U.S. House of Representatives U.S. House of Representatives
C-SPAN’s House floor debate reveals sharp divides over Trump’s $12B farm bailout and $900B NDAA, with Democrats like Shamari Figures warning of ACA subsidy cuts doubling premiums for 50K Alabama residents amid health care crises, while Republicans blame Democratic policies for inflation. Jerome Powell’s Fed rate cut to 3.4% signals caution over employment risks, contrasting Trump’s $1M/$2M "gold card" immigration plan and $18T investment surge. The NDAA’s 3.8% military pay raise and $145B AI defense funding face bipartisan praise but criticism from Rep. Jacobs over missing IVF coverage and Rep. Khanna’s concerns about Venezuela deployments, underscoring deeper tensions between oversight and executive power. [Automatically generated summary]
Ordering the previous question on House Resolution 936, adoption of the House Resolution 936, if ordered, and the motion to suspend the rules and pass H.R. 3857, if ordered.
The first electronic vote will be conducted as a 15-minute vote.
Pursuant to clause 9 of Rule 20, remaining electronic votes will be conducted as five-minute votes.
Pursuant to clause 8 of Rule 20, the unfinished business is the voting on the order of the previous question of the House Resolution 936, on which the yays and nays are ordered.
The clerk will report the title of the resolution.
Resolution providing for consideration of the bill, H.R. 3898, to the Federal Water Pollution Control Act to make targeted reforms with respect to waters of the United States and other matters and for other purposes.
Providing for consideration of the bill, H.R. 3383, to amend the Investment Company Act of 1940 with respect to the authority of closed-end companies to reinvest in private funds.
Providing for consideration of the bill, H.R. 3638, to direct the Secretary of Energy to prepare periodic assessments and submit reports on the supply chain for generation and transmission of electricity and for other purposes.
Providing for consideration of the bill, H.R. 3628, to amend the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act of 1978 to add a standard related to state consideration of reliable generation and for other purposes.
Providing for consideration of the bill, H.R. 3668, to promote interagency coordination for reviewing certain authorizations under Section 3 of the National Gas Act and for other purposes.
Providing for consideration of the bill, Senate 1071, to require the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to disinter the remains of Fernando V. Cota from Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery, Texas, and for other purposes and for other purposes.
The question is on the ordering of the previous question.
Members will record their votes with electronic device.
This is a 15-minute vote.
unidentified
This is the first roll call vote of the day in the House.
This is a vote to start debate on six bills scheduled for floor consideration this week, including the final version of the $900 billion 2026 defense programs and policy bill known as the NDAA.
This is a 15-minute vote.
We should let you know that Fed Chair Jerome Powell is set to announce whether or not the Fed will cut interest rates.
We'll have that announcement and a press conference with Chairman Powell starting at 2.30 Eastern.
Extending Health Care Subsidies00:03:53
unidentified
You can see it live on C-SPAN 3.
As voting continues here in the House, we'll show you today's Capitol Hill press conference with House Democratic leadership on their agenda, including extending for three years the health care subsidies set to expire at the end of the year.
Tomorrow, the Senate plans to vote on whether or not to advance the Democrats' health care plan and a Republican alternative.
Honored as always to be joined by Vice Chair Ted Liu and also Representatives Sarah McBride and Shamari Figures, new members to Congress who have been amazing advocates for their communities, for their regions, and honored to have them here.
We're here today because Donald Trump and House Republicans are failing the American people.
They're failing to address the health care crisis that they've created.
They're failing to lower costs, and they're failing to make life more affordable for hardworking Americans.
Families are struggling to get by, yet Republicans continue to be more focused on building on the bidding of their billionaire-class friends than helping people that they represent.
Ahead of the holidays, Americans are seeing prices go up for gifts and groceries, and the family gatherings that they are planning are becoming more expensive.
On top of that, Republicans have no real plan to ensure Americans' health care premiums don't skyrocket before the end of the year.
They highlighted that and stood for that even just moments ago.
For months, House Democrats have been sounding the alarm that Republicans need to work with us on extending the Affordable Care Act tax credits to keep health care costs low for American families.
And we've put forward a plan that has the support of every single member of the Democratic caucus.
We only need four Republicans to join with us in signing a discharge petition to prevent the American people from losing their health care coverage.
Because we know when people don't have health care coverage, they don't stop getting sick.
They don't stop needing medication.
They don't stop needing to take their kids to the doctor.
If they can't afford to go to the doctor, they won't see one, or they'll go to the emergency room, which is the highest cost, most expensive way to get care and limits our already burdened health care system.
Which Republicans will be brave enough to join us?
We just don't know.
The American people can't afford inaction from Republicans, and it's time that they put politics aside and do the right thing.
Lower costs, save health care, put the American people first.
And I am so honored to be here today with two of our amazing freshmen, Shamari Figures and Sarah McBride.
I also want to note that we had an election yesterday in America, and I want to congratulate Eric Gissler in Georgia for flipping a state House district.
And just to give you some context, Democrats lost that district last term by 22 points.
And I want to congratulate Eileen Higgins, the incoming mayor of Miami.
She flipped that seat from red to blue, and she overperformed by 20 points.
She is the first Democrat in nearly 30 years who's going to be Mayor of Miami.
And I dare Florida Republicans to try mid-decade redistricting because we're going to win the seats that you have to weaken among Republican incumbents if you try this.
Now, we have an affordability crisis in America.
Electricity costs are surging.
Grocery prices continue to increase.
And health care costs are skyrocketing.
What is the president of the United States focus on?
I'm just going to read you one of his many posts on social media.
This one was from two days ago.
The only reason Marjorie Trader-Brown, Green Turns Brown under stress, went bad is that she was jilted by the President of the United States.
Certainly not the first time she has been jilted.
Too much work, not enough time, and her ideas are now really bad.
She sort of reminds me of a rotten apple.
Marjorie is not America first or MAGA because nobody could have changed her views so fast.
And her new views are those of a very dumb person.
That was proven last night when washed up Trump-hating 60 Minutes correspondent Leslie Stahl, who still owes me an apology from when she attacked me on the show with serious conviction that Hunter Biden's laptop from hell was produced by Russia, not Hunter himself, totally proven wrong, interviewed a very poorly prepared trader who, in her confusion, made many really stupid statements.
My real problem with the show, however, wasn't a low IQ trader, it was that the new ownership of 60 Minutes Paramount would allow a show like this to air.
They're no better than the old ownership who just paid me millions of dollars for fake reporting about your favorite president, me.
Since they brought it, 60 Minutes has actually gotten worse.
Oh well, far worse things had happened.
P.S.
I hereby demand a complete and total apology, though far too late to be meaningful, from Leslie Stall in 60 Minutes for her incorrect and libelous statements about Hunter's laptop, President DJT.
Oh, now it's my great honor to introduce an amazing freshman from Alabama, the great Representative Shamari Figures.
Look, we're in the middle of a health care crisis and the stakes could not be higher.
Millions of Americans rely on health care subsidies to be able to afford coverage and 50,000 of those Americans are located in my district in Alabama.
And it's not just a talking point back home.
This is real life for people.
I represent one of the poorest districts in the country.
The individual median income in my district is just north of $32,000.
To say that another way, 50% of the wage earners in my district earn less than $32,000.
And so when we talk about 50,000 people's health care premiums on average increasing by a little more than double in a district where the income is just north of $32,000 on average, it's more than a talking point.
It's something that hits people in real ways in real life.
It's not something people can afford.
And beyond the personal side of it, my district as a whole is one of the worst for health care access and outcomes in the country.
I have 13 counties in my district.
You can only deliver babies in two of the 13.
10 of the 13 counties either have hospitals that have closed, are in the process of converting to REHs so they don't close, or are on literal financial life support under the threat of closure.
And by the way, the largest hospital in my state capital of Montgomery, which I also represent, which is one of only two hospitals in that county, is in the middle of a bankruptcy.
And so health care access is something that is deeply personal to my district.
And to make the cost of health care unaffordable for people, completely unaffordable, to put it completely out of reach for people is something that is irresponsible and something that we have the ability to be able to stop because it's going to put more stress on the hospitals that we still have.
And people are going to continue to suffer some of the worst health care outcomes because all of that that I just said is all in a district that has the third lowest life expectancy in America.
And so this is something that we have to, that we have to get Republicans on board to fix.
We just need a few.
We just need a few to join us to do the right thing.
We need a few to step up to the plate to show that they understand and they know that supporting life doesn't end at birth.
It is something that we can do and something that we need to do here in Congress to make sure that the American people and the richest nation that the world has ever known, that health care coverage, health care access, is not something that is a luxury that is only available to the wealthy and something that is only available to the few.
And so I am proud to stand here with my colleagues to bring up this issue once again, yet again, something that we have been pressuring now for since I've been here in Congress for the better part of the last 10 or 11 months, but something that obviously Democrats have been pushing for decades.
And we're going to continue to wave this flag.
We're going to continue to beat this drum.
We're going to continue to do this on behalf of the constituents in Alabama's 2nd Congressional District and those across this country because it's the right thing to do.
And with that, I'll turn it over to Representative Sarah McBride.
Thank you so much to my fellow freshmen, Representative Figures, and thank you so much, Chair Aguilar and Vice Chair Liu, for inviting us today.
Across Delaware and around the country, families are being hit from every direction, at the grocery store, at the pharmacy, and of course now in their health care premiums.
In 2024, Donald Trump promised the American people that he would lower costs on day one.
But we all know that whether it's his business partners, people who worked for him, or the American people, the one through line throughout Donald Trump's life is that he has never met a promise that he was not willing to break.
Because one year into the second Trump presidency, all we have are a litany of broken promises and billionaire tax breaks.
This affordability crisis is not a hoax.
It is a choice by congressional Republicans and by Donald Trump.
A choice to impose a tariff tax on small businesses and consumers.
A choice to cut food assistance.
And a choice to insert a $1 trillion bomb into the center of the American health care system.
That bomb is now going off.
Premiums are skyrocketing.
The largest cut to Medicaid in American history is on the horizon.
Rural hospitals and doctors' offices are already closing.
Trump care has arrived, and it is dangerous and it is deadly.
I hear it every single day back in Delaware.
Dave, a constituent of mine in Newcastle, pays $350 a month right now for his wife's marketplace plan.
Next year, without the ACA tax credits, those premiums will jump to $1,200 a month.
His wife lives with a disabling spinal condition, diabetes, hypertension, depression, and takes dozens of daily medications.
Without this tax credit, they will lose their coverage that is Keeping his wife alive.
People like Dave are doing everything right, but Republicans in Congress continue to fail them.
It's not too late for my Republican colleagues to do the right thing, to make a different choice.
As has been mentioned, we only need four Republicans in Congress to demonstrate courage on behalf of their constituents by signing this discharge petition to force an up or down vote on protecting care.
But I'm not going to hold my breath because while we are freshmen, while we are new, what has become abundantly clear to us in the last 11 months is the only thing that congressional Republicans are more loyal to than Donald Trump is to cutting the health care of the American people.
Imagine winning those elections, getting all of that power, and spending all of your political capital on kicking millions of people off their coverage and jacking up health care prices for everyone else.
People deserve so much better than what congressional Republicans and Donald Trump have offered them.
I ran for office after my experience as a caregiver to my husband during his battle with terminal cancer.
And I simply do not believe that in the wealthiest nation on earth, any American should have to go without the health care that they need to live and thrive.
And so long as there is air in our lungs and breath in our bodies, House Democrats will fight for an America where every single American can get the health care they need regardless of where they live and regardless of who they voted for in the last election.
And so with that, I'll turn things back over to Chair Aguilar to answer any questions.
I think that what Robert Kennedy Jr. has done to the health care system, what he stands for, his latest support for decisions that reduce Americans' access to vaccines are deeply troubling from a public health perspective.
I understand that members have frustrations and concerns about it.
I don't know how successful those measures would be in a Republican-held Congress, but I appreciate that members have a lot of views on this and want to hold the Secretary accountable.
He is someone who is an impediment to Americans having health security.
I think that's very clear.
And the day for accountability will come.
I don't know when that is, but the day for accountability for the Secretary and many others of the President's administration will come.
This NDAA has a provision in there requiring the Department of Defense to release a video of the strike on the Venezuelan boat, particularly their second strike that killed two defenseless shipwreck survivors.
And if the Pentagon doesn't do that, then the Secretary of Defense's travel budget will be reduced.
So you have now bipartisan support to get this video released, and we need to be asking, the American people would be asking, what is Pete Hegseth hiding?
President Trump was in Northeast Pennsylvania last night kicking off what the administration has responded, a series of events promoting his economic agenda, his economic policies, pushing back on Democrats' criticism of his role in the affordability crisis.
Republicans believe that the more he's out there, the better it is for them and their voters to hear from the president.
I wanted to get your thoughts on, do you believe the more that President Trump is out there that it's advantageous to the case that you all are making about the affordability crisis, given that he's talked with hopes and a con?
And just what do you make of the fact that they say that he's going to be out on the road a little bit more speaking about his agenda and kind of looking to revert some of the criticisms that you all have waged against him on the affordability crisis?
Sometimes it's a long 16 blocks from Capitol Hill to the White House.
Clearly, it's taken the president quite a long time to understand the affordability crisis that we're in.
I think the event yesterday was one of the first.
I've seen that the president wasn't attending a sporting event or something else.
But saying that the economy is a plus plus plus, calling the affordability crisis a hoax, these are things that the American people just know aren't true.
He's lying.
Republicans are lying.
They know that.
They know that the affordability crisis is at their doorstep.
They know it is more difficult to live under the Trump economy than it was previously.
And they're holding him accountable.
And that's coming through, not just in public polling, but it's coming through in our elections.
In every election that we've seen, special elections from last night to Iowa months and months ago to everything in between, New Jersey, Virginia, Mississippi, Georgia, I mean, all of these.
Republicans continue to underperform because they have no real solutions.
They won't solve the affordability crisis.
They're only making it worse.
And the American people are smart enough to know that.
So I don't think that there's anything that the president can do because clearly every time he gets in front of a microphone, he's saying something that is an outright lie and the American people know it.
So I don't have any problem with him continuing to go out around the country and to talk about this because the polling clearly shows that folks aren't paying attention and that they know better.
First of all, the idea that the American people aren't hearing enough from Donald Trump right now beggars belief.
I think everyone in this country hears enough from Donald Trump and having him go out on the road and stand in front of a sign that says affordability isn't changing that.
It also doesn't change the fact that they have no plan to tackle the affordability crisis and that Donald Trump himself has continued to deny this crisis, calling it a hoax.
I think his handlers in the White House are making the same mistake that his handlers in Trump One made, which is thinking that they can put together these events and keep this president on message in the way that they want him to be on message.
He is always going to speak what he believes and what he clearly believes right now is that he's doing a great job, that prices are fine, that the economy is working well, and that everyone should just go along and get along.
I strongly support President Trump going on the road, even though he is old and weak and has trouble staying awake at cabinet meetings.
I am begging the White House to please send Donald Trump to every swing house district.
Many people say that Congressman David Valedeo in California would love to have Donald Trump visit Donald Trump and talk about how tariffs are helping the farmers.
He could talk about how the racial profiling by ICE is helping Valedeo's constituents.
And he could talk about how the Medicaid cuts are owning the libs in David Valladail's district.
I would love for Donald Trump to go to every House swing district.
I can't speak for other members of the leadership team.
I can speak for myself.
I haven't had any conversations with House Republicans.
They continue to recycle old priorities.
The priorities that they laid out today in their conference meeting and in front of all of you previously are all old ideas, 10, 15-year-old ideas that reflect where Republicans are, that basically say if you have money, you can put some money aside to help with your health care.
It does nothing to address the millions of people in Alabama's 2nd district who are losing their health care and around the country.
Democrats are fighting for them.
They're fighting for people to keep their health care.
And none of the ideas that Republicans put out today move the needle to actually help the American people keep the health care that they have.
Just briefly on that, with regard to the Republican conference's proposals, quote unquote, on the health care affordability crisis, the one that they created.
This is like an arsonist setting fire to a house and then bringing a garden hose to try to put out a five-alarm fire.
These are no solutions to actually grapple with the health care crisis that they created.
The Republican health care plan was the big ugly bill.
The Republican health care plan is Trump Care, which we are living under right now.
The largest cut to Medicaid in American history, a massive cut to Medicare in action, letting the ACA tax credits expire.
That is the Republican health care plan, and that has been the Republican health care plan for decades.
Because every single step of the way, Republicans in Congress have tried to prevent progress in expanding access to health care and have tried to cut health care for the American people.
And it certainly stands in stark contrast to our proposals to extending the Affordable Care Act tax credit, to expanding Medicaid, to improving Medicare, and to guarantee that every single American can get health care without breaking the bank.
unidentified
In the middle of this affordability crisis, there is growing concern that the construction of these AI data centers in rural communities specifically could be increasing the cost of utilities like water and electricity.
Do Democrats see this as a priority?
And if so, is there any bipartisan consensus that this needs to be addressed?
Democrats see rising utility costs under this Republican administration as a priority.
We see the data, we see the numbers go up.
Vice Chair Liu, I'll let speak, is convening some stakeholders to speak with members of the Democratic caucus on these issues.
We think rising utility costs are a concern for the American people.
One of the first things the administration did was to gut any renewable energy Proposals that the previous administration had in place that would have diversified our energy, would have lowered costs, made significant investments, those types of things.
And his opposition to an all of the above strategy really harms the American people and is going to continue to rise their costs unless we address it.
And Democrats have ideas and strategies on how to do that.
But we're going to need to ensure that we have the gavels in order to deliver on that.
He would much rather talk about a Senate race than he would the Georgia House races that Republicans lost or the mayor's race that the vice chair mentioned first time in 30 years that a Democrat has been mayor of Miami.
He wants to distract and take away from this because he's losing his grip on his majority.
That much is very clear.
So the more that Speaker Johnson wants to talk about the national landscape and the Senate environment, I absolutely support because he's losing his majority next November, if not sooner.
On the ACA subsidies, yesterday we saw yet another plan to extend them two years, not the three years you want, and it's got some eligibility limits and some HSA promotion language in there.
But it does have the advantage of being bipartisan.
Jared Golden's on, Tom Swasey, a couple others.
Do you see a scenario where if the option is no extension of subsidies, the one you guys have to swallow a shorter window and some of the reforms that you don't like, but do you see a scenario where that is the vehicle that can actually get something done?
And I'll add to that that in the lead up to and during the shutdown process, the one message that was consistent coming out of the Democratic caucus was, come and talk to me.
Meet us at the table.
Let's discuss a way to keep health care affordable for millions of people.
The fact that we're even getting to the point now where there are bipartisan solutions, I think, is an outcome, or bipartisan proposals, rather, is an outcome of that messaging and of that belief and of the strategy of Democrats to be willing and open.
It's not even a strategy.
It's a core principle, right?
Just come to, like, we all got elected to Congress to come here to try to hash out different deals in different ways where we understand we won't get everything we want.
They understand they won't get everything they want, but we should be able to come together as adults in a room and come up with solutions that literally will save lives in this case that is so drastically necessary.
So I think, you know, that is progress that we're seeing those sorts of offers on the table.
And I think it's progress that's been driven by the leadership of the Democratic caucus and the position of Democratic members of Congress.
One of the things that it also speaks to is where is Speaker Johnson on this?
His members are clearly speaking out against him by supporting these bills, one-year, two-year bills.
He is nowhere to be seen.
That's why discharge petitions happen.
That's why discharge petitions have been successful, is because he cannot lead a group.
He cannot keep them on the same page because they know his North Star is how to decimate the ACA and hurt the American public.
And they know that that's not popular.
They're just waking up to it.
and they were trying to do something to send a message to their communities that they're aware of it after they voted for the largest Medicaid cut and health care cut in American history.
A quick follow, then, if I could, because Mike Johnson is not going to bring the Fitzpatrick bill to the floor because, as you say, he doesn't support the subsidies that you do.
A sufficient number having arisen, a recorded vote is ordered to present clause 8 of Rule 20.
Further proceed.
unidentified
This will be a five-minute vote.
And members now moved on to a vote on passage of the rule governing debate for six bills scheduled for floor consideration this week, including the final version of the 2026 defense programs and policy bill known as the NDAA.
If this rule is approved, the House would then debate the defense bill for an hour.
We are hearing, though, that several Republicans plan to vote against passage of the rule due to a few unappealing provisions that were included in the defense bill.
Here's news for you.
The Federal Reserve has just announced a rate cut of 1 quarter percent.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell is expected to talk about that decision at a press conference coming up at 2.30 Eastern today.
You can see that live on our companion network C-SPAN 3.
While this vote continues, we'll show you the House Republican leader's press briefing from earlier today on Capitol Hill looking at their agenda for the week.
Let me be clear and start off with saying that Democrats didn't just cause inflation.
They lit the match.
They watched it burn, and then they poured gasoline on the flames.
They buried families under regulations, spent trillions on pet projects, and railed against American paychecks to appease who?
Their radical base.
And Americans will never forget who did that because we will continue to remind them.
During four long years of Biden inflation, hardworking families actually did the right thing.
They tightened their belts.
They canceled vacations.
They put groceries back on the conveyor belt.
And they drained their savings just to keep the lights on.
Because Bidenomics sent energy costs skyrocketing, under Bidenomics, and in those four years, let me just paint the picture for everybody.
Home heating oil shot up 44%.
Gasoline climbed 48%.
Electricity costs went through the roof, rising 29%.
And abundant American natural gas rose 27%.
Well, as we're under the four years during President Biden, that economic punishment crushed the American dream for millions of Americans.
But there's actually good news.
Thanks to President Trump and Republicans in Congress, the comeback is underway and America loves a good comeback story.
Now, it won't happen overnight.
You don't rebuild a burned down home in one day.
And after four years of economic arson, there's a lot to clean up.
But House Republicans are here with the fire extinguisher.
We are rebuilding the economy that working families can afford and so that working families can thrive again.
This week, we're laser focused on passing legislation that actually lowers costs.
And guess what?
It's already working.
Gas prices are at a four-year low.
Grocery prices are finally coming down and wages are actually rising.
And next year, Americans will see bigger paychecks because of the Working Families Tax Cut Acts.
Remember, the Democrats voted and they wanted to give every single American a pay raise.
Every single American, the Democrats voted to raise your taxes.
Thank God Republicans voted to not let that happen.
Last week, we cut red tape and peeled back Biden's burdensome regulations, and we're doing it again this week.
This is all part of an agenda to lower costs and increase paychecks for hardworking families.
Real reforms to roll back Washington's overreach and put the power back where it belongs, with the workers, with the families, and with actually the job creators.
Government in Washington doesn't need more power.
We actually believe that the power lies with the people, unlike the Democrats who want to tell you what to do, when to do it, how to do it.
The Democrats believe they are a better steward of your money than you are.
We don't believe that.
That's why we're putting the power back in your hands.
And what are Democrats doing again?
They're going to, you think they're going to vote to lower costs?
I don't think so.
I think the Democrats will vote against giving you bigger paychecks.
I think the Democrats will vote against relief for American families.
They're fanning the flames of the crisis that they ignited, right?
So we will continue our work without them.
And watch how they vote, right?
We will continue our work without them because asking Democrats to fix inflation is like asking an arsonist to join the fire department.
This week, we'll vote to lower electricity prices, secure supply chains, and modernize permitting to make energy more affordable again.
Because House Republicans are cleaning up Biden, Bidenomics, ending Biden inflation, and restoring an America that is strong and respected again.
We are restoring an America that is affordable and prosperous again for every single hardworking family.
And another piece of important legislation that will be on the floor this week is the NDAA.
And I don't think there's anyone better here to talk about it than Representative Kiggins.
I'm also a Navy veteran, former helicopter pilot, a Navy spouse, and now a proud Navy mom.
So it's certainly a privilege to be here today to talk about this year's National Defense Authorization Act, which should see a vote on the floor today.
This is over $900 billion of money that we can send to our warfighters and to our military families.
There's a large chunk of that that's dedicated to ships, submarines, aircraft, the actual warfighting resources and tools that we need to just exemplify peace through strength throughout the world.
That part can't be overstated.
We've done so much with this administration just to reprioritize peace through strength.
That's how we keep peace in the world is by being that deterrent, by being that strong fighting force, but also taking care of our military families and our men and women in uniform.
We did so much good work last Congress with the Quality of Life Task Force, and we continued that work into this year's NDAA.
We looked at pay raises.
We gave a 3.8% pay raise to our servicemen and women.
We looked at housing.
We put $1.5 billion back into housing infrastructure improvements.
We know that there's a lot of room for improvement there, and I'm thankful that the Secretary of War has prioritized a task force to specifically look at where we are housing our men and women.
We have money specifically dedicated to new child care facilities.
We looked at DOD education.
We've pressing on Dodea to look at things like no cell phones in schools that are on military installations.
There's a lot of money in there for health care that we want to make sure we're providing good health care for our men and women who serve and their families.
We put other things in there for licensures to make it easy for providers to be able to serve our military community.
And we even looked at things that were making it unifying the accession process because we heard a lot of challenges with young people who want to serve that they're being looked at differently for different types of medical history issues.
So we changed those things.
A lot of meaningful change.
One of the things I'm most excited about is how we've prioritized our military sealift command.
In the Navy, you know, we don't have as many ships as we probably should, and we're working on that shipbuilding exercise.
But in the meantime, I have my military sealift command folks who are stepping up, who are civilian partners, and providing that peace through strength on the seas.
And we left them out a little bit of the discussion with the quality of life issues.
So we included them back this time.
We took out pay caps for military sealift command pay.
We made sure that our military sealift command members could shop at the commissaries and exchanges.
We're protecting our commissaries, making sure that they are available and there for our military families.
So, a lot of good things to take care of the people who serve, but then also that technology integration piece, the contract awarding, the procurement acquisition reform.
We've done many, many good things to the tune of over again over $900 billion.
So it's a privilege to have been a part of the team that put that together.
It's a mission that we all share here in Congress on both sides of the aisle of taking care of our military and making sure we remain the greatest in the world.
It seems like every day there is a new discovery of stolen taxpayer dollars in my home state of Minnesota.
And who is smack dab in the middle of it?
The self-acknowledged liar, incompetent, failed governor, and failed vice presidential candidate Tim Walz.
But with the world now watching, Walls can no longer hide from accountability.
I want to thank President Trump and his all-star administration for pursuing justice for the hardworking taxpayers of my state of Minnesota.
Secretary Noam, Secretary Besson, Secretary Duffy, FBI Director Patel, Administrator Laughler, Dr. Oz, Stephen Miller, Border Czar Tom Holman, and even more in the Trump administration have sounded the alarm and taken action finally.
On behalf of the people of Minnesota, thank you.
In addition to exposing and eliminating rampant waste, fraud, and abuse, President Trump and House Republicans are delivering on our promise to restore affordability and opportunity for the American people.
With legislation to streamline permitting, unleash American energy, and increase opportunities for Americans to invest in their futures, we're working to lower costs, support American jobs, and spur business innovation.
In particular, the nonpartisan Invest Act, led by Congresswoman Ann Wagner, is going to cut bureaucratic red tape.
It's going to empower small businesses in this country and entrepreneurs and give Americans more freedom to invest, build wealth, and save for the future.
This will be another great week for America First Wins.
Thank you, Whip, and really appreciate the work that the WIP has done to remind everybody about the fraud that was going on in Minnesota for years.
It's finally getting, I think, more coverage, not as much as it deserves, but alarming, alarming that so much of that was going on right under the nose of Governor Waltz and the waste and way, brutal waste of taxpayer dollars.
We're going to continue, as President Trump is this week, to focus on affordability and lowering costs.
You saw President Trump go to Pennsylvania yesterday to talk about a number of the things he's been working on in his administration and working with Congress to lower costs for families.
But it's important to remind people what he inherited and what was going on in this country under the Biden administration for four years when you saw prices skyrocketing, energy costs skyrocketing, interest rates skyrocketing.
And Democrats in Congress never cared about any of that.
They let it happen.
They looked the other way over and over again.
An open, porous southern border that President Trump not only said he would fix as a candidate, but now has fixed as President of the United States.
And when he talks about the things that he's doing to lower inflation, we're finally seeing some relief, but we're going to continue working to lower costs for families.
And it's something that is not only important to President Trump, it's important to this House majority.
You know, we've talked a lot about health care in these last few weeks here at this podium, but our committees have been working on very serious proposals, all focused on lowering costs for 100% of American families.
While Democrats talk about less than 10% of the American people, we have been talking about what we can do to lower health premiums for 100% of American families, while also giving options to people who are trapped in unaffordable care act plans.
Where Democrats want to keep them trapped, we want to give them options.
And so we've been working and meeting with different caucuses within our conference for weeks.
The committee chairs have been talking about the very specific bills.
We've been meeting and getting ideas from a lot of our members who have great, passionate ideas on health care.
The Doctors Caucus, doctors who practiced medicine in the private sector and then they came to Congress.
They still have great ideas about how to restore the doctor-patient relationship that Obamacare broke.
So many things about health care that the Affordable Care Act just destroyed, starting with the title of the bill: Nothing is Affordable About the Affordable Care Act.
And Republicans want to fix that.
And so, what we did today in our conference, just a little while ago, is had a really productive discussion about all those ideas that the committees have been working on, not just ideas, actual bills.
And we are now focused on bringing a number of those bills to the floor next week that we have consensus on.
There are still some areas that we don't have full agreement upon, and we're going to keep working on those.
And we've committed to work on those early into next year, but starting next week, voting in the House on bills that will focus on lowering premiums for 100 percent of Americans.
Let's see where Democrats stand when it's not just giving money to insurance companies and propping up failed Obamacare plans, but actually helping 100 percent of Americans have better choices and lower health care premiums.
So, we're going to continue bringing bills to the floor that work on fixing problems that Democrats have created and delivering on the promises we made to the American people.
And our champion who is our lead person who is helping unify this very narrow Republican majority but very effective Republican majority is our Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson.
Our majority is narrow, but we were happy to add a new member this past week, and we've administered the oath now to Representative Matt Van Epps of Tennessee.
You're really going to love him.
He's a combat veteran and a dedicated husband and father, a very effective state official from Tennessee.
And now he will be representing the folks of Nashville and 14 counties here.
And we've added him to his committees this morning formally and officially, so he is hit the ground running.
There is a lot going on here.
We wanted to talk with you about some of those things this morning.
And I'm so grateful for this leadership team for giving you the report so far and for Representative Kiggins, who is an extraordinary member of Congress, as you know, a decorated veteran and somebody who's so committed to our nation's defense and our military servicemen and women and her expertise and all these things has been so greatly appreciated.
We're glad to have her this morning.
Now, look, we've had one of the most consequential, most productive, most successful Congresses in the history of this institution, the 119th Congress.
In spite of those small margins, the Republican majority has been working in lockstep with the Republican majority in the Senate, even though that one's small as well.
And, of course, with our strong Republican president and his administration.
And the result of that cannot be questioned.
And I see this false narrative right now.
Oh, they haven't done enough.
Oh, pray tell.
Listen, the Working Families Tax Cut, the Big Beautiful Bill, took about six months of the first part of this Congress to put together because it was so consequential and so comprehensive.
And there are so many things in that bill that our members are going to be so excited to go and run on and talk about in the upcoming election cycle because we inherited an absolute disaster from the Biden administration.
Virtually every area of public policy was decimated.
And we had to rebuild from the ground up in many of these places and make all sorts of changes and reforms to get America back again.
And we did.
And we put it all in this one landmark piece of legislation that will have consequences for generations.
And it will be seen and written by history to be one of the biggest things that the Congress has ever achieved.
And among those things was an approach to beginning this affordability agenda.
Because remember, we inherited massive inflation from the previous administration.
It's no secret affordability is a flashpoint, right, in recent weeks.
And we had four catastrophic years of Bidenomics that we inherited.
The Biden administration spent like drunken sailors, and they attempted to tax and regulate their way to prosperity.
And we all knew when they were doing it that it would not work.
It had exactly the opposite effect.
The result was inflation skyrocketed.
Gas prices reached record highs.
Homeownership declined.
Credit card debt increased.
All those things that everybody felt and they're still feeling now.
Now, the American people gave us a mandate in the election.
The President won the Electoral College soundly.
He won a big majority popular vote.
We got the highest vote total for House Republicans in the history of this institution, and they charged us to go fix this.
We began that process with the Big Beautiful Bill, and we have never let up on the accelerator.
We keep it going day by day, week by week, notching away at this, trying to fix everything that the previous team broke.
And now, I wish we could flip a switch right after the election and make it all go away and make it all right.
But you know that's not how the economy works.
It takes some time to implement new policies and root out the bad things, and that's what's happening.
It is a fact that the Biden administration and their Democrat enablers in Congress, we cannot forget, wrecked the U.S. economy.
That's what happened.
And we had to take it over in January.
This is why Democrats' newfound claims about affordability are just patently absurd.
Okay, here are the facts, and you know this.
Many of you don't write about it, but these are the facts, and they're undisputed.
They broke the economy, and now they want to lecture to the American people about affordability.
They opened our borders, and now they want to lecture to the American people about immigration border enforcement.
They broke the American health care system.
They caused premiums to skyrocket, and now they have the audacity to tell Republicans that the only way to save it is to throw hundreds of billions of dollars to health insurance companies, which would merely fuel a system that is rife with fraud, waste, and abuse.
You cannot be an arsonist and a firefighter at the same time.
That's the message for the Democrats.
Let's be very clear about one thing.
When the Democrats talk about health care affordability, okay, this catchphrase that they have, they are talking about one thing and one thing only.
They are talking about continuing handouts to big insurance companies.
They do not want, they have no ideas, they have no desire to fix the broken system they created.
They just want to subsidize it.
And subsidy is a big word.
It means they are taking taxpayer dollars and funding a broken system.
That is their entire affordability agenda in a nutshell.
This agenda does not lower health care costs.
All it does is hide the cost of the failed law, which we assume is the point.
And their proposal, which is a three-year extension of these enhanced subsidies, the Democrat COVID subsidies that they created, that they put the expiration date on for this December, that proposal to extend that for three years is devoid of any reforms to clamp down on the rampant waste, fraud, and abuse, and it continues to provide taxpayers-subsidized health care to Americans who are making hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual salary.
It doesn't make any sense.
Now, you heard Whip Emmer and Leader Scalise reference the massive fraud that's just been uncovered in the last week or so in Minnesota.
We know that this has been going on around the country in these deep blue states, and now the evidence is starting to come forward.
It's staggering.
It should upset.
It should anger every American that this is where their dollars are being wasted and abused.
A new report by the Government Accountability Office, which I haven't seen too much written about yet, you should look into that.
It is an eye-opener as well.
It makes clear why it would be a dereliction of duty to just extend subsidies without massive reforms to them.
Over the last two years, this is investigators at the Government Accountability Office.
They submitted 24 fraudulent applications for the ACA subsidies, the Unaffordable Care Act subsidies, Obamacare.
Of the 24 fraudulent applications that they created intentionally to just see what would happen, 23 of them were approved.
These applications were completely fraudulent.
The investigators did not submit any Social Security numbers, citizenship documentation, or reported income documents.
And 23 of the 24 applications were still approved.
18 of those, by the way, are still receiving coverage as they were as of September of this year.
That means the Obamacare Exchange and insurers didn't verify any of the information that they were supposed to under the law, and they proceeded to pay tens of thousands of dollars to insurance companies for people who do not exist.
The GAO report also found that 29,000 Social Security numbers in 2023 and 68,000 in 2024 were used to receive more than one year's worth of insurance coverage.
In other words, multiple people were utilizing the same Social Security numbers to openly defraud the American taxpayers.
The GAO also found that more than $94 million was sent to insurers on behalf of dead people.
This is the system that Democrats in Congress want to extend without reform.
It's unbelievable.
Listen, these are undisputed facts.
The Democrats broke America's health care system when they gave us the Unaffordable Care Act, Obamacare, 15 years ago.
Remember all the promises?
I mean, some of y'all were here.
Oh, the average premium and the average family is going to go down to $2,500 a year.
You are going to be able to keep your doctor.
You are going to love this system.
None of that was true.
In fact, it is the opposite.
And premiums have risen because they broke the system dramatically over that time, in some areas as much as 70 percent, in some over 90 percent.
And those things are still on a trajectory to rise further.
Now, what are we going to do about that?
The Democrats had a chance to vote to make life more affordable earlier this year in the Working Families Tax Cut, a big, beautiful bill, and they blew it.
The House version of the bill, you may remember, included cost-sharing reductions.
We passed that out of the House, we sent it to the Senate, and what that would have done is would have lowered premiums for the average American family by over 12 percent.
Democrats fought to strip that out of the bill.
Every American watching today should remember that.
The Democrats had a chance to actually lower your premium six months ago, but they refused because they wanted to keep health care as a political football.
They do not want a solution.
They want an issue.
That's what this is about.
They use the American taxpayers, they admitted themselves during the longest shutdown in U.S. history a few weeks back, as leverage in this cynical political game.
So, in the coming days, what you are going to see is the other party, the Republican Party, continuing to do the important work that we have already begun to actually lower the cost of health care and reduce fraud, and we hope Democrats will join us in those efforts.
There are two parties in this town.
One has no intention and no plan and no desire to lower your health care costs.
They really haven't put any good idea on the table.
They just want to subsidize a broken system.
Check them on that.
The Republican Party, on the other hand, is already demonstrating that we know how to do this.
We are not just talking about it.
We have done it.
In the Working Families Tax Cut, you will remember, in the Medicaid reforms, we went after program integrity.
We didn't change the substance of Medicaid, as they've claimed, falsely.
We went to program integrity.
Why?
Because we owed that to the American taxpayers.
We got ineligible recipients off of Medicaid, and we cut out the fraud, waste, and abuse.
And the CBO said they've calculated it saved $185 billion for American taxpayers, and it reduced premiums.
We reformed it to strengthen Medicaid.
Those same principles are going to guide us in the months, in the weeks, the days and weeks and months forward.
As Leader Scalise noted, we have some low-hanging fruit.
We have some things that every Republican agrees to.
Democrats won't.
Remember, they don't actually want to fix this problem.
But you are going to see a package come together that will be on the floor next week that will actually reduce premiums for 100 percent of Americans who are on health insurance, not just the 7 percent.
Remember, the COVID era subsidy only covers 7 percent of Americans, and it was passed and extended without any reforms at all.
It would only reduce their premiums by 4 percent.
So they are using that as a red herring.
The overall system is broken, and we are the ones that are going to fix it.
You will see that laid out.
Thanks to the good work of Chairman Cole and all of our appropriators, we have our appropriations process that will be going forward as well.
We are moving those through the regular order process, and that's the way it is supposed to work.
So, you will see many of those going through the process, and we think we can get it all wrapped up by the end of that deadline on January 30th.
And you will see that process continue over the days and weeks ahead as well.
I will say this again.
This Congress has been the most productive and successful in the modern era.
And I think you can make an argument, one of the top five of all time.
You'll have heard me say that.
Look at the evidence and the facts.
Don't listen to the talking points.
This team has delivered with small margins what the American people asked us to do and what we promised we would do.
And that work has just begun.
It will continue in earnest all the way through the end of this year as we sprint through the end of this calendar year and we start the new session in January.
We never take our gas or foot off the gas.
So with that, I'll take a few questions.
unidentified
Speaker Johnson, do you intend to advance pro-life provisions in your health care package, such as hyde amendments for whatever you advance?
The Republicans always stand by the Hyde provisions.
It's been a tradition in our law forever.
We do believe in the sanctity of human life, and we think it's important that taxpayer dollars not fund abortion.
I mean, this is a well-settled principle of ours.
So this week, as we go forward, we're going to do a lot of things on the floor, and we always keep our fundamental principles in mind.
Let me tell you just some of these things this week.
Some of this has been mentioned, but real substantive things come to the floor.
We passed legislation last week to keep the CCP out of your children's classrooms and to cut costly red tape for small businesses.
This week, you're going to have the NDAA on the floor, as Representative Kiggins has talked about, building on historic investments that we included in the Working Families Tax Cut to advance President Trump's Peace Through Strength agenda.
By the way, I want to just tell you before somebody's going to ask about these provisions, this legislation, the NDAA, codifies 15 of President Trump's executive orders, as the leader mentioned, provides a well-deserved pay raise for our troops.
It advances the Golden Dome.
It revitalizes our defense industrial base.
It ends woke ideology at the Pentagon and it keeps the border secure.
And it's the product of months of work by Chairman Rogers and our House Armed Services Committee with Representative Kiggins and all the colleagues there.
We thank them for their efforts.
And this week we're also going to have legislation to streamline permitting processes, accelerate permitting approvals, as Chairwoman McClain discussed, strengthen our electric supply chain, and many other things.
What you're not going to see, though, what you're not going to see is a dreaded Christmas omnibus, right?
Because we broke that fever, and I'm so proud of that.
For three consecutive years, Republicans have avoided the bloated end-of-the-year Christmas omnibus.
We've broken that tradition, and we're not turning back.
Those are the things you're going to see as we advance our core principles and we stick to the traditions of what we've done for the taxpayers and for the citizens of this country.
Yes, sir.
Second right here, class.
unidentified
And a live look at the floor where the House is in a bit of a standstill where they're voting on passage of the rule that would steer the debate on six measures.
This includes the final version of the 2026 defense programs and policy bill.
Looking at the tally on the floor, you can see that Speaker Johnson still has to convince five other Republicans to change their current no votes to yes.
And we're hearing that those no's are opposed to a number of provisions in the NDAA, the defense programs and policy bill.
This was scheduled to be a five-minute vote.
Optimistic Outlook for Next Year00:15:16
unidentified
It's been open for nearly 30 minutes now.
We'll continue to watch as voting continues.
In the meantime, the Federal Reserve just announced a rate cut of a quarter percent.
The median projection in the SEP for total PCE inflation is 2.9 percent this year and 2.4 percent next year, a bit lower than the median projection in September.
Thereafter, the median falls to 2 percent.
Our monetary policy actions are guided by our dual mandate to promote maximum employment and stable prices for the American people.
At today's meeting, the committee decided to lower the target range for the federal funds rate by a quarter percentage point to 3.5 to 3.4 percent.
In the near term, risks to inflation are tilted to the upside and risks to employment to the downside.
A challenging situation.
There is no risk-free path for policy as we navigate this tension between our employment and inflation goals.
A reasonable base case is that the effects of tariffs on inflation will be relatively short-lived, effectively a one-time shift in the price level.
Our obligation is to make sure that a one-time increase in the price level does not become an ongoing inflation problem.
But with downside risks to employment having risen in recent months, the balance of risks has shifted.
Our framework calls for us to take a balanced approach in promoting both sides of our dual mandate.
Accordingly, we judged it appropriate at this meeting to lower our policy rate by a quarter percentage point.
With today's decision, we have lowered our policy rate three-quarters of a percentage point over our last three meetings.
This further normalization of our policy stance should help stabilize the labor market while allowing inflation to resume its downward trend toward 2% once the effects of tariffs have passed through.
The adjustments to our policy stance since September bring it within a range of plausible estimates of neutral and leave us well positioned to determine the extent and timing of additional adjustments to our policy rate based on the incoming data, the evolving outlook, and the balance of risks.
In our summary of economic projections, FOMC participants wrote down their individual assessments of an appropriate path of the federal funds rate under what each participant judges to be the most likely scenario for the economy.
The median participant projects that the appropriate level of the federal funds rate will be 3.4% at the end of 2026 and 3.1% at the end of 2027, unchanged from September.
As is always the case, these individual forecasts are subject to uncertainty and they're not a committee plan or decision.
Monetary policy is not on a preset course and we will make our decisions on a meeting-by-meeting basis.
Let me turn now to issues related to the implementation of monetary policy with the reminder that these issues are separate from and have no implications for the stance of monetary policy.
In light of the continued tightening in money market interest rates relative to our administered rates and other indicators of reserve market conditions, the committee judged that reserve balances have declined to ample levels.
Accordingly, at today's meeting, the committee decided to initiate purchases of shorter-term Treasury securities, mainly Treasury bills, for the sole purpose of maintaining an ample supply of reserves over time.
Such increases in our securities holdings ensure that the federal funds rate remains within its target range and are necessary because the growth of the economy leads to rising demand over time for our liabilities, including currency and reserves.
As detailed in a statement released today by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, reserve management purchases will amount to $40 billion in the first month and may remain elevated for a few months to alleviate expected near-term pressures in money markets.
Thereafter, we expect the size of reserve management purchases to decline, though the actual pace will depend on market conditions.
In our implementation framework, an ample supply of reserves means that the federal funds rate and other short-term interest rates are primarily controlled by the setting of our administered rates rather than day-to-day discretionary interventions in money markets.
In this regime, standing repurchase agreement or repo operations are a critical tool to ensure that the federal funds rate remains within its target range even on days of elevated pressures in money markets.
Consistent with this view, the committee eliminated the aggregate limit on standing repo operations.
These operations are intended to support monetary policy implementation and smooth market functioning and should be used when economically sensible.
To conclude, the Fed has been assigned two goals for monetary policy, maximum employment, and stable prices.
We remain committed to supporting maximum employment, bringing our inflation sustainably down to our 2% goal, and keeping longer-term inflation expectations well anchored.
Our success in delivering on these goals matters to all Americans.
We understand that our actions affect communities, families, and businesses across the country.
Everything we do is in service to our public mission.
At the Fed, we will do everything we can to achieve our maximum employment and price stability goals.
Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.
unidentified
Howard.
Thank you, Howard Schneider with Reuters.
Just first turning to the statement, just to be clear, we're on the same page here.
The insertion of the phrase considering the extent and timing of additional adjustments, does that indicate that the Fed is now on hold until there's some clearer signal from inflation or jobs or the evolution of the economy along the baseline outlook?
So, yes, the adjustments since September bring our policy within a broad range of estimates of neutral.
And as we noted in our statement today, we are well positioned to determine the extent and timing of additional adjustments based on the incoming data, the evolving outlook, and the balance of risks.
That new language points out that we'll carefully evaluate that incoming data.
And also, I would note that having reduced our policy rate by 75 basis points since September and 175 basis points since last September, the Fed funds rate is now within a broad range of estimates of its neutral value, and we are well positioned to wait to see how the economy evolves.
unidentified
And if I could follow up on the outlook there, it seems like with the additional GDP growth coupled with easing inflation and a fairly steady unemployment rate, this seems like a pretty optimistic outlook for next year.
What's given rise to that?
Is this an early bet on AI?
Is there some sense of improving productivity out there?
So, a number of things are driving what's happening in the forecast.
And I would say if you look broadly at outside forecasts, you do see a pickup in growth in many of those now, too.
So, it's partly that consumer spending has held up, it's been resilient, and to another degree, it is that AI spending on data centers and related to AI has been holding up business investment.
So, overall, the baseline expectation for next year is at least at the Fed and I think with outside forecasters, too, is a pickup in growth from today's relatively low level of 1.7 percent.
I mentioned that the SEP median is 1.7 for this year growth and 2.3 for next year.
You actually, some of that is due to the shutdown.
So, you can take two-tenths out of 2026 and put it in 2025.
So, it would really be 1.9 and 2.1.
But overall, yes, for a few reasons.
Fiscal policy is going to be supportive.
And as I mentioned, AI spending will continue.
The consumer continues to spend.
So, it looks like the baseline would be solid growth next year.
unidentified
Thank you.
Steve.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for taking our questions here.
You had previously described rate cuts in terms of a risk management framework.
And kind of following up on what Howard was asking, is the risk management phase of rate cuts over here?
And have you taken out sufficient insurance, I guess, against potential weakness in terms of the data we might get next week when it comes to employment?
So, we're going to get a great deal of data between now and the January meeting, and I'm sure we'll talk more about that.
And that will, the data that we get are going to factor into our thinking.
But, yes, we have, If you go back, we held our policy rate at 5.4% for more than a year because inflation was high, very high, and unemployment in the labor market was really solid at that point.
So, what happened is over last summer, summer of 24, inflation came down and the labor market began to show real signs of weakness.
And so, we decided, as our framework tells us to do, that when the risks to the two goals become more equal, you should move from a stance that favors really dealing with one of them, in that case inflation, to a more balanced, more neutral setting.
And so, we did that.
We did some cutting, and then we paused for a while to work our way through what was happening in the middle of the year.
And then we resumed cuts in September.
And we've cut now three, we've now cut a total of 175 basis points.
And as I mentioned, you know, we feel like where we're positioned now, we're well positioned to wait and see how the economy evolves from here.
So, it is, the implication is obviously higher productivity.
And some of that may be AI.
It just also, I think, productivity has just been almost structurally higher for several years now.
So, if you start to thinking of it as 2% per year, you can sustain higher growth without more job creation.
Of course, higher productivity is also what enables incomes to rise over long periods of time, so it's basically a good thing.
But that may be, that's certainly the implication.
unidentified
Thank you.
Colby Smith with the New York Times.
Today's decision was clearly very divided.
It wasn't just the two official dissents against the cut, but there were also soft dissents from four others.
And I'm just wondering if this reluctance from several people to support recent reductions suggests that there is a much higher bar for cuts in the near term.
And what exactly does the committee need to see if things are well positioned right now to support a January reduction?
So let me just say, as I mentioned, and as I've mentioned here before, the situation is that our two goals are a bit in tension, right?
So interestingly, everyone around the table at the FOMC agrees that inflation is too high and that we want it to come down and agrees that the labor market has softened and that there's further risk.
Everyone agrees on that.
Where the difference is, is how do you weight those risks and what does your forecast look like?
And ultimately, where do you think the bigger risk is?
And it's very unusual to have persistent tension between the two parts of the mandate.
And when you do, this is what you see.
And I think it's actually what you would expect to see.
And we do see it.
Meanwhile, the discussions we have are as good as any we've had in my 14 years at the Fed.
They're very thoughtful, respectful, and you just have people who have strong views.
And we come together and we reach a place where we can make a decision.
We made a decision today.
We had 9 out of 12 supported it.
So fairly broad support.
But it's not like the normal situation where everyone agrees on the direction and what to do.
It's more spread out.
And I think that's only inherent in the situation.
In terms of what it would take, we all have an outlook in terms of what's going to come.
But I think ultimately, having cut 75 and the effects of the 75 basis points will only begin to be coming in, as I've said before a couple times, we're well positioned to wait to see how the economy evolves.
We'll just have to see.
And we will get, as you know, quite a bit of data.
I should mention on the data, as long as I'm talking about it, that we're going to need to be careful in assessing, particularly the household survey data.
There are very technical reasons about the way data are collected in some of these measures, both in inflation and in labor, in the labor market, so that the data may be distorted and not just sort of more volatile, but distorted.
And that's really because data was not collected in October and half of November.
So we're going to get data, but we're going to have to look at it carefully and with a somewhat skeptical eye by the time of the January meeting.
Notwithstanding that, we will have a lot of the December data by the time of the January meeting.
So we expect to see a lot more, but I'm just saying that what we get for, for example, CPI or for the household survey, we're going to look at that really carefully and understand that it may be distorted by very technical factors.
unidentified
And just one more question on dissents.
I mean, you talk about it in a very positive way, just given the complicated nature of the situation we're in economically.
But is there any point in which those dissents become counterproductive either to the Fed's communication and the messaging around the policy path forward?
If you look through the SEP, you'll see that a very large number of participants agree that risks are to the upside for unemployment and to the upside for inflation.
So what do you do?
You've got one tool.
It can't do two things at once.
So at what pace do you move?
What size moves do you make and that kind of thing?
And what's the timing of them?
It's a very challenging situation.
I think we're in a good place to, as I mentioned, to wait and see how the economy evolves.
unidentified
Nick Timmeros of the Wall Street Journal.
Chair Powell, there's been some discussion recently of the 1990s.
In the 1990s, the committee did two discrete sequences of three quarter point cuts, one in 1995-96 and one in 1998.
And after both of those, the next move in rates was up, not down.
With policy now closer to neutral, is it a foregone conclusion that the next move in rates is down?
Or should we think of policy risks as genuinely two-sided from here?
So I don't think that a rate hike is anybody's base as the next thing, is anybody's base case at this point.
And I'm not hearing that.
What you see is some people feel we should stop here and that we're at the right place and just wait.
Some people feel like we should cut once or more this year and next year.
But when people are writing down their estimates of policy of where it should go, it is either holding here or cutting a little or cutting more than a little.
So I don't see that as I don't see the base case as involving that.
Of course, you know, a data set of two, now three, is not a big data set, but you are right about those two three-cut times in the 90s.
unidentified
If I could follow up, the unemployment rate has been rising very gradually for the better part of two years, and indeed the statement today no longer describes the unemployment rate as remaining low.
What gives you confidence it won't continue rising in 2026, especially when housing and other rate-sensitive sectors still appear to be feeling restrictive policy from the notwithstanding the 150 basis points and cuts prior to today?
So the idea is that now having cut 75 basis points more now and having policy, you know, I'd call it in a broad range of plausible estimates of neutral, that that will be a place which will enable the labor market to stabilize or to only tick up one or two more tenths, but we won't see any kind of a sharper downturn, which we haven't seen any evidence of at all.
At the same time, policy is still in a place where it's not accommodative and we feel like we have made progress this year in non-tariff-related inflation and that as tariffs come through, as they flow through, that'll show through next year.
But as I said, we're well placed to wait and see how that turns out.
That is our expectation, but, you know, we're going to start to see the data, and it'll tell us whether we were right or not.
A lot of people interpreted your comments at the October meeting that when there's a foggy situation, we slow down to mean that there wouldn't be a cut now, there'd be a cut in January instead.
So it'd be good to get a sense of why did the committee decide to move today rather than to move in January instead?
So in October, I said that there was no certainty of moving, and that was indeed correct.
I said it's possible you could think about it that way, but I was careful to say other people could look at it differently.
So why did we move today?
You know, I would say point to a couple things.
First of all, gradual cooling in the labor market has continued.
Unemployment is now up three-tenths from June through September.
Payroll jobs averaging 40,000 per month since April.
We think there's an overstatement in these numbers by about 60,000, so that would be negative 20,000 per month.
And also, just to point at one other thing, surveys of households and businesses both show declining supply and demand for workers.
So I think you can say that the labor market has continued to cool gradually, maybe just a touch more gradually than we thought.
You know, in terms of inflation, we are, it's come in a touch lower, and I think the evidence is kind of growing that what's happening here is services inflation coming down, and that's offset by increases in goods, and that goods inflation is entirely in sectors where there are tariffs.
So that does build on the story, and so far it's only a story, that the goods inflation, which is really the source of the excess at this point, that almost more than half the source of the excess inflation is goods, is tariffs.
And you've got to say then, so what do we expect from tariffs?
And I would say that is to some extent down to looking for broader economic heat.
Do we see a hot economy?
Do we see constraints?
We see what's going on with wages.
You saw the ECI report today.
It doesn't feel like a hot economy that wants to generate Phillips curve kind of inflation.
So we look at all those things and we say that this was a decision to make.
Obviously, it wasn't unanimous, but overall that was the judgment that we made, and that's the action we took.
Balance sheet shrinkage, sometimes called QT, went on.
We had a framework in place for monitoring it, and nothing happened.
The overnight reverse repo facility went down pretty much close to zero.
And then beginning in September, the federal funds rate started to tick up within the range, right?
And it ticked up almost all the way to interstorm reserve balances.
There's nothing wrong with that.
What that's telling you is that we're actually in reserves in an ample reserves regime.
So, you know, we knew this was going to come.
When it finally did come, it came a little quicker than expected, but we were absolutely there to take the actions that we said we would take.
So, and those actions are today.
So, you know, we announced that we're resuming reserve management purchases.
That is completely separate from monetary policy.
It's just we need to keep an ample supply of reserves out there.
Why so big?
The answer to that is, you know, if you look ahead, you'll see that April 15th is coming up, and our framework is such that we want to have ample reserves even at times when reserves are at a low level temporarily.
So that's what happens on tax day.
People pay a lot of money to the government.
Reserves drop sharply and temporarily.
So this seasonal buildup that we'll see in the next few months was going to happen anyway.
It was going to happen because April 15th is April 15th.
There's also a secular ongoing growth of the balance sheet.
We have to keep reserves, call it constant as it relates to the banking system or to the whole economy.
And that alone calls for us to increase about $20, $25 billion per month.
So that's a small part that's going on.
It's also happening in the context of a temporary few month front loading to get reserves high enough to get through the tax period in mid-April.
So that's what's happening there.
unidentified
Andrew.
Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
This is the last post-FOMC press conference before an important Supreme Court hearing next month.
Can you talk about how you're hoping the Supreme Court will rule?
And I'm just curious why the Fed's been so reticent on such a pivotal matter.
So I did think that in 2000, was it 19, where we cut three times?
But this is such a unique situation.
It's not the 1970s, let's put it that way, but we do have tension between our two goals.
And so that's just unique in my time at the Fed.
And I think going back a long ways, we haven't had that.
In our framework, our framework, as you know, says that when that's the case, that we try to take a balanced approach to the two things.
And we look at how far they are and how long it would take to get them back to each of them back to the goal.
And that's a very subjective analysis, really.
But it just tells you you've got to, and I think ultimately what it says is when they're broadly equally threatened or equally at risk, you should be kind of neutral.
Because if you're either accommodative or tight, you're favoring one or the other goal.
And so we've been sort of moving in the direction of neutral.
Now we're in the range of neutral.
We're in the high end of the range of neutral, I would say, and that's what we're doing now.
It's so happened that we've cut three times.
We haven't made any decision about January, but as I've said, we think we're well positioned to wait and see how the economy performs.
So with tariff inflation, you know, it takes, there's the announcement of a tariff, and then there's, you know, they start to take effect, and then it takes some months.
Goods may have to be shipped from other parts of the world.
It may take quite a while for an individual tariff to take its full effect.
But once it's had that effect, then the question is, isn't that just a one-time price increase?
So we actually look at all of the announcements and what you get from all that, you see sort of a, for each one of them, there's a time period and then it's fully in.
So if there are no new tariff announcements, and we don't know that, but let's assume there are no major new tariff announcements, inflation from goods should peak in the first quarter or so, right roughly.
We haven't been able to predict this with any precision.
No one is.
But call it the first quarter or so of next year should be the peak.
And from here, it shouldn't be big.
It should be a couple tenths or even less than that.
We don't really have precision on this.
And after that, again, if there are no new tariffs that are being announced that will take nine months to get fully in, and nine months is also an estimate, then you should start to see that coming down in the back half of next year.
And I want to see if I could address sort of the elephant there.
And the President's been talking openly about a new Fed chairman.
Does that hinder your current job right now or change your thinking at all?
unidentified
No.
Mike?
No ball accounts for it.
Michael McKee from Bloomberg Radio and Television.
Ten-year rates are 50 basis points higher than when you started cutting back in September of 2024, and the yield curve basically has been steepening.
Why do you think that continuing to cut now, especially in the absence of data, is going to bring down the yield on the thing that will move the economy the most?
So we're looking at the real economy and focusing on that.
And when the long bonds move around, you've got to look at why they're moving around.
If you look at inflation compensation, it's very, that's one part of it, is inflation compensation break-evens.
And they're at very comfortable levels.
They're at levels consistent.
Once you get out past the very short term now, break-evens are at a, you know, at quite levels that are quite consistent with 2% inflation over time.
So there's nothing happening with rates going up out there that suggests concern about inflation in the long term or anything like that.
I mean, I look at these things pretty regularly.
Same thing with surveys.
Surveys are all saying that the public understands our commitment to 2% and expects us to get back there.
So why are rates going up?
It has to be something else.
It must be an expectation of higher growth or something like that.
And that's a lot of what's been going on.
I mean, you saw a big move toward the end of last year, which was not to do with us.
It was to do with other developments.
unidentified
Well, you just mentioned that the public is expecting you to get back to 2%, and Americans overwhelmingly are citing high prices, inflation as their number one concern.
Can you explain to them why you're prioritizing the labor market, which seems relatively stable to most people, instead of their number one concern, inflation?
So we, as you know, we have a network of contacts in the U.S. economy, which is really unmatched if you go through the 12 Reserve Banks.
So we hear loud and clear how people are experiencing really costs.
It's really high costs.
And a lot of that is not the current rate of inflation.
A lot of that is just embedded higher cost due to higher inflation in 2022 and 23.
So that's what's going on.
And so the best thing we can do is restore inflation to its 2% goal, and our policy is intended to do that, but also have a strong economy where real wages are going up, where people are getting...
unidentified
Leaving these remarks with Fed Chair Jerome Powell answering reporters' questions on economic policy, but also addressing the quarter-point rate cut announced by the Fed earlier today.
Gift for Great People00:08:40
unidentified
And the House still in mind as members seek to approve the rules for debating six measures, including the final version of the 2026 defense programs and policy bill.
We see that those five Republicans voting no have not changed their votes for about an hour now.
Those five Republicans include Representatives Green, Luna, Burchett, Massey, and Boebert.
We're hearing they're opposed to some of the provisions in the NDAA.
This was supposed to be a five-minute vote.
It's been open for over an hour now.
We'll take you now live to President Trump with remarks from the Oval Office.
The site goes up and all funds go to the United States government.
It could be a tremendous amount of money.
It'll also be able to help people like this keep, as an example, just one example.
There are a lot of examples, people just buying them.
It's somewhat like a green card, but with big advantages over a green card.
And companies are going to be able to go to the Wharton School of Finance, the Stern Business School, Harvard, MIT, wherever you may get your students, any school.
And you're able to buy a card and keep that person in the United States, actually, say this certainty, because a lot of, I've heard from Tim Cook of Apple, and I've heard from a lot of people, some of the people at this table, that essentially in the United States, you can't keep the student.
You can't hire people from the best colleges because you don't know whether or not you can keep the person.
They come and have the people get out, they throw the person out of the country.
You graduate number one from your college, and there's no way of guaranteeing, I guess you could say.
There's no way of guaranteeing that they're able to stay in the country.
Howard, maybe you'll give a little description of the Trump gold card.
And as the President said, for a corporation, they spent $2 million.
They can then have an employee.
Full betting.
The best vetting the government has ever done.
$15,000 vetting to make sure these people absolutely qualify to be in America.
Absolutely qualify.
Then the company can keep them here and they have a path to citizenship, right?
Obviously, they have to be perfect people in America and having passed the vetting after five years they'll be available to become citizens and then the corporation can put someone else on the card.
So for a company that can keep putting people on the card, one person per card, and for an individual, it's a million dollars and it's a gift to the United States of America to help America be great again under Donald Trump.
It's a gift of getting somebody great coming into our country because we think these would be some tremendous people that wouldn't be allowed to stay.
You know, they graduate from college, they have to go back to India, they have to go back to China, they have to go back to France, they have to go back to wherever they came from.
Very hard to stay.
It's a shame.
It's ridiculous things.
We're taking care of that.
The companies are going to be very happy.
I know Apple's going to be happy, but a lot of the companies, nobody talked to me more about it than Kim Cook.
He said it's a real problem, and it's not going to be a problem anymore.
As you know, they used to send people up to Canada and other places, other countries, so we've solved that.
And the other thing is it'll take in, we think, probably billions of dollars that will go to the Treasury of the United States, that will go to an account where we can do things positive for the country.
So it'll be a great thing.
We'll take in, I think, you know, billions of dollars.
Many billions of dollars, even.
So that's very exciting.
The Trump accounts are doing really well.
We have a man on my right.
Michael Dell is an extraordinary person.
His wife, his wife is even more extraordinary.
I think I can say that.
They have such a good relationship.
She's an extraordinary person.
A great wife.
But they're two great people.
And as you know, last week Michael contributed $6,250,000,000.
And this is just something that's so special.
So many people are in love with it.
He understood it right from the beginning.
It was his idea.
And he understood it right from the beginning.
Could you give maybe just a little description of why you loved it for such a long period of time?
And we were able to get it through the Great Big Beautiful Bill, basically.
That's what gave us the authorization to do it.
Michael, please.
Yeah, absolutely, sir.
So, you know, when we first heard about this idea, the idea was that the government would give $1,000 to a newborn baby in an account that they would own, and it would go in essentially the SP 500 and compound.
And when the child becomes 18, they could use that money to go to college, to buy a home, to start a business, to continue saving.
And I thought that was a great idea.
I thought that'd be great if companies matched the government's contribution, which we're doing.
A lot of the companies around the table have committed to doing that.
And also the thought about this is, wow, this is going to be like a platform for families and communities and philanthropists to contribute to those accounts.
And so we originally started with the idea of, well, what if we gave some money to all the kids in our home state of Texas, right?
And now that the Investment America Act is a law, which that in itself is an incredible thing that occurred, it does create a platform.
And we were super happy to announce that we would give $250.
We arrived at $250 because next year will be the 250th birthday of America and 25 million children.
We thought that was a nice thing to do because it would include most of the children that are 10 and under, that are not part of the government program, that live in zip codes where the median income is less than $150,000.
And that was also an important part of our contribution.
And I do believe there will be a number of other large gifts announced.
unidentified
I've already spoken with a few who won't be in gifts at the state level.
So we have the Trump accounts are doing really well, and it's become, I have to tell you, just everyone's talking about them beyond what I would have even thought.
And it's going to make some young people relatively very wealthy.
Arvind Krishna of IBM, who's actually become, I would say, a legend.
The job he's done.
He's taken the stock from a rather low price to a very nice price.
I won't say high because I'm sure you're going to say it's going to go up a lot more.
So I can't say a high price.
But he took IBM into a new stratosphere that nobody, I think, saw.
If you go back to before when he took over the company, nobody would have even imagined that you'd be able to do what you've done.
So congratulations, Bigaro.
Thank you.
Good friend Cristiano Amon of Quelcom.
And thank you very much.
Congratulations and success.
I know a lot about your company.
You've done amazing.
An executive director of the technology CEO council, Bruce Millman.
So thank you very much.
I think that these people know each other.
We're going to be talking a little bit about technology today, and we'll take a few of your questions about technology.
I'm sure you probably won't have too many of those questions.
You'll be asking about some other things, right, Bruce?
Our administration is committed to total dominance in technology.
Right now we're leading artificial intelligence by a lot.
And I think, you know, you look at what's going up, and we're writing rules, regulations.
We want to keep it at the federal government level so it's simple for the companies, very important, frankly.
And I think we're pretty well committed.
I spoke to some of the senators today, and I think we're committed to doing that.
We want to make it as simple as possible, as easy, because you're competing with some very big sources, and we want to stay number one by a lot.
We're leading the world in building new data centers and new semiconductor and chip manufacturing facilities and new capacity for AI.
And we're unleashing all of the forms, literally all forms of energy and natural gas and oil to clean, beautiful coal and safe, reliable nuclear power.
And I'm giving them approval to, when they build these massive plants that cost $50 billion.
You know, it used to be that for $50 million you could build a nice little shopping center.
But for $500 million, you could build one of the biggest, most beautiful centers.
And now they're talking about $50 billion.
So explain that one.
These buildings, there's never been anything.
There's never been anything like that.
So you're all involved in that.
It's pretty amazing.
One year ago, our country was considered dead by many leaders throughout the world.
And now we have what's called the hottest country anywhere in the world.
We're the hottest country in the world right now.
Ten months took us.
I thought it was going to take longer, Michael.
I didn't think we were going to have this success this soon.
Well, you know, if I think about all the investment that we make with the American companies that are adding capacity, particularly around semiconductors, it's several hundred billion dollars.
Over the next few years, we're going to invest an initial $3.5 billion building in CQ of manufacturing.
We build the largest supercomputer for the United States government that supports both the DLD and the OE.
So in the next 18 months we're going to build the largest five supercomputers that will keep the United States ahead of the game, both in life science and AI, but also to keep ahead owning the entire stack at the national security level.
From outside we invest in the year $780 million per year.
So if you look at the last five to next five, it will be close to $100 billion.
We are going to be investing in AI at the edge, not only on data centers, but how to make AI available to customers in PCs, in headsets, in devices that they will be using.
Joe Biden secured just really much less than a trillion dollars of new investments in four years, and in 10 months we secured more than $18 trillion, so 18 times the amount in 10 months what they did in four years and they would have got negative.
They were heading toward negative.
In other words, not a trillion dollars, but it could have been three or four or five trillion less because people were leaving.
There's never been a country that's gotten anywhere near that.
In the Middle East, when I left the Middle East, we brought back $3 trillion and lots of Boeing airplanes, like 300.
And Boeing gave me the award for the greatest salesman in the history of Boeing, which is a nice little award.
I haven't looked at Black.
The greatest, I think I've sold a thousand Boeing planes.
Can you believe it?
Now all they have to do is make them.
Okay, they've got to make them, but they will.
But we have made historic trade deals with the United Kingdom, China, Indonesia, Vietnam, Japan, the EU, Malaysia, Cambodia, El Salvador, Argentina, Ecuador, Guatemala, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Thailand, and South Korea, and many others.
And a lot of it's based on the November 5th election result, which was a massive victory.
We won all seven swing states, a popular vote.
We won the Electoral College by a landslide.
We won counties, the counties, they do it.
I don't know.
To me, it's the most accurate of all in many ways.
That's why when you see the maps are all red, except for two little blue lines on the right and the left side of the map, they're probably changing to Americans are great builders.
And in the Trump administration, America is once again a country where innovators get a green light.
You have the greatest innovators in the world at this table and representing a lot of their friends who are competitors and friends.
But we're really on a big move to get rid of red tape so they can run their businesses and not have to wait 10 years for an approval.
In the old days, getting some of these approvals for plants that are already being built would have taken 10, 15, even 20 years prior to rejection.
You get rejected.
You'd work 20 years and then you'd lose five to four.
And we're getting plants approved in a matter of weeks.
The biggest plants ever built in a matter of weeks.
For every new regulation, we're slashing more than 10 old regulations.
So we're not allowing regulations unless they slash 10 old regulations.
We did that in the first term, and we cut more regulation than any administration ever.
In our first term, we have the all-time record.
I think we're exceeding it here.
In fact, now it's one in 24 is the number we're at.
It's one in 10 you have to do, otherwise we're not letting you do it.
But we're actually up to one in 24, so we get rid of 24 regulations for everyone.
That's not a bad deal.
And it's been very exciting, actually.
But including, we're allowing 100 in the Great Big Beautiful deal, we're allowing 100% expensing for capital expenditures, including investments in factories and equipment and structure.
So including even structure.
So that if Michael goes out and builds a factory, you can take it against tax.
The resolution is adopted and without objection the motion to reconsider it is laid on the table.
Pursuant to Clause 8, Rule 20, the unfinished business is a question on suspending the rules and passing H.R. 3857, which the clerk will report the title.
Senate 1071, an act to require the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to disinter the remains of Ferdinando V. Cota from Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery, Texas, and for other purposes.
unidentified
Pursuant to House Resolution 936, an amendment in the nature of a substitute consisting of the text of Rules Committee Print 119-16 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 the ranking minority member of the Committee on Armed Services or their respective designees.
The gentleman from Alabama, Mr. Rogers, and the gentleman from Washington, Mr. Smith, each will control 30 minutes.
Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all members have five legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and insert extraneous material in S-1071.
This year, we focused a lot of our efforts on fixing the Pentagon's broken acquisition process, which is failing our warfighters.
The fiscal year 26 NDAA includes a series of reforms to put commercial solutions first, eliminate regulatory burdens, and end bureaucratic inertia.
It also puts in place a system that will deliver capability to the warfighter at the speed and scale that we need.
Fixing acquisitions will go a long way toward ensuring our warfighters are the most capable fighting force on the planet.
Properly equipping our warfighters is critical, but so is ensuring we recruit and retain the best and brightest.
Toward that end, the FY26 NDA continues to make improvements in the quality of life of all of our service members.
This bill supports the Trump administration's 3.8% pay raise for all service members.
It authorizes nearly $3 billion for construction of barracks, family housing, dining facilities, medical facilities, child care centers, and schools.
And it also improves the service members' access to mental health services.
Our committee will continue to make improving the quality of life of our service members a top priority every year.
We need a ready, capable, and lethal fighting force because the threats to our nation especially those from China are more complex and challenging than at any point in the last 40 years.
The FY26 NDA counters the threat from China and ensures mission success in the Indo-Pacific.
The bill includes a number of provisions to rid adversaries from our defense supply chain.
It extends the Pacific Defense Initiative, enhances the U.S. posture in the region, and improves our ability to conduct military operations in the Pacific.
And it also bolsters Taiwan's defenses and helps build the capacity of our allies in the region.
Furthermore, this bill increases the lethality of our forces to prepare for and detour global threats.
The bill authorizes over $26 billion in shipbuilding for additional submarines and surface vessels, $38 billion to ensure air dominance with new generation fighter jets, and $25 billion to restore America's arsenal of munitions.
$145 billion to research and develop innovative new technologies our warfighters will need to win on future battlefields.
This is a strong, bipartisan bill that delivers for our warfighters and deters our adversaries.
It will fundamentally reform the defense acquisition enterprise.
It will continue historic improvements in the quality of life of our service members and their families, and it will build the ready, capable, lethal fighting force we need to deter China and our adversaries, and it will deliver on President Trump's peace-through-strength agenda.
I urge all members to support it, and I reserve the balance of my time.
I also support this bill, and I really want to thank Chairman Rogers, the committee, staff, House, Senate.
This has truly been a bipartisan process.
I'm not in love with everything in the bill.
There's some other things I would have liked to have seen included, but I really compliment Chairman Rogers and the majority staff for having worked with us throughout that process and worked with the Senate.
I thought we had a very good bicameral bipartisan agreement this year.
And the Chairman's right, the highlight of this bill is acquisition reform, something that our committee has worked on for quite some time.
But the last two years in particular, we have been really focused on how to get this right.
And this is the most ambitious swing at acquisition reform that we've taken.
And I know that can sound sort of dry.
Acquisition reform doesn't exactly excite people, but it's really important because what it's about is getting the Pentagon to be able to buy the equipment, the innovative equipment that it needs to adapt quickly so that our warfighters can have what they need to meet the challenges of the modern battlefield.
Way too slow right now, too many programs, way over budget, not delivering as advertised.
Speeding up that process and delivering a better product is an enormous priority for this country to meet our national security needs.
And this bill does that.
And the House really led on that, and I think it's really important.
There are other key aspects of this bill.
We have others outside of the jurisdiction of the NDAA who are part of this, including Coast Guard reauthorization, Foreign Affairs reauthorization, and the Intel Committee's reauthorization.
Those are important to meet our national security needs as well.
There's also a very important component on countering UAS domestically, the threat that drones pose to many of our military Installations and other sensitive areas in the country is a real problem.
This bill takes a step towards trying to address that.
I'm also very pleased that this bill does, I think, a meaningful job of trying to reassert some legislative authority to truly be the co-equal branch of government that we say we are.
We show strong support for Ukraine with $400 million in USAI.
We block the President's misbegotten efforts to pull troops out of Eastern Europe in this moment and really reassert the ability of our committee to exercise oversight.
We have a fence on the travel budget for Secretary Hagseth until he follows the law and releases the videos for all of the boat strikes that are going on right now in Latin America and also until he gets us the execute orders that by law he is supposed to get to us.
We also have a requirement here that if any senior level military officer is going to be fired, Congress has to be notified and a reason has to be given.
So overall, I think this bill is a good balance of the interests of both sides, in the Senate and the House as well.
It's a good product that we should be supportive of, and with that, I reserve the balance of my time.
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I'd like to thank you for the ranking member as well.
They did a wonderful job on this.
And thank you, Mr. Chairman.
This NDAA contains substantial wins for service members and their families and continues the committee's tradition of improving the quality of life of service members and their families by authorizing a 3.8 percent pay raise, expanding child care, increasing family separation allowances, expanding and reauthorizing special pays and bonuses, and expanding convalescent leave.
This bill also bans cell phones in DODEA schools, prevents the downsizing or closing of child care centers without congressional notification, expands access to health care, prevents the elimination of uniformed doctors, increases access to specialty care, and authorizes over $335 million to renovate and build new medical centers, hospitals, and clinics.
And more importantly, this bill puts the final nail in the coffin of the Biden DOD's woke bureaucracy.
The FY26 NDAA includes essential reforms that we all know are essential to refocus our military on warfighting and lethality by codifying the President's executive order, ending radical and wasteful government, diversity, equity, and inclusion, better known as DEI, their programs and preferencing, eliminating statutory provisions relating to DEI in the Department of War, and requiring all command selections to be based, wait for it,
on individual merit and demonstrative performance rather than race, ethnicity, or sex.
Those categories would be immaterial.
Mr. Chairman, I urge the passage of this bipartisan NDAA so we can deliver on our promises to service members and their families, making our warfighters lethal, better trained, and more prepared to the future fight while ensuring their quality of life is the standard Americans expect us to provide their brave warriors.
I am pleased to yield two minutes to the gentleman from Connecticut and the ranking member of the Sea Power and Projection Forces Subcommittee, Mr. Courtney.
Mr. Speaker, in 2025, with the growing global maritime threats, it's particularly important for Congress to exercise its constitutional mandate to, quote, provide and maintain a Navy.
The Sea Power portion of this bill accomplished that goal.
For example, the bill includes a plus-up of $5 billion to shipbuilding above the administration's request, including $1.9 billion to address glaring OMB budget request shortfalls in the Virginia submarine account.
The Sea Power Subcommittee also strengthened the industrial base by replenishing last year's wage improvement authorities with $615 million news to continue progress in hiring a new generation of shipyard workers in the metal trades.
For the Columbia-class program, the Navy's number one priority, the bill again fixes another glaring OMB blunder, which shortfunded Columbia in both the reconciliation bill and last month's continuing resolution.
The subcommittee provides Navy with contracting authority for five new Columbia subs with incremental funding authority, eliminating the risk of a stop work order, which came close to happening because of the Columbia omission in last month's CR.
The bill also authorizes a boost to sea lift, the new Marine Corps landing ship program with a vessel construction manager model, and the fourth Ford Carrier-class carrier aircraft carrier.
I'm proud of the strong bipartisan support for allies and partners in the bill, the $400 million refill of the Ukraine Security Initiative, and streamlining exports to our AUKUS partners.
Last week, the Pentagon's AUKUS review endorsed that security agreement, and this bill's massive commitment to the submarine industrial base and export reforms will keep us on track to sell three Virginia-class submarines starting in 2032 to our great ally, Australia.
I want to thank my Sea Power Subcommittee colleagues, particularly Chairman Trent Kelly, for their outstanding bipartisan work, as well as the subcommittee staff, Phil McNaughton, Kyle Noyes, Kelly Goggin, and Abby Snyder.
I want to open by complimenting my friend, Majority Leader Steve Scalise, on the very dapper OMIS tie he's wearing that he lost in a bet when my OMIS rebels beat his LSU Tigers earlier this year.
I rise today in strong support of this year's NDAA.
I want to thank Chairman Rogers and Ranking Member Smith for their leadership on the critical acquisition reforms in this bill.
I also want to thank my good friend SeaPower Ranking Member Joe Courtney for his dedication in supporting our naval and projection forces.
America's Navy and Air Force are incredible assets for our country, protecting critical interests and projecting our presence around the world.
In the face of increasingly audacious threats from adversaries scattered across the globe, sending the message that America is committed to peace through strength is more important than ever.
This year's bill supports and strengthens our ability to continue this noble and vital mission.
This NDAA will add to our fleet of Virginia and Columbia-class submarines.
We are also investing in future procurement of ships and submarines and granting authorities to support our industrial base and improve the acquisitions process for the future.
This year's NDAA also shapes the investment in the transformative power of unmanned vehicles.
These are just some of the critical provisions in the NDAA, not just for the Navy of today, but for the Navy of tomorrow.
This bill also supports our airborne force projection, raising the minimum number of aerial refueling aircraft, maintaining a strong inventory of C-130 aircraft for intra-theater airlift, and supporting cutting-edge aerial drone programs.
As with our ships and submarines, we are paving a smoother towards building a projection force of the future.
I thank the general for recognizing me, and I want to thank my fellow Bobby Su, Commander Bobby Sue, who did an outstanding job in working on this NDA.
I support this bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.
I'm now pleased to yield two minutes to the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Readiness, Mr. Garamindi of California.
unidentified
Gentleman from California is recognized for two minutes.
Thank you, Mr. Smith.
I stand here a little bit confused.
I want to support this bill, but at the same time, the work that we have put in on the Readiness Subcommittee dealing with the ability of the troops to have clean barracks and to be ready to deal with the issues that are out there, there are many things going on that are troublesome.
And it may be time for all of us to just take a deep breath and go, wait a minute, what's happening here?
There are extrajudicial killings going on in the middle of an ocean.
Military aircraft is used for deportation.
Secretary Hedseth and the President are eroding our military readiness while advancing their ambitions.
At a moment when this administration is dangerously close to dragging us into a disastrous and unauthorized war in Venezuela, this bill does not, unfortunately, push forward the appropriate role of the Congress to carry out its funding as well as our oversight responsibility.
Many provisions of this bill they worked hard for on the Readiness Subcommittee, child development, infrastructure, barracks, and even in my own district.
But it's not enough.
The administration's threatened war with our NATO allies, purged senior officers and career military lawyers without cause.
They deployed the National Guard into U.S. cities over the objections of local city leaders, entered into a conflict with Iran without congressional authorization, diverted resources from critical military needs to fund immigration enforcement.
All of this, and I haven't even begun to talk about my favorite subject of the nuclear arsenal.
And we could spend a lot of time on that.
I'd like to vote for this bill, but I can't.
I just can't.
It's time for all of us to take a moment and say, wait a minute, we're the Congress of the United States.
This bill, while it does many things, does not assert congressional authority as it should be.
I rise today in strong support of H.R. 3838, the Streamlining Procurement for Effective Execution Delivery and National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2026.
This NDAA emphasizes ensuring the lethality of the U.S. Armed Services by reforming the acquisition process to deliver innovative equipment to the warfighter at speed and scale.
It does so by accelerating the requirements process to reduce decision timelines from three years to three months, by making other transaction authorities more easily available for prototyping and by cutting red tape through eliminating duplicative cost reporting requirements.
As the chairman of the subcommittee on cyber, infotechnologies, and innovation, we have worked tirelessly to deliver the best and most cutting-edge technology to our service members.
To that end, this bill authorizes $142.6 billion for research, development, testing, and evaluation to field essential technologies like hypersonics, AI, and autonomous vehicles to win the wars of tomorrow.
China has a cyber force that is 10 times that of the United States.
China and Russia are attacking our networks every day.
The threat in cyberspace domain is real, and this legislation reflects that reality and takes essential steps to address it.
I want to thank the outstanding subcommittee staff that made this possible.
Sarah Moxley, Karen Curley, Andrew Smith, Brooke Allred, Maria Girado, and Michael Herman and Wendell White.
Specifically, this NDA helps small businesses by fast-tracking promising technologies, establishing a pilot program to test and procure technologies that bolster operational capabilities, incentivizing the consideration of commercial off-the-shelf products prior to entering expensive contracts, and authorizing the Defense Innovation Unit to develop regional outreach centers.
The FY26 NDA is a strong bill that prioritizes our national security through common sense, acquisition reform, and innovation at scale.
I encourage my colleagues to support this bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.
Thank you, Ranking Member Smith, and to Chairman Rogers for 60-plus years working on this piece of legislation and those before us to make sure we get it done on behalf of America.
So, that long, proud tradition of bipartisan work by our subcommittee on tactical air and land forces, with special thanks to my chairman, Chairman Whitman, and his staff, that we all work together and have a commitment to make sure we get this done.
Mr. Speaker, this bill addresses affordability and achievability of the current and future modernization requirements while continuing the oversight necessary to ensure reasonable execution of these programs.
That includes all our tactical aircraft programs, the intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance aircraft, tactical munitions.
And finally, we want to thank those subcommittee professional staff for their hard work, including Jay Valerio, Michael Curlin, Heath Boat, Caroline, Brooke, Andrew, and certainly to my own personal staff, assistant Robin Dickey, Defense Fellow Brian Lee, and certain Sam.
As we finish up this, this is going to be an incredibly important vote for the history of our country.
Thank you, Chairman Rogers, Ranking Member Smith, and Ranking Member Seth Moulton on Stratt Forces.
I rise today in support of the Compromise Bill for Fiscal Year 2026 National Defense Authorization Act.
This bill continues the fundamental reforms to defense acquisition that started in our committee and supports a fighting force that will stand against those who threaten the United States of America.
As the chair of the Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, I'm proud the compromise product builds on the subcommittee's work to enhance our national security space capabilities, strengthen our nuclear forces, and expand our missile defense, all critical elements of our national security.
First and foremost, this bill supports the continued modernization of our nation's nuclear triad, our nuclear command and control systems, and the scientific capabilities that maintain our nuclear stockpile.
We also established a new rapid capabilities program within the National Nuclear Security Administration to enhance our ability to respond to growing nuclear threats from China and Russia.
Our adversaries, China in particular, continue to rapidly develop and deploy new nuclear weapons, while U.S. nuclear capabilities can take over a decade to design, develop, and produce.
This bill will apply innovative and rapid acquisition approaches to keep pace with the dynamic threat environment and ensure our nation continues to field a nuclear deterrent that is second to none.
For the defense of this homeland, the bill supports development of the Golden Dome system to achieve President Trump's bold vision.
It also includes multi-year procurement authority and additional resources to expand production of critical missile defense interceptors.
In space, we push to sustain the growth and development of Space Force Guardians.
We must ensure we have the highly skilled and technically proficient acquisition cadre capable of bringing online the next generation of systems necessary to fight and win in space.
As we develop those space systems, we are going to need both better trained acquisition guardians and more of them.
The joint force will be looking to these professionals to deliver significant portions of the Golden Dome architecture.
This bill helps them do that.
We also ensure that the national security launch enterprise is led by one individual that has the authority to make decisions and make trades to support the warfighter.
This bill revitalizes the defense industrial base and American manufacturing, supports a well-deserved pay raise for our service members, creates more lethal and agile force to counter our adversaries, and secures our nation's borders, all while saving taxpayers over $20 billion through cutting inefficient programs and government bureaucracy.
This is a compromise bill that meets the moment and the need to support our warfighters and protect our nation.
I applaud the work for this committee and bring forth this strong bipartisan bill.
I encourage all my colleagues to vote yes, and I yield back the remainder of my time to the chairman.
I'm pleased to yield two minutes to the Ranking Member of the House Subcommittee on Cyber Information Technologies and Innovation, Mr. Khanna of California.
unidentified
The gentleman from California is recognized for two minutes.
Mr. Speaker, as our country wastes trillions of dollars in wars overseas, the American people are frustrated and saying, why is it that we're doing that while China, with its Silken Belt initiative, is building its industrial base?
They want us investing not in wars overseas, they want us investing in manufacturing here at home, in health care here at home, in childcare here at home.
And as we debate this bill, President Trump is announcing that he has seized an oil tanker off the coasts of Venezuela.
People voted for President Trump because he was going to end the endless wars.
This Congress must stand up against another war in Venezuela like we had in Iraq or Afghanistan or Libya.
The American people do not want a regime change war in Venezuela.
And Mr. Speaker, while I have such tremendous respect for the chairman of the committee and the ranking member, it's not enough for Pete Hegseth to come and just testify behind closed doors.
I trust their judgment, but we need an accountability and a full hearing where Pete Hegset answers to the American people for what happened off the coast of Venezuela.
It's not the American way of doing business of killing people who are unarmed.
That may be how Putin acts.
That may be how Xi Jinping ping acts.
That's not how America acts.
And I know there are Republicans on this committee who are concerned about how Hegseth has acted.
We need Hegseth before the Armed Services Committee, answering to the American people, and shame on him for throwing under the bus an Admiral.
The Admiral has far more honor than Pete Hegseth has.
We need him to give answers to the American people.
Mr. Speaker, I urge this committee and Congress to listen to the American people and stop getting us into endless wars.
unidentified
General from Washington Reserves, gentlemen from Alabama.
I rise today in strong support of S-1071, the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2026.
I'd like to thank my friend, colleague, and ranking member Don Norcross for all of his great work on this effort.
You know, this year, the NDA placed an extraordinary emphasis on overhauling the acquisition process, shifting focus from compliance to quickly fielding new capabilities at speed and scale.
It slashes red tape by creating new requirements processes to enable the Pentagon to actively seek existing technology solutions from industry rather than prescribing overly exquisite gold-plated systems with burdensome requirements.
This year's bill also fully funds the President's request for counter-drone systems, improves force protection for drones at home and abroad, and codifies the Joint Interagency Task Force 401, responsible for coordinating all department efforts to counter drones now and in the future.
Among the NDA's most important achievements this year is the authorization of $38 billion for development, procurement, and modification of aircraft.
This includes full funding for the Air Force's F-47 and the Navy's FAXX sixth-generation aircraft programs, as well as 47 additional F-35 aircraft.
These investments will guarantee America's air superiority around the globe.
The legislation also supports shipbuilding, a third Virginia-class, an additional Virginia-class submarine, and a third Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine.
Additionally, the bill contains block by authorization that allows the Navy to purchase two Ford-class aircraft carriers under the same contract.
This bill is a product of a long and thoughtful deliberative process aimed at rapidly arming our American warfighters with the most innovative and productive technology available.
It delivers on this in an astounding fashion.
I'd like to thank Chairman Rogers and Ranking Member Smith for their thoughtful leadership on this essential piece of legislation.
I'd also like to thank my subcommittee staff, Michael Curlin, Heath Boke, Caroline Curley, Brooke Allred, and Andrew Smith, and also in my office, my lead military legislative assistant, Andrew Maloney, and the Department of War United States Marine Corps, Captain Alex Feldman.
I urge my colleagues to support this year's NDAA, and I yield back the balance of my time.
The bill before us is a bipartisan compromise that continues our work to improve the quality of life of our service members and their families.
And I want to thank the Chair and Ranking Member for working so diligently to bring this forward.
At the heart of our national security are the people whose courage, skill, and integrity make every mission possible.
And this legislation recognizes their value with a 3.8 percent pay raise, an increase in the family separation allowance, and other provisions that will help ease the financial pressures of military families.
It also extends a child care in your home pilot through 2029 and requires annual reviews of child care fee assistance.
We also included protections I championed for Department of Defense civilians' workforce, barring arbitrary layoffs for Dodia teachers and child care staff, and shielding public shipyard employees from reductions in force and hiring freezes.
I'm very grateful that this bill moves forward a reform that I've worked on for years, authorizing automatic selective service registration for eligible men, making the system more fair and efficient.
And I'm especially proud that this legislation codifies the women's initiative teams across all services.
Women serve and they lead in every domain of our military, and we cannot let Secretary Hegseth sideline them.
Making WITS permanent ensures that each branch can continue to identify the barriers and remove those barriers to women's recruitment, retention, and health and safety.
I do all this and support this bill despite my extreme lack of confidence in this Pentagon's leadership.
But I always must support the men and women who wear this uniform.
Our service members and their families make extraordinary sacrifices for our nation, and now, especially now, we must fulfill our commitments to them.
With my remaining time, I would also like with very much respect to the Ranking Member and Chairman to echo Mr. Connor in imploring a full committee hearing for HASC with Secretary Hegseth and a full committee hearing for the Intel Committee with the DNI, Tulsi Gabbard, because we absolutely collectively all must have the oversight and the understanding of what's going on in Venezuela and the attacks in the open Caribbean.
Thank you very much for the opportunity to serve and I yield back.
unidentified
Gentlemen from Washington Reserve, gentleman from Alabama.
I am impressed with our nation's will to face down potential aggressors.
From protecting the shipping lanes in the Red Sea to using sea power to protect our allies to securing our nation's borders and finally to projecting power to strike a nuclear-ready Iran, our military continues to be up to the task.
The National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2026 continues to press needed reform to make our military more lethal and ready.
Accelerating the acquisition cycle, slaying a bloated military construction process, delivering environmental stewardship to communities impacted by PFAS, and providing quality housing for our service members, this bill is essential to keeping trust with our service members and their families.
And this bill is laser-focused on the future to ensure our forces have the training, maintenance, and equipment to deliver a credible future deterrent that prevents any would-be aggressors.
Undoubtedly, this bill is worthy of your support.
Before I conclude, I want to thank Chairman Rogers and Ranking Member Smith for their steadfast support and leadership in delivering this bill.
Our national security is stronger when we work across the aisle and deliver common sense outcomes for our nation.
And to the Chair and the Ranking Member, thank you for your work, your leadership that's got us here today.
To the Ranking Member, also thank you for yielding time.
I stand in strong support of the 2026 NDIA.
It's an essential piece of legislation that underscores our commitment to ensuring that we uphold safety and security of the American people.
The 2026 NDIA is a reflection of many of our priorities.
When we talk about priorities, especially in eastern North Carolina, I visited our child development center and we see in here part of the funds that's going to help Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, as well as when I think about the work that's needed at Cherry Point, there's specific efforts that just helps this community through the Flightline Utilities Modernization Project.
But let me say what really is important is when we talk about affordability to see this pay raise for the men and women who are serving us well 3.8 percent.
This is going to help them at the checkout counter.
So I stand in full support.
I yield back.
unidentified
Gentlemen from Washington Reserves, gentleman from Alabama.
At this time, I'd like to yield two minutes to the chairman of the Intelligence and Special Operations Subcommittee, the gentleman from Texas, Mr. Jackson.
And Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2026 today.
I would like to thank Chairman Rogers for his leadership in bringing this critical piece of legislation vital to the national security of our nation to the floor for the 65th consecutive year.
This year's NDA puts our warfighters first by streamlining procurement and ensuring they receive the capabilities needed to counter the increasingly sophisticated actions of our adversaries, particularly the People's Republic of China.
Through the Intelligence and Special Operations Subcommittee, we were able to ensure our Special Operations Forces, the Defense Intelligence Enterprise, and the Defense Security Cooperation Agency have the tools required to execute the Department's efforts in strategic competition and countering malign influence.
Additionally, I'm extremely proud to have championed the SOCOM Urgent Technologies and Capabilities Pilot Program, which ensures our special operators receive the technology and equipment they need to meet and defeat emerging threats.
This is an essential bill for America's national defense, and I urge my colleagues to support it.
With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the remainder of my time to Chairman Rogers.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I thank the hardworking chairman and ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee.
I rise in support of the FY26 National Defense Authorization Act.
Importantly, the bill reforms the outdated acquisition process at the Department of Defense.
It provides a pay raise for our service members, supports our allies in Europe, including Ukraine, and takes other steps to strengthen our security.
I'm pleased that this bill includes the Intelligence Authorization Act, and I thank again the Chairman and the Ranking Member.
I want to thank Chairman Crawford and all members and staff of the House Intelligence Committee who contributed to this important legislation.
In both the unclassified text and the classified annex, the bill enhances congressional oversight of the intelligence community to ensure they conduct their work effectively, efficiently, and within the bounds of law.
Among other provisions, it increases oversight of the FBI terrorist watch listing process, requires the NSA to notify Congress of significant changes in its collection posture, and improves our visibility in counter-narcotics-related operations.
It requires each IC element to designate a senior official to oversee work on biotechnology issues an emerging priority.
It also extends the requirement that there be an IC coordinator to ensure accountability for Russian atrocities and adds Russians' forcible transfer of Ukrainian children to the list of matters under the coordinator's purview.
It requires each IC agency to develop metrics for the adoption of critical emerging technology.
Finally, it provides a narrowly tailored authority to CIA to protect its domestic facilities from unmanned drones, a gap in the law that we have been seeking to close for more than five years.
Once again, I appreciate the strong bipartisan efforts on the IAA as well as the NDAA, and I'm pleased to support the final product and yield back.
unidentified
Gentleman from Washington Reserves balance of his time.
This time, I'd like to yield three minutes to the chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, the gentleman from Missouri, Mr. Graves.
unidentified
Gentleman from Missouri is recognized for three minutes.
I rise today in support of S1071, the National Defense Authorization Act of 2025, which includes the Coast Guard Authorization of 2025, which is bipartisan legislation to authorize appropriations for the Coast Guard for fiscal years 2026 and 2027.
This bill will allow the Coast Guard to continue its vital mission in defending our maritime borders, saving lives at sea, and ensuring safe and reliable maritime commerce.
The measure also builds upon the historic $25 billion investment the Coast Guard received in reconciliation, providing necessary oversight and much-needed support for the service's ongoing efforts to capitalize its cutter and air assets and shoreline facilities and its IT capabilities.
As the Coast Guard faces increased demand for its services, the bill authorizes service to grow to 55,000 active duty members by 2027 and supports the training, assets, and programs necessary to attract, retain, and advance the personnel needed to carry out the Coast Guard's missions.
To that end, the bill ensures the morale, well-being, and safety of our Coast Guard personnel, which are provided from the day that they enter boot camp to the day that they retire.
In line with President Trump's efforts to rebuild America's maritime capability, this bill strengthens America's maritime base, including provisions that streamline the Merchant Mariner credentialing process and laying the groundwork for responsible deployment of new technologies at sea.
Through this legislation, the United States Coast Guard will possess the assets and personnel it needs to execute its safety, enforcement, and national security missions.
Finally, I want to thank the committee's Ranking Member Rick Larson, Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation Committee, Subcommittee Chairman Mike Ezell, and Ranking Member Salud Carbajal for their hard work on this legislation.
Mr. Speaker, I'd urge my colleagues to support S1071 without yield back to Chairman Rogers the remaining amount of my time.
I'm now pleased to yield one minute to a member of the House Armed Services Committee, Ms. Jacobs of California.
unidentified
Gentleman from California is recognized for one minute.
Thank you.
I rise today to share a story from Lydia, an Army wife who desperately wants IVF coverage.
Speaker Johnson, I hope you're listening because you just stole her dreams to build a family by removing my bipartisan and bicameral provision from this year's NDAA.
Here's what Lydia said.
And I'm quoting, the very job that injured my husband and caused his infertility, his service to his country, also denies him the medical treatment he needs to become a parent.
IVF isn't a luxury for us.
It's the only medical path we have to conceive, and TRICARE completely ignores that reality.
My husband served 11 deployments, survived a brain injury, and has continued to serve.
But we're told the cost of growing our family is ours alone to carry.
Lydia and her husband have tried everything to conceive.
They've already done nine rounds of IUI, and since they can't afford IVF out of pocket, they've considered leaving the military and even divorcing to get coverage in another state.
Speaker Johnson is forcing this reality on Lydia and many more military families by refusing IVF coverage.
And it's especially hypocritical when his own staff has access to this care.
This is one of the reasons why I will vote no on the final NDAA, but this fight isn't over.
I yield back.
Gentlemen from Washington Reserves, gentlemen from Alabama.
Mr. Speaker, I rise to support the FY 2026 National Defense Authorization Act and to also thank the Chairman and Minority Leader and my House Armed Services Committee colleagues for crafting a bill for the people of Guam in mind.
The bill advances a package of legislation addressing the War Department's special relationship with Guam's economy, provisions allowing the Department to more aggressively hire Guam locals and work more effectively with the island businesses included.
Bill also generates over a billion dollars of economic activity for Guam and makes good on the Pentagon's responsibility to invest in the island's infrastructure.
In addition to the pro-affordability policies, the NDAA addresses my constituents' environmental concerns and keeps Guam in a position to lead the way for the nation as Golden Dome is built up.
Mr. Speaker, I want to first start by thanking Chairman Rogers and Ranking Member Smith for their leadership.
I came to Congress wanting to join the Armed Services Committee in particular because it is one of the few committees that still works together to collaborate and legislate.
We don't always agree on every position, as reflected in this year's bill and even in this floor debate, but the final product before us represents the bipartisan nature in which the committee is run, and the wins within the NDAA are proof.
It represents the work that my friend on the other side of the aisle, Representative Schmidt, and I collaboratively put into improving availability and accessibility of health care for veterans at DOD facilities, including the world-renowned Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in my state of Maryland.
The bill also means the United States Naval Academy and all military academies will be better equipped to brace for the impacts of extreme weather and sea level rise, and I worked on that with Mr. Whitman.
The bill delivers a well-deserved pay increase for our service members and ensures DOD cannot arbitrarily riff its employees.
This bill includes crucial support for our allies like Ukraine and provides critical checks on this administration's power.
I spent most of this year, including yesterday, visiting every military installation in Maryland, meeting with and listening to service members of all ranks.
It helped inform my priorities, and today I'm proud to stand before this chamber requesting my colleagues support this bill.
I yield back.
unidentified
Gentlemen from Washington Reserve, gentlemen from Alabama.
Mr. Speaker, this NDA delivers the investments and reforms our service members deserve, improving readiness, modernizing our forces, and strengthening the foundation of America's national defense.
The bill revitalizes our defense industrial base, strengthens American shipbuilding, and supports the workforce that keeps our Navy and joint force mission ready.
These investments deliver for our nation and they deliver for Hampton Roads, home to the sailors, shipbuilders, and military families who sustain our national security every single day.
It invests directly in the men and women who wear the uniform by improving pay, strengthening housing, expanding child care, and ensuring access to timely, high-quality health care.
It also makes targeted improvements to training, capabilities, and modernization, so our force remains the world's premier fighting force.
The fiscal year 26 NDAA builds a stronger military, a more resilient industrial base, a more secure nation.
I urge my colleagues to support this legislation, and I yield back.
I want to first thank Chairman Rogers and Ranking Member Smith in the manner of which they work together in a bipartisan way.
It is an example of what has taken place here for almost 60 years where we've come together for this legislation.
I will just throw it, Ann in, though.
I would love the day when the state authorization bill stands on its own and we wouldn't have to, but so I look forward long for that day.
But let me just start with what I believe is good in the bill that was negotiated.
The Iraq war ended more than a decade ago, yet presidents from both parties have cited the 2002 authorization for use of military force or the AUMF to justify military actions completely unrelated to Iraq.
Leaving it on the books invites future presidents to drag us into reckless war, foreign wars, and the American people do not want those wars.
And Congress has not yet authorized those wars or will not.
They have to come to Congress to give us that power.
So I'm honored to take the baton from former Congressmember Barbara Lee in carrying this legislation forward.
And I want to thank the cross lead across the aisle, Representative Roy, for getting this past the finish line.
This bill also includes legislation like the Haiti Criminal Collusion Transparency Act, which would curb the flow of illegal arms and fueling Haiti's crises and hold accountable those elites enabling it.
Legislation Delivers Peace Through Strength00:15:19
It restores the State Department's Office of Haitian Affairs in a bipartisan way.
And the NDAA preserves bipartisan initiatives like the Wrangell, Payne, and Pickering Veterans Innovation Fellowship at the State Department.
There are, of course, some things in here that I don't agree with, and I wish we could have gotten in.
You know, I wanted a stronger DFC, which is dealing with its core development mission, and not give those things away.
But all in all, I've decided to vote yes in that spirit.
I know you don't get everything that you want, but as members of the Foreign Affairs Committee, where we try to do things also in a bipartisan way, I appreciate what the two gentlemen here are doing in a bipartisan way.
I yield back.
unidentified
Gentlemen from Washington Reserve, gentlemen from Alabama.
Mr. Speaker, I rise also today in full support of the Defense Authorization Act.
This bill delivers exactly what America has needed, bombs and bullets from America for America.
But it also does something very important to me as chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee.
It rebuilds American foreign policy.
What does it do on that front?
The NDAA, it reauthorizes three parts of the State Department's biggest branches, political affairs, management, and public affairs.
Now, in the past, less than 15% of the State Department has been authorized.
This takes that number to about 40%, and we're ready to do more work on that front as we move into the next year.
This NDAA, it also modernizes the Development Finance Corporation so that America, not China, can set the pace for global investment.
It expands our loan program from $60 billion to $205 billion.
That is a really big deal to get America out there on the world stage.
And also with this NDAA, as many know, we are repealing sanctions on Syria that were placed there because of Bashar al-Assad and his torture of his people.
And we're giving Syria a chance to chart a post-Assad future.
We do that while also holding the new government accountable for its actions and giving the White House the flexibility that the White House needs to reimpose sanctions if the President views it necessary to do so.
Finally, as was mentioned already and very importantly, we are scrapping the old 1991 and 2002 Iraq war authorizations.
We are taking the State Department from a place that was an unaccountable liberal slush fund in many cases to a place that has true accountability where the dollars that go through that place will not simply be burned, which is what was happening in the past.
And in that, I thank everybody for their work to create a better State Department.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today as we debate the NDAA to highlight the important wins for New Mexico, even as we are investigating reports of unlawful strikes in the Caribbean.
But I do want to applaud the bipartisan work that produced some major wins for my district and for New Mexico, including a long overdue 3.8 pay raise for all military personnel, authorization of funding for Kirtland Air Force Base, and language, which I am most grateful for, to hold the Department of Defense accountable for cleaning up munitions and unexploded ordnance on tribal lands, including in Isleta, Pueblo.
It also authorizes funding to stand with our allies in Europe against Russian aggression and strengthens our critical partnerships with allies in the Indo-Pacific.
So while I thank my colleagues on both sides of the aisle for your great work in achieving these wins, we will continue to hold this administration accountable.
unidentified
I yield back.
Gentlewoman yields back.
Gentleman from Washington Reserves, gentlemen from Alabama.
At this time, I'd like to yield one minute to an outstanding and very passionate member of the Armed Services Committee, the gentleman from South Carolina, Mr. Wilson.
unidentified
Gentleman from South Carolina is recognized for one minute.
And thank you very much, Chairman Mike Rogers and Speaker Mike Simpson.
I am grateful to support the National Defense Authorization Act.
I appreciate House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers for his success for peace-through strength, working together with the Ranking Member Adam Smith.
I am grateful that language that I propose to support missions at the Savannah Riverside Nuclear Modernization, the two-site solution, shows American commitment for peace-through strength.
Support defense programs at universities like the University of South Carolina have provided for promotion of academia and national security together.
With President Trump's envoy Tom Barrick, history is being made today for the repeal of the Caesar Act, giving Syrians a chance after 54 years of Baptist Socialist dictatorship, a message to the dictators in Tehran.
Finally, enhancing security ties with European allies to defeat War Criminal Putin keeps American families safe at home.
Mr. Speaker, at the appropriate time, I will offer a motion to commit this bill back to committee.
If the House rules permitted, I would offer this motion with an important amendment to this bill.
The amendment would talk about the very issue that I spoke about earlier.
President Trump earlier this year launched one of the largest attacks on labor in U.S. history by signing an executive order to strip federal workers of their collective bargaining rights.
For more than 60 years, federal agencies under both Democrat and Republican administrations have recognized these rights, the rights that give workers a voice in the workplace.
The one thing that Trump went and said is that we're trying to keep the Department of Defense from striking workers.
This has always been illegal.
There has never been a strike at the Department of Defense by the civilian employees.
It is banned.
It does not impact national security.
It is clear that this union-busting tactics by the union buster-in-chief, I was a union electrician.
and co-chair of the Labor Caucus.
I know firsthand how important collective bargaining rights are.
It gives a voice to those workers.
In a time where we're trying to encourage people to go to work for the Department of Defense, this is a way to try to keep them away because they don't have a voice.
It's key to securing fair wages, a safe workplace, and dignity on the job.
That executive order, over 1 million federal employees were impacted by this, including the Department of Defense.
Unions, the collective bargaining agreement, were created by a vote of the workers.
President Trump's executive order seeks to silence those workers by overriding this sacred vote.
It really brings a new meaning to when President Trump says, stop the steal.
So, I ask unanimous consent to insert to the record the text of this amendment, and I ask my colleagues to please join me in voting for this motion to commit.
unidentified
Without objection.
Gentlemen's time has expired.
Gentlemen from Washington Reserve, gentlemen from Alabama.
I rise today in support of S-1071, the National Defense Authorization Act of 2025.
This bipartisan legislation includes the Coast Guard Authorization Act of 2025.
This bill supports the efforts of the Coast Guard to protect American waters, interdict drugs, stop human trafficking, promote maritime safety, and save lives at sea.
The Coast Guard Authorization Act of 2025 authorizes funding for the Coast Guard through fiscal year 2027 and makes critical investments to enable the service to meet its growing mission demands.
I appreciate the work of Chairman Graves on this legislation, along with Ranking Member Larson and Subcommittee Chairman Corbaja.
I urge my colleagues to support this bill, and Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
This time I'd like to yield one minute to an outstanding freshman member of the House Armed Services Committee, Mr. Maguire of Virginia.
unidentified
Gentleman from Virginia is recognized for one minute.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman Rogers and Ranking Member for your leadership.
Mr. Speaker, as a Navy SEAL veteran, I'm incredibly proud to rise today in support of the fiscal year 2026 National Defense Authorization Act.
This transformative piece of legislation delivers on the piece of legislation, delivers the peace through strength mandate for this administration.
This bill we're voting on today stands as a once-in-a-generation reform on the Department of War's acquisition procedures to ensure that the warfighter and services that the right equipment in a timely and expeditious manner for the fight in this moment and the future.
God forbid we have to go to war.
We want our men and women to be able to win the fight and return home safely.
I promised when I took office to deliver for the Virginia 5th District, and this bill does just that with more for the Commonwealth, supporting the growing nuclear industry, advancing manufacturing and workforce development sectors.
It also takes necessary steps to address the extraordinary threats in the cyber domain posed by AI and quantum computing.
Thank you to the committee staff and my own for their hard work on this year's bill, and I encourage all of my colleagues to vote yes.
I rise in support of the NDA, which is a data that strengthened federal authorities in detecting and mitigating dangerous drone activities.
Unmanned aircraft systems, while offering significant potential and innovation, also present a clear and present risk to the public.
This issue is especially urgent in Florida, which is the home to some of the busiest seaports in America.
Drone attacks are a major seaport would pose serious threat to our national security, and I appreciate the good work done in the bill, and I yield back.
And the first thing I want to do, we have mentioned repeatedly acquisition reform, which is such a huge part of this bill, such a major undertaking, and took a long time.
We did a lot of meetings with a lot of different defense contractors, think tanks, former people of the Pentagon to really get an understanding of exactly what's going on so that we could fix it.
And fix it means moving faster, getting more innovative technologies more quickly.
But there are two people.
The staff on the House Armed Services Committee is outstanding.
Collectively, I thank all of them.
I cannot possibly name all of them, but I really do want to name Phil McNaughton and Lynn Williams, who are the two members of the staff who worked on acquisition reform, worked on all those nitty-gritty details that are very difficult to understand to help us produce such a great product.
So I want to publicly thank both of them for their incredible work on this issue.
I do support this bill.
That does not mean that I don't have concerns.
I do.
The biggest concern I have is that the Pentagon being run by Secretary Hagseth and by President Trump has simply not been accountable to Congress or accountable to the law.
I mean, I guess it started with SignalGate when Secretary Hagseth put on an unsecure channel sensitive, classified information that could place our troops at risk.
The Inspector General did a report on that that concluded exactly that, that Secretary Hagseth had unnecessarily placed our troops at risk.
His response to this was to say, I'm completely exonerated, no problem.
Didn't even try to fix it.
And also, this Pentagon, unlike any Secretary of Defense that I've dealt with, simply has not given Congress the information we are supposed to receive and given us the ability to do the level of oversight that we're supposed to do.
Now, in this bill, I mentioned there are things that try to force that forward, and I think that's a positive step.
It's not enough.
To begin with, it is in the law that you are supposed to transmit execute orders when the White House tells the Pentagon what it wants to do to Congress.
It's in the law.
Within 30 days, you have to do that.
It's not really complicated.
It's not a big deal.
They just don't do it.
And we've been asking over and over again.
The lack of respect for the law out of this Pentagon is a huge problem.
And let's start with actually one other fact.
It is the Department of Defense.
It is not the Department of War.
The law is very clear on that point.
We passed a law that called it the Department of Defense.
Now, if you want to call it the Department of War, I think that's a god-awful idea for a whole bunch of different reasons.
But okay, come back to Congress, let's do it.
They didn't do that.
They just changed it because the law doesn't matter to them.
And that has implications.
It causes problems.
We are supposed to do our oversight for a reason.
And some of those problems are bored out in a variety of different ways.
We have the National Guard engaged in domestic law enforcement all across this country.
They're not trained for that.
They're not supposed to be doing it.
It's a violation of the Posse Comitatus law, and it's bad policy.
But it also means that the National Guard can't do the job that we're actually paying them to do, which is to train service members to be ready for the fight.
They don't have any training dollars.
I met with the TAG, the Adjutant General for the state of Washington, but they told me they're not able to train because all that money is going to have our National Guard members stay in hotel rooms all around Washington, D.C., Memphis, Los Angeles, New Orleans.
And that is something that shouldn't be happening, and we should have greater accountability.
I am also concerned about this whole issue of merit.
You know, we've heard that we have to get rid of DEI because it undercuts merit.
And yet, we have generals, inspector generals, judge advocate generals being fired all over the Pentagon without explanation.
Many of them, clearly, highly qualified people.
C.Q. Brown, who is the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Howck, who is the head of the Cyber Command and NSA Combined Command, very talented people.
Was that based on merit?
There's no merit involved in that.
That's about loyalty to Donald Trump.
Laura Loomer shows up in the White House and says, I don't like this guy, and he's out.
So if we're going to have merit, merit can't mean we're going to make sure that nobody who isn't a straight white man ever gets any possible advantage.
That's not merit, all right?
That's a built-in bias that focuses on loyalty, not on ability.
And I also want to say I don't love DEI programs.
You can read anything I've had to say about this.
I am concerned about the way it has been implemented.
But the idea that we ought to work to make sure that every corner of our country is represented in our military, I support.
And there has been bigotry and bias and racism and sexism that has made that difficult.
And we ought to try to undo that so that we can access all of the talent in this country.
And saying that we're going to get rid of all of that in favor of merit that just happens to focus on people who are blindly loyal to Pete Hegseth and President Trump, that's not merit.
I should clarify, I'm not opposed to DEI programs.
I'm opposed to bad DEI programs, and we ought to exercise those.
But we don't do enough here, I think, to correct those problems as we move forward.
And I'm saving the worst for last, stumbling into wars.
Why does all that stuff matter?
Accountability, oversight, the people's house having a say in all this?
Because that way we don't stumble into bad decisions.
And we're about to do that.
We've already done that in Latin America right now.
We have launched a war against narco-terrorists.
President Trump ran on wanting to stop endless wars.
You talk about an endless war treating every single person who is a drug trafficker as a legitimate target for killing is an endless war and a war without authorization or proper legal authority.
That lack of accountability and that lawlessness has consequences.
And now, as someone mentioned, we are hearing that we have seized a Venezuelan oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela.
And the president has spoken frequently about his desire for regime change in Venezuela.
That should not be happening.
That's not the policy that we should be headed towards.
We shouldn't be wanting to go back to the 19th century where powerful countries simply took what there could and there was no international law.
So I have a lot of things that I'm concerned about.
This bill, even if we did it perfectly, could not fix all of that.
And the reason I want people to vote for this bill is because we need to reassert the authority of Congress.
whole string side of things that I just listed that we're concerned about.
One of the biggest things about that is Congress needs to exist.
We need to be a co-equal branch.
We need to do our job.
In which place President Trump puts us in a fiendishly difficult position.
He disregards us, abuses us, does all this other stuff.
And then if we pass a bill, eventually he has to sign it.
So it's like, well, should we do that?
But if we don't, then we're completely out of the picture.
And this bill, and this, I will give a sincere compliment and thank you to Chairman Rogers.
He worked with us in a legitimate bipartisan way.
There are things that are not in this bill that Republicans wanted in the bill.
We got those out because we wanted a bipartisan product.
This is a bipartisan project.
It starts moving us in the right direction.
Does it stop all those bad things that President Trump and Pete Hegseth are doing right now?
No, but it really couldn't.
It's a step in the right direction towards reasserting the authority of Congress, which is but one step along a very long road, I will grant you, to try to get some restraint on the lack of transparency, the unaccountability, and the problems that are coming out of this White House and this Department of Defense that is creating all of these problems.
So I hope we'll vote for this bill, and I hope we will continue working to do more oversight of the Pentagon going forward.
First, I want to take a minute to thank the ranking member.
As anybody who's listened to this debate can just tell, he is a very bright, very thoughtful, articulate fellow.
And I am very fortunate that he's my partner in running the Armed Services Committee.
I also want to thank Chairman Roger Wicker, Senate Armed Services Committee, and Ranking Member Jack Reed.
They also are very passionate, thoughtful, bipartisan members of Congress.
And this product that we bring before the House today is a result of this bipartisan, bicameral effort.
And for those of us who have been around here a long time, we used to see more of this.
We don't now.
And so it's refreshing to see this kind of effort, this kind of product come to the floor in these more recent years of toxicity in this town and in this chamber.
But that toxicity is not reflected in this product.
I also want to thank our staff for their outstanding work.
This is literally a cumulative product of 11 months of a lot of hard staff work.
The House Legislative Council, the CBO, and the parliamentarians staff here.
Leadership staff, as we saw just before this came to the floor.
There's been a lot of people pulling hard to get this done, but it's resulted in this product.
And a lot of folks don't think about this, but this authorization bill is a massive piece of legislation, not just including what's riding along with it today from other committees, but in and of itself, it authorizes over half of all discretionary spending.
This is a big deal.
But it also has been done for 64 consecutive years.
No matter which party has control of the White House and no matter which party has control of this chamber, we find a way to make sure our service members have what they need to be successful and safe.
So I'm very proud of this committee.
I'm very proud of this product.
I'm proud of the partnership that we have had with the other party.
And it is an important bill.
I urge our members to be supportive of it and to vote yes.
And with that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the ballots at my time.
unidentified
Gentleman yields.
All time for debate has expired.
Pursuant to House Resolution 936, previous question is ordered on the bill as amended.
An act to require the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to disinter the remains of Ferdinand V. Cota from Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery, Texas, and for other purposes.
unidentified
For what purposes the gentleman from New Jersey seek recognition?
Those favoring a vote by the yeas and nays will rise.
Fest number having risen, the yeas and nays are ordered pursuant to clause 8 of rule 20.
Further proceedings on this question will be postponed.
Pursuant to Clause 12A of Rule 1, the head chair declares the House in recess for a period of less than 15 minutes.
The U.S. House now in recess after lawmakers started work on the 2026 Defense Programs and Policy Bill, known as the NDAA.
It would authorize over $900 billion for Pentagon and Energy Department nuclear funding for 2026.
It also includes a 3.9% across-the-board pay increase for all military service members.
When lawmakers return, watch live coverage here on C-SPAN.
Watch America's Book Club, C-SPAN's bold original series, Sunday with our guest best-selling author, Arthur Brooks, who has written 13 books about finding purpose, connection, and cultivating lasting joy.
His books include Love Your Enemies, Build the Life You Want with co-author Oprah Winfrey and his latest The Happiness Files.
Companionate Love Defined00:00:37
unidentified
He joins our host, renowned author and civic leader David Rubinstein.