walz refuses to take accountability for the fraud he created and enabled, President Trump is committed to justice for the crimes against the taxpayers of Minnesota, and I am too.
I want to thank Treasury Secretary Scott Besson for launching an investigation into this important issue.
Minnesotans deserve answers and accountability, and we're not going to rest until they get both.
And thank God for President Trump raising this because no one was covering it.
We've been sounding the alarm on this fraud for over three years.
No one in this room and no one back at home was reporting how bad this is.
Finally, because of our president raising the issue, people are talking about it.
And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention before I left what our conference chair talked about when we started.
My wife Jackie and I are praying for the family of Sarah Bergstrom as they grieve this infuriating and unfathomable loss.
We're also praying for Andrew Wolf as he continues to fight for his life.
Our country was shocked the day before Thanksgiving to see just a senseless, violent act of this tragedy attack on our National Guardsmen here in D.C., the West Virginia National Guardsmen that were both attacked for just doing their jobs and keeping D.C. safe.
I too want to extend my prayers and sympathy to Sarah Becktram's family for the horrible loss of her life and just senseless, senseless loss of life for such a young girl with great promise.
And then, of course, Andrew Wolf, who is still at the hospital fighting for his life from the gunshot wounds that he suffered.
And we keep him and our prayers, his family as well, and pray that he is able to recover and come back.
And I know the people of West Virginia share that.
The people of America share those prayers.
This week we have a number of bills we're bringing to the floor to continue to address some of the problems that were created by the Biden administration that drove up inflation, that drove up higher costs.
We saw so many ridiculous rules and regulations that added cost to the products we buy, our small businesses that were under attack.
And so this week we're bringing a number of bills to reduce those regulatory attacks on small businesses.
Giving small businesses relief also gives families relief in terms of lower costs.
We're going to bring more bills that came out of the Education Committee to take on what is happening in our universities, in our schools, where the Communist China, Chinese Communist Party tries to move Confucius Institutes into our schools, teaching our children, trying to put communist ideas into our children in our schools.
And so we're going to continue to have more transparency and prohibit that kind of money coming in from China to our schools.
We're bringing the SCORE Act to give some structure.
Over the years, you've seen lawsuits erode the ability for the NCA to even police college athletics to the point where now it's the Wild, Wild West.
There are no rules in place or structure.
You have people that can play until they're 26 years old in college athletics.
You don't have any protections for a lot of the student athletes.
And so we first restore the ability for policing through the NCAA.
Congress won't be doing the regulations.
It will be the NCA having the ability to police college athletics again.
We also protect women's sports.
We protect Olympic sports by ensuring that you have an equal number of women's sports to men's sports, that you have a minimum number of sports, so that a lot of the Olympic sports that are so important to our country, as we see the Olympics, coming up here again, in many cases, our Olympians come from the college ranks.
And so we protect that too.
And again, just putting structure in place for what is right now Wild, Wild West atmosphere.
And we're going to continue to work on health care proposals to ensure that families have choices and lower premiums.
That's what Republicans care about.
Democrats have never cared about that since they passed the Affordable Care Act and all the broken promises and lies that went with it.
If you like what you have, you can keep it.
Probably the most broken promise in all of politics, where millions of families lost the good health care plans that they liked because of the Affordable Care Act.
And of course, there's nothing affordable about the Affordable Care Act.
All we've seen is increased costs, 80% premium increases.
Democrats just concerned about bailing out insurance companies who get record profits while families see higher premiums because of that failed law.
What we want to do is give families options, lower premiums for families.
And again, we've brought some bills to the floor already.
We're going to keep bringing bills to the floor to do those two things, to lower premiums for families and give them options so that they can get what's best for their families.
They don't have to be enforced into a plan that the government tells them they have to be in that's too expensive form and doesn't work for their family.
They can buy whatever they want that makes sense for them and for their family.
So we're going to continue to work on that too as we move an aggressive agenda.
Thank you, Mr. Leader, this leadership team, Colonel Nunn, for being here with us this morning.
There is a lot going on, and we want to give you some updates on things.
I hope everybody had a blessed Thanksgiving.
It is true that our hearts were heavy, of course, with Sarah and Andrew, these two selfless National Guardsmen who were senselessly attacked while they volunteered for service to defend the rest of their fellow Americans, and they literally took bullets for it.
And so our prayers are with Andrew as he recovers, and our hearts and prayers are with the family of Sarah.
It reminds us, it reminds us that freedom isn't free, and some people make the ultimate sacrifice so the rest of us can have that.
You know, I was reminding our conference this morning, 1789, our first president, George Washington, was the first to issue a National Day of Thanksgiving and prayer, a proclamation.
And he declared that because the Congress requested it of him.
And of course, Washington was the first and best person to do that, to start the tradition.
And he wrote famously in his proclamation, he said, it is the duty of all of us.
It is our duty to acknowledge the blessings of God, to be grateful for what he's done for our country and all of us individually, and to humbly implore his protection and favor.
It's never been more important to do that.
And it's a great reminder.
Thanksgiving is a uniquely American holiday, as we know.
And it's a great time to sit around the table and be reminded of those blessings.
And chief among them is the freedom that we enjoy.
And we do not take that for granted.
So it's proper, appropriate for us to acknowledge those sacrifices.
Now, there's a lot going on across the country.
There's a special election in Tennessee today, you may have heard, Tennessee's 7th district.
I spent all day there yesterday.
I think it was 10 hours and 12 events, I think.
I was with Matt Van Epps, our Republican, extraordinary candidate for the seat there that is open and will be filled today in the election.
He's running against someone who truly is, by any objective measure, a real radical.
She famously said that she hates Nashville, which is the largest city in the district, which is kind of an interesting campaign strategy, and hates country music.
You know, it's Tennessee.
So Matt Van Epps is an extraordinary candidate by contrast.
He is a lieutenant colonel in the Tennessee Army National Guard.
He's a combat veteran.
He flew combat missions deployed eight times over to the Middle East and dodged missiles and bullets for his country.
He worked in Tennessee state government and is a highly capable, competent, calm, common sense conservative.
He's exactly what that district needs.
We're excited for him, a devoted husband and father, America First Patriot.
So I'm just, hey, if you're in Tennessee, 7th District, Nashville, and 14 counties, go vote today.
It matters.
Special elections are strange animals, and anything can happen.
And when you're in a deep red district, sometimes people assume that the Republican, the conservative, will win, and you cannot assume that because anything can happen.
So we encourage everybody to go out there and make that happen.
The people are fired up.
I was there and really enjoyed the energy there.
We're going to see that across the country next week as we go into this very important midterm election next year, in all the weeks ahead.
And as we go into that election, remembering, again, how important all of this is.
And as we put some posters up here to remind you and remind all of ourselves what an extraordinary run we've had in the 119th Congress.
Now, in spite of the fact that we had razor-thin majority, I mean, at many times, as you know, one or two vote margin, we still have had one of the most consequential Congresses in the great history of this extraordinary nation.
And, you know, if you look at what has been accomplished for the first 10 months of this term, this year, the 119th Congress, this new administration, you can stack that up against any Congress in history.
I think it's probably in the top five in terms of marquee landmark achievements.
And, you know, part of our both a blessing and a curse is we did so much of it in the one big beautiful bill, the working families tax cut.
There's so much to talk about, it's as if it just got brushed aside.
But the component pieces of that is some of the most nation-shaping, productive pro-growth policies that have ever occurred to help all Americans.
And we look forward to all the provisions of that bill being implemented beginning really in earnest in the first part of the year.
And so the first quarter, second quarter will be a very different scenario.
But we're excited to go through that.
We can't fix everything overnight.
And the Biden-Harris administration, as we said so many times in four years, really destroyed almost every metric of public policy.
Don't go flip a switch to do that.
It takes some time.
And we've been working earnestly and around the clock to do that, to work on solutions to solve all those problems and to make government more efficient and effective and responsive.
Republicans have been delivering and working to bring down costs for American families, to fix the Democrats' broken health care system and to rid our streets of violent criminals and dangerous illegal aliens.
All this has been our goal since January, and we've been delivering.
And as the year comes to an end, we started to reflect upon what we've done in that first 10 months and ultimately the first 12 months, and it's really something.
The Working Families Tax Cut.
Let me just tell you some of the components of that because people seem to have forgotten.
It was a permanent extension of the 2017 tax cuts, which is collectively the biggest tax cut in U.S. history.
Had we not passed the big bill, we would have had a $5 trillion tax increase on all hardworking American families as that expired in December.
It was a marquee achievement.
We also in that included permanent estate tax relief extensions.
We had landmark Medicaid program reforms, which the CBO has said is going to save $185 billion and reduce premiums on everybody for their health care.
We expanded the SNAP work requirements to get ineligible recipients off, young, able-bodied men with no dependents or health problems.
They shouldn't be riding the wagon and they won't anymore.
In the bill, we increased border enforcement and funding, generational investment in those things, and it's worked because guess what?
The border is sealed.
We don't have all these illegals coming across the border anymore.
We included no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, increased standard deduction for seniors, free tax savings accounts for every child born in America, which we'll be announcing at the White House in an event this afternoon.
Business tax provisions to incentivize investments and innovation.
That's all in the bill and much more.
We codified 67 of President Trump's America First Executive Orders so far, and there are many more to come.
We repealed Biden-era regulations with 23 Congressional Review Act resolutions.
Now, this is important, too.
We've been making history along the way over the last 10 months.
In the entire time that CRA's Congressional Review Acts have been part of the law, only 20 had been signed into law since the inception of that instrument.
This year alone, we have already passed 23 of those out of the House, and 16 of those have been signed into law.
That's a big thing.
We've restored regular order to the appropriations process.
And y'all know what a big thing that was.
A goal of mine since I became Speaker a little over two years ago was to restore regular order because instead of governing by an omnibus before Christmas, which is no way to do stewardship, we wanted to get back to 12 separate approach bills.
And as you saw, when we reopened government, one of the things the president signed was three regular order appropriations bills signed into law.
What a marquee achievement.
We had agriculture, legislative branch, military construction, VA bill signed into law, and both chambers and the appropriators are working right now to put the next bills, get them prepared, and get them enacted and signed into law.
We've also, in the last 10 months, defunded wasteful spending through rescissions, billions of dollars there.
We passed and signed into law the Genius Act, the bipartisan landmark crypto legislation.
We passed into signed into law the Lake and Riley Act, the HALT-Fentanyl Act, and the Ticket Down Act.
And the House has passed the SAVE Act, the Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act, Protecting American Energy Production Act, the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, Fix Our Forest Act, the Ticket Act, Unlocking Our Domestic LNG Potential Act, American Entrepreneurs First Act, Stop Illegal Entry Act, Made in America Defense Act.
I could go on and on and on.
Remember, these are just the top lines.
The House has passed 331 pieces of legislation this year that will directly improve the quality of life for millions of American families.
And that's a lot to be thankful for.
By the way, just this week, as was mentioned earlier, President Trump is signing into law the IRS Math and Taxpayer Help Act.
It received little fanfare in the media, but it's a bill that will provide taxpayers fairer treatment when corresponding with the IRS regarding tax returns.
And that's a big thing as we go into tax season in the first quarter.
It's the type of work that House Republicans are doing here every day in these halls.
We're working on real solutions to real problems for our constituents.
As I mentioned, the Working Families Tax Cut, if we were just to go through every provision of that bill that's going to make life easier and safer and more affordable for American families, we would be here until Christmas.
So I'm not going to do that for you.
But we're not going to rest on our laurels.
The American people delivered a clear mandate last fall for us to fix everything.
And we're going to sprint through the finish line next November.
We'll be adding a new member.
I expect Matt Van Epps is going to win that election today.
And we will bring our freshman class of Republicans up to the number of 36, adding another vote to that margin every single day, and we'll keep working.
We're more confident than ever that the Working Families Tax Cut provisions are implemented as that happens in the first quarter, second quarter.
American families begin to receive financial relief.
Republicans are not just going to hold on to the majority.
We're going to grow it.
And over the next weeks and months, House Republicans will advance legislation to continue to bring down the cost of health care for working families, to ensure our fighting force remains the most lethal and the best prepared in the world, and to fully fund the government for the upcoming fiscal year in a responsible way while maintaining good stewardship of taxpayer resources.
This week, as the leader mentioned, we'll pass legislation to reduce the regulatory burden on small businesses further, to keep the Chinese Communist Party out of America's classrooms.
That's a big and important endeavor, and to establish a landmark nationwide NIL framework for collegiate athletics and empower student athletes to maximize their college experience.
Despite the unrelenting stream of palace intrigue stories that fill the pages of your publications, House Republicans remain united and focused on delivering results for our constituents.
That's how we've gotten this done.
That's how we'll continue to do it.
And that will be happening in earnest in the weeks and months to come.
So we'll take a few questions if you have a question.
You're so eager.
unidentified
I got to get a relationship at this point for South Florida Thanksgiving as well.
Recorded Vote Ordered00:07:02
unidentified
But quick question: What are your thoughts about scandal, but specifically, what are your thoughts about President Trump calling Governor Walls retarded?
Well, look, that's not the word that I would choose.
I think his reaction was probably a spontaneous one to the enormous amount of fraud that was announced there.
We're thinking it may be $2 billion.
Congressman Ember, of course, represents that state, and it is an outrage.
And we're told that this was funding terrorist organizations in Somalia.
And so it's a lot to look into.
I mean, all of us, when we heard the news, we reacted in different ways.
And, you know, that's not the word I would choose.
But I think everybody understands how absurd and crazy that is and how Congress has an immediate obligation to look into it, and the administration is as well.
And we're going to get down to the bottom of that.
Governor Walsh appears to have a lot to answer for.
So it was a really stupid thing.
unidentified
Thank you so much, Mr. Speaker.
You talked a lot about your accomplishments, and one you didn't mention is the SAVE Act, which the House has passed twice, it's celebrating action in the Senate for some reason.
But many are still asking when an in-person, same-day hand-counted paper ballot measure will be passed, and will that be done in time for the 2026 election?
A sufficient number having risen, a recorded vote is ordered.
Members will record their vote by electronic device.
This is a five-minute vote.
unidentified
House votes now on approval of the debate rolls pertaining to six bills involving small businesses and school policies.
One of the measures addresses how college athletes are paid by setting national standards for charging for the use of their name, image, and likeness, or NIL.
If the debate rules are approved here, lawmakers will consider two small business-related bills.
This is a five-minute vote and also the last vote of the day in the House.
On the Caribbean boat strikes, the administration has acknowledged that there was a second strike in that attack in September, but they have not said if there were any defenseless survivors.
Should they release the video to Congress, the unedited video to Congress and to the American public, and to if the defenseless survivors were killed, would that constitute a violation of the laws of war?
As you know, both of the Armed Services Committee and the Senate and the House will be having hearings on this to review, and that's their role.
I have been listening again, I was pretty busy yesterday.
I didn't follow a lot of the news, but I caught up a little bit early, early this morning.
That my assessment of this, my understanding is that most of the people that have looked at this, at least in a preliminary review, say that the admiral who ordered the second strike thought it was necessary to complete the mission.
He's a highly decorated, highly respected admiral in the Navy, and he made that call.
And so, you know, we're going to have to look at that.
I'm sure Congress has a right to look at it.
I don't know how much of the tape should be released because I'm not sure how much is sensitive with regard to national security and all that.
I haven't had a chance to review it, so I'm not going to prejudge it.
But I will say that, you know, it's not an unprecedented thing.
One of the things I was reminded of this morning is that under Barack Obama, President Obama, he had, I think, there were 550 drone strikes on people who were targeted as enemies of the country, and nobody ever questioned it.
And secondary strikes are not unusual.
It has to happen if a mission is going to be completed.
So I haven't reviewed the scope of the mission.
I haven't reviewed that particular strike.
I don't know what went into the Admiral's decision matrix, but it's something that Congress will look at, and we'll do that in the regular process and order.
I think it's very important for everybody to reserve judgment and not leap to conclusions until you have all the facts, and that's what we'll be uncovering.
unidentified
Yes.
Secretary Hacker testified.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
The first one is a little bit self-surveying.
It's Giving Tuesday, and so just asking everyone to consider perhaps public television among the many worthy charities of Louisiana public television.
Yes, there's a plea to give to public television for Giving Tuesday.
unidentified
And then on health care, two of your members came out of the meeting just now and told me that it was their impression that the House Republicans are likely to get on board some kind of short-term extension for the subsidies while you work out long-term reform.
They weren't members who love that idea, but they said it looks like that might be necessary.
Broken Promises Discussed00:09:17
unidentified
Where do you think things stand, and could something come before the House by the end of the year?
I don't know who you talked to, but they might have left early.
I was up there for quite a bit today.
We were talking about a lot of issues, and what I said, we didn't commit to that.
What I said is when you have, this is just practical, okay?
When you have a razor-thin majority, which we have, this is not like the old days.
You know, in the old days, they had 30, 40 seat majorities.
And so four leaders could go in a back room, create the agenda, and hoist it upon everybody and say, this is what you're doing.
And if 20 or 25 people disagreed, they said, so what?
Go jump in the Potomac.
We're moving forward.
It doesn't work that way anymore, right?
In an era of small margins, I literally have to get almost every person in the room on board.
Now, healthcare is a very complex issue.
And I want to point this out.
Look, it is not the Republicans who broke American health care.
Next week, we'll go into this in real detail, and I'll show you the whole timeline.
The Democrats broke health care, okay?
When they created the Unaffordable Care Act 15 years ago, they promised you that everybody could keep your plan, keep your doctor if you wanted, and that your premiums would be reduced on average by $2,500.
Exactly the opposite was the truth.
And premiums have risen in some cases 60, 80% over that time.
They broke the system.
And every time the Democrats have gone in to try to subsidize the broken system, they've spent more and more taxpayer dollars and they've been wasted.
The COVID era subsidy only affects 7% of Americans.
All this hullabaloo is over 7%.
Now, every American, 100% of Americans, need their health care costs to come down.
Republicans have ideas to do that.
Now, what I've got to do is build consensus deliberately around the best ideas, and we've been working on that.
The majority leader has been quarterbacking this effort with the chairman of the committees of jurisdiction, with the docs caucus, and with individual members who this is their passion, and they really spend a lot of time thinking and working on it.
And we're pulling those ideas together, and there will be a Republican response to this, okay?
So I can't project in advance what that will be because I don't know what the consensus is in that room, but you will see our sleeves rolled up and that work being done in earnest this week as we bring all that together.
I told everybody we are going to respond.
We understand the need of bringing down health care costs and at the same time, raising access to care and quality of care.
The Republican Party is the party that can do that.
The Democrats have demonstrated for 15 years they broke the system and they keep doubling down on the broken system.
Okay.
Hey, and guess what?
If you love your Obamacare, you'll get to keep it.
Okay?
We're going to improve the system for Americans.
We have good ideas to do it.
We have a lot of thoughtful people working on this and we'll be pulling it together.
So no, the answer is no, I did not project any outcome of this this morning.
We were talking about the various ideas and we're working right now.
People are very passionate about this and they should be because their constituents understand the necessity of it.
So we'll keep doing that.
Thank you all so much and be more later today.
unidentified
I wish.
The tigers.
Do you know that the CW Care Society, they actually work on helping Somalis get properly diagnosed?
They're what the Somali Minnesota authorities take by the time.
Before we begin, I want to say that our hearts are with the family of National Guard specialists Sarah Brextrom, who was tragically murdered last week here in the district.
House Democrats are honoring her memory and continue to pray for the recovery of Staff Sergeant Andrew Wolf.
This tragedy should never have happened, and we'll continue to support the investigation on this deeply troubled individual and how they were able to carry out this horrific attack.
Now, we'd like to talk about the affordability crisis that is plaguing hardworking families and Americans all over this country.
This past week, Americans experienced this sticker shock as they went to their Thanksgiving dinners, as they went to the grocery store, and as they decided to get a jump on buying Christmas presents.
In every town, every community, every rural community, the cost of living continues to become more difficult for families to bear.
From groceries to clothing to rent and utilities, Americans are seeing these expenses go up with no relief in sight.
And not only is there no relief in sight, there's no agenda from House Republicans on how to address this.
Donald Trump promised to lower costs on his first day in office.
This was one of the many broken promises from this president.
The Republican economic policies have only made this worse.
On top of the cost of living crisis, Americans are on the brink of losing access to quality and affordable health care if Republicans allow the affordable tax credits, affordable care tax credits to expire.
There is no time to waste.
We have a discharge petition that is active, that has Democratic support.
That is the only path to deliver the health care certainty and stability that Americans need.
We heard during the shutdown from dozens of Republicans who gave public statements saying that they supported the Affordable Care Act tax credits to their constituents.
This is their opportunity to make that right.
This is their opportunity to stand up for health care, to stand up for their constituents, and to stand up to Speaker Johnson and Donald Trump, who are willing to let these tax credits expire to hurt the American people.
This is the only real solution, and Republicans should take it before it's too late.
I also want to add my sincere condolences to the family of Sarah Beckstrom, the National Guard soldier senselessly killed last week.
And I also pray that Andrew Wolfe, the other National Guard soldier fighting for his life, pulls through.
As Chairman Aguilar has said, we have an affordability crisis.
That's one reason Donald Trump is polling at the lowest level ever for a modern-day president at this point in a term.
Only 36% approval, over 60% disapproval.
And for folks who shop on Black Friday last Friday, according to Salesforce, average prices across all products increased 7%.
And then specifically for household goods, prices increased 24%.
Things like furniture, appliances, dining, and decor all skyrocketed.
And what is Donald Trump doing?
He wants to make sure his great Gatsby ballroom is as big as it can be.
Trump and his rubber stand Republicans are not focusing on the affordability crisis, and now we have health care costs skyrocketing.
And if we don't extend ACA tax credits, it's going to mean that millions of Americans are either going to lose health insurance or pay a lot more for the health care premiums.
Now I'd like to talk about war crimes.
Last week, Secretary Hegseth lied and denied media reports that the U.S. military ordered a second strike on defenseless shipwrecked survivors.
Then yesterday, both the White House and Hegseth said actually it was Admiral Bradley who ordered the second strike.
I served on active duty as a JAG for four years and then an additional 21 years in the reserves.
And let me be very clear: killing shipwrecked survivors is a war crime.
The Pentagon's own Department of Defense law manual on the law of war literally says that, quote, orders to fire upon the shipwrecked will be clearly illegal.
The Department of Justice must conduct an investigation into the war crime and hold all those accountable, including Secretary Heckset.
He allegedly said, quote, killed them all.
If the Trump administration does not hold the people accountable, I guarantee you a future administration will do so because there is no statute of limitations for war crimes.
And now I have a message for the members of the United States military.
Thank you for your service to our great nation.
And for those of us who served, we know that we all followed a code of conduct.
And part of that code of conduct is to not lie and to accept responsibility.
Unfortunately, the head of the Department of Defense, Secretary Hegseth, engaged in dishonorable conduct.
He stated on national TV, quote, I watched it live.
We knew exactly who was in that boat.
And instead of accepting responsibility for what happened, Hegseth chose to throw Admiral Bradley under the bus.
You and the Vice Chair have spoken about affordability this morning.
I'm sure this message you heard from your constituents while you were back home last week.
But the White House, after some of the Black Friday numbers came out, said that the record Black Friday spending is an indication that some of the affordability sirens that you all have sounded are a little bit hyperbolic or a little bit, you know, kind of overblown.
What's your reaction to the White House?
You know, Kevin Hassett was on the Sunday shows this weekend.
What's your message to the White House who's saying, you know, look at the consumer spending numbers.
Look at how Americans are continuing to spend money.
And that's an indicator that, again, some of what Democrats are saying, you know, is kind of, you know, overblown.
People waiting in line to get a deal doesn't necessarily mean we have a soaring and roaring economy.
It means people are looking for a deal.
And so the only way we truly know what the economy looks like is, look, our members of Congress are out in our districts, we're out in our community, we see it, we talk to our friends and neighbors, and we hear from them the affordability crisis that they're in.
We hear direct stories from them on their health care premiums doubling and getting notices and having to think about whether they're going to go without health care for the next year if these premium increases stay.
That's what we hear.
But look, in communities all across the country, people, Black Friday is a tradition to go wait in line and to try to get a deal to try to get ahead on the Christmas shopping.
But Kevin Hassett is in the White House just continuing to perpetuate lies if they use one anecdote as a reason to call for a good economy.
One of the things that they can do and that they can control though is they can produce real data.
They can fund the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
They can fund agencies that give us good data so we have an understanding of what is happening with the economy.
They don't want to do that because they know that the tariffs that they've imposed on Americans are crushing people and they know that those costs are thousands of dollars that people will face this holiday season as a result of Trump's reckless economic policies.
I find it really funny Republicans are making that argument about Black Friday signing records.
The reason I set records is because prices increased.
That's why, because people are paying more and getting less.
And that's why we see consumer sentiment surveys that show that consumer sentiment has been rapidly dropping.
Polls after polls show that American people know that affordability is a crisis and they want Trump Republicans to do something about it instead of focus on stupid things.
None of what we're saying on the House floor comes back to addressing this issue.
If Republicans were so confident that the economy is in the right place, that the American people feel good, they talk in their morning meetings about wanting to address the affordability crisis.
They have an opportunity every week here to put up meaningful bills that address that.
We don't have that this week.
We haven't had that in months.
And their only solution is to do whatever the president asked them to do.
unidentified
Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
A question for both of you, and maybe a little more for Vice Chair Luke, as you discussed Secretary Hegseth in your opening statement.
But his impeachment for the Defense Secretary, is that something that should be on the table?
And would you guys potentially support that right now, especially if the facts regarding this alleged fall-on strike on the shipwreck are borne out?
Yeah, let's not draw the conclusion before we hear the evidence.
I appreciate that both Senate majority and minority members, as well as House Armed Services members, Chairman Rogers and Rankin Member Smith, indicated that they want a full accountability to what's happening in Venezuela, especially with the strike, as the Vice Chair mentioned.
That's where this should start.
Republicans are not going to impeach Pete Hegseth.
We feel he should resign.
The Vice Chair has said that multiple times from this podium.
I've said he's the most unqualified Secretary of Defense that we've ever had in this country.
So that's how we personally feel.
But when it comes to the evidence and the accountability and the oversight, let's go through that process.
But members of the military need to tell the truth, as the Vice Chair said, and we need a full accounting of what happened on that day with that strike in particular and whether there were crimes that were committed.
I agree with Chairman Aguilar that we need a full accounting to get all the facts first.
But we already do know that Secretary Hegseth lied, as did Sharon Parnell at the Department of Defense.
He also lied.
They denied the media reports last week.
And then just yesterday, the White House and Hegseth himself confirmed, yeah, a second strike was ordered, and then they threw Admiral Bradley under the bus.
That's what happened.
unidentified
Kyle McDuro with the PBS News Hour.
When it comes to the expiration of the expanded ACA subsidies, how much are you constrained by what can get 60 votes in the Senate?
And are you willing to compromise at all on the Democratic discharge petition in order to get a handful of House Republicans on board that you would need to successfully move a discharge petition?
Republicans have said that they want an extension, that they support the Affordable Care Act tax credits.
We're giving them an opportunity to do that.
That's what this discharge petition is about.
As Leader Jeffreys has said for months, Democrats will go anywhere and have any discussion with our Republican colleagues about addressing the Affordable Care Act tax credits or the affordability crisis.
If Republicans want to have a conversation about solutions, we're all ears.
What we're saying is we have a solution.
We have a solution with more than 200 supporters.
Work with us and let's address this.
But right now, the Republican conference is in chaos.
They haven't had a health care strategy ever.
So we're not just going to sit around and wait for them to come up with one-year, three-year health savings account, all these things that they don't have consensus among themselves.
They're in disarray and disagree with their own leadership on this.
And it appears that Donald Trump might even disagree with them because before the holiday he was willing to engage on this reportedly.
So what we're saying is: look, we have a solution, we have a vehicle, we have an opportunity.
Let's take this step, and then we can have conversations about what goes on in the Senate.
I'm not a Senate expert, and so we're not pretending to be.
We're trying to pass legislation out of this chamber.
unidentified
Open to Congressman Fitzpatrick's framework if the details are released in the next week or so.
Look, we're open to solutions that deliver support for the American people.
We have a viable solution with 200 supporters plus.
If any member of the Republican Party has a solution with 200 supporters, we're willing to have a conversation.
unidentified
Thank you.
Building off that question, would you guys consider doing a separate discharge petition on a bipartisan basis for a different proposal like the Patrick-Swazi one?
So are you open to a two-year extension as opposed to a three-year with reforms, which is what Swazi and Fitzpatrick seem to be talking about right now, if they can show you that it can pass the Senate and get signed in the vote box?
What we're saying is there's 200-plus Democrats on this discharge petition.
If Republicans want to work with us on this, if they want to deliver for the American people, they have a real opportunity to do it.
But don't just join a working group and put a press release out to your constituents saying you're willing to engage.
Sign a discharge petition, force a vote.
We're willing to have conversations with anybody, anytime, anywhere, on the affordability crisis and specifically these tax credits.
But they have had plenty of time.
They have known that these tax credits were going to expire for years, and they chose to do nothing about it, including Congressman Fitzpatrick, when he supported the big ugly law.
And so, you know, Republicans have known that this crisis was coming.
They chose to do nothing about it.
So if they're truly serious about this, we have a proposal, we have a solution.
Let's take that step, and then we can have conversations about what can be passed into law.
But it's clear that the president is even open to this before Speaker Johnson got a hold of him.
Thank you so much.
unidentified
And that news conference from earlier today, the House here voting on the second of two bills.
This is a vote on approval of the debate rules pertaining to six bills involving small businesses and school policies.
One of the measures addresses how college athletes are paid by setting national standards for charging for the use of their name, image, and likeness, or NIL.
This is a five-minute vote.
It's been open for at least 15 minutes now.
You can see that there are at least three Republicans who voted no on this.
And we are learning from our Capitol Hill producer, Craig Kaplan, that those no votes were cast by Texas Congressman Chip Roy, Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, and Byron Donalds of Florida.
We're unclear why they're opposed to the legislation.
And when we find that out, we will certainly share that with you.
In the meantime, we'll show you some of the floor debate on this measure from earlier today.
We're now only a few weeks away from new health insurance premiums skyrocketing.
People's insurance bills are going to double, triple, and in some cases quadruple.
And so you'd think we'd be here on the floor today addressing that, right?
You would think, but you would be wrong, because we have on the floor this week another embarrassingly pointless and irrelevant collection of bills that do absolutely nothing to help everyday people.
You know, when Democrats first raised the alarm about health care premiums skyrocketing earlier this year, Speaker Mike Johnson said, oh, don't worry, this is a policy debate for December.
And here we are in December, and Republicans are doing nothing, zero.
Actually, they're doing less than nothing.
They took an eight-week taxpayer-funded vacation while people panicked about how they're going to afford their insurance premiums starting January 1st.
Families are going to see their bills go up and up and up, and in some cases by nearly $1,000 more dollars a month.
Now, maybe that doesn't sound like a lot of money to Republicans, because these guys might not get how much that means to regular people.
I know how out of touch they are.
But they're building a fancy new ballroom at the White House with their billionaire donors.
That's where their attention is.
They eat caviar and they drink fine wine and mar-a-lago while regular people suffer.
And maybe they don't understand how much $1,000 a month is to the people I represent.
But guess what?
It is a lot.
For most hardworking people, this is a catastrophic amount of money that suddenly needs to be added to a monthly budget.
It's more than what a lot of people earn during a week of work.
And Republicans have known that this crisis was coming for some time, yet they still have no plan on health care.
They say they have one.
Well, where the hell is it?
We're still waiting.
Their only answer so far is: good luck, folks.
Hope you like choosing between health insurance and food.
And here's the kicker, Mr. Speaker.
If this House voted today to stop premiums from exploding, it would pass.
It would pass easily.
Democrats would vote for it, and I know there's a chunk of Republicans that would vote for it as well.
But the Republican leadership will not bring it up because they care more about tax breaks for billionaires than tax credits for working families.
It is that simple.
Now, don't even get me started about the bills Republicans are bringing to the floor this week.
Two bills for small businesses.
Sounds good, right?
You know what their bills do?
One of them creates a hotline that already exists.
Wow, groundbreaking.
And neither of them do anything about the number one issue that I hear from small businesses, and that is tariffs.
Every small business owner I talk to says the same thing.
The tariffs are killing them.
The tariffs are making prices skyrocket.
The tariffs are slowing down business.
But these guys don't care.
They don't care.
They just go along to get along.
They don't want to tick Trump off.
I guess my question is, if Republicans want to help small businesses, why are they blocking a vote to overturn the tariffs?
Why have they refused to let Congress vote on the tariffs for months and months, even though it's our responsibility?
What's up with that?
After all, it's our responsibility.
It is our job.
And are they afraid that if it comes to the floor for a vote, that they will lose?
And then we got a bunch of bills about protecting public schools.
Give me a break.
Give me a break.
My sisters are public school teachers.
I talk to parents and students all the time.
You know what they tell me?
Reduce class size.
Support teachers.
Make schools safer.
Fund education.
But these guys are bringing up a bill about foreign infiltration in third grade math class.
Mr. Speaker, isn't it amazing that we come here to talk about these six bills and a significant portion of the debate from the other side of the aisle deals with bills that we're not addressing?
And they talk about some of those and they then make allegations, Mr. Speaker, that are just not accurate.
I remember hearing the clause just a second ago a phrase, well, what are they doing to help small business?
How soon we forget, Mr. Speaker, that just last summer we passed the Working Families Tax Cuts Bill with lots of help for people on Main Street, in Abingdon, Virginia, in Marion, Virginia, in every small town that I represent in the 9th Congressional District.
Those businesses are benefiting from what we did because we made major adjustments.
Actually, what we did was we kept everything that we already had that was going to expire for taxes that would have burdened our small businesses and made it more expensive for them to compete against the big companies.
Now, it's true the big companies get some of these tax cuts too.
But Mr. Speaker, the people who really need them are the small businesses.
The people who need those breaks are the mom and pop shops.
The people who need those breaks are the my son, who's 18, is now getting tips.
He's working tables at Mac and Bob's restaurant.
And he's getting tips.
Guess what?
He won't have to pay income taxes on that.
Now, maybe he's at a point where his money wouldn't be high enough that he'd pay those taxes anyway.
But for those families who rely on that tip money as a part of their income, that's a huge benefit to the American families.
So I find it surprising that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle want to focus on saying that we're not helping small business when every single small business person in the United States knows that we've been fighting for them, knows that we've been helping them, and knows that while these bills today in this rule, that's all we're doing, Mr. Speaker, is a rule on six bills, and the bills that relate to small businesses that we're doing today will help a little bit.
But to challenge us and say, what are we doing to help small business after we did a huge benefit on a number of different issues for small businesses, for mom and pops, for people out there working, whether they're working overtime jobs where they're able to take a tax credit for that as well, whether they're doing tips or whether they're just trying to buy some new equipment and want to be able to write that off in the first year instead of having to amortize it over a number of years,
as used to be the law and is what my colleagues on the other side advocated for last summer, that they start paying that again so that they can't take that write off.
That hurts small business.
So I ask you, Mr. Speaker, just to consider that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle really don't understand small business or they wouldn't make such a comment.
And with that, I reserve the remainder of my time.
Yeah, well, let me just say that as the son of small business owners, I don't think the gentleman knows what he's talking about.
This is outrageous.
Yeah, I have the bills that we're considering here today.
And the reason why I'm not spending much time talking about them is because they suck.
They're awful.
It's pathetic.
One creates a hotline that already exists.
You can go online and call that a hotline.
You just restate it.
That's what we're doing here.
Nothing about the tariffs that are screwing over small businesses.
Nothing about the realities that small businesses are dealing with each and every day.
You come up with these bills that are meaningless, that do nothing for anybody.
And I'm sorry that my Republican friends don't want to talk about the health care crisis.
But because of Republican inaction, millions and millions of people are going to see their health care bills skyrocket.
And millions are going to probably go without health care.
And we've been warning my friends about this for months, and the Republicans have done nothing, not a damn thing.
I don't know how you go home and face your constituents who are about to get screwed over with high health care premiums and bills and say, oh, yeah, no, I get it.
I mean, people are going to lose their health care.
You've been in charge all year, and you've done zero, nothing, not a damn thing.
You know, so these bills that we're talking about today, I mean, I would encourage anybody who's viewing this on C-SPAN to Google them, to look them up.
It's pathetic.
It's pathetic that this is what we're wasting our time doing.
And there's so much at stake.
And we have two weeks left to address the health care crisis.
And my Republican friends have nothing to talk about that today.
Yeah, I mean, the hotline already exists, by the way.
You go on, you can Google it.
So you recreate, you basically establish a hotline that already exists.
Boy, that's helping small businesses.
Yeah, that's not a big problem, my friends.
Big problem is the high cost of health care and these tariffs, which are just, you know, basically putting many of our businesses out of business.
And so you come here, my friends come here and defend this garbage that we're doing.
It is pathetic.
It's pathetic.
Mr. Speaker, I want to yield two minutes to the gentlewoman from Ohio, Ms. Seiss.
Today I rise in opposition of the rule and H.R. 4312, the SCORE Act.
This legislation fails to address the rights of students to advocate for themselves, and that's why I introduced an amendment to allow for students to collectively bargain.
As a former gymnast and athlete, my allegiance will always be with athletes and with the underdog.
It is undeniable that student athletes are not receiving equitable compensation for their labor, especially those in high-revenue sports.
A student athlete constantly endangers themselves and risks great harm to their bodies for the entertainment of the masses, all while juggling classes, practice, and potentially a part-time job just to survive.
Their natural talents allow for universities to recruit on and off the field, raise money, all while the actual revenue generators are left in the cold.
This issue was already addressed in the courts, and one thing that remains clear is the NCAA has been profiting off of college students' labor, and the students have not.
For decades, students have not been paid for their participation in what is clearly a billion-dollar industry, and this is not right.
Currently, the Score Act has not laid out an equitable revenue-sharing model and leaves it wholly up to the interpretation of the school.
Further, passing the SCORE Act as it stands would only eliminate students' abilities to collectively bargain.
That's why I introduced an amendment in the Rules Committee to strike the language from the bill and allow students to be properly compensated for their labor.
I thank my colleagues on the Democratic side for offering the amendment, but unfortunately, the amendment failed on party line rules and was rejected by the Republicans.
Without my amendment, players at schools in my district, basketball players specifically, would not have the means of recourse to negotiate compensation and would be forced to simply shut up and dribble.
I understand that the needs of a Big Ten school are different than those than the MAC or the SWAC, and without the ability to collectively bargain, these athletes cannot negotiate with the university for their specific needs, no matter the size of the program.
For those reasons and more, I am in opposition to the rule and the bill, and I encourage my colleagues to get back to the drawing board and do something that actually works for student athletes and allows them to be paid equitably and fairly and collectively bargain.
I appreciate that some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle may have been involved in small businesses.
I was too.
Not just family, but I ran a small business for many, many years.
People may not consider a solo practitioner of law of small business, but I tell you, when you have to pay the light bill and you have to pay the salaries, you're a small business.
Further, I've also been involved in many years in a swimming pool that some years makes money, but most years may show a little bit of a profit, but it's there mainly because we want it to be a community pool.
But it is a corporation that makes money occasionally, even if only on paper, and that corporation has to buy equipment.
Shockingly, you need new kickboards, you need new diving boards, you need new swim blocks.
And what we did last summer helps all of those small businesses, and every one of them knows it.
So to say that we haven't done anything on that is really a misnomer and a mistake.
I will tell you that it is true that the bill, the SCORE Act, does not solve all the ills that some may see out there, but it is a step in the right direction.
That's why in my opening I said that this was a first step but not the last step in trying to solve problems that we have in our college athletics.
And it's true that the big sports make lots of money, but the gymnasts of the world and the swimmers of the world, they don't bring in a lot of revenue.
And I can assure you, Mr. Speaker, that when I would be swimming in the pool, even in my prime, it was never considered mass appeal entertainment.
Nobody would have paid to watch our swimming meets.
Now, we had a good time swimming for Embert and Henry College now university, but you know, it was not bringing in great revenues to the college.
And that's why this bill says that some of those revenues have to be spent, if you're going to be doing this, some of those revenues have to be spent to keep other sports going as well.
We're trying to make sure that there's some recognition of the Olympic sports.
We're trying to make sure that there's recognition of other sports.
That also means women's sports.
That you've got to have some abilities to take some of the money that you make off the revenue sports, as they're called, and use them for the other sports.
Now, if we want to continue with the wild, wild west, as my friend Gus Bill Arakas likes to say, then we do nothing and we defeat this rule.
We do nothing.
And it will continue to be a crazy arena out there where students aren't looked at, and particularly if you're not the top-bill student on the football team or on the basketball team, but if you're a student athlete in any other way, you're getting harmed by what's starting to happen and what is happening in our larger universities where everything is going to pay the top-name athlete to come to your school next year.
This starts us down that path.
Is it a perfect bill?
I will not claim that.
The rule makes it so that we get this first step moving down the pathway to try to resolve some of these issues.
And I fully expect that we will have bills in the future that will deal with some of the other issues.
We will find that when we do this, that we probably have solved some problems and will discover additional problems.
Sometimes when you get an answer to a question, it raises more questions.
That's what this bill is supposed to do.
It's supposed to start us down the path.
And if we find that there are other issues that Congress needs to step in and deal with, then we can do so.
We are not limited to taking action in only December of 2025.
That's why we have a legislative body that will consider: does this bill do good?
I submit to you, Mr. Speaker, the SCORE Act does good.
Does it do perfect?
No.
Does it solve everything that everybody might think of?
No.
Does it solve problems we have yet to think of?
No.
But it is a good start in an area where there is no guidance currently and where the NCAA has lost control of our college athletics completely and where it is, in fact, a wild, wild west where the vast majority of students I submit who are student athletes are being hurt and left behind.
We're trying to rectify it, to create a balance, so to speak.
And that's why as a first step on this first step bill, we need to pass the rule.
And I reserve the remainder of my time.
unidentified
Gentleman Reserves, gentlemen from Massachusetts, recognized.
The Republican leadership is running this House like an authoritarian dictatorship.
It's their way or the highway.
There are six bills that are allowed to be considered in this rule.
Six.
Every single one of them is completely closed.
What does that mean?
It means nobody can offer any amendments.
Democrats can't offer amendments.
Republicans can't offer amendments.
They didn't even ask for people to submit amendments.
And they like to say, oh, nobody offered amendments.
Yeah, people did offer amendments.
The gentleman talks about the SCORE Act.
A Republican came to the Rules Committee last night and offered five amendments.
I think they were reasonable.
I think they were reasonable enough to be debated and for us to vote on them.
All five were blocked.
They're blocking members of their own party.
That's how they run this place.
And, you know, a Democrat came up with an alternative, a good idea.
I mean, you know, you may not support it, but people like me thought it was a better way to approach this than the way the bill is written.
And that was blocked, too.
Everything is blocked.
Everything is blocked.
I mean, I think they're being blocked because my friends are afraid they might prevail.
And by the way, all the players associations are against the SCORE Act the way it is currently written.
Every single one of them.
I mean, you know, this year alone, Republicans have issued 86 closed rules.
86.
That puts them on track to obliterate their previous record of the most closed rules in a single Congress.
That's 86 times that this chamber was kept from even considering amendments to improve bills.
No debate, no votes, nothing.
I mean, that's what an authoritarian dictatorship is like.
Republicans have blocked nearly eight out of every ten amendments submitted to the Rules Committee.
And get this, that's 2,700 amendments gone, tossed out by this leadership.
They have blocked 60% of bipartisan amendments, most of their own party's amendments, and more than 90% of Democratic amendments.
Apparently, the only ideas welcoming this Congress are the ones written by special interests or the ones that Donald Trump personally signs off on.
Now, we used to debate in this chamber.
We used to vote on amendments on the floor.
Members had a voice.
Legislation wasn't cooked up in the Speaker's office and rammed through with no chance to fix it.
But here we are.
Republicans have made fewer amendments in order at this point in the year than any Congress going back a decade.
By decimating debate, House Republicans have turned themselves into a rubber stamp for Trump.
And they'll fast-track giveaways to the wealthy and the well-connected, but they will block amendments that would protect care for millions or unreg our economy for working people.
I mean, the real scandal here is that we can do something to control the rising costs of health care, and we have been begging, by the way, not just Democrats, some Republicans have too, for them to at least just put something on the floor that we can debate and vote on to help alleviate the terrible burden that's about to fall on millions and millions of families in this country.
And the answer is we have, we can't do it.
They won't do it.
They won't do it.
You know, you want to debate the rule?
This rule is pathetic.
Six completely closed rules on six completely different bills.
You know, Congress is supposed to work for the American people.
I think my Republican colleagues have forgotten that.
Mr. Speaker, I yield two and a half minutes to the gentlewoman from New Mexico, Ms. Stansbury.
It's always instructive to come down here to the floor and listen to the debate.
I think it speaks for itself.
But I rise today in opposition to the bills that are before us and in strong defense of the Department of Education, our students, and kids across America.
As a public school student myself, I can say unequivocally these bills are fundamentally unserious and designed to distract from the fact that the Trump administration is currently dismantling the Department of Education right before our very eyes.
They've laid off thousands of employees, shuttered offices, carved up programs and transferred them to other agencies, declassified educators from getting student loans, threatened schools and universities, and given their friends contracts to not only rewrite educational curricula, but to even rewrite American history itself.
So let me remind my colleagues, this is the agency that was born out of the civil rights movement, the agency that ensures kids with disabilities have opportunities and ensures that all kids, no matter who they are or where they live, have access to education.
Because before the Department of Education, millions of children all across this country were denied access to schools and educational opportunities.
Federal programs were duplicative and wasteful.
And states, yes, states, regularly violated the basic civil rights of students.
So if our colleagues want to stand with students, you want to stand with schools and you want to stand with educators, then we should be fighting to protect our schools, fighting to protect them from an administration that is trying to dismantle education as we speak.
You should be fighting to address housing, food, health care, and fixing our broken economy, which is why, Mr. Speaker, I am here to stand today to oppose these bills and to stand with every public school and every kid across America who is fighting for a fair shot, because that's what we were elected to do.
And I will see to my colleague, the ranking member of the Rules Committee, that it's absolutely a fair point of debate to bring up the number of closed rules, but he does so without providing all the context.
When accounting for closed rules in the rules package, CRAs and bills which received no amendments, less than 35%, this is for this Congress.
Less than 35% of closed rules have been at the discretion of the Rules Committee.
Now, I know the ranking member will also say there was no formal deadline or call for amendments.
But don't be misled, Mr. Speaker.
He knows all too well that when he was chairman of the committee, the committee did not always provide a formal amendment deadline every week when they ran the show either.
Now, it's true that this rule has six closed measures, but it should be noted that amendments were only submitted on three of the six.
This means of the six bills, only three were closed at the discretion of the committee.
My friend, the gentleman from Massachusetts may also recall that members can submit amendments and the Rules Committee may make them in order whether there's a formal deadline to submit them or not.
This is a practice that both Republicans and Democrats have employed.
Now, Mr. Speaker, sometimes we get down here and we get all riled up.
Been there, done that.
I've been riled up myself before.
But I find it fascinating from a historical context that my colleague said, this is what it looks like when you have closed rules.
This is what it looks like in an authoritarian dictatorship.
Now, I know that the words authoritarian dictatorship must poll well because my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are consistently, Mr. Speaker, they're consistently throwing it out there.
But here's what's so fascinating.
In an authoritarian dictatorship, you don't get to claim that something that the majority is doing is like an authoritarian dictatorship because you would be banned from saying such things.
You would not be allowed to say such things.
You would not be allowed to have your time to debate the rule and then the bills.
All that would go by the wayside.
That's not happened here.
Now, we can argue, and on some points, I might even agree with my colleague from Massachusetts in the general running of a House floor.
I might even be willing to go further than him on some issues, because I'd like to see us reform a lot of the things we do around here.
But we are nowhere near his so-called authoritarian dictatorship from a historical perspective.
And for those of us who study those movements throughout history, I would submit, Mr. Speaker, that to even say that is damaging to this great republic, known throughout the world as the beacon of freedom and known as the United States of America.
unidentified
I have reserved.
Gentlemen from reserve, gentlemen from Massachusetts recognized.
Mr. Speaker, that's a lot of words to defend the most closed Congress in history.
Yeah, and I've, and I say this place is starting to look like an authoritarian dictatorship because this is what happens in authoritarian countries.
People don't get an opportunity to be able to offer amendments or change bills or change legislation.
It's take it or leave it.
I mean, people are silenced all the time.
And the gentleman's trying to defend this process.
Talk to the Republican member who came to the Rules Committee and offered five amendments.
All of them germane, you know, all of them designed to improve the so-called SCORE Act.
And he was denied, not one, not two, all five can't do it.
And by the way, I will say again that when the gentleman says that, oh, people didn't offer amendments to all these bills, let me just say, I think people are getting to understand what's going on here.
My Republican friends don't even ask for amendments anymore.
They don't give people time to write them.
You know, they basically, everybody kind of knows that the system is rigged and take it or leave it.
People have had it.
I mean, every single member here, you know, has ideas that maybe could improve some of this legislation.
But the whole system is rigged in a way that you got to take it or leave it.
This is not the way the House of Representatives should be run.
You know, and there are a whole bunch of other issues that we should be dealing with.
You know, Mr. Speaker, on Friday, the Washington Post reported an egregious abuse of power by the Secretary of Defense.
You know, back in September, an order was reportedly carried out to eliminate all remaining survivors on a suspected drug trafficking boat sailing through the Caribbean.
Pete Hegseth, who now calls himself Secretary of War, issued an order to, quote, kill everybody, end quote, who survived the first strike.
Kill everybody.
Those are the alleged words from the leader of our Defense Department.
And just to be clear, killing defenseless people, regardless of whether they had been engaged in armed conflict, is a war crime, plain and simple.
The administration is trying to brainwash the American people into thinking that cruelty and murder and war crimes are normal.
Well, I have news for the Trump administration.
This is not normal.
Even if we were at war, attacking survivors of an airstrike, whether or not they pose a threat to the United States, is a war crime.
It is unconscionable.
It is an unconscionable act of aggression that violates the Department of Defense's own guidelines, U.S. law, and international norms and laws.
And even President Trump is trying to distance himself from this unlawful attack, saying that he, quote, wouldn't have wanted that, not a second strike, end quote.
Let me be clear.
Secretary Hegseth has blatantly carried out illegal acts of violence, and right now he's trying to convince the American people that these actions are okay.
Mr. Speaker, the American people know better, and they deserve better.
And by the way, in case anybody tuned in to the President's little press conference before we gathered here today, he said the issue of affordability is a hoax.
It's a scam, he said.
I mean, really?
To anybody who's watching these proceedings, do you really think the issue of affordability is a scam?
I mean, prices are higher than ever.
I mean, people are paying more, they're going to be paying more for their health care because of the inaction of Republicans in the House and the Senate and this White House.
They're going to be paying so much that many of them are going to drop their health insurance.
And he says that the issue of affordability is a scam, is a hoax, is not real.
I mean, come on, come on.
And I would urge my Republican colleagues, you know, stand up for your constituents.
I mean, do the right thing.
Say no to these closed processes that don't allow you, even you, to be able to offer amendments, and stand up for policies that are going to make life easier for all people in this country.
I reserve my time.
unidentified
Members are reminded to address the remarks to the chair.
Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Massachusetts and I agree on one thing in his comments.
Killing defenseless people is wrong.
And I don't know whether that happened or not, but as he knows or ought to know, Mr. Speaker, both the Senate and the Armed Services Committee in the House are looking into these allegations.
But again, let me unequivocally state that I agree.
Killing of defenseless people is wrong.
Let's talk about affordability.
I do agree that affordability of health care is an issue.
It's a complex issue.
It's not in any of the bills that we're dealing with today, and that's his complaint.
Is that there ought to be something in there?
But let me remind folks how we got here.
We got here with a bill that came out of the Speaker's office, Speaker Pelosi's office, called the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare.
It was going to make everybody's world much better.
Now, it did take care of pre-existing conditions, and it's something that Republicans, and I wasn't here then, but Republicans should have fixed.
They should have fixed that.
But other than that, it did not make health care affordable.
And in fact, the biggest complaint that my colleagues have had throughout the course of the last few weeks has been about the enhanced premium tax credits, which were a temporary program that they said would end in December of 2025.
And now they claim nobody can afford it without this temporary program that was brought in because of COVID.
Nobody can afford insurance in exchanges.
They have, in fact, admitted that health care costs and health insurance costs in this country are a problem because of Obamacare.
Now, that said, Mr. Speaker, we've talked about everything.
I thought about maybe getting up here and giving a speech on the D-Day National Memorial.
I mean, people are talking about everything has nothing to do with this rule.
I believe that I have exhausted all of my comments that are directly related to the rule.
So I am prepared at the appropriate time to close.
But if we keep bringing up new issues, I may feel compelled to respond.
But if we're just talking about the rule that deals with these six bills that we're considering this week, then I am prepared to close.
A bill to require the administrator of the Small Business Administration to ensure that the small business regulatory budget for small business concern in a fiscal year is not greater than zero and for other purposes.
Pursuant to House Resolution 916, the amendment in the nature of a substitute recommended by the Committee on Small Business printed in the bill is adopted and the bill, as amended, is considered read.
The bill, as amended, shall be debatable for one hour, equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on Small Business or their respective designees.
The gentleman from Texas, Mr. Williams, and the gentlewoman from New York, Ms. Velezquez, each will control 30 minutes.
The chair recognizes the gentleman from Texas, Mr. Williams.
I ask unanimous consent that all members may have five legislative days and wish to revise and extend their remarks and submit extraneous materials on the bill under consideration.
I rise today in strong support of H.R. 2965, the Small Business Regulatory Reduction Act of 2025 introduced by my friend Beth Van Duyen from the great state of Texas.
Throughout countless Democratic administrations, we have seen over-regulation suffocate small business.
The Biden-Harris administration alone imposed regulatory costs totaling $1.8 trillion on businesses in just four years.
The Committee on Small Business has heard testimony from hundreds of small business owners from across the country who repeatedly tell us that excessive regulation is stifling their operations and unclaiming their bottom line, undermining their bottom line, too.
So to revitalize the American dream, big government, one-size-fits-all mandates must stop.
The Trump administration fully recognizes this challenge and is taking aggressive action to give small business the relief they deserve.
In just the first six months of President Trump's second term, Republicans have worked to put an end to burdensome regulations through CRAs and carry out a deregulatory agenda.
We are responsible for $86 billion in reduced regulatory costs and over 50 million hours of reduced paperwork burdens.
This is why I'm proud to support this bill, which would advance President Trump's executive order unleashing prosperity through deregulation.
This straightforward bill would require the SBA to operate under a regulatory budget of zero, meaning that for each new regulation imposed, a costly or outdated regulation must be repealed.
This bill would also require the SBA to provide annual reports on the true cost of small business imposed by government regulations.
And this seemingly simple requirement will have a major impact by bringing transparency and bureaucracy to federal government actions each year and in the true burden of those actions.
The transparency measures in this bill are critical to expose the harmful actions by bureaucrats behind closed doors and highlight the harm done to hardworking small and family-owned businesses across the United States.
With that, I urge my colleagues to vote yes on H.R. 2965, and I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to H.R. 2965, the Small Business Regulatory Reduction Act.
Let me begin by stating that I wish we were here to talk about bills to help small businesses grow or policies that address challenges they're facing today, like tariffs, the cost of groceries, and health care.
Instead, we are talking about an unworkable regulatory budget.
To be clear, small businesses are not talking about regulations.
It ranks near the bottom of their list.
Inflation, tariffs, and finding good employees are some of the top challenges facing small businesses.
Take a walk down a main street and you will hear the same concern from small business owners up and down the block.
The uncertainty and rising costs tied to the Trump tariffs are crushing their small businesses, plain and simple.
We should be working together on issues that matter, lowering costs for small businesses.
Instead, we are considering two regulatory bills that will not help them one iota, while real problems go unaddressed.
H.R. 2965 may sound good on the surface, but it will have the practical effect of limiting the SBA from issuing any rules, even if the benefits outweigh the costs.
SBA needs to issue regulations to update programs, issue disaster regulations, and even reduce record-keeping requirements.
That is good government practice.
The majority fails to realize that agencies may be able to estimate the cost of a regulation, but they do not have the hard data on the costs that are imposed.
This bill will require the SBA to make assumptions that could turn out to be incorrect.
There's nothing in the bill that clarifies how the agency is to implement a regulatory budget and is therefore impractical.
Finally, the bill does not include an exception for national emergencies, meaning that if this bill had been enacted before the pandemic, small businesses across the country might not have received PPP assistance in a timely manner, if they receive it at all.
For this reason, I oppose the Small Business Regulatory Reduction Act, and I urge my colleagues to oppose it.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker, and I thank the gentleman for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, every day, small business owners serve as their own accountants, legal counsel, and managers while still handling day-to-day operations of their enterprises.
That means they work extra hours or they hire extra assistants just to keep up and bear the costly burden of complying with local, state, and federal regulations.
So to say that we're not going to save money and we're not going to help small businesses save money by cutting regulations is an absolute lie.
Working hard has always been the standard for small business owners, but when the Biden-Harris administration created $1.8 trillion in additional regulatory costs for businesses across the country in just four years, small business owners felt the brunt of that pain.
H.R. 2965, the Small Business Regulatory Reduction Act of 2025, supports the Trump administration's deregulatory agenda by giving small businesses the relief that they need to grow and succeed, no matter what industry they're in.
Put simply, this bill aims to ensure that any new rulemaking by the Small Business Administration is at no cost to small businesses.
No cost.
Not the $1.8 trillion, but no cost.
The very agency that helps small businesses start, grow, and build cannot also be the one that increases their financial and regulatory burden.
In addition, H.R. 2965 requires the SBA Office of Advocacy to report to Congress on the total cost of all federal regulations impacting small businesses.
And unlike what we just heard from the other side of the aisle, to be clear, this bill does not prevent agencies from issuing new regulations, but rather it requires them to eliminate those that are duplicative, outdated, or don't reflect the intent of the law.
The PPP was a program that was established by Congress.
It was not a regulation established by the SBA, so totally irrelevant.
In doing so, it creates a systemic culture of regulatory discipline where agencies will have to consistently review regulations with scrutiny.
Small businesses make up 99.9% of businesses in America, and they remain the key source of economic prosperity across all of our districts.
H.R. 2965 moves the needle toward empowering small businesses by reducing red tape.
And to say that that doesn't save money to small business, then obviously she's never been a small business owner.
But if we want America to succeed, it starts on Main Street.
And I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting the Small Business Regulatory Reduction Act of 2025, and I yield back.
The gentleman's recognized well, thank you, Mr. Speaker, and thank you, Chair, for your leadership and our ranking member.
Thank you for your leadership as well.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of H.R. 2965, the Small Business Regulatory Reduction Act of 2025.
You know, for four long years under the previous administration, America's small businesses, the backbone of our economy and the heart of Missouri's 4th congressional district, have been smothered, smothered by an onslaught of overreaching federal regulations that have made goods less affordable in the United States of America.
Under the Biden-Harris administration, small businesses were hit with an unprecedented $1.8 trillion, not billion, but $1.8 trillion in new regulatory costs while inflation soared over 20%.
Main Street cannot thrive under that kind of bureaucratic chokehold.
Americans are demanding affordability, and this is a good step in that direction.
This bill, championed by my colleague, Congresswoman Beth Van Dyne, finally puts a stop to it.
H.R. 2965 requires the Small Business Administration to report on the regulatory costs imposed by other federal agencies on small businesses.
Transparency.
It's all about transparency.
It's going to show the American people exactly where the Democrat blue tape is strangling growth in America.
This legislation supports President Trump's regulatory right-sizing agenda and gives our job creators the relief that they desperately need to start to grow and to succeed once again.
Mr. Speaker, you want to make things more affordable in America?
You want to cut down on over-regulation?
This is the bill to do it.
Let's all stand with America and our small businesses and our entrepreneurs, our family-owned businesses, and support H.R. 2965.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I want to thank the Chairman and the Ranking Member for this debate on the floor today.
I rise in strong support of H.R. 2965, the Small Business Regulatory Reduction Act of 2025.
I would certainly join those remarks of my colleagues on this side who have advocated for the bill.
I'd like to back up a bit and talk more generally about regulatory burden and how this bill is an important step in dealing with a much larger problem.
The chart on my right shows the number of pages in the Federal Register.
The year I was born in 1968, there were about 50,000 pages.
Today, there are almost 200,000 pages.
In my lifetime, the number of rules and regulations written by unelected federal bureaucrats that people in the real world that we all represent, in my case in eastern Kansas, must comply with, has quadrupled.
Quadrupled.
And I will guarantee you, Mr. Speaker, that is a silent tax increase on every American and every small business in all of our states.
The estimated regulatory compliance cost for businesses in the United States is about $3 trillion per year.
And as been mentioned, about $1.8 trillion of that was added in just the four years of the prior administration.
To put that in context, the entire federal budget is about $7 trillion per year.
You know what the difference is between a tax and a regulatory command, Mr. Speaker?
With a tax, the federal government says to, in this case, a small business owner, give me your money and we'll spend it on priorities that we decide.
With a regulation, the federal government says to that same small business order, you take your money and spend it on the priorities that we decide.
Not on hiring more people, not on growing and expanding, not on giving charitable support in our communities, not on doing all the things that small businesses do, but as people in this town have decided.
That's what's at stake here.
And that's why we have to take this action.
Mr. Speaker, I urge passage of this measure because it is one step toward peaking that mountain of regulation, making small business freer to do what they do, making life more affordable to all the people I represent who buy and sell on Main Street each and every day.
Trump's tariffs, not regulations, are crushing small businesses.
I know that it's painful for the other side of the aisle to discuss or even debate the issue of tariffs and how it's negatively impacting small businesses.
The President of the United States said that on day one, he will lower the cost.
And yet here we are.
Witnesses have testified before our committee that the costs of tariffs are harming their small businesses.
The uncertainty resulting from the on-again off-again pronouncement by Trump has halted investment and expansion of small businesses.
And it has hindered basic business decisions like when to put in an order or how to plan for the holiday season.
I know they don't want to talk about tariffs and instead we are debating these two bills.
The American Action Forum estimates that Trump's tariffs are costing small businesses $85 billion a year and that is not including the cost of navigating the uncertain environment or complying with the tariffs themselves.
The tariffs disproportionately harm small firms, which operate on thinner margins and have virtually not buying power.
Yet, we are focused today on a regulatory budget that is unworkable.
The bill has no exceptions for national emergencies.
Let's look back to 2020.
SBA issued scores of rules to provide relief to help small businesses during the pandemic.
So the author of the bill is incorrect when she claimed that SBA didn't issue regulations to make sure that people accessing the money from PPP will not commit crime, abuse, or fraud.
The Paycheck Protection Program imposed significant compliance burdens on small businesses, but I believe we can all attest to the PPP, help to the fact that the PPP helped millions of small businesses stay afloat that otherwise would have gone out of business.
Clearly, the benefits of those regulations at the time outweighed the cost.
Had a regulatory budget been in place in 2020, it would have been extremely challenging for SBA to cut existing regulatory programs to offset the cost of the paycheck protection program.
Moreover, many of the lending rules ensure accountability and fair access.
Cutting them to free up funds for PPP would have compromised the integrity of the program.
Moreover, these funds needed to be disbursed quickly.
Imposing a new spending without cuts approach would have delayed or reduced aid to small businesses.
The bottom line is this bill is slogan over substance and would harm small businesses rather than help them, particularly in a crisis.
I urge my colleagues to oppose this bill and yield back the balance of my time.
A bill to require the administrator of the Small Business Administration to ensure that the small business regulatory budget for a small business concern in a fiscal year is not greater than zero.
Union calendar number 333, H.R. 4305, a bill to direct the Chief Counsel for Advocacy of the Small Business Administration to establish a red tape hotline to receive notification of burdensome agency rules and for other purposes.
Pursuant to House Resolution 916, the amendment and nature of the substitute recommended by the Committee on Small Business printed in the bill is adopted and the bill, as amended, is considered red.
The bill, as amended, shall be debatable for one hour equally divided and controlled by the chair and the ranking minority member of the committee on small business or their respective designees.
The gentleman from Texas, Mr. Williams, and the gentlewoman from New York, Ms. Velazquez, will each control 30 minutes.
The chair recognizes the gentleman from Texas, Mr. Williams.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I ask unanimous consent that all members may have five legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and submit extraneous materials on the bill under consideration.
I rise today in strong support of H.R. 4305, the Dump Red Tape Act, introduced by Representative Weed from the great state of Wisconsin.
Mr. Speaker, entrepreneurs across America are driving our economic growth, but too often they often are forced to fight through layers of red tape just to keep their doors open.
And every day, small businesses deal with outdated, duplicative, or unclear regulations that make it harder for them to hire, grow, and innovate.
Since 1976, the SBA Office of Advocacy has served as a voice for small business across the country.
Advocacy works to encourage small businesses' success through the government's legislative, regulatory, and administrative process.
When it comes to regulatory costs, advocacy is equipped to represent the interests of small business at the federal level.
To make this easier, advocacy launched the Red Tape Hotline, a necessary resource that gives small businesses a direct, real-time way to report burdensome regulations that are holding them back.
The Red Tape Hotline empowers small business owners to speak up and help advocacy hold federal agencies accountable for the red tape that is crushing their day-to-day operations.
The red tape hotline was created by following President Trump's executive order, unleashing prosperity through deregulation.
The Dump Red Act codifies the executive order and ensures that small businesses always have a reliable channel to be heard.
This bill strengthens advocacy ability to deliver small business concerns directly to Congress, ensuring we have the real-world data which we need to push for smarter, more effective regulatory policy.
While the public can submit comments to proposed rules, this red tape hotline provides small businesses the opportunity to provide feedback on the true burden of compliance with active regulations.
This bill also requires advocacy to submit an annual report to Congress summarizing the notifications received through the hotline.
By strengthening and formalizing this process, Congress will receive a clear picture of how federal regulations affect different types of businesses nationwide.
This will help ensure that Congress is acting on accurate, real-world information.
Some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle may argue that the hotline improperly focuses on burdensome regulations rather than collecting positive feedback.
But it is simple.
The purpose of this tool is to identify obstacles that need attention, and regulations that function well do not require intervention.
Small businesses are not asking us to preserve the status quo.
They are asking to eliminate the barriers that prevent them from thriving.
By isolating problematic rules, we empower Congress and federal agencies to focus time and resources where they are needed most while still preserving the regulations that work.
The Dump Red Tape Act strengthens our commitment to a pro-job, pro-innovation economy by ensuring that federal agencies retain accountable and responsive to the needs of Main Street.
So, with that in mind, I urge my colleagues to vote yes on H.R. 4305.
Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to H.R. 4305, destroying unnecessary, misaligned, prohibited red tape act, or dumb.
While H.R. 4305 is less objectionable than the other anti-regulatory bills, it is simply not necessary.
To begin with, a deregulatory hotline already exists on regulations.gov.
Establishing another creates duplication and drains SBA resources.
Isn't this contrary to everything Republicans, the administration, and the recently dissolved DOGE effort tried to prevent duplicity?
More concerning, the proposal hasn't been vetted properly.
In their first 100-day report, advocacy indicated there were 96 small business submissions, and more recently reported there were 301 submissions.
Yet, despite repeated requests for more information, advocacy has failed to provide any specific information about these requests to the committee, Democrats and Republicans.
We have no way of knowing if the submissions are related to rules.
They could have easily been about tariffs or on paid invoices to contractors.
And to the best of my knowledge, advocacy has not weighed in with the administration, which raises concern over their lack of independence from the administration.
Turning to the specifics, the bill lacks adequate reporting mechanisms to identify who is making the submissions, leaving it vulnerable to abuse and the inability to differentiate between a small business, trade association, or law firm.
And the bill focuses only on the cost of regulations, not the benefits, which greatly outweigh the costs.
For these reasons, I oppose the bill.
And it is important to note, I said to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, if we can get the information from advocacy as to what small businesses are actually submitting and the mechanics of the hotline to ensure independence, I will be willing to work with them.
Instead, the bill is being run through the House to score political points.
I urge my colleagues to oppose the bill and focus on real solutions to lift up small businesses during these troubling economic times.
I rise today in support of my bill, H.R. 4305, the Destroying Unnecessary, Misaligned and Prohibitive Red Tape Act, also known as the Dump Red Tape Act.
Far too long, America's small businesses have been buried under costly regulations.
After suffering through four years of regulatory onslaught by the Biden administration, totaling nearly $1.8 trillion in new costs and requiring an additional $360 million to comply with these new regulations, small businesses are desperate for regulatory relief.
A report published last December by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce found that over half of small business owners view the cost of complying with regulations as a barrier to growth.
Small businesses are forced to navigate complex environmental reporting requirements, overtime and wage rules that change from one administration to the next, and lengthy permitting processes that can delay construction projects for months or even years.
Family-owned shops face costly data privacy mandates designed for multinational corporations, while contractors struggle with ever-shifting OSHA paperwork requirements that eat up their time better spent on the job site.
Earlier this year, the Small Business Administration created the Red Tape Hotline under its Office of Advocacy.
This hotline gives small businesses a seat at the table to highlight the prohibitive red tape regulations from across federal agencies that hurt their ability to grow and to compete.
My bill takes that progress further.
It codifies the hotline into law and requires annual reports to Congress so that we know exactly which rules are holding back growth and what steps are being taken to fix them.
I am pleased that my bill earned the endorsement of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and associated builders and contractors who recognized the need for a direct line of communication to the SPA for small businesses.
The Dump Red Tape Act is a common sense way to gather input directly from the people most harmed by over-regulation to allow Congress to take meaningful action.
I urge all of my colleagues to support this important piece of legislation and stand with America's small businesses.
Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this bill codifying the so-called red tape hotline, an anonymous inbox, the contents of which, as the ranking member articulated, we know virtually nothing about, will do nothing to help small businesses.
But while the majority is busy claiming to fight bureaucracy by creating new bureaucracy, they're ignoring the real crisis small businesses are begging us to address, the looming lapse of the enhanced premium tax credits.
I know this because I've met with small business owners in my district, like Rachel Rosner, who's the owner of the Elden Tea Shop in Reston, not far from here, a five-person business that is exactly the kind of Main Street business that the majority claims to champion.
As she told me, Rachel's business depends on the tax credits.
And her tea shop is not an exception.
It's the norm.
Nearly half of all adults with ACA marketplace coverage are small business owners, small business employees, or self-employed.
In many cases, the Affordable Care Act and the enhanced premium tax credits have given them the freedom to start their small business.
But the Republican attacks on health care will force small businesses to close.
Nationally, 22 million Americans, including millions of small business owners, will see premium hikes averaging 114%.
Some of their premiums will double, triple, or even quadruple.
These are middle-class workers.
These are employees of small businesses.
These are small business owners, the people keeping our local economies alive.
Republicans keep telling us they're the party of entrepreneurs.
But you can't be the party of entrepreneurs while you're driving up their health care costs and driving them out of business.
I urge my colleagues to oppose this bill, and I yield back.
I rise today in strong support of the Dump Red Tape Act and want to thank Representative Weed for his leadership on this crucial deregulatory initiative.
In addition to regulations that are promulgated pursuant to the Administrative Procedures Act, there exists a vast scope of additional regulatory documents that impact small businesses.
These are guidance documents, memoranda, bulletins, circulars, letters, and more.
What Wayne Cruz, a fellow in the regulatory studies at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, has more appropriately referred to as regulatory dark matter.
Only rules that are adopted pursuant to the APA actually carry the force of law.
Yet in practice, agencies seek to skew the intent of congressional law and impose other requirements through this regulatory dark matter, thereby avoiding compliance with the APA requirements.
Identifying the full scope of the regulatory state as it exists through this dark matter is not only a challenge for Congress and the agencies themselves, but for our small businesses as well.
Under the first Trump administration, agencies catalogued or attempted to catalog all of these various guidance documents.
But as soon as he took office, President Biden stripped away this essential transparency measure in the early days.
The reality is that reforming the regulatory state begins with identifying its true magnitude, and that it is an exercise which Congress simply cannot do alone.
The deregulatory agenda President Trump instituted, which resulted in the creation of the SBA Office of Advocacy's red tape hotline, captures this reality.
It does so by creating a forum by which to partner with the small businesses of America who can identify sector-specific regulations that impose undue regulatory compliance, challenges, and costs.
By voting for the Dump Red Tape Act, we can codify this hotline and the essential role that it plays and make permanent this partnership with America's small businesses in a much-needed deregulatory effort.
Federal regulations' total costs, compliance costs, and economic effects are at least $2.155 trillion, which equates to over $16,000 in annual hidden regulatory costs to the American taxpayer.
If we truly care about affordability, about the economy, about small businesses and their consumers, then there is no better policy than deregulation.
And this bill will further empower the SBA Office of Advocacy in coordination with the small businesses that it represents.
Thank you again to Representative Weed and Chairman Williams for their leadership on this important issue.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I want to thank the Chairman for yielding.
It's my pleasure to rise in support today of H.R. 4305, the Dump Red Tape Act.
I'm back again on this subject with this chart that shows the growth in the number of pages in the Federal Register where all of the Federal Regulations are published.
It's where they're codified.
That's where you go to look them up.
And the number of pages has quadrupled in my lifetime.
Let me just offer a couple of thoughts on how this bill is, in my view, important for small businesses to get at that problem of the creeping weight of federal over-regulation.
In my district, the 2nd District of Kansas, the eastern part of the state, it's more or less 80% of the small businesses, of the businesses in the state, employ 20 or fewer people.
80% of them are really small businesses.
You're at about 93% if you go under 500 employees.
But for a lot of us, that sounds like a big number in my part of the world.
But under 20 employees, that's a small business.
80%.
Those are the Main Street businesses we're talking about.
I talk with a lot of people that own those businesses, that work in those businesses.
They're all active in their communities.
They support everything from the local sports team to the local charity to the local schools foundation.
That's what they're focused on.
Making a living, making their business work, whatever it is they do, provide professional services, other services, retail items, manufacture items.
That's what they're focused on.
They are not focused on this.
They don't have an army of compliance attorneys and compliance consultants to help them figure out what's in these 200,000 pages of federal regulation and what that means for how they conduct their behavior in their communities each and every day.
So how do we figure out where to start?
And I think this bill is a very common sense answer.
Ask the people who are most affected.
The whole point of the red tape hotline that President Trump set up and that this bill codifies and makes permanent is to allow the people in the small business world who are affected by regulatory decisions made in this town, our nation's capital, to tell somebody who has the ability to aggregate that information and do something about it, bring it to the attention of lawmakers.
This is where you need to focus.
This one of all of these is what's making a difference and preventing me from adding more employees, having a little more liquidity that I can, you know, maybe redo the storefront on Main Street.
Maybe I can give a little more to the local charitable cause, or maybe my family will just be a little bit more comfortable going into the holidays.
Ask the people affected.
Listen to their voices.
That's what this bill does.
And it makes sure we put in place a simple structure that is permanent so that the vagaries of this town don't change things on Main Street.
Small businesses are being crushed by the Trump tariffs.
And advocacy, to the best of my knowledge, has not conveyed their concerns to the White House.
Advocacy is supposed to be an independent office within the SBA, and it is responsible for advancing the views and concerns of small businesses before Congress, the White House, federal agencies, the federal courts, and state and local policymakers.
But it has done nothing on tariffs.
That is particularly troubling to me and should be equally troubling to my friends on the other side of the aisle.
Instead of helping small businesses that are being crushed by the Trump tariffs, the majority is focused on creating another deregulatory hotline, even though one already exists on regulations.gov.
This bill to codify a hotline at advocacy is duplicative, unnecessary, and waste of taxpayers' dollars.
The system is clearly broken.
For years, the chairman and ranking member of the Small Business Committee has had a strong tradition of working together to find common ground.
That cooperation was essential in helping entrepreneurs launch and grow their small businesses.
It is exactly what we are losing now.
We are wasting valuable time today on bills that are unnecessary, divisive, and a waste of taxpayers' dollars.
Unfortunately, my Republican colleagues are focused on regulatory bills that will not help small businesses one iota, while allowing the authorization for critical vital counseling and training programs to last.
It doesn't make sense.
Small businesses deserve better than slogans over substance.
I urge my colleagues to oppose this bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.
A bill to direct the chief counsel for advocacy of the small business administration to establish a red tape hotline to receive notifications of burdensome agency rules and for other purposes.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today with deep concern at the President's outrageous and shameful pardon of Juan Orlando Hernandez, a man, an American jury convicted of trafficking tons of cocaine into the United States and of corrupting his own government in the process.
I saw this firsthand when I brought a bipartisan delegation to Honduras when he was president.
We refused to meet with him because he is, was a thug.
This is not a minor case.
This is not a closed call.
This was a decisive conviction for crimes that have devastated American families and fueled violence and instability abroad.
And yet, President Trump chose to use one of the most powerful powers of the presidency to wipe it all out.
This is so hypocritical as he's bombing small boats that he describes as full of drugs coming to the United States, and perhaps they are, and that's a different thing.
But if he's doing that, why would he pardon a thug?
Hernandez was once boasted at a meeting of narco-traffickers that together they would shove the drugs right up the noses of the gringos.
What message does pardoning this criminal send to parents who have lost children and archaics, to law enforcement officers risking everything to stop the flow of deadly drugs?
This disgraceful pardon should be met with bipartisan condemnation as an affront to our values, our safety, our rule of law, our democracy.
Those who do not join in that condemnation are either pro-crime or do not care.
It's another reminder, the American people must be vigilant.
Accordingly, the House stands adjourned until 10 a.m. tomorrow morning for morning-hour debate.
unidentified
Today, the U.S. House is considering a number of bills, including two small business-related measures.
One would require the Small Business Administration to ensure that any agency roles do not increase costs for small businesses.
The other permanently authorizes the SBA Office of Advocacy Red Tape Hotline, allowing small businesses to report federal regulations that negatively impact their business.
Also, this week, lawmakers will consider legislation to address how college athletes are paid by setting national standards for charging for the use of their name, image, and likeness, or NIL.
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