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06Regulating Imports With a Reciprocal Tariff to Rectify Trade Practices That Contribute to Large and Persistent Annual United States Goods Trade Deficits: Message From the President of the United...
07After Recess
10Adjournment
1 member spoke
Daily Digest
Public Bills and Resolutions Introduced
43 public bills, H.R. 2659- 2701; and 6 resolutions, H. Res. 293, 295-299, were introduced.
Pages H1458-60
Report Filed
A report was filed today as follows: H. Res. 294, providing for consideration of the joint resolution (S.J. Res. 18) disapproving the rule submitted by the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection relating to ``Overdraft Lending: Very Large Financial Institutions''; providing for consideration of the joint resolution (S.J. Res. 28) disapproving the rule submitted by the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection relating to ``Defining Larger Participants of a Market for General-Use Digital Consumer Payment Applications''; providing for consideration of the bill (H.R. 1526) to amend title 28, United States Code, to limit the authority of district courts to provide injunctive relief, and for other purposes; providing for consideration of the bill (H.R. 22) to amend the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 to require proof of United States citizenship to register an individual to vote in elections for Federal office, and for other purposes; and for other purposes (H. Rept. 119-50).
Page H1458
Speaker
Read a letter from the Speaker wherein he appointed Representative Begich to act as Speaker pro tempore for today.
Page H1421
Recess
The House recessed at 1:04 p.m. and reconvened at 2 p.m.
The Chair announced the Speaker's appointment of the following members of the House to the British-American Interparliamentary Group: Representatives Crow, Meeks, DelBene, Gomez and Matsui.
Page H1429
Recess
The House recessed at 2:08 p.m. and reconvened at 4 p.m.
Page H1429
Recess
The House recessed at 5:34 p.m. and reconvened at 6:30 p.m.
Page H1441
Suspensions
The House agreed to suspend the rules and pass the following measures: Authorizing the use of the Capitol Grounds for the National Peace Officers Memorial Service and the National Honor Guard and Pipe Band Exhibition: H. Con. Res. 9, authorizing the use of the Capitol Grounds for the National Peace Officers Memorial Service and the National Honor Guard and Pipe Band Exhibition;
Pages H1429-30
Montgomery GI Bill Selected Reserves Tuition Fairness Act of 2025
H.R. 983, to amend title 38, United States Code, to direct the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to disapprove courses of education offered by a public institution of higher learning that does not charge the in-State tuition rate to a veteran using certain educational assistance under title 10 of such Code;
Pages H1432-33
Vietnam Veterans Liver Fluke Cancer Study Act
H.R. 586, amended, to direct the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to study and report on the prevalence of cholangiocarcinoma in veterans who served in the Vietnam theater of operations during the Vietnam era, by a \2/3\ yea-and-nay vote of 411 yeas with none voting ``nay'', Roll No. 89;
Pages H1435-37, H1441-42
Clear Communication for Veterans Claims Act
H.R. 1039, amended, to direct the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to seek to enter into an agreement with a federally funded research and development center for an assessment of notice letters that the Secretary sends to claimants for benefits under laws administered by the Secretary, by a \2/3\ yea- and-nay vote of 412 yeas with none voting ``nay'', Roll No. 90;
Pages H1437-39, H1442-43
Deliver for Veterans Act
H.R. 877, amended, to amend title 38, United States Code, to expand the authority of the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to provide or assist in providing a vehicle adapted for operation by a disabled individual to certain eligible persons, by paying expenses associated with the delivery of such vehicle; and
Page H1439
Fairness for Servicemembers and their Families Act of 2025
H.R. 970, to amend title 38, United States Code, to require the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to periodically review the automatic maximum coverage under the Servicemembers' Group Life Insurance program and the Veterans' Group Life Insurance program.
Pages H1439-41
Moment of Silence
The House observed a moment of silence in remembrance of Officer William F. Evans, United States Capitol Police Officer, who was killed in the line of duty defending the Capitol on April 2, 2021.
Page H1442
Authorizing the use of Emancipation Hall in the Capitol Visitor Center for a ceremony to present the Congressional Gold Medals awarded under the `Six Triple Eight' Congressional Gold Medal Act of 2021
The House agreed to discharge from committee and agreed to H. Con. Res. 22, authorizing the use of Emancipation Hall in the Capitol Visitor Center for a ceremony to present the Congressional Gold Medals awarded under the `Six Triple Eight' Congressional Gold Medal Act of 2021.
Page H1443
Suspensions: Proceedings Postponed
The House debated the following measures under suspension of the rules. Further proceedings were postponed. Veterans Education Transparency and Training Act: H.R. 981, to amend title 38, United States Code, to improve the processes to approve programs of education for purposes of the educational assistance programs of the Department of Veterans Affairs; and
Pages H1430-32
Prioritizing Veterans' Survivors Act
H.R. 1228, to amend title 38, United States Code, to clarify the organization of the Office of Survivors Assistance of the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Pages H1433-35
Presidential Message
Received a message from the President transmitting a notification of certain actions taken to deal with the unusual and extraordinary threat to the United States' economy and national security posed by the underlying conditions of our trade with foreign nations, including a lack of reciprocity in our bilateral trade relationships, disparate tariff rates, and non-tariff barriers, and foreign economic policies that suppress domestic wages and consumption- referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Committee on Ways and Means and ordered to be printed (H. Doc. 119-37).
Page H1441
Senate Message
Message received from the Senate appears on page H1430. Quorum Calls--Votes: Two yea-and-nay votes developed during the proceedings of today and appears on pages H1441-42 and H1442-43. Adjournment: The House met at 12 p.m. and adjourned at 9:21 p.m.
Every speech and line is the Congressional Record's own text, read from GovInfo. Speakers are matched to members by GPO's own metadata. Referandom places each turn on the Clerk's video by matching its words: 118 of 173 spoken turns were found. Turns without a time are still listed; they just can't seek.
Morning-Hour Debate
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the order of the House of January 3, 2025, the Chair will now recognize Members from lists submitted by the majority and minority leaders for morning-hour debate.
The Chair will alternate recognition between the parties, with time equally allocated between the parties and each Member other than the majority and minority leaders and the minority whip limited to 5 minutes, but in no event shall debate continue beyond 1:50 p.m.
Mr. Speaker, last week I introduced legislation to reverse the out-of-touch California EV mandate that the Biden administration approved with one foot already out the door.
This de facto ban on internal combustion engines not only stifles innovation and blocks consumer choice for the American people, but it also threatens 40 percent of the auto market including the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
I have been leading this fight since I arrived in Congress to protect consumer choice and to foster further innovation in the auto industry. With the support of President Trump and Energy and Commerce Chairman Brett Guthrie, I am confident that this legislation will swiftly pass and be signed into law.
Mr. Speaker, at the beginning of this term, President Trump announced an aggressive artificial intelligence plan to keep the U.S. competitive with China.
Just 3 months later, we are already seeing this plan in action through the investment of billions of dollars to revitalize the former Homer City Generating Station located in Pennsylvania.
Projects like this and the Three Mile Island nuclear plant's revitalization not only bring revenue in for local economies, it employs hardworking Americans. It also helps our Nation stay competitive with China in the development of artificial intelligence.
As President Trump builds up our artificial intelligence base, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania stands ready to fulfill its necessary energy needs.
Mr. Speaker, since President Trump was sworn into office, the daily number of border crossings has plummeted to record lows. Currently, our Border Patrol agents are making fewer than 50 arrests per day at the U.S.-Mexico border. Under President Biden, Border Patrol was averaging more than 1,000 arrests a day.
President Trump has promised to secure our border and make our communities safer by removing dangerous criminals from our streets. Just 3 months into his term, the results of these policies truly speak for themselves: Promises made, promises kept.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor World War II ace pilot and Johnstown native, Lieutenant Colonel Boyd ``Buzz'' Wagner.
Buzz completed his flight training in 1938 before he was assigned to the Philippines. When Japanese forces attacked the Philippines in December of 1941, Buzz quickly shot down five Japanese planes, making him the first ace pilot of World War II.
By April of the following year, Buzz was credited with eight air-to- air kills, as well as numerous successful bombing runs on Japanese airfields, one of which earned him the Distinguished Service Cross citation.
Though he tragically passed away in November of 1942 during a training flight in Alabama, Buzz's legacy lives on as an inspiration to all aspiring aviators.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to congratulate University of Florida forward and New Oxford, Pennsylvania, native Thomas Haugh who helped lead the Florida Gators to a Final Four victory, clinching their spot in the national championship game. Thomas played a critical role in the semifinal game, recording 12 points, 7 rebounds, and 2 blocks.
On behalf of everyone in Pennsylvania's 13th District, I congratulate Thomas and his parents, Jennifer and Ryan, on this incredible victory. I wish the best of luck to Thomas and the entire Florida Gators team in the national championship game tonight.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor Mr. David Greenwood, a beloved member of our Hudson Valley community, who passed away recently at his home in Millbrook, New York.
A lifelong lover of the arts, David graduated from the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo with an art history degree before pursuing his master's back at home at SUNY New Paltz where he was ultimately named an outstanding alumnus.
He and his wife, Nan, married in his ancestral home in Yorkshire in 1974 while David was working as an art history teacher. He was later named supervisor of the entire K-12 arts program, a position which he held until his retirement in 2004.
Coming back home to our community in the Hudson Valley, he contributed so much to so many. One of David's proudest accomplishments was an annual calendar project in Millbrook, celebrating the town's people, places, and events throughout history, which in 2022 earned him the Edmund J. Winslow Local Government Historian Award of Excellence.
Our community is a better place because of the years of service and spirit that David Greenwood brought to the Hudson Valley. We thank David, and our thoughts are with his family.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to congratulate a true public servant, Maureen Halahan, on her retirement from leadership of the Orange County Partnership.
As CEO of the partnership for 24 years, Maureen has been a leader in helping to grow and diversify our entire Hudson Valley economy. For over two decades, Maureen has helped small and medium businessowners in Orange County finance, grow, and staff their businesses to the immense benefit of our entire Hudson Valley community.
From major infrastructure projects, transformative economic development projects creating hundreds and thousands of jobs, investing in our workforce, and mentoring the rising next generation of business leaders, Maureen's impact has been tremendous.
To me, Maureen has been such a counselor and adviser on important economic development and community issues. While we will miss Maureen greatly, we wish her all the best as she moves into this next chapter. We look forward to continuing to foster our relationship with the partnership's new CEO, Mr. Conor Eckert.
Maureen's service to our community made a tremendous impact. We thank her and are forever grateful.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize Mr. James Gagliano, a friend, a fellow West Point graduate, a veteran, and a true public servant to the Hudson Valley and to our Nation.
Most recently as mayor of the village of Cornwall-on-Hudson, James put his decades of experience in the military and law enforcement community to use in protecting his own community. In particular, he proudly served 25 years in the FBI and protected our State and our Nation.
As a Representative for the Hudson Valley, I can personally attest to the fact that having good, smart, dedicated, patriotic, locally elected officials, regardless of political party, truly makes all the difference when it comes to getting stuff done and delivering for our community.
That was always the case with Mayor Gagliano, a tireless partner in making our community more affordable, safe, and free. We partnered closely on bringing funding, and ultimately executing critical water and infrastructure projects, public safety projects, and first responder and EMS investment.
He was always the first with a smile and a joke. Even though we don't agree about baseball teams, I think we agree on pretty much everything else, and I appreciate his leadership. Everyone in his community and in the Hudson Valley knows that Cornwall is a better place following his leadership as mayor of the village.
While we wish him the best in his new chapter, I will truly miss working with him and marching in the Fourth of July parade with him. I am sure I will see him at Army football games soon.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the commissioning of the USS Iowa, the Navy's newest Virginia-class, nuclear-powered, fast-attack submarine.
I had the honor this weekend to attend the ceremony at Naval Submarine Base New London, alongside Governor Kim Reynolds, veterans, and the families of over 140 crew members.
It was a powerful moment marking the beginning of a new era. The USS Iowa is the third naval vessel to bear that name following a battleship that served with distinction in World War II, both in the Atlantic and the Pacific, in the Korean war and in the Gulf. That proud legacy now continues beneath the sea. The legacy of the Gray Ghost and the new USS Iowa nuclear-class submarine begins its mission.
A new legend for the USS Iowa began on Saturday. It is indefatigable. It is undeterred. It is undetected, and it is unstoppable.
To the crew, I thank them for their service and remember to be Iowa nice to one another. To all those who may cross her path and our adversaries, fear the Ghost.
Mr. Speaker, today I rise with a letter. This is a letter from Republican State legislators from my home State of Minnesota, addressed to President Trump and Republicans in Congress. Please listen carefully.
The letter was signed by more than one dozen Republican State legislators.
Mr. Speaker, this is from Republican legislators to the Republican President and the Republican majority in Congress. Their plea is clear. The threat is real. The facts are undeniable. Republicans in State legislatures do not want to gut Medicaid. Minnesotans do not want to gut Medicaid. Americans do not want to gut Medicaid.
So why in the world are congressional Republicans teeing up these massive cuts to Medicaid in their budget?
It is because they are singularly focused on giving massive tax breaks to their wealthy donors, to billionaires like Elon Musk, and to huge corporations. They are willing to do that by selling out healthcare coverage for 80 million Americans.
That is it. It is really that simple.
I say to my Republican colleagues that you cannot hide from your own party raising the alarm not to do this. You cannot hide from the fact that you are choosing to rip healthcare away from millions of Americans. You cannot hide from the fact that you are choosing to decimate State budgets in order to serve your donors and your billionaire elites. You cannot hide from the fact that your State counterparts and surely your constituents do not want you to do this.
As we consider the budget this week, we need House Republicans in the House of Representatives to finally stand with Democrats against this disastrous budget.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of crucial, bipartisan legislation that will support our Nation's most vulnerable. The IDEA Full Funding Act is a bipartisan, commonsense commitment to our Nation's children who are living with disabilities.
This is not just about dollars and cents. It is about fulfilling a promise made 50 years ago to ensure that every child, regardless of ability, has access to a quality education that prepares them for a full and productive life.
When Congress passed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in 1975, it was a landmark step toward educational equity. The Federal Government pledged to cover 40 percent of the excess costs of special education services.
Yet, for decades we have fallen short of promised funding levels, which have hovered around 13 to 15 percent, leaving States and local school districts struggling to make up the difference.
This shortfall forces schools to stretch their already limited resources, meaning fewer special education teachers, outdated instructional materials, and less support for students who need it most.
The burden does not just fall on the schools. It affects families, educators, and, ultimately, the success of our communities. At the Education and Workforce Committee last week, we just heard about the exciting new opportunities artificial intelligence presents to advance education for students with special needs. However, many of those opportunities will not be realized if Congress does not live up to its commitment.
The IDEA Full Funding Act ensures that we meet that commitment, gradually increasing Federal support until we reach the promised 40 percent. It is not just good policy to invest in our Nation's future and ensure students with disabilities have access to a high-quality education. It is the right thing to do.
Full funding will provide critical resources to schools, enabling students with disabilities to receive services and support that they need. It will reduce financial strain on States and local districts, preventing them from having to cut other essential programs. This legislation supports teachers and staff, ensuring that they have the tools and the training to deliver high-quality special education.
Lastly, and most importantly, it gives families peace of mind, knowing their children will receive the education they deserve without unnecessary hurdles.
Investing in special education is an investment in future taxpayers, workers, and independent citizens who contribute to society. By fully funding IDEA, we alleviate the pressure on States and local governments thereby strengthening our education system.
Mr. Speaker, we have an obligation to every student in this country. When we fail to meet our commitment under IDEA, we fail millions of children who deserve a fair shot at success. Passing the IDEA Full Funding Act is a step toward fairness, responsibility, and a brighter future for all.
Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this essential legislation.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to celebrate a stunning, dominant victory by the UConn women's basketball team yesterday over a very good University of South Carolina team by a margin of 23 points, which actually is lower than really where it was for most of the second half.
It is an amazing group of women student athletes who, again, rose to the occasion to take the UConn women's basketball program into further heights with its 12th national title. All records are made to be broken, but it is hard to even imagine any other school's team that could come close to 12 national titles.
They were led by Paige Bueckers who is going to be one of the greats in the history of college basketball. She scored 17 points and had numerous rebounds, steals, and blocks. She has had every award imaginable for a college basketball player: ESPY Award, John R. Wooden Award, and Naismith Awards, but winning that trophy which so far had eluded her is just a storybook way for her career at the University of Connecticut to finish.
She was joined by Azzi Fudd, who is a junior, 24 points, 6 rebounds, and 3 assists. She was named the Most Outstanding Player of the Final Four, which is really saying something when we have a teammate like Paige Bueckers.
Lastly, a freshman, Sarah Strong, had 24 points and 15 rebounds. Over the course of the season watching her grow as a player playing with poise and maturity that defied someone of her young age was something quite striking and amazing.
Their starting line-up was rounded out by Jana El Alfy and Kaitlyn Chen, a portal transfer from Princeton University, with a really deep bench. KK Arnold came out and provided lots of energy during the game.
It was just an amazing team led by an amazing coach, Geno Auriemma. In 2006, which is a long time ago, he already was named to the Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts, which usually is reserved for coaches after they have retired. However, Geno just kind of keeps going on. Their last win was in 2009, and there were a lot of naysayers out there that while the UConn program has hit its peak, in 2023 in USA Today there was a headline: ``UConn's dynasty is officially dead. That is good news for women's college basketball.''
That is probably the ultimate bulletin board material for someone like Geno Auriemma, if you know him.
What is so striking about Geno is just the loyalty of his players. He had all these former stars of the UConn program who have gone on to be at the WNBA who were all there yesterday in Tampa, Florida, rooting them on. The same for the bench. He is an amazing leader and a really talented coach.
John Wooden, the legendary coach, never got 12 national titles during his time. I congratulate Coach Auriemma and the team.
We have here the college basketball capital of the world. If we add on the six national titles that the men's program has actually accumulated since 1999, its total is 18. I was there for the first one. It was like a religious experience as a UConn fan and a UConn Law
Eighteen titles for a land-grant university in rural Connecticut defies any conventional wisdom about big, high-paying university programs. They just keep getting it done.
Coach Hurley, who coaches the men's team, was rooting on Geno and the women as loudly as anyone. It is a great university sports program that brings everybody together. We are so proud of them, particularly in the Second Congressional District. I have the honor to represent the amazing university campus and stores and also Avery Point.
Well done, bravo, and kudos to all of them. Just watching them celebrate on the court last night was really so exciting for all of us from Connecticut and from all across the country where many of these players come from.
I was texting with the Governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, which is the home of Paige Bueckers, and he was as happy as anyone in Connecticut to see her great victory.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the life and legacy of my friend and colleague, the great Oklahoma Congressman, Wes Watkins.
Wes originally took office as a Member of Congress in 1976 after serving 2 years in the Oklahoma Senate. He succeeded former Speaker Carl Albert, who notably endorsed Wes after retiring.
However, Wes' legacy of service started long before he made his way to Washington. As a young boy, Wes was involved in 4-H and FFA while working several jobs to help support his family. He then graduated high school at the top of his class before attending Oklahoma State University. He earned a bachelor's degree in agricultural education and a master's degree in educational administration.
At Oklahoma State University, he served as the southeast district vice president for the Oklahoma FFA Association. He was so successful in that position that he would later be chosen to be the State president of the Oklahoma FFA Association. But he didn't stop there. He continued to prove himself to his peers and was also elected as the chair of the student senate.
Winning the student senate election would become a monumental moment for Wes because it was becoming quite clear to everyone that he had an ability to motivate and to lead his peers.
In a 2017 interview with the Oklahoma Historical Society, Wes reflected on the moment he won the student election. A friend asked him if he was going to run for office one day. This made Wes stop and think about a life in public service. He thought to himself: What is your mission? What are you all about? What is your passion?
It is evident that these questions guided Wes through his time in Congress. He was a strong public leader who advocated for Oklahomans above all else.
He was raised during a difficult time, where many families were leaving Oklahoma in search of jobs and a chance for economic prosperity. Instead of following suit, he ran for office to change this and help the State. When he arrived in Washington in 1976, he came with a clear mission: Make life better for the neighbors.
Wes knew that in order to do this, he needed to work on financial policy, so he made his case to join the Banking Committee. Like everything else Wes did, he was so successful that his peers chose to elevate him to the House Appropriations Committee, one of the most important committees in the United States House.
Later, during his second stint in Congress, based on that same track record of success, he secured his spot on the Ways and Means Committee, not only the longest standing committee of the United States House, but the committee of jurisdiction over all tax policy. This made Wes the first Member of Congress to serve on both the Ways and Means Committee and the Appropriations Committee.
Wes ultimately knew that these committee assignments would give him the opportunity to provide access to capital to Oklahomans, and he was right. While Wes Watkins' legacy in Congress cannot be overstated, to Oklahomans, his kindness, generosity, and love for his community might be what we remember most.
Now remember, Mr. Speaker, Wes received his degree in agricultural education, and he was certainly an educator and a mentor to his very core. In his later years, he spent time counseling young people who sought his guidance. He would ask these young people the same questions that he had once asked himself: What is your mission? What are you all about? What is your passion?
Oklahomans will remember Wes Watkins as a dedicated public servant who fought hard to bring abundant opportunities and true prosperity to his neighbors. He never forgot his original mission of serving Oklahoma, and the work of his lifetime will continue to benefit the State for literally centuries to come.
One last thought: When his time in D.C. was done, Wes went straight back to Oklahoma.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor President Jane Close Conoley, of Cal State, Long Beach, for her exceptional leadership, friendship, and passion for her community.
After nearly 50 years in higher education, she will retire at the end of this academic year, leaving a lasting impact on the Long Beach community.
As the first woman to serve as president, she led Cal State, Long Beach through a period of incredible growth, including growing enrollment and fundraising over half a billion dollars for scholarships, academic programs, and campus improvements.
Now, under her leadership, Cal State, Long Beach earned recognition as a high-research institution and received the Seal of Excelencia for its work with Latino students.
Now, Cal State, Long Beach also receives more applications than almost any public university in the Cal State system and public universities, period, in the State of California. This is all thanks to her incredible leadership.
President Conoley prioritized building strong connections between the campus and community and addressing student needs, from housing to food insecurity. She has been a partner, a friend, a supporter, and someone who has built an incredible academic reputation and partnerships across the country.
As an educator myself, I have seen firsthand her dedication to student success and her efforts to strengthen the university's ties to the community.
As she prepares for retirement, I know I join the entire Long Beach community in thanking her for years of service to Cal State, Long Beach, its students, and the community.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to call out Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and their disastrous MAGAnomics.
Last week, Donald Trump and his Cabinet of billionaires recklessly imposed the largest tariff tax hike in American history. Now, look at the markets just today. They are crashing.
Costs will now increase on all kinds of goods for the American family and people across this country. Working families can't afford to pay more for basic needs, for necessities. No one voted to pay for more expensive groceries, homes, cars, and household goods.
That is all Donald Trump has to offer.
Supply chains and small businesses are also right now being thrown into chaos, and hardworking people are going to lose their jobs.
Not only do we have this incredibly large tariff tax hike, but we also know that the stock market is in a free fall. Retirement accounts are being wiped out. We have lost trillions of dollars in the stock market in just a few weeks.
MAGAnomics hurts working people and gives huge tax breaks and giveaways to billionaires, to Elon Musk and all of their billionaire friends.
MAGAnomics is about more than just causing a recession. Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and House Republicans are trying to take away billions of dollars from Medicaid, which will threaten, as we know, care for millions of people. That means higher healthcare costs, with many losing coverage completely.
MAGAnomics is slashing employees and programs from the Federal Government. It is about destroying the social safety net and the programs which we rely on, such as medical research, the Department of Education, air safety, and so much more. They are attacking the foundations of our economy and the foundations of our lives and our families.
Republicans in Congress need to join us and say enough is enough.
End the chaos. End the incompetence. Put American families first. Let's stop and reject Donald Trump and Elon Musk, and let's reject MAGAnomics right now.
Mr. Speaker, this is a little bit unusual. I have comments on my friend Wes Watkins, as well.
I want to talk a little bit off the cuff about the man that my good friend and colleague Frank Lucas was talking about a few minutes ago.
Wes Watkins liked to think of himself as an ordinary man and a typical Oklahoman. I can assure everybody here he was neither ordinary nor typical. He was extraordinary.
Wes Watkins was born, as my friend Mr. Lucas said, in very humble circumstances, yet he succeeded in every single thing he did over the course of his lifetime. He succeeded in college. He succeeded as a businessman. He was a family man, and he was extraordinarily successful at that. He was in the National Guard. Finally, he began a political career, first in the State senate and then in the Halls of this distinguished institution.
Wes Watkins served two different stints in Congress, but what my friend Mr. Lucas didn't say was that he served the first seven terms as a Democrat. Then he went home to run for Governor. He is the only person I know of in Oklahoma history, maybe in American history, that ever carried his congressional district first as a Democrat, then as a Democrat running for Governor, and then as an independent seeking the governorship, and, finally, later as a Republican.
He was so impressive on the campaign trail in his second term that the person who won the election, former Governor Frank Keating of Oklahoma--who was actually my friend, my mentor, and my client at the time--was so impressed that he would come back from the campaign trail and say: I love Wes Watkins. He is for everything I am for. He is such a great guy.
As soon as Frank became Governor Keating, he offered Wes Watkins a cabinet position in his own administration. Wes was the only person ever turned down who had been a State senator for a cabinet spot because Democrats were so mad at him at the time. Frankly, he got the last laugh because, the very next year, he ran for his old congressional seat and won.
Republicans thought so much of him. I remember calling Newt Gingrich, who was the Speaker of this institution at the time. I was Wes' campaign consultant and a good friend of Speaker Gingrich. I said: He really wants to go on the Ways and Means Committee. Speaker Gingrich said: If he runs, he has got it. I will absolutely put him there.
Wes was one of the best Members of Congress. He was a pretty extraordinary guy.
I will tell you, of all the different candidates I have worked with and for over the years, nobody ever worked harder and longer. As a matter of fact, on one occasion, I remember getting a call at 5:30 in the morning--actually, on more than one occasion. I would also get calls late at night. I called his beloved wife, Lou, once and said: Lou, I am getting calls at 5:30 in the morning and 10 at night. She said: Tom, he keeps a list of people he can call before 8 in the morning and after 8 at night, and somehow you have gotten yourself on both those lists.
That is how hard he worked. That is how relentless he was.
While he changed political parties over the course of his lifetime, I can tell you he never changed his political principles. Quite frankly, he symbolized and propelled the transformation of Oklahoma from a Democratic State to a Republican State. I never met Democrats who didn't like him or Republicans who didn't like him. He was simply a revered individual.
I remember Wes Watkins with a great deal of fondness.
In the course of his life, there were three things he loved the most.
First was his family. When you think of his family, you always think of his wife, Lou. They were inseparable.
Then, he loved the State of Oklahoma, and he served it proudly, as well.
Finally, and I say this as an OU alumnus and a fierce Sooner, he was the proudest, most ferocious Oklahoma State graduate I ever met. He absolutely revered that institution and spent a lifetime working for it.
I know the people of Oklahoma will miss Wes Watkins. He was, in many ways, a favorite son of the State. He certainly distinguished himself in public service and in his devotion to the interests of the State.
I am going to miss Wes even more than that. I will miss him as a friend. I will miss him as a mentor. I will miss him as a role model. I will miss him first, foremost, and always as a great Oklahoman.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today on behalf of Mark Falkenhan, a Baltimore County volunteer firefighter and Secret Service agent who perished on the third floor of an apartment building in 2011.
I rise on behalf of Nathan Flynn, a Howard County firefighter who tragically died in the basement of a large house fire in 2018.
I rise on behalf of Frederick County firefighter Captain Josh Laird, who we lost in 2022 when he, too, fell through a floor and into a basement fire.
After each of these tragedies and tragedies just like them across this country, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, or NIOSH, produced a report examining what went wrong and, crucially, how to prevent these tragedies from occurring moving forward. Those reports went on to save untold lives.
In Mark's case, the NIOSH report spurred a new emphasis on identifying and communicating the presence of a basement upon first arrival.
In Nathan's case, the NIOSH report exposed how outdated practices in building ventilation and fire flow management were killing firefighters across the country, ushering in nationwide changes in fire ground operations.
In Josh's case, the NIOSH report was instructive in identifying and operating over a basement fire.
Maryland's fire community, like so many in our country, is small and well-connected. Each fatality is felt widely and personally.
Following a tragedy, it can be difficult without the proper technical resources to make accurate and objective recommendations and changes, which is why the NIOSH investigations and reports are so crucial.
These NIOSH reports are critical for firefighting communities in Maryland and around our country because they save lives. When released, crews across this country gather around kitchen tables and read the reports together.
In Maryland, our firefighters have told me that in those moments and for the first time they were able to walk through an incident guided by photographs, construction drawings, timetables, graphs, and supporting scientific evidence and that recommendations from these reports can be revolutionary to how they fight fires and save lives.
NIOSH produces these reports through its Fire Fighter Fatality Investigation and Prevention Program, which was already significantly understaffed, with only five investigators investigating these incidents across the Nation. At this staffing level, it would take up to 4 years to thoroughly research and release a report after each line- of-duty death.
That was until 2 months ago.
Under the banner of government efficiency and the claim to reduce waste, DOGE has fired three of the five investigators, which means longer wait times for our first responders who deserve answers as to how their brothers and sisters died in the line of duty and, critically, what changes need to be made to prevent such a death moving forward.
Another victim of the reckless work of DOGE was the National Firefighter Registry for Cancer, which tracked cancer cases and deaths of firefighters.
Cancer is now the leading cause of death for firefighters, and this database was critical to tracking health and safety improvements for firefighters and improving working conditions. In another sweeping effort to cut costs, DOGE eliminated the entire office. Now, this cancer registry is no longer maintained or updated.
When the President talks about DOGE and government efficiency, I am thinking about the firefighters whose lives he is putting in harm's way. We owe it to firefighters across this country who sacrifice so much to keep our families safe. At the very least, we can be there for them when they are exposed to cancer or lose members to line-of-duty deaths.
These jobs are difficult and inherently dangerous, but they do not need to be deadly.
These actions by the administration are cruel and unsafe. This is not what the American people wanted. This is not what they voted for.
Lost in this desperate mission to cut costs at all costs, we have forgotten the greater public good, the public good that government must maintain and deliver for our constituents, our obligations to one another, and, most importantly, our obligation to those who run into burning buildings and who keep our communities safe.
The Fire Fighter Fatality Investigation and Prevention Program and the National Firefighter Registry for Cancer are the Federal Government at its best.
These civil servants who serve our first responders should not just be reinstated. Frankly, their offices should be doubled.
Perhaps these positions were eliminated as an oversight. Perhaps these hardworking, passionate civil servants were merely line items on a budget to some cost-cutter who didn't know any better.
That is why I rise today to give voice to these cuts, to put faces to these draconian measures, and to plead with my colleagues across the aisle and with the President himself to do what is right.
Restore these offices. Reinstate these civil servants. Protect and serve those who protect and serve us.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today with great pride to recognize and congratulate the Manchester Squires on an extraordinary achievement: winning the Class 2A basketball State championship this past weekend.
This victory marks a historic milestone because it was the first boys' basketball State championship title in the school's history.
The journey to a championship is never easy. It requires months, if not years, of dedication, sacrifice, and relentless effort. The championship win is not just about the trophy or the title. It is about the countless hours of practice, the late nights and early mornings, and the unwavering belief in one another.
It is about the community that stood behind them: the fans who filled the stands, families who provided constant support, and coaches who guided them every step of the way.
I especially congratulate Coach Henson for his leadership.
I also congratulate the players, specifically Gavin Betten and Ethan Hendrix, who scored 21 points apiece. The players all made their school, their families, and their entire community incredibly proud.
The encouragement of the families, fans, and support staff was invaluable to this accomplishment. Their legacy as the first State champions in Manchester boys' basketball history will inspire future generations of Squires.
This victory is not just for the team, but for Wabash as a whole. They should enjoy this moment. They have earned it. I congratulate them once again.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor and congratulate the South Bend Saint Joseph Huskies on their remarkable triumph in the Class 3A State basketball championship this past weekend.
The Huskies made history with this win, the first-ever boys' basketball State championship. Winning a State title is an achievement that only a select few teams get to experience. Yet, for the Huskies, this championship was even more meaningful as it came just 1 year after the heartbreaking loss in last year's State championship.
Coming back just 1 year later, rising to the challenge, coming back, and securing the ultimate victory speaks volumes about the character and the commitment of this team.
The road to a championship is never guaranteed. It is earned through hard work in the gym, trust in one another, and the ability to rise to the occasion when it matters most. The Huskies did just that.
I congratulate Coach Eric Gaff for his leadership. I also congratulate the players, whose determination and refusal to give up have written a new chapter in Saint Joseph's history.
I saw the putback dunk made by Chase Konieczny.
The unwavering encouragement of the families, fans, and support staff helped fuel this team.
The South Bend community celebrates this moment with the Huskies, and their victory will serve as an inspiration for years to come.
I congratulate the Huskies. This is an accomplishment that will never be forgotten.
Mr. Speaker, among the daily assaults on our communities, on our economy, and the daily distractions and absurdities that we see from this administration and from my friends across the aisle in this Chamber, it can be easy to lose track of the bigger picture of what is happening across our country right now and the historical inflection point on which we stand.
If Members zoom out and look at the bigger picture and the larger movement of this moment, my colleagues can see the ways in which this administration is trying to roll back the clock on American history, to redefine whose histories count, whose languages count, whose cultures count, whose identities count, whose personhood counts, whose very civil rights count, and who belongs in this great country.
We see it in this Chamber this week with a GOP that is trying to roll back the voting rights of Americans across the country, and we see it in the insidious rollback of civil rights across the administration, in our workplaces, in our schools, and all across this country, as the administration has armed itself with Project 2025 and has sought to redefine American society and roll back advancements of the civil rights era.
We see it in the executive orders that Donald Trump signed in his first days in office, terminating diversity, equity, and inclusion across our Federal agencies, putting thousands of Federal workers on leave, shuttering offices and freezing Federal funds, and scrubbing websites of American history.
We see it in the military in the treatment of our veterans, firing one of the highest-ranking generals serving on the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the first females in military leadership across multiple armed services divisions, the banning of our trans and LGBTQ+ servicemembers from serving openly, the scrubbing of DOD websites trying to erase the history of our veterans with 26,000 images and web pages of our history to be erased including the Tuskegee Airmen, Jackie Robinson, and the Navajo Code Talkers. Republicans even want to delete a picture of
We have seen the termination of the Commissioners of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and a memo from the Department of Justice that would investigate, eliminate, and penalize those who engage, both in the private sector and universities, in diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility for our communities who live with disabilities, claiming that they will unleash the law and criminal proceedings on private companies, unleash the FCC, threatening to block mergers of companies like Disney and ABC. Federal contractors are being told that they cannot have contracts with the Federal Government if their boardrooms engage in diversity and inclusion. They are engaging in trying to stifle and chill the telling of American history by putting the Vice President in charge of a commission, just last week, to erase history from our Smithsonian Institution as well as attacking our schools.
Across the United States, there are 98,000 public schools. Last week, the Trump administration issued a letter to those schools saying that they must certify that they will end the use of diversity, equity, and inclusion in our public schools, or they will have their Federal funding cut.
Imagine that in schools across every community. These are schools in your neighborhoods. They are the schools that I attended. They are the schools that your children attend. Their Federal funding will be cut if they teach history, if they teach language, if they teach culture, and if they celebrate the multiple cultures and diversity of this country.
The administration is trying to dismantle Tribal schools, which were created because of our trust and treaty responsibilities, trying to turn them into a voucher program and school choice. There are no choices in many of our rural and Tribal communities. The choice is to keep our Tribal schools open, which provide multicultural programs, language, and other programs that are the root of these communities.
Mr. Speaker, we cannot give in. We will not allow them to roll back the clock. We must keep fighting for the future of this country. We will not give in to the politics of despair because the time is right to always do right. We must stand up and fight back and we will.
Mr. Speaker, let's go back to 1974, which was, indeed, a big year. It was the year ``Blazing Saddles'' was a massive box office success, ``All in the Family'' was the top-rated TV show, and ``Happy Days'' premiered on ABC.
Mr. Speaker, it was that same year that Trinity Baptist College was founded in Jacksonville, Florida, 50 years ago.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to celebrate Trinity Baptist College's 50th anniversary, a milestone that invites reflection on a half-century commitment to higher education from a God-centered worldview.
Mr. Speaker, TBC believes that ministry is not confined to the pulpit or the classroom but rather every career can be a platform for living out faith and sharing the gospel.
With this understanding, the college has seen impressive growth in both its academic and athletic programs. Most importantly, TBC has upheld a bold, unapologetic Christian worldview in every aspect of student development. For five decades, TBC's mission has remained unchanged and is today more alive than ever before as it strengthens students for service, purpose, and leadership.
Mr. Speaker, as TBC celebrates its golden anniversary, I ask my colleagues to join me in wishing them a hearty congratulations on 50 years of preparing students to learn with integrity, whether in the classroom, workplace, or the community.
May God's favor and blessing be upon Trinity Baptist College as it embarks on the next 50 years.
Mr. Speaker, I rise to recognize the extraordinary work done in my district at Kennedy Space Center.
I recently had the privilege of touring this iconic vehicle assembly building, a structure that rises 716 feet into the Florida sky. For almost 60 years, it has stood as a symbol of American space ambition.
This is where the mighty Saturn V rockets were assembled, launching Apollo astronauts toward the Moon. It is where three decades of the space shuttle fleet took shape, and that legacy continues today, where work is being done to prepare the Artemis II mission.
During my visit, I saw firsthand the progress on the SLS, the Space Launch System, the rocket that will carry astronauts on a 10-day journey to the Moon, further than we have been from the Earth for over 50 years.
I saw up close the SLS core stage, a 212-foot fuel tank engineered to launch the next era of human spaceflight, and the two solid rocket boosters that have already been stacked onto the mobile launch platform. Just days ago, the core stage has been integrated with the boosters, a major milestone in the path to launch.
In the coming months, the crews at the KSC will add more hard work to the SLS, culminating in securing the Orion spacecraft to the top. The Artemis II mission is currently on track to launch in April of next year. When it lifts off, 9 million pounds of thrust will carry American astronauts further from Earth, as I mentioned before, in over 50 years, into our lunar orbit. When Artemis II succeeds, America will aim to return astronauts to the lunar surface in 2027.
These missions are a statement to the world that America still leads, still explores, and still dares. That is why the work being done by NASA at Kennedy Space Center is so critical. This team is working tirelessly to keep Artemis II on schedule, pushing through complex technical milestones with focus and determination.
This mission matters. Returning to the Moon opens the door to the future, deep space exploration, technological breakthroughs, and a new chapter in American space leadership.
It is a reminder to every child looking at the sky that there are still frontiers to cross and still dreams to chase.
Mr. Speaker, this is a race. China has made no secret of its lunar ambitions. This Communist dictatorship is building, planning, and pushing to plant their flag on the Moon and to shape the rules that follow. We cannot afford to yield that ground.
The Nation that leads in space will shape the world order on Earth, and that leadership must be American. Kennedy Space Center is where we make that stand, and I applaud the work of the men and women who are making Artemis II a reality. I am proud to say the future of American spaceflight is alive and well at Florida's Kennedy Space Center.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to commend Jekyll Island Club Resort and Sea Island for being named among Southern Living's Best Resorts for 2025.
Jekyll Island Club Resort is a historic retreat that combines timeless elegance with modern comfort. Nestled along Georgia's coastline, it offers visitors a unique blend of luxury and rich history. Sea Island is also a world-renowned resort that provides guests with unparalleled amenities, breathtaking coastal views, and a legacy of excellence.
Its pristine beaches and award-winning accommodations make it a standout destination. Both resorts contribute significantly to Georgia's tourism industry, attracting visitors from across the country. Their recognition highlights Georgia's ability to offer diverse and high-quality travel experiences. I encourage everyone to explore these iconic resorts and experience the best of Georgia's hospitality.
Celebrating the Georgia Safari Conservation Park in Madison, Georgia
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to celebrate the Georgia Safari Conservation Park in Madison, Georgia, for being named one of TIME magazine's World's Greatest Places for 2025.
This 530-acre park offers an unforgettable safari experience where visitors can encounter giraffes, rhinos, and other exotic animals. The park provides luxurious accommodations, including glamping tents and a private giraffe suite, giving guests the chance to stay close to nature.
The park plays a vital role in wildlife conservation by educating the public and supporting endangered species. The park's success has significantly contributed to Madison's economy by attracting tourists from across the Nation.
Accessibility is a priority with wheelchair-friendly amenities ensuring all guests can fully enjoy the experience. TIME highlights Georgia's commitment to preserving natural wonders while promoting economic development. This honor showcases the park as a top destination that blends adventure, education, and conservation.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to acknowledge a true southern institution, Mrs. Wilkes' Dining Room in Savannah, Georgia, which was recently highlighted on Southern Living's bucket list.
In the Hostess City of the South, it is only fitting that lunch is served with true southern hospitality. At Mrs. Wilkes', this means gathering around tables set for 10 where guests take a seat, share a meal, and leave as friends. Every day at 11 o'clock, the doors swing open, inviting everyone to enjoy a rotating menu of classic southern home cooking all served family style.
The meal is always a surprise. You never know what the day's entrees and sides will be, and that is part of the restaurant's charm.
Whether it is crispy fried chicken, collard greens, cornbread, or black-eyed peas, every dish is steeped in tradition. Mrs. Wilkes' Dining Room isn't just a restaurant; it is an experience.
It is a place where history, hospitality, and home-cooked meals unite to create something truly special.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to commend the islands of St. Simons, Jekyll, and Tybee, which have recently been recognized as three of the top five best beach towns in the South.
Jekyll Island was ranked as the fifth best beach town in the South, celebrated for its beauty, pristine wilderness, otherworldly nature, and function as a refuge for local wildlife.
Tybee Island was ranked fourth on the list, being praised as a little island packing a big punch. Tybee contains over three miles of beaches, hundreds of years of history, and countless opportunities to explore nature making it one of the most beloved areas in the First Congressional District.
St. Simons was ranked as the number one beach town in the South, surpassing a list of 50 other iconic locations.
St. Simons' laid-back and welcoming atmosphere, delicious restaurants, renowned golf courses, and historic landmarks are reasons why the idyllic town beats out all the rest.
Mr. Speaker, I am proud to say that Georgia's First District is home to three of the best beach towns in the South.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the life of my constituent Sergeant Jose Duenez, Jr.
Sergeant Duenez was described by his family as someone who always wanted to protect people. He enlisted right after high school and served with his whole heart.
His family said: ``It is like it was in him to be a hero,'' and that is exactly what he was, an extraordinary hero.
As we mourn this devastating loss, our community in Joliet stands with Sergeant Duenez' family: his wife, Kai; their 1-year-old son, Junior; and with all the loved ones of the four soldiers who lost their lives in Lithuania last month.
Let us never forget their strength and resilience. Let us draw inspiration from their courage and selflessness. Let us thank them always for their service.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize Gold Star Spouses Day.
On April 5, we honored the spouses of military servicemembers who died while defending our freedom and serving our country.
This day serves not only as a moment of remembrance but also a tribute to the strength, resilience, and sacrifice of these courageous individuals.
As an Army dad, I consider myself profoundly blessed that my son returned home. I recognize that not all families share that same blessing. That truth weighs heavily on my heart and should remind us all of the price that has been paid.
Gold Star Spouses Day brings much-needed awareness to the grief and enduring strength of these spouses. Their sacrifice did not end with their loved one's passing. It continues every day as they carry forward the legacy of their fallen heroes.
Mr. Speaker, let us all take a moment to remember that our freedom is not free.
Gold Star families have lost a loved one in the name of protecting our freedom, and they deserve our gratitude today and every day.
Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the concurrent resolution (H. Con. Res. 9) authorizing the use of the Capitol Grounds for the National Peace Officers Memorial Service and the National Honor Guard and Pipe Band Exhibition.
The Clerk read the title of the concurrent resolution.
The text of the concurrent resolution is as follows:
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Perry) and the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Stanton) each will control 20 minutes.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Pennsylvania.
Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that Members have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and insert extraneous material into the Record on H. Con. Res. 9.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Pennsylvania?
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I am proud to have introduced this bipartisan resolution along with the Economic Development, Public Buildings, and Emergency Management Subcommittee Ranking Member Greg Stanton of Arizona.
This resolution authorizes the use of these Capitol Grounds for the 44th Annual Peace Officers' Memorial event to honor the law enforcement officers who died in the line of duty in 2024.
According to the Fraternal Order of Police, last year, there were 342 on-duty officers who were shot, 50 of whom were killed.
In February of this year, tragedy occurred in the district I am honored to represent when multiple police officers were shot while in the line of duty. One, Officer Andrew Duarte of the West York Borough Police Department, made the ultimate sacrifice. Mr. Speaker, he was only 30 years old.
Police officers across the country put their lives on the line every single day to keep us safe. Every day that they go out, they put their uniforms on and leave their families, and they don't know what they are going to run into. Every day can be a boring day where nothing happens. They can go through a whole career that way, but they never know and their families never know. Every single day, they are prepared. They are ready to give everything as a sacrifice to their communities to make sure that safety is preserved.
That is why I and my friend, the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Stanton), are extremely honored to once again be able to sponsor this resolution.
Mr. Speaker, I urge support of this resolution, and I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
I rise in support of H. Con. Res. 9, which authorizes the use of the Capitol Grounds for the 44th Annual National Peace Officers' Memorial Service on May 15, 2025. I thank the gentleman
This incredibly important event, which is hosted by the National Fraternal Order of Police, will honor Federal, State, and local law enforcement officers who lost their lives performing their duties in the year 2024.
In addition to the family and friends of the deceased, event organizers expect up to 25,000 police officers from around the country to be in attendance.
Among those honored and remembered will be Officer Adam R. Buckner of the Tucson Police Department, Officer Joshua Briese of the Gila River Police Department, Detective Ryan So of the Scottsdale Police Department, and Officer Zane Tristan Coolidge of the Phoenix Police Department.
Police Officer Zane Coolidge was shot in the line of duty while responding to reports of larceny, passing away at the hospital. He served with the Phoenix Police Department for 5 years and is survived by his wife and infant daughter.
Officer Buckner was killed on March 31, 2024, when he was hit by a car while responding to a reported crime. He is survived by his wife, mother, sister, and three brothers.
Mr. Speaker, 23-year-old Joshua Briese was shot and killed while responding to a disturbance call in the Gila River Indian Community. He had served with the Gila River Police Department for less than 1 year and was still completing field training. His father, Deputy Sheriff David Leroy Briese, Jr., of the Yellowstone County Sheriff's Department, Montana, died in the line of duty on November 3, 2006. We owe a special debt of gratitude to this family that has lost two of their family members, police officers who died in the line of duty.
Ryan So was accidentally shot and killed after serving a search warrant and conducting an arrest in Scottsdale. A United States Navy veteran who served with the Scottsdale Police Department for 9 years, Detective So is survived by his wife and three daughters.
Mr. Speaker, this is an important resolution. This is an important event to honor police officers who died in the line of duty and also to honor those living who are willing to die in the line of duty to serve their community.
Therefore, I support this resolution, and I urge my colleagues to do the same.
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, like my friend, the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Stanton), implied, these are heartbreaking, heart-wrenching stories about real people. Oftentimes, in our country, people look for heroes. They look to sporting fields. They look to pop culture for their heroes, but their heroes walk right among them, right in their own communities every single day, again, being willing when they put on that uniform, when they sign up, to say, ``I will give all for my community,'' running to the sound of the gun, running to the danger, unlike most other people whose senses, whose sensibilities, tell them to go the other way.
This is the smallest thing we can do to acknowledge the enormous sacrifice that law enforcement makes every single day in our community, to acknowledge that sacrifice and to honor those heroes who are near and far.
In closing, I reiterate my support for H. Con. Res. 9, which will honor the fallen men and women serving our Nation as law enforcement officers.
Mr. Speaker, I urge support of this resolution, and I yield back the balance of my time.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the motion offered by the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Perry) that the House suspend the rules and agree to the concurrent resolution, H. Con. Res. 9.
The question was taken; and (two-thirds being in the affirmative) the rules were suspended and the concurrent resolution was agreed to.
Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill
The Clerk read the title of the bill.
The text of the bill is as follows:
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Bost) and the gentleman from California (Mr. Takano) each will control 20 minutes.
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 981 offered by the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Van Orden), my friend and colleague.
The bill would improve the information schools are required to give individuals regarding GI Bill benefits.
Currently, schools are required to give an estimated cost of education to anyone who potentially will use the GI Bill. However, there are cases where a school cannot accurately estimate the tuition and expenses for the year. This means that the schools are providing misleading information that serves the interests of the institution over the veterans due to bureaucratic obstacles.
I support a veteran getting accurate estimates of what their expenses would look like. I do not support veterans having to choose a school based off of incorrect financial information.
Without this fix, veterans are having to make a choice that could harm them financially in the future.
This change is a commonsense addition to the Trump administration's mission to make VA work for veterans.
Finally, this bill would also ensure that schools have a central place to find information to train their staff in charge of helping to make sure students and veterans understand.
In a time when government is filled with bureaucratic red tape, I am happy that we, as a Republican majority, are making it easier for veterans to get an education.
Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support H.R. 981, and I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I rise to express my support for H.R. 981, the Veterans Education Transparency and Training Act, or VETT Act, introduced by Representative Van Orden.
The bill makes improvements to the Shopping Sheet that is offered to student veterans when they are applying to institutions of higher learning.
These Shopping Sheets give student veterans more information about the schools they are considering before they take the major step of enrollment.
This legislation improves student Shopping Sheets for enrollments at colleges and universities. The Johnny Isakson and David P. Roe, M.D. Veterans Health Care and Benefits Improvement Act, authored by Representative Mike Levin, created these Shopping Sheets, benefiting student veterans around the country who now know more about what a school offers and charges.
This legislation further refines the sheets so that they can be better tailored for specific school programs and student needs. This is a welcome improvement that ensures we won't waste time on paperwork that doesn't benefit student veterans.
Mr. Speaker, Democrats in the House have continued to advocate for increased transparency and quality of education for student veterans. Transparency and accountability in education are under assault with the dismantling of the Department of Education, which leaves student veterans and their hard-earned benefits at risk of exploitation and fraud.
We must do everything possible to ensure that student veterans are able to access their educational benefits and that they can get the quality education they deserve so that they can have a better chance of success after they transition from military service.
Mr. Speaker, I support H.R. 981 and urge my colleagues to do the same.
Mr. Speaker, at this time, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Van Orden), who is the chief sponsor of the bill.
Mr. VAN ORDEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for yielding me time.
Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of my legislation, the Veterans Education Transparency and Training Act, or the VETT Act.
This bill addresses critical barriers that veterans currently face with accessing educational benefits that they have earned through their dedicated service to our Nation. It helps ensure a smoother, more effective transition back into civilian life.
Specifically, my legislation requires educational institutions to clearly provide estimated tuition costs to potential GI Bill students. If an institution cannot accurately estimate the tuition, they must explain exactly why, and this transparency ensures veterans aren't misled by inaccurate information, preventing unnecessary debt that they would accrue.
The bill directs the VA to establish an online resource center, a centralized hub regularly updated to include all available training for school certifying officials, and this simple change provides essential flexibility for institutions, such as police academies and truck driving schools, ensuring that they can effectively support veterans and their families.
At a time when this bureaucratic red tape has been strangling our veterans, when it has become a barrier rather than a bridge, I am proud to champion a bill that directly helps veterans reduce unnecessary government hurdles.
Mr. Speaker, this legislation aligns perfectly with President Trump's mission to make the VA truly work for our veterans. I urge all Members to support H.R. 981.
Mr. Speaker, at this time, I encourage all of our Members to support this bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the motion offered by the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Bost) that the House suspend the rules and pass the bill, H.R. 981.
The question was taken.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. In the opinion of the Chair, two-thirds being in the affirmative, the ayes have it.
Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 983) to Amend title 38, United States Code, to direct the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to disapprove courses of education offered by a public institution of higher learning that does not charge the in-State tuition rate to a veteran using certain educational assistance under title 10 of such Code, and for other purposes.
The Clerk read the title of the bill.
The text of the bill is as follows:
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Bost) and the gentleman from California (Mr. Takano) each will control 20 minutes.
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 983, offered by my friend and colleague, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Van Orden).
This bill would reduce tuition costs for Montgomery GI Bill Selected reservists by making them eligible for the same in-State tuition waivers.
When a veteran uses other education benefits offered by VA, they are able to receive an in-State tuition. It is time to include MGIB Selected Reserves as another benefit that uses in-State tuition.
Last Congress, under the Republican majority, the House passed legislation that would streamline benefits and protect taxpayers. This bill would continue that mission in the 119th Congress.
Mr. Speaker, I urge all of my colleagues to support H.R. 983, and I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I rise to express my support for H.R. 983, the Montgomery GI Bill Selected Reserves Tuition Fairness Act of 2025.
This bill mandates the Department of Veterans Affairs to deny courses that do not charge in-State tuition rates to veterans using certain educational assistance under title 10. The VA already has the authority to disapprove courses at higher education institutions that do not offer in-State tuition rates for other GI Bill beneficiaries.
Mandating in-State tuition rates is good policy. It ensures that only schools who prioritize quality education at a fair price participate in the programs. It preserves the GI Bill benefits for student veterans, and it makes the entire GI Bill program more solvent and sustainable so that the GI Bill stays available for veterans for generations into the future.
Mr. Speaker, it is also crucial to ensure that selected reservists receive the same benefits as their Active-Duty counterparts by ensuring that in-State tuition is granted regardless of their residency.
This bill will expand educational opportunities by providing them with more affordable education options. Their dedication to serving our country deserves nothing less.
We passed this bill last Congress, but, unfortunately, the Senate did not consider it in time. I hope we finish this work in this Congress, and I urge my colleagues to support it.
Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Van Orden).
Mr. VAN ORDEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of my legislation, H.R. 983, the Montgomery GI Bill Selected Reserves Tuition Fairness Act of 2025.
This bill holds particular significance for me because the issue was first brought to my attention by one of my constituents, Mr. Greg Tremelling, a fellow veteran, during our Veterans Day listening session hosted last Congress.
His voice, joined by countless other reservists and veterans, highlighted the urgent need for policy change, and this is precisely what this government
I am honored to represent the brave men and women serving at Fort McCoy and Volk Field, whose daily sacrifices safeguard our Nation and its values. My legislation will help veterans utilizing the Montgomery GI Bill Selected Reserves by including them in the in-State tuition waiver that all other beneficiaries currently receive.
These reservists face the same dangers and make identical sacrifices as our Active-Duty counterparts when deployed. Their courage and dedication deserve equal recognition.
Mr. Speaker, of the last eight servicemembers killed in the line of duty, six of them were reservists, the two remaining being my fellow Navy SEALs, who were lost in the Red Sea. Their loss underscores the serious consequences of the decisions made by the previous administration.
Mr. Speaker, I would remind everyone that the enemy does not care if you are a National Guardsman or -woman. They don't care if you are a selected reservist or Active Duty. They are simply aiming at the American flag on your shoulder.
By passing this bill, we are going to ensure parity between the reservists and Active-Duty servicemembers. It is long due for a change, and I extend my personal gratitude to Mr. Tremelling for bringing this critical matter to my attention, and I thank Chairman Bost for his steadfast leadership and support.
Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting H.R. 983.
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, while the House debates various veterans-related legislation today, none are more urgent than the legislation I am introducing to stop thousands of veterans from losing their homes.
Last Thursday, Secretary Doug Collins and President Trump announced the abrupt termination of the Veterans Affairs Servicing Purchase program, known as VASP.
This program was designed to prevent foreclosures for veterans with VA home loans who had exhausted every other option. With no notice, no replacement, and no plan, the Trump administration decided that these veterans are on their own.
The decision came down just hours after the new Trump tariffs sent our economy reeling, plunging the stock market, increasing job insecurity, and deepening financial strain on working families, including veterans.
It is hard to imagine a starker representation of their values. At the very moment veterans are needing stability, the administration chose to take it away. They did it while Republicans in Congress are pushing massive tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires.
The Republicans are pushing for massive tax cuts for billionaires while forcing veterans into foreclosures. Veterans who served this Nation are now calling our offices, panicked and unsure if they will lose their homes. They don't know what is next, and the truth is neither does VA.
Secretary Collins has provided no answers and no alternatives to VASP. Ending this critical support without a clear plan is not just reckless, but it is cruel. That is why I am introducing the Foreclosure Assistance Immediately Reinstated, or FAIR Act, to reinstate the VASP program and make it clear that VA's job is to help veterans stay in their homes, not push them into homelessness.
The VA Home Loan Program has been a pillar of the American middle class since the original GI Bill. It helped returning World War II veterans achieve economic security through homeownership. Yet, today's veterans, facing high costs, low wages, and an unstable economy, need that same promise fulfilled.
Let me be very clear. This is not a handout. These are earned benefits. Veterans stepped up to defend our country, our Nation, and they deserve more than empty slogans and broken promises in return.
VA had the tools, and has the responsibility, to intervene when veterans faced foreclosure. VASP was working. It had already helped over 15,000 veterans keep their homes with tens of thousands more eligible.
Ending it based on the false narrative that veterans would game the system is an insult to their service and sacrifices. This decision abandons our values. It punishes the very people who kept their promise to America.
Mr. Speaker, it is our turn to keep our promise to them. I urge my colleagues to support the FAIR Act and send a clear message: We don't let veterans fall through the cracks. Not on our watch.
Mr. Speaker, in closing, I ask all of my colleagues to join me in passing H.R. 983, the Montgomery GI Bill Selected Reserves Tuition Fairness Act, and I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, once again, we are seeing fear-mongering from the other side of the aisle.
VA's decision to phase out the Veterans Affairs Servicing Purchase program, or VASP program, is an important step by the Trump administration.
Last Congress, the Biden-Harris administration, during an election year, created VASP instead of implementing a partial-claim program. This decision added billions of dollars to the VA budget without any assurance to the taxpayer that this was a good decision.
The average amount that a veteran had to pay back in their mortgage was less than $25,000. Instead of solving the problem, VA chose to purchase the entire loan, which, on average, was about $321,000. In no way does this make sense to solve a $25,000 problem with a $320,000 solution. Therein lies the problem with our colleagues across the aisle.
Rather than being wise and trying to fix it for the veterans and for the veterans in the future, Democrats instead do a political thing during an election year that ends up costing the taxpayers. I will say it again that veterans are taxpayers.
This is why, under my leadership, House Republicans have a solution, the alarm on the Biden administration program and the risk it could bring to VA home loans.
This is also why House Republicans have a solution in this problem, H.R. 1815, introduced by my friend, Representative Van Orden.
Mr. Speaker, if the ranking member is so concerned about the veterans, I ask him and his side of the aisle why my Democratic colleagues haven't introduced a solution to aid veterans and still make sure that it actually deals with the veterans' problems, not just all of a sudden spends not only more money than they have to fix their problem, but creating a problem for other veterans because Democrats are going to drain this system.
Now, I welcome the ranking member and other colleagues on the other side of the aisle to cosponsor Mr. Van Orden's legislation and get it out of the House to the Senate. Instead of complaining, the ranking member should join us in this legislation. I, once again, encourage people to get back to the issue at hand and support the bill that we were debating before.
Mr. Speaker, I encourage all of our colleagues to vote for that bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the motion offered by the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Bost) that the House suspend the rules and pass the bill, H.R. 983.
The question was taken; and (two-thirds being in the affirmative) the rules were suspended and the bill was passed.
Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 1228) to amend title 38, United States Code, to clarify the organization of the Office of Survivors Assistance of the Department of Veterans Affairs.
The Clerk read the title of the bill.
The text of the bill is as follows:
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Bost) and the gentleman from California (Mr. Takano) each will control 20 minutes.
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 1228, offered by my friend and colleague Representative Ciscomani of Arizona.
This bill would ensure that VA prioritizes its care, services, and benefits for surviving family members of veterans as much as VA does for veterans.
This bill would do so by requiring that the VA Office of Survivors Assistance conducts its mission within the Office of the VA Secretary.
In 2008, Congress created the Office of Survivors Assistance to serve as the Secretary's principal adviser and resource on all VA benefits and services for veterans' surviving loved ones.
However, the Biden-Harris administration moved this office from the Secretary's office to the Veterans Benefits Administration Pension and Fiduciary Service.
This decision to hide the Office of Survivors Assistance near the bottom of the VA organizational chart reflected the Biden-Harris administration's lack of commitment to the surviving loved ones of our veterans.
During the Biden-Harris administration, the Office of Survivors Assistance did not have a direct line to the Secretary on the care, services, and benefits offered by the VA offices, including those outside the VBA's Pension and Fiduciary Services that they did in the original bill of 2008.
Mr. Ciscomani's bill will correct the Biden-Harris administration's disservice to survivors and would ensure survivors have a seat at the table again.
The current administration supports this bill and is therefore as committed as I am to ensuring that the needs of the veterans' surviving families are prioritized by the VA.
Now, I am proud to co-lead this bill with Representative Ciscomani on behalf of the surviving families of our Nation's heroes, and I urge my colleagues to support H.R. 1228.
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I rise to express my support for H.R. 1228, the Prioritizing Veterans' Survivors Act.
The bill requires the VA to move the Office of Survivors Assistance, or OSA, to a position directly reporting to the Office of the VA Secretary.
The Office of Survivors Assistance was established by statute in 2008 to serve as a resource regarding all benefits and services furnished by the Department to survivors and dependents of deceased veterans and members of the Armed Forces.
OSA also serves as a principal adviser to the Secretary and promotes the use of VA benefits, programs, and services to survivors. VA moved the supervision of OSA from the Office of Outreach, Transition and Economic Development to VBA's Pension and Fiduciary Service.
The VA made this move with the idea that it would increase emphasis on the office and oversight of OSA as VBA has more capacity to properly oversee the function.
However, the survivors' community has been critical of this move, characterizing it as a downgrade of the function and a diminishing of the importance of survivors in the VA's mission. H.R. 1228 is responsive to those concerns.
Now, historically, there has been a lack of resources dedicated to the mission of serving survivors. For example, there are only four employees in the Office of Survivors Assistance to serve over 450,000 potentially eligible beneficiaries. By the way, Secretary Collins actually fired one of those four people.
We also see a lack of awareness of who is part of the survivors' community, where the community is, and a lack of direct and targeted outreach. That is why I am deeply concerned by all of the DOGE cuts to the VA's outreach efforts.
Overall, we have seen an underutilization of survivors' benefits, so we must do whatever we can to remedy that situation. This bill is a small but important step in that process.
I would be remiss, however, if I didn't also point to other legislation that we can and should be taking up to improve benefits for survivors. I have introduced H.R. 2278, the Survivor Benefits Delivery Improvement Act, a bill that puts new tools in the VA's hands to aid in reaching survivors where they are and better inform them of the benefits they have earned.
We have Members, like Representative Julia Brownley, who have introduced legislation to extend CHAMPVA eligibility. Representative Jahana Hayes has introduced legislation to raise the levels of Dependency and Indemnity Compensation benefits to be on par with other Federal survivors' programs.
We have Republican Members like Richard Hudson, who has introduced the Love Lives On Act, with Veterans' Affairs Committee member Representative Kelly Morrison, that would repeal the ridiculous penalties survivors face when they choose to remarry.
My hope is that we can consider those bills soon.
In the meantime, however, I do support this bill, and I encourage my colleagues to support it, as well.
I extend a special thanks to the survivors who may be listening today and those who are with us only in spirit. Your stories demonstrate bravery and courage, and you deserve every ounce of our effort in creating a VA that is welcoming and accessible, and every dollar of benefits we can muster on your behalf.
Mr. Speaker, I support this legislation, and I ask my colleagues to do the same.
Mr. Speaker, I thank Chairman Bost for yielding me time today to speak in support of my bill, H.R. 1228, the Prioritizing Veterans' Survivors Act.
Since being elected, I have heard from military servicemembers and surviving family members about their struggles accessing VA benefits.
In my district, I started a Veterans Advisory Council, and we often discuss this very topic to find ways to better this situation. I am always looking to ensure that Department of Veterans Affairs leaders hear the concerns of veterans' loved ones.
From its creation, the Office of Survivors Assistance, OSA, was meant to serve as the principal adviser to the VA Secretary on all survivors' benefits and services, as well, including medical care and burial benefits.
When the VA placed OSA within the Veterans Benefits Administration, they deprioritized survivors' policies and skirted Congress' intent when it created this office.
My bill would fix this by requiring OSA to operate within the Secretary's office, thereby prioritizing advocacy and services for servicemembers' and veterans' surviving spouses and families, as well.
I will highlight the comment of a member of my Veterans Advisory Council, Ms. Jane Strain, a surviving spouse and an Army veteran herself. She said: Surviving spouses and families who cared for children, moved many times during a military career, compromised their own careers, and maintained their homelife while the servicemember was deployed have earned and deserve attention when the spouse has passed. Placing the OSA directly under the Secretary will help to recognize the importance of this population.
Mr. Speaker, I was proud to work alongside Chairman Bost on this to ensure survivors have a seat at the table.
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I will return back to the issue of VASP and read aloud a letter that I am circulating to my colleagues for a signature to the Secretary, and it begins with:
``Dear Secretary Collins: On April 3, 2025, you abruptly announced the closure of the Veterans Affairs Servicing Purchase program (VASP), leaving tens of thousands of veterans at risk of foreclosure. These actions were taken unilaterally, leaving veterans, veterans service organizations, and mortgage services unsure how the closure would be administered, and what would happen to veterans that are already reeling from this administration's assault on veterans and our economy. We write today to urge you to immediately reverse this decision, and avoid foreclosing on veterans who simply wish to keep paying their mortgage and keep their home.
``Since the inception of the Veterans Affairs Servicing Purchase program (VASP) in May 2024, over 17,000 veterans have been able to avoid foreclosure and remain in their homes.''
This represents 0.46 percent of the 3.7 million total loans under the VA home loan program.
``VASP was established as a last resort option within VA's Home Retention Waterfall to help veterans impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. During this emergency, Congress and the VA rightfully allowed borrowers to request forbearance and allowed missed payments to be added to the end of the loan term.
``Upon expiration of this pandemic program, VA used this authority to end borrowers' ability to push missed payments to the end of the loan term and created VASP to help up to 80,000 veterans at risk of foreclosure. Now VA is taking a misstep that will push thousands of veterans into foreclosure. This is cruel, wrong, and runs counter to the benefits earned by the veterans as led by the VA Loan Guaranty Office, which always seeks to use foreclosures as an absolute last resort.
``Furthermore, with the rising costs of housing and overall inflation, VA must ask itself: Is it more cost effective to allow veterans to lose their homes or help them? VA leaders, veterans service organizations, and housing organizations have all recently shared with Congress their concerns about ending VASP too soon. All have testified that VASP is the only program of its kind that currently exists as the last resort for veterans facing foreclosure.
``Critics of VASP, who believe the program will incentivize veterans to purposely default on their loans to get a lower mortgage rate, grossly misunderstand and mischaracterize the sacrifices veterans and their loved ones have made in service to our Nation. The VA should learn from its past, when in the 1990s, GAO found that VA- insured homes foreclosed upon was the most expensive option, costing VA an average of $25,387, which is the equivalent of $65,038 today. While past policies have assumed that veterans have been financially irresponsible for assuming mortgages they can't afford, today's financial and housing market puts veterans at risk of losing their homes in a much more vulnerable situation.
``Even a straightforward solution, such as forcing veterans to sell their homes to cover their arrears, would not leave the veteran better off precisely because the cost of housing has increased dramatically in the past 5 years. Until better policy solutions are in place that provide for stronger underwriting, ending the VASP program abruptly will only harm veterans and their families.
``Congress, VA, and other stakeholders must work together to offer practical, cost-effective solutions that better serve veterans. Our veterans earned their home loan guarantee benefit, and they deserve a viable option to get back on track with payments and keep their homes.
``Secretary Collins, you have repeatedly stated that the mission of VA is to serve veterans and that no benefits would be cut. We call on you now to follow your words.''
Mr. Speaker, in closing, I ask all of my colleagues to join me in passing H.R. 1228, the Prioritizing Veterans' Survivors Act, and I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, very clearly, I say to our veterans and the taxpayers that a partial claim bill would cure the problems that veterans are having with their home loans. If the ranking member and the other side of the aisle will work together with us, with the partial claim program, we can actually do that.
By going down the path that he has just said--he says he is for the veterans. Apparently, he is only for the veterans today because the veterans of tomorrow will not have the program because it will break the bank.
This is actually sensible. It is a way that we can do this. We can make sure our veterans are taken care of. We need to pass the bill that we were just discussing, which is H.R. 1228.
Mr. Speaker, I ask all of my colleagues to support this bill. I yield back the balance of my time.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the motion offered by the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Bost) that the House suspend the rules and pass the bill, H.R. 1228.
The question was taken.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. In the opinion of the Chair, two-thirds being in the affirmative, the ayes have it.
Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 586) to direct the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to study and report on the prevalence of cholangiocarcinoma in veterans who served in the Vietnam theater of operations during the Vietnam era, and for other purposes, as amended.
The Clerk read the title of the bill.
The text of the bill is as follows:
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Bost) and the gentleman from California (Mr. Takano) each will control 20 minutes.
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 586, as amended, offered by Representative LaLota from New York, my friend and fellow veteran.
Representative LaLota's bill would require VA to conduct a study and produce a report on the frequency of bile duct cancer for veterans who served in and around the Vietnam war.
Mr. Speaker, it goes without saying that many Vietnam veterans suffered greatly in service to their country. Thousands of Vietnam veterans still live with invisible and visible wounds of war today.
My own uncle is one of them. He served in Vietnam and, like so many others, suffered debilitating injuries from his service. Sadly, many never received the treatment or recognition they deserved when they came home.
Today, we are still learning about the full extent of the health risks these veterans faced, some of which weren't understood at the time.
One risk may have come from something as simple and routine as eating local food during their deployment. Certain uncooked fish consumed in Southeast Asia are known to carry a parasite called a liver fluke. The parasite can cause infection and long-term scarring that may lead to bile duct cancer. This is a rare but serious illness here in the U.S. and one more commonly found in the region where our veterans served.
This bill would require VA to study whether bile duct cancer is linked to service in Vietnam and whether this rare condition should be considered service-connected.
One of VA's most important missions is to care for the injuries veterans sustain while they serve this country. This study would help uphold that sacred obligation.
Mr. Speaker, I thank my fellow veteran, Mr. LaLota, for his leadership on this bill on behalf of our veterans. I urge my colleagues to support H.R. 586, as amended.
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I rise to express my support for H.R. 586, the Vietnam Veterans Liver Fluke Cancer Study Act, as amended.
Liver fluke is a serious parasitic infection that is a well- recognized risk factor for the development of bile duct cancer.
H.R. 586, as amended, would require VA, in consultation with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to commence an epidemiological study on the prevalence of bile duct cancer in veterans who served in the Vietnam war versus their nonveteran U.S. resident counterparts.
This legislation requires VA to submit a report with the results of the study broken out by age, gender, race, ethnicity, and geographic location.
I certainly understand why Vietnam war veterans would be concerned about their exposure to this disease and believe we should do everything possible to ensure veterans have access to care and treatment for diseases they may have been exposed to as a part of their service. However, I must note that the context in which we are considering this legislation is vastly different than the last time the bill was considered by the House just under 7 months ago.
In fact, under Secretary Kennedy's leadership in the past week, the CDC, or Centers for Disease Control, has cut 18 percent of its workforce. Many of these roles have been in global and environmental health roles, which means the individuals in offices best suited to assist with the requirements of this bill may no longer even exist at the CDC.
Vietnam war veterans deserve answers about their health and access to the best treatments. Under this administration's chaotic and damaging workforce cuts across all sectors of government, it will be harder than ever to get these answers.
I will support this bill today, but I urge my colleagues to consider that implementation of this bill will be harder than it needs to be in the new CDC workforce realities that we are now in. These workforce cuts have real and lasting consequences, including for our veterans.
In addition, while I support the underlying goals of this measure, I must express concern over the majority's decision to offset its cost by diverting pension payments from some of the VA's oldest and sickest veterans.
The VA pension programs exist specifically to assist our most vulnerable veterans and their survivors. Slashing these benefits, particularly when other support systems are also under threat, poses a significant risk for those who rely on them most.
I recognize that this offset has been employed historically and in some form since the 1960s. However, in light of this administration's ongoing efforts, enabled by a complacent Republican-led Congress, to systematically weaken VA, we must reevaluate whether it remains appropriate to rely on this offset. I believe it would be prudent to discuss with the Senate whether a more appropriate offset can be identified before this bill becomes law.
Mr. Speaker, with those caveats I have identified, I support this legislation, and I ask my colleagues to do the same.
Mr. Speaker, a weekend or two ago in Suffolk County, I stood with nearly 1,000 Long Islanders at a Vietnam war Veterans Day ceremony. The theme of the day was simple but powerful: Welcome home.
Welcome home after serving in a war that was unpopular at home.
Welcome home after surviving brutal jungle and guerrilla warfare.
Welcome home after losing more than 58,000 brothers and sisters in arms.
Welcome home to a nation and a healthcare system that wasn't ready to care for your wounds, seen and unseen.
Today, Vietnam veterans across my district and across the country are still fighting. This time, the enemy isn't on a battlefield overseas. It is a silent killer, bile duct cancer, caused by a parasite known as the liver fluke.
Multiple studies have confirmed what these veterans have suspected for decades. Those who served in Vietnam face a much higher risk of contracting, suffering from, and dying from this disease.
Here is the most disappointing part, Mr. Speaker. The Department of Veterans Affairs continues to hide behind a familiar excuse: We don't have enough data.
Let me tell you what we do have. In 2018, the Northport VA Medical Center on Long Island, right in the heart of my district, conducted the first of its kind study on this issue. From a small sample of 50 Vietnam veterans, 24 percent tested positive for exposure to the liver fluke parasite.
That study raised the alarm and called for further research, standardized treatment, and expanded access to care for affected veterans at VA facilities across the country.
Instead of urgent action, we got bureaucratic delay. It wasn't until 2024, 6 years later, that a second followup study was finally completed. What did
Still, the VA refuses to acknowledge this as a service-connected condition. Mr. Speaker, that is unacceptable.
We have seen this pattern before with Agent Orange, the blue water Navy, and now, again, with liver fluke: Delay, denial, deflection.
In response, I introduced H.R. 4424, the Vietnam Veterans Liver Fluke Cancer Study Act, a bipartisan bill requiring the VA, in partnership with the CDC, to conduct a nationwide study and finally confront the truth: Bile duct cancer caused by the liver fluke parasite is a service-related illness.
Since the VA won't act, Congress must because our Vietnam veterans deserve more than parades and speeches. They deserve answers, care, and our action.
Mr. Speaker, every day we wait, more veterans die without the care they deserve. Let's not repeat the failures of the past.
Mr. Chairman, I thank Chairman Bost for his support of this legislation. I urge all of my colleagues to join me in standing with those who once stood for us. They answered the call. Now, it is our turn.
Mr. Speaker, I have no additional speakers, and I yield myself the balance of my time to close.
Mr. Speaker, I ask all of my colleagues to join me in supporting H.R. 586, the Vietnam Veterans Liver Fluke Cancer Study Act, as amended, and I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, I encourage all Members to support this bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the motion offered by the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Bost) that the House suspend the rules and pass the bill, H.R. 586, as amended.
The question was taken.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. In the opinion of the Chair, two-thirds being in the affirmative, the ayes have it.
Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 1039) to direct the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to seek to enter into an agreement with a federally funded research and development center for an assessment of notice letters that the Secretary sends to claimants for benefits under laws administered by the Secretary, and for other purposes, as amended.
The Clerk read the title of the bill.
The text of the bill is as follows:
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Bost) and the gentleman from California (Mr. Takano) each will control 20 minutes.
Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks on H.R. 1039, as amended.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Illinois?
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 1039, as amended.
This bill was introduced by the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Barrett), my friend and fellow veteran, and I am proud to be a cosponsor.
H.R. 1039, as amended, would require VA to contract with a research entity to improve the notice letters VA sends to veterans and survivors who file claims for VA benefits. The VA provides veterans and their survivors information throughout the VA claims process. It is important for these notice letters to be understandable so that the veterans and survivors know their rights and how to navigate the claims process.
I am pleased to see that the VA has recently improved some of their notice letters. However, hundreds of other VA letters are still difficult to understand.
At a recent hearing, we heard from veterans' advocates that the VA needs help from outside experts, given the huge number of letters that VA must draft. We still hear from veterans that many of VA's letters are too long, filled with legal jargon, and contain information that is not relevant to their claims.
These complex letters sometimes cause veterans and survivors so much confusion and stress that they just abandon their claims.
As a veteran myself, I continue to receive long and complex letters. You shouldn't have to be a Member of Congress or an attorney to understand how the VA claims process works.
H.R. 1039, as amended, would ensure that none of VA's notice letters discourage veterans from accessing the benefits they have earned. Representative Barrett's bill would ensure that VA sends veterans and survivors understandable notice letters so they can make informed decisions about their claims. Further, this modernization bill is supported by the administration.
Mr. Speaker, I thank our veterans service organizations for their support of this commonsense bill. I urge all of my colleagues to support H.R. 1039, as amended, and I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I rise to express my support for H.R. 1039, the Clear Communication for Veterans Claims Act.
When a veteran applies for benefits at VA, the agency corresponds with that veteran at multiple points in the process regarding their claim. This communication is often through letters that can be densely laden with legal jargon and confusing information, which makes it hard for the veteran to understand what is required of them or the benefits decision VA has arrived at. This can lead the veteran to miss important deadlines or fail to submit
Under the Biden administration, VA already launched an internal review of these notice letters and had already redrafted many of them to be more direct and easier to understand, but VA could also use some outside help in reviewing the literally thousands of different possible letters they might send to a veteran.
H.R. 1039 seeks to provide that assistance. Specifically, it mandates that VA make its notice letters--documents that explain decisions on benefits--shorter, clearer, and easier for veterans and their families to understand. This bill requires the VA to contract with a third party to assess and recommend improvements to these letters, which often contain complex legal language that confuses veterans.
The bill also sets deadlines for action: The VA must contract with a Federally Funded Research and Development Center, or FFRDC, to evaluate these communications within 30 days of the bill's enactment and submit its recommendations within 90 days. This effort aims to streamline the claims process and reduce the stress and confusion many veterans face when dealing with their benefits.
Mr. Speaker, in spite of my support for the substance of this measure, I want to raise concern with the majority's choice to offset the cost of this bill by continuing to divert pension payments from the oldest and most sick veterans in VA's system. I understand that this offset has been used in the past and has existed in some form since the 1960s. However, given that this administration, with the enabling of a feckless Republican-led Congress, has been working overtime to hollow out VA, we must rethink whether or not it is appropriate to continue its use.
Aside from the moral failing of cutting one veterans' benefit to pay for another, VA's pension programs are designed specifically to support the poorest and sickest veterans and their survivors. Therefore, this continued reduction in pension payments poses real risks when the other services these veterans might need to fall back on are also being cut.
Mr. Speaker, again, I support the substance of this bill, but I think we should have a very serious conversation about the majority's choice to perpetuate cutting veterans' pensions, and I believe that we should include this item in any negotiations with the Senate before this bill becomes law.
Mr. Speaker, with those concerns in mind, I support this legislation and ask my colleagues to do the same. I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of my very first piece of legislation that I introduced as a Member of Congress, H.R. 1039, the Clear Communication for Veterans Claims Act.
This bipartisan bill, which I am proud to lead with Chairman Bost and Representative Budzinski, the ranking member of the subcommittee that I lead on Chairman Bost's committee, will make it easier for veterans to access the care and benefits they have earned by making significant improvements to our overly complicated claims process.
Mr. Speaker, you have already heard from other Members today about issues with veterans filing claims and running into problems with forms, legalese, bureaucratic speak, and things that are not easily understood. I can tell you, I personally have seen this myself in applications and interfacing I have had with the VA and challenges you get when you receive things in the mail. It is hard to determine whether this is an update on the claim that I have filed, a resolution to that claim, or seeking more information, or is it simply a delay saying that they don't have a resolution to the claim yet? It can be very difficult to figure that out, especially if you have multiple claims within the same packet.
When a veteran files a claim, it means they need help, yet too often they receive long, confusing letters full of legal jargon that leaves them with more questions than answers, ultimately leading them to call into a claims center or a helpline, which overburdens that and slows down the overall claims process.
This is unacceptable. Claims letters should be the catalyst to care and benefits and not the obstacle.
That is where my bill comes in. H.R. 1039 requires the VA to make these notices clear, concise, and easy to understand while also streamlining the Department's overall communication with our veterans.
As you heard already, it requires the VA to partner with an outside agency, not the bureaucrats within the VA, to make these communications easier and more streamlined for veterans to understand. Often, when you are working within the industry, it can be very difficult to put yourself in the position of those receiving these letters to understand what would be best absorbed by them.
Our veterans serve the United States military with honor. They shouldn't need a lawyer or specially trained advocate to explain a claims letter to them.
When I was elected to the State legislature in Michigan 10 years ago, I became the only Iraq war veteran in the entire Michigan House of Representatives. I worked closely with my Federal Members of Congress to help veterans obtain their benefits.
I maintained then that if I were ever in a position to make the process more streamlined and easier to understand, I would commit to doing that. This very first bill in Congress makes good on that commitment. I am proud to offer that today.
Mr. Speaker, I thank you and the rest of the Chamber for taking up this bill for consideration. It is time to give America's heroes and their families a clear and efficient claims process that actually works for them. I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on this bill that would do just that.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of the Clear Communication for Veterans Claims Act, bipartisan legislation that would simplify the Department of Veterans Affairs' correspondence for our Nation's heroes. I am proud to lead this bill with Chairman Tom Barrett, who I serve with on the House Veterans' Affairs Technology Modernization Subcommittee.
Every day, my office hears from veterans who are struggling to get the benefits that they earned because of overcomplicated documents and bureaucratic red tape. Correspondence from the VA regarding benefits decisions, often called notice letters, usually contain complex legal jargon, which can be confusing, frustrating, and stressful for veterans and their families.
The Clear Communication for Veterans Claims Act is a commonsense solution to this problem. This legislation would require the VA to study and provide recommendations for simplifying VA notice letters. The goal is to make these letters shorter, easier to understand, and more comprehensive so veterans have the information they need for the next step in their claims process.
Our veterans have sacrificed so much in service to our Nation, and we must do more to improve access to the critical services they need and deserve. Right now, our veterans are facing great uncertainty and anxiety. This bill would make a real change in their lives. We owe it to them now more than ever before.
Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on this important bill.
Mr. Speaker, I join with the ranking member and ask all of my colleagues to support this bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the motion offered by the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Bost) that the House suspend the rules and pass the bill, H.R. 1039, as amended.
The question was taken.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. In the opinion of the Chair, two-thirds being in the affirmative, the ayes have it.
Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 877) to amend title 38, United States Code, to expand the authority of the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to provide or assist in providing a vehicle adapted for operation by a disabled individual to certain eligible persons, by paying expenses associated with the delivery of such vehicle, and for other purposes, as amended.
The Clerk read the title of the bill.
The text of the bill is as follows:
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Bost) and the gentleman from California (Mr. Takano) each will control 20 minutes.
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 877, as amended, offered by my friend and colleague, the delegate from Guam (Mr. Moylan).
H.R. 877, as amended, would allow the VA to pay for the shipping price of specially adapted vehicles for disabled veterans. Currently, service-connected disabled veterans who are unable to drive due to their disability can work with the VA to get a vehicle that is adapted for their use.
This is an important program and helps disabled veterans in their daily lives by allowing them to drive to medical appointments, to the grocery store, and to work. Unfortunately, shipping costs are not currently covered, creating a financial burden on veterans who want to make their lives better.
While this might not be an issue for some veterans, other veterans are unable to get a vehicle adapted for them because there are no resources capable of making the vital modifications nearby.
Delegate Moylan's bill would correct this issue by including shipping costs in the $24,000 the VA provides to support veterans who are having trouble accessing the resources they need for any adapted vehicle.
In a time when bureaucracy is getting in the way of doing what is best for our veterans, Congress must intervene to eliminate the red tape and provide the necessary assistance our veterans deserve.
This bill would do just that and would save hundreds of dollars for disabled veterans across the country. It would also ensure that the disabled veterans have the ability to get to a job and earn money to support themselves and their families.
I thank the DAV and the VFW for supporting this bill last Congress and for their tireless work on the Hill advocating for this legislation.
Mr. Speaker, I urge all my colleagues to support H.R. 877, as amended, and I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I rise to express my support for H.R. 877, the Deliver for Veterans Act. This bill would make it easier for disabled veterans to obtain the adaptive automobiles they are entitled to through their service-connected disability. If signed into law, this bill could save veterans tens of thousands of dollars on shipping costs of vehicles.
Two Congresses ago, we passed the Veterans Auto and Education Improvement Act, a bill authored by Ranking Member Mike Levin and Representative Lizzie Fletcher, which expanded the adaptive auto benefit for veterans, allowing them to get a new vehicle if 10 years have passed since last using the benefit.
This bill from Representative Moylan builds upon that work by simplifying the process for veterans who require their adaptive vehicle to be shipped. This includes veterans who live in areas such as Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Northern Mariana Islands.
Again, I support the substance of this bill, but I think we should have a very serious conversation about the majority's choice to perpetuate cutting veterans' pensions. I believe that we should include this item in any negotiations with the Senate before this bill becomes law.
Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues in the House and Senate to support this bill, and I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for yielding time.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of my bill, H.R. 877, the Deliver for Veterans Act, a critical piece of legislation addressing challenges faced by veterans in remote areas, including Guam.
As the Representative of a region where the unavailability of adaptive vehicles poses a significant barrier to our veterans, I urge my colleagues to support this essential measure.
Veterans in remote districts across our Nation face immense challenges because of the lack of access to adaptive vehicles. These vehicles are essential for veterans with disabilities to lead independent and fulfilling lives.
Unfortunately, the high cost of shipping to remote areas has created an insurmountable obstacle for many of our veterans. They are forced to cover the expensive shipping fee, a cost that should not be borne by those who have already sacrificed so much for our country.
Whether it is for medical appointments, running errands, or simply visiting family and friends, adaptive vehicles are a lifeline for veterans in Guam. H.R. 877 will provide much-needed relief to our veterans, ensuring that they can access the support and services they rightfully deserve without facing financial hardships.
Let us stand together in solidarity with our veterans in Guam and all areas around the world and ensure that they receive the support they need and deserve.
Mr. Speaker, I implore each and every one of my esteemed colleagues to join me in supporting H.R. 877, the Deliver for Veterans Act.
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, I ask all of my colleagues to join me in supporting this bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the motion offered by the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Bost) that the House suspend the rules and pass the bill, H.R. 877, as amended.
The question was taken; and (two-thirds being in the affirmative) the rules were suspended and the bill, as amended, was passed.
Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill
The Clerk read the title of the bill.
The text of the bill is as follows:
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Bost) and the gentleman from California (Mr. Takano) each will control 20 minutes.
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 970 offered by my colleague from Washington (Ms. Strickland).
H.R. 970 would require the VA to regularly review and compare the maximum coverage for VA life insurance programs to keep them in line with the average cost-of-living changes.
The maximum coverage of these programs is provided by law and under current law does not automatically adjust for changes in cost of living. Any increases in the maximum coverage for these programs require congressional action.
We must ensure that we have all the data we need to make an informed decision on whether the maximum coverage has kept pace with the cost of living. The bill would help us do that by ensuring that the VA sends Congress the results of the VA review so that we can decide whether to adjust the maximum coverage for VA life insurance programs.
We are duty bound to ensure that the families of our veterans are taken care of after their loved one passes away. This commonsense bill would provide us with the data to help Congress do just that.
Mr. Speaker, I urge all my colleagues to support H.R. 970, and I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I rise to express my support for H.R. 970, the Fairness for Servicemembers and their Families Act of 2025.
Mr. Speaker, just a few short years ago we increased the maximum coverage amount under the Servicemembers' Group Life Insurance (SGLI) program and the Veterans' Group Life Insurance (VGLI) program from $400,000 to $500,000. Prior to that, however, those maximum coverage amounts had not been increased since 2005, clearly failing to keep pace with inflation.
To ensure that we are not waiting another decade or more to improve this benefit for our servicemembers and veterans, my good friend Representative Marilyn Strickland has introduced this bill which requires the VA to periodically review coverage amounts every 5 years and report to Congress what the level of benefits would be if adjusted for inflation over that period. This will allow Congress to regularly make a more informed decision about whether or not these maximum coverage amounts should be increased.
Mr. Speaker, this is commonsense legislation that allows Congress to better do our job to support servicemembers, veterans, and their families. This legislation passed the House last Congress, and I encourage my colleagues to support it once again.
Mr. Speaker, I now yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from the State of Washington (Ms. Strickland), my good friend and author of this bill. She currently serves on the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure and the House Committee on Armed Services.
Mr. Speaker, I thank Representative Takano for yielding time.
Mr. Speaker, I rise to express my support for my bill, H.R. 970, the Fairness for Servicemembers and their Families Act of 2025.
I first thank Chairmen Bost and Luttrell and Ranking Members Takano and McGarvey for working with me to get this bill to the floor. I also thank my partners in this effort, Congressman Keith Self and Senator John Cornyn.
The Fairness for Servicemembers and their Families Act will help ensure that life insurance benefits for servicemembers and veterans account for changes in the economy.
This bill will require the Department of Veterans Affairs to periodically review and report on the maximum coverage available under the Servicemembers' Group Life Insurance and Veterans' Group Life Insurance. Accurate and reliable data will allow the VA to make necessary policy adjustments to ensure accurate payments.
I have the honor of representing Joint Base Lewis-McChord, home to tens of thousands of servicemembers and their families. Our servicemembers courageously put their lives on the line for our country, and we must secure the well-being of their families and loved ones in the event of a tragedy.
Servicemembers' life insurance plans must keep pace with economic demands. A robust life insurance policy can provide a grieving family with the financial security they need to navigate the loss of their loved ones and do so with dignity.
The brave men and women who sacrifice their lives deserve peace of mind, knowing their families will be taken care of. For nearly two decades, the maximum coverage of the Servicemembers' Group Life Insurance and Veterans' Group Life Insurance programs has been stagnant, even as the costs of housing, goods, and services have risen over the past 20 years.
This bill ensures that these programs are reviewed periodically to verify their value sufficiently and to make sure they are updated to the current CPI or Consumer Price Index.
Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this bill. I thank my colleagues for their unwavering commitment to supporting veterans. I look forward to it being passed and signed into law.
Mr. Speaker, I have no further speakers. I yield myself the balance of my time for the purpose of closing.
Mr. Speaker, I ask all my colleagues to join me in passing H.R. 970, the Fairness for Servicemembers and Their Families Act, and I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, I urge all my colleagues to support H.R. 970, and I yield back the balance of my time.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the motion offered by the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Bost) that the House suspend the rules and pass the bill, H.R. 970.
The question was taken; and (two-thirds being in the affirmative) the rules were suspended and the bill was passed.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX, the unfinished business is the vote on the motion to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 586) to direct the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to study and report on the prevalence of cholangiocarcinoma in veterans who served in the Vietnam theater of operations during the Vietnam era, and for other purposes, as amended, on which the yeas and nays were ordered.
The Clerk read the title of the bill.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the motion offered by the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Bost) that the House suspend the rules and pass the bill, as amended.
The vote was taken by electronic device, and there were--yeas 411, nays 0, not voting 22, as follows:
Mr. JEFFRIES changed his vote from ``nay'' to ``yea.''
So (two-thirds being in the affirmative) the rules were suspended and the bill, as amended, was passed.
The result of the vote was announced as above recorded.
Moment of Silence in Remembrance of United States Capitol Police Officer William F. Evans
The SPEAKER. The Chair asks that all those present in the Chamber, as well as Members and staff throughout the Capitol, to please rise for a moment of silence in remembrance of Officer William F. Evans, United States Capitol Police Officer, who was killed in the line of duty defending our Capitol on April 2, 2021.
The SPEAKER. Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX, the unfinished business is the vote on the motion to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 1039) to direct the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to seek to enter into an agreement with a federally funded research and development center for an assessment of notice letters that the Secretary sends to claimants for benefits under laws administered by the Secretary, and for other purposes, as amended, on which the yeas and nays were ordered.
The Clerk read the title of the bill.
The SPEAKER. The question is on the motion offered by the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Bost) that the House suspend the rules and pass the bill, as amended.
This is a 5-minute vote.
The vote was taken by electronic device, and there were--yeas 412, nays 0, not voting 21, as follows:
So (two-thirds being in the affirmative) the rules were suspended and the bill, as amended, was passed.
The result of the vote was announced as above recorded.
Authorizing the Use of Emancipation Hall in the Capitol Visitor Center for a Ceremony to Present the Congressional Gold Medals Awarded Under the `six Triple Eight' Congressional Gold Medal Act of 2021
Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on House Administration be discharged from further consideration of H. Con. Res. 22, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.
The Clerk read the title of the concurrent resolution.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Wisconsin?
There was no objection.
The text of the concurrent resolution is as follows:
Moment of Silence in Remembrance of Staff Sergeants Jose Duenez, Jr., Edvin F. Franco, Troy S. Knutson-Collins, and Private First Class Dante D. Taitano
Mr. Speaker, we are gathered here today to honor the lives of Staff Sergeants Jose Duenez, Jr., Edvin F. Franco, Troy S. Knutson-Collins, and Private First Class Dante D. Taitano.
These men, these heroes, were part of the 3rd Infantry Division out of Fort Stewart, Georgia, and members of the 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team. Tragically, they were found deceased last week after a training accident in Lithuania. Our hearts break for their families and all who were lucky enough to know these brave men.
While none of these men were native to Georgia, they are forever part of our States' and our Nation's story, thanks to their selfless and courageous service. Their loved ones, the Fort Stewart community, and all those impacted by this tragic loss of life have been in our prayers, and we humbly request that they be in yours, as well.
Mr. Speaker, at this time I ask that the House join us in observing a moment of silence.
Mr. Speaker, the Houthi rebels are still a murderous puppet of Iran, the foremost state sponsor of terrorism in the world.
After the December collapse of the murderous Assad regime in Syria, when he fled to Moscow, the Tehran regime retains two conspirators, Yemen and Iraq, both supported by terrorist militias armed by war criminal Putin.
Sadly, Houthi terrorists have been gaining ground in Yemen and are possibly taking over oilfields which would provide them resources to support terrorism. The Houthi rebels are armed by war criminal Putin and will be stopped.
Mr. Speaker, I am grateful that just days after President Donald Trump took office, he designated the Houthis as a foreign terrorist organization, as Houthis have attacked American ships. I am encouraged that the Trump administration is working with our regional partners, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman, to stop Houthi aggression.
In conclusion, God bless our troops as the global war on terrorism continues. Open borders for dictators put all Americans at risk of more 9/11 attacks imminent as warned by the FBI. Trump is reinstituting existing laws to protect American families with peace through strength.
Mr. Speaker, this administration is taking money out of people's pockets and robbing the middle class of their earnings, and I am fighting back.
I am fighting for the food bank in Redmond that can't offer meat in its meals because of funding cuts. I am fighting for the seniors across my district that are watching their life savings evaporate in the stock market. I am fighting for retirees taking required distributions from the their IRAs at a loss because Trump's tariff policies that are tanking the market.
I am fighting for the parents who can't afford clothes for their kids, for the families who can't afford groceries, and for the young people who can't afford to buy a car or a home.
This foolishness can't continue, Mr. Speaker. Costs are skyrocketing. The stock market is in free fall. We are headed toward a recession.
I call on Congress to pass my Protecting Families From Inflation Act and to vote to put an end to this ill-advised trade war. The American people can't wait.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the remarkable achievement of professional golfer Russell Henley.
Russell, a University of Georgia alum--go Dawgs--recently secured his fifth PGA Tour victory at the 2025 Arnold Palmer Invitational.
Russell delivered a pivotal chip-in eagle on the par 5 hole during his final round at Bay Hill, taking lead over his playing partner, Collin Morikawa. Ultimately, he maintained his score of 11 under par to win by one stroke.
Russell was finally back in the winner's circle for the first time in over 850 days, having been one of the most consistent players on the PGA Tour since 2024. With this win, he has solidified his position as one of the top ten players in the world. He outplayed some of the world's best golfers, showing his determination under pressure and setting an example for athletes worldwide.
Mr. Speaker, I applaud Russell Henley for his outstanding performance.
Mr. Speaker, needless chaos on U.S. financial markets must be quelled. Today's continuing historic losses on top of last week's are unprecedented, totalling over $6 trillion. That is trillion. This has never happened before. America's enemies are applauding.
Congress needs to act to rein in this chaos. Trump tariffs of this magnitude equate to new taxes on everything the American people buy or own. Today, the Dow Jones and Standard & Poor's continued their nosedive with the worst 3-day performance in nearly a half a century.
These are not just numbers. They represent people losing wealth they worked for. It is evaporating retirement savings, businesses losing capital, cars not being sold, and rising unemployment that has started in industrial and agricultural America.
Our people produce real products for market, and we know what pink slips are. Too many families are fearing for their financial futures, with senior citizens unable to meet the rising cost of living, including for food and medicine.
Mr. Speaker, Congress must pass legislation to support sustained growth, not destroy wealth. The Trump extreme taxes must be stopped.
Mr. Speaker, this week the House will take up the Senate's amendments to the budget resolution, an essential step in moving forward with the reconciliation process.
This vote paves the way for meaningful action on securing the border, strengthening the tax code to support our families and economic growth, and investing in reliable domestic energy, which ensures a strong national defense and setting the country on a healthier financial path. Passing this amendment allows the House to begin drafting instructions for committees to take up these critical priorities in their subgroups.
The challenges facing the country require decisive action, and this process is key to delivering real solutions Americans have voted for and have been waiting for. With this step, the groundwork is in place to advance policies that strengthen the economy, protect American interests here and abroad, and create a more stable future.
Let's quit hemming and hawing and get this thing done. Then we will see the positive, productive results the American people have been begging for for several years.
Mr. Speaker, this week we learned that 75 percent of the men on that plane to El Salvador, the men who President Trump claimed were the worst of the worst, were, in fact, not hardened criminals.
Are we surprised that it was another example of optics over evidence?
Mr. Speaker, 75 percent of these men had no criminal charges in the United States. One of these men is 31-year-old Andry Hernandez Romero who was snatched off the streets and put on a plane to El Salvador to rot in a prison there.
Andry is not a gang member. He is not a terrorist. He is a threat to no one. He is a son, a brother, a makeup artist, and a hairdresser. He is a man who fled his home country to come to the United States because he feared for his life because he is gay.
We are being lied to. These kinds of cruel tactics are not necessary to keep us safe. This is about taking away due process and intimidating us into silence and submission. If this administration will do this to Andry, then they will do it to anyone. We are all at risk.
Mr. Speaker, tonight is the NCAA championship, but the magic of March Madness is gone. Every number one seed has made the Final Four. There are no upsets, no Cinderellas, just bigger brands with bigger budgets. Why? It is because college sports is on a downward trajectory, and the magic of what used to make it special is gone.
Now the House v. NCAA settlement will unleash even more chaos with no plan to protect small schools, Olympic sports, or competitive balance. That is why tonight I am introducing the Restore College Sports Act. It replaces the NCAA with a new entity under Presidential authority to regulate public college sports as a public good. It fixes the NIL transfer process to eliminate chaos, and it equally shares revenue across all sports and all schools to increase opportunities in Olympic sports and create competitive balance.
Mr. Speaker, indeed, tonight is a big moment with the Restore College Sports Act.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the trailblazing accomplishments of Amy Cooper, this year's recipient of the Minnesota History Center National Girls and Women in Sports Day Wilma Rudolph Courage Award.
Amy's athletic career started at Washburn High School in Minneapolis where she was a standout athlete in swimming, track, basketball, and soccer.
Then, playing for Howard University, she went on to become the first soccer player from a historically Black college and university to earn all-conference honors.
Not long after, Amy was diagnosed with health conditions that prevented her from continuing to play soccer competitively so she turned to coaching. Yet, her commitment to expanding athletic opportunities for women of color never wavered.
Her perseverance and commitment to expanding opportunities for girls and women in sports makes her the perfect candidate for the Wilma Rudolph Courage Award, and we could not be more proud of her for this accomplishment.
Mr. Speaker, today I rise to recognize the incredible work of the Madison House Autism Foundation, particularly through their Madison Fields program in my district in Montgomery County, Maryland.
As we observe Autism Awareness Month, we celebrate the progress that we have all made with individuals on the autism spectrum. However, we have to acknowledge the work still to be done.
Madison Fields provides a vital space where adults with autism gain job skills, build independence, and experience a sense of community.
Located in the heart of the agricultural reserve, Madison Fields offers hands-on experiences, whether it is caring for animals or working in the soapery, that foster independence, relationships, and personal growth.
The success of Madison House relies heavily on the support of critical agencies like NIH and the CDC, whose research on autism is essential for informing the data-backed best practices.
Moreover, we must support the Department of Education to ensure that students with autism continue to have educational opportunities.
As a Member of Congress, I am committed to supporting organizations like Madison House and ensuring continuing funding for proven research.
Mr. Speaker, there is an exceptional farm family in Deep Run, North Carolina. Tyndall Farms is a true reflection of the spirit of eastern North Carolina.
During a visit, the Tyndall family welcomed me with open arms, sharing their humble beginnings. They talked about how their parents started the farm with little and what life was like growing up in the Tyndall household.
We spoke about their rich heritage, biscuits cooked from scratch, and the meaning of agriculture across our region.
Jerry Tyndall, the new North Carolina Tobacco Farmer of the Year, shared his acceptance speech. He led a group prayer before leaving. Jerry's grandma is so proud.
Mr. Speaker, many families like the Tyndalls are counting on Congress. We must make good decisions so that they can continue to operate and so that they can pass on the farm one day to their sons, daughters, and grandchildren.
Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to say to our President and to his administration: Hands off our education, hands off our teachers, hands off our students, and hands off our schools. Last week, the Department of Education sent a letter to thousands of public schools across the country asking them to certify that they would end programs promoting diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility or they would have their Federal funding cut.
Let us be clear. This is a direct attack on our communities on whose histories, whose cultures, whose languages, and whose communities count.
Last week, we met with the Secretary of Education and hand delivered a letter calling on the administration to end these attacks on our schools, on our communities, on Tribal communities, and our education system.
We will continue to fight back because we cannot stand with a country that is attacking our students.
Mr. Speaker, I say to our President: Hands off our schools, hands off our students, and hands off our communities.
Mr. Speaker, yesterday in Mount Vernon, New York, a packed congregation came together to honor the 50th pastoral anniversary for Rev. Dr. W. Franklyn Richardson, the senior pastor of the largest African-American church in my home county, Grace Baptist Church. It is hard to grasp that Dr. Richardson has led Grace from the pulpit for one-half century, leading his flock through both good and difficult times.
His pastoral reach goes beyond the congregation, across the city of Mount Vernon, the county of Westchester, New York State, and, indeed, the Nation. Grace Baptist has sponsored churches in Florida and overseas; his preaching and teaching has reached thousands more through social media. He is a leader, as well, in the National Action Network and the Conference of National Black Churches.
There will be many more celebrations honoring Dr. Richardson throughout this pastoral year. Let me add my voice with so many others to congratulate Dr. Richardson and First Lady Inez Richardson for their lifelong achievements in Westchester, the Bronx, and all across our land.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to express my profound opposition and disappointment in the recent executive order that strips away collective bargaining rights for Federal workers.
The foundation of the economic strength of Indiana's First Congressional District is our labor workforce. It is only because of the ability to collectively bargain and form unions that workers in our Nation were able to make progress and have fair wages, safe working environments, access to affordable healthcare plans, and secure retirements.
I have spent my entire career as an elected official believing that every worker should have the ability to form and join a union.
As a member of the Congressional Labor Caucus, I was proud to join my colleagues in signing a letter to the administration on this matter which states that this is the single most antiworker and anti-union Presidential action since the firing of the striking air traffic controllers in 1981.
I am committed to stand shoulder to shoulder with my colleagues to swiftly reverse this unjust action and defend the fundamental rights of every worker to bargain for an equitable future.
After returning from our districts, Mr. Speaker, it is time to bring to the Chair's attention a variety of issues which we have come across over the weekend and issues that the minority party has brought up.
The first issue I bring up is that regarding DEI. DEI or Affirmative Action has been a big part of America's landscape over the last 60 years, and it is not something that is going to go away overnight.
President Trump can do what he can to wipe out this odious philosophy, but nevertheless it is important for us to educate the young people in this country as to why it is so odious.
It is based on the premise that what you accomplish in this country or what you should be given in this country is based on your ancestry or your gender.
It was based on the idea I think largely thought up by a guy by the name of Herbert Marcuse in the early 1970s that we can destroy America by dividing it by ethnic group or dividing it by gender. He was a genuine Communist sort of person.
Prior to this time, people who wanted to destroy this country thought they could divide it by income, and they thought they could make everybody very mad and jealous of very successful people and tear down America by doing that.
They tried in the 1960s. There were bombings, and there were anti- Vietnam protests, but they failed to bring down America because Americans themselves are hardworking, and they realized the middle- class lifestyle in America would be like a wildly wealthy lifestyle everywhere else in the world.
They failed. They thought: Let's educate our so-called minority people that America is a horrible country and that you are being held down because you are not a White male. President Biden made it clear that he was somewhat hostile to White males.
The first thing we can do to prove that it is not true and every child ought to know it so they aren't corrupted by these DEI professionals that our colleges and universities are spitting out or this horrible ideology our young people are educated into is--as I was reminded again going back to my district, I met with a group of Ahmadiyya Muslims from Pakistan. Here is a group that didn't come from Europe. They aren't Christian, but nevertheless, they have a mosque in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, in my district, and they are obviously succeeding very well. They have strong families. They have a good work ethic. If America were Eurocentric, as they say, they would not be so successful.
I have also seen the same thing with Hmong in my district. I have a substantial Hmong population from Laos. These people came to America and
Indeed, if you look at statistics that are put out there by the Census Bureau, if you look at different ethnic groups from around the globe, you find easily the most successful group is people who came here from India, another group that didn't even necessarily know English when they got here. Indian Americans make far more income than the average American. Indeed, they make almost twice the income as the average European American.
Other groups that do tremendously well are the Taiwanese, the Filipinos, the Cubans, people who come here from the West Indies. They are all doing far better than the native born, despite the fact that they are not of European heritage.
If anybody knows anybody who has been corrupted by this wicked ideology that implies, in America, you can't succeed unless you are a White European, look at the facts. Look how people come here and succeed again and again. I would hope you would realize by looking at these facts that you should throw the DEI ideology being taught to our college kids, and in some cases taught to our high school and middle school kids, in the garbage.
Remember a communist by the name of Herbert Marcuse, who thought up this stuff in the seventies and eighties. Remember, the reason they adopted the DEI ideology is because they wanted to destroy America. They wanted to set people from one continent against another continent.
Remember the statistics of how well people do here and make sure that our next generation is not polluted by this because we have way too many people floating around this country who got a certificate in DEI or a major in DEI, and they are up to no good.
Another thing I want to mention here is with regard to immigration. President Trump is trying to enforce the law. I think one of the difficult problems he has dealt with is we just got done with a President who did all he could to ignore our immigration laws. As a result, we took in about 10 million people here in the last 4 years, and that is not something that we should have done.
What can we tell the people who feel we are being unnecessarily cruel? Every year in this country, about 850,000 people are naturalized. They are sworn in to become American citizens. I like to show up at these ceremonies. They have them in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I try to show up at one or two a year. It is kind of thrilling to watch people from all over the globe--a lot of them have good jobs; a lot of them already have their own businesses--as they are sworn in as American citizens.
When you take it in 3-year increments--there is always one year or other years as an outlier. If you look at it in 3-year increments, that 850,000 over the last 3 years is the most that we have taken in, as far as I can tell, in this country's history.
When I was growing up, the number of naturalized people every year was about 200,000. We are now over four times that amount. Nevertheless, there are people who are going to go out there to try to divide us who say that we are not letting people come here from abroad, that we are being cruel.
Mr. Speaker, 850,000 people. That is something to remember. That is before you get all the people coming here on work visas, all the people coming here on tourist visas, and all the people coming here on student visas.
One just has to look around and realize that the idea that we are being cruel to people who came here across our southern border is ridiculous. Many people are coming here. Obviously, if we are going to enforce the law, we have to remove the people who came here by pretending they needed asylum and didn't. Then, there are going to be millions of people, and the same people who encouraged them to come here, knowing full well they were breaking the law or having to lie about needing asylum to come here, the people who caused the mess are going to say it is horrible to remove these people.
Our President Trump is going to have to step up to the plate and undo the damage done by the last administration, and he is going to remove many, many of these people. One has to remember, the reason he is removing them is because the prior administration, with a lot of encouragement from people on the other side of the aisle, were bringing people here who were coming here on false pretenses.
The next issue we have to look at is one that I do hope is included in Donald Trump's big, beautiful bill. This is, I think, the biggest crisis facing America today. John Adams said our country is built for a moral, God-fearing country. In a free country, families have to be strong and self-reliant.
Beginning in the 1960s, in this country, we had a massive increase in subsidies, which ignored a family with a mother and father at home.
In the 1950s, about 4 percent of the children born in this country were born without a mother and a father at home. Within the next 30 years, after Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society, that 4 percent increased to over 40 percent. Many other problems came with it.
Why did that happen? It happened because, right now, we have approximately 90 programs that you are not eligible for if you are not in poverty. In other words, for a mother or a father at home making $40,000, $50,000 a year, they would not get these programs. These programs are familiar to all of us: earned income tax credit; what I think is the most damaging, the low-income housing programs; the healthcare programs; the food stamp programs; the Pell grants. There is program after program you get, but you would lose these programs if you had both parents in a home.
Nobody takes advantage of all 90 programs, but I think it is probably not unusual to have people take advantage of 6 or 7 programs. Then, it would not be unusual for people who have a mother and father at home to be penalized over $20,000 a year if they get married.
We have to look at these programs, and frequently, these programs materially put a married couple at a disadvantage.
We have all heard stories of Food Share. If you talk to people at the local convenience store, talk to people at the local grocery store, people are taking advantage of these programs. They may be able to buy food items that the person who is working behind the counter can't afford.
We know when it comes to housing that there is section 42 tax credit housing, which is a screwed up program for many reasons. It is aimed at lower income people. The developers are incentivized to make these projects as nice as possible.
I had a staffer who got married in Wisconsin. They said, ``Glenn, my husband and I are looking for a place to live after we get married, and the nicest places are all low-income housing.'' That doesn't seem to make any sense, unless you look at it again as certain people are out there trying to destroy the nuclear family and trying to discourage people from entering into that sort of relationship.
The same thing is true of healthcare. We need healthcare for everyone, but the same thing is true of healthcare. You don't have the big deductibles that you have when people get their healthcare from working in the private sector. You might have a $10,000 or $15,000 deductible. You don't get a deductible like that if you are on the government plan.
The same thing is true with Pell grants. A woman came up to me and said, ``My husband and I got married. We don't have enough money to help our daughter go through college, so she had to take out a lot of student loans. My sibling is not working, and her daughter got free grants from the government, grants she wouldn't have gotten if she was married.'' Again, is that a good thing? I am not sure it is.
Again and again, in program after program, we discourage the nuclear family. That is why we have gone from a 4 percent rate of kids born without a mother and father at home to 40 percent. It was like it was by design, like somebody wanted to destroy the nuclear family.
It is important to remember that we may individually not know these people, but there have always been people who wanted to destroy the nuclear family and feel that is the key to bringing down America. Certainly, the Marxists wanted to destroy the nuclear
These anti-nuclear family people got the upper hand, and that is why we have gone from about 4 percent to over 40 percent.
I hope, as the people in this body put together their great big, beautiful bill, that we remember that a lot of the programs in our current budget are programs designed to destroy the nuclear family.
I have two other quick comments. One is with regard to transgender and local schools. A lot of people have talked about men in women's sports, and I don't even think that is the biggest scandal. I think the biggest scandal is that we are educating our young people to adopt a transgender lifestyle.
In Europe, when they backed off on pushing this lifestyle, the lifestyle not exclusively but largely disappeared. In other words, we have made it cool by what they do in Hollywood promoting this lifestyle. Sadly, the schools are promoting this lifestyle.
I will mention, again, my own anecdotes. When I was campaigning last year, I ran into a couple of grandmothers whose grandchildren were going down this transgender route, and it broke their hearts. They wondered why this had to happen because it wasn't something they saw when they were children. It happened because our education system and our popular culture promote this lifestyle.
It is a good thing if President Trump tries to get this stuff out of our institutes of public instruction.
I think it is really too bad if people feel it is cool to adopt this lifestyle. It is something for us to remember, and hopefully, we will be having hearings on this topic as we delve into whether people would adopt this lifestyle in the first place if there weren't so many powerful special interests that encouraged people to adopt this lifestyle.
Mr. Speaker, my final point, when we come to our big, beautiful bill, a lot of it is going to have to do with taxes. I stand with President Trump on some of his items here that he has brought up in the past and some of them are the reasons why I like him.
President Trump is not afraid to stand up to the special interests that seem to be so persuasive in this Chamber.
First of all, even though a lot of the money is already out the door, President Trump came up against the CHIPS bill. The CHIPS bill was a public-private partnership, I guess we should call it. Whenever you hear about a public-private partnership, I think you have to hold onto your wallet, because that means a private-sector group wants some government money.
The CHIPS bill is to encourage more semiconductor manufacturing in the United States. I think we have to encourage more semiconductor manufacturing, but it costs about $280 billion. That is about $700 for every man, woman, and child in the country.
Does anybody really believe that the Federal Government should be grabbing $700 from everybody just to promote one industry? I think we could promote that industry with a much smaller amount if we deal with some exemptions from manufacturing I am going to talk about in a second. That would be another way to bring more semiconductor manufacturing into this country.
I strongly believe, along with President Trump, that a subsidy of $700 per person in this country for the semiconductor industry is unnecessary.
The next thing I will bring up is the carried interest treatment for hedge fund managers. Under the carried interest loophole, you might call it, people whose primary income is derived from being entitled to some of the money they make for their investors is taxed at capital gains rates rather than regular rates.
In other words, people who are investing other people's money and making, frequently, millions of dollars a year are taxed at a much lower rate than people who are welders, people who are nurses, or people who make their money any other way.
President Trump came out against the carried interest loophole when he ran for President in 2016. He wasn't able to get rid of it at that time. This time, I hope that our Committee on Ways and Means, together with President Trump, stops taxing these wildly wealthy people at a lower tax rate than what the average guy or woman is making in this country. That is another good thing to do.
The final tax provision that I point out is President Trump has floated the idea of having a lower tax rate for manufacturing than other industries. I applaud him for that.
To be a great country, you have to make things. You are not a wealthy country because you have a lot of law firms. You are not a wealthy country because you have a lot of advertising agencies. You are a wealthy country because you make things. Our manufacturers, unlike some of these other industries, have to compete against companies abroad.
Mr. Speaker, when these big multinational corporations have to decide if they are going to set up shop in Germany or Korea or Brazil or India or wherever, we want it to be favorable taxwise to set up shop in the United States. Therefore, I do believe that, when the final tax rates are laid out by the Committee on Ways and Means, I would like to see lower rates for manufacturers who, after all, are responsible for producing the wealth in this country.
It is something I have pursued in my own personal career. We have got a nice low tax rate for Wisconsin manufacturers, but we would like to see a lower rate for manufacturers in the United States than these other countries.
If we are going to be a great country, not only do we need stronger families and to stop penalizing these families, but we have to stop educating our poor, young people that we are a racist country. To be a great country, we need a strong manufacturing base. We want it to be preferable to manufacture stuff in the United States than in Europe or Asia or South America. The way to do that is a lower tax rate for manufactured items.
I thank the chair for paying rapt attention to all the comments I have made here tonight. I hope my colleagues, as they put together the big, beautiful bill, take them to heart, stop penalizing the nuclear family, start treating manufacturing especially the way it should be, and crack down on special tax provisions that benefit the very wealthy.
Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the subject of this Special Order hour.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentlewoman from Virginia?
Mr. Speaker, it is with great honor that I rise today to co-anchor this CBC Special Order hour along with my distinguished colleague, the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Clyburn).
For the next 60 minutes, members of the CBC have an opportunity to speak directly to the American people on education, an issue of great importance to the Congressional Black Caucus, Congress, and the constituents who we represent.
Mr. Speaker, in the 1880s, my great-grandfather founded a school in his rural community because the State of Alabama did not provide a good education to Black children. As explained in his autobiography, he wanted to teach children, whose parents and grandparents had been enslaved on plantations nearby, to be of better service to themselves, their employers, and the community in which they lived.
In the 1930s, my father and his sisters attended that school because the State
In the 1950s, my mother had to move away from her hometown because the State of Mississippi did not provide a good education for Black children. The only school that did was run by the Catholic church, but only up until the eighth grade.
As the third youngest of 14 children, she wanted more than the domestic and laborer jobs that were available to her parents, her grandparents, and her siblings. She had to move to go to high school, becoming an educator herself, eventually running the TRiO Programs at Virginia State University. These are federally funded programs run by the Department of Education to work to ensure that children like her have the support they need to go to and graduate college.
My parents understood how important a good education is not only to individual opportunity, but to a thriving, healthy economy, community, and democracy. Like my grandparents and great-grandparents before them, they dedicated their lives to ensuring not only that their children had a good education but every child did. Not every child is so lucky.
The legacy of 300 years of slavery and Jim Crow, massive resistance, and chronic underfunding have created too many obstacles to the ability of States and local governments to give every child an opportunity for a good education.
For the past 20 years, first as a State legislator and now in Congress, I have worked to ensure that every child in Virginia could have a good education. As the mother of two children in public schools, I know that, even with bipartisan and Herculean efforts, there are still gaps in Virginia and across the country.
The Department of Education was created to fill those gaps. The Department protects students' civil rights, particularly those with disabilities who often need special accommodation to learn. It provides support to attract, train, and retain the best and brightest teachers, school administrators, support personnel such as counselors, nurses, and mental and behavioral health specialists, especially in hard-to- staff rural or urban schools.
It measures and tracks academic progress across the country and helps those school divisions that lag behind address areas of concern. It manages student loan and grant programs that ensure children without financial means can go to and succeed in college without incurring more debt than they could ever pay off.
The Trump administration's illegal actions to dismantle the Department of Education will ensure that these gaps remain. The administration claims that it is just returning control of public education back to States and localities. States and localities have always had that control, but they have not always had the will or the ability to ensure that every child can get a good education.
In my own State of Virginia, State and local officials and educators right now fear that local agencies and the Virginia Department of Education will not have the funding or the staff to handle the workload, especially in areas like special education.
The block grant funding that the Trump administration promises comes with little accountability, making it unclear whether the funds will actually reach the students and schools that need them the most: children with disabilities in rural and low-income communities.
Education lays the foundation for a strong future. Our Founding Fathers understood that. Today's students are the entrepreneurs, civic leaders, teachers, doctors, lawyers, engineers, and Members of Congress of tomorrow. We owe it to our parents, our grandparents, and our great- grandparents to protect and build upon the progress that they have made. We owe it to our children and theirs to fight efforts to roll back that progress now.
Mr. Speaker, it is now my privilege to yield to the gentleman from the great State of South Carolina, the Honorable James Clyburn.
Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding to me.
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to join the gentlewoman from Virginia (Ms. McClellan) tonight in opposition to the Trump administration's attacks on education.
Mr. Speaker, as the gentlewoman just mentioned, our country has a very spotty history when it comes to educating everybody. I know a lot about the history she just mentioned in Alabama and Mississippi and now in Virginia.
Hailing from South Carolina, my own dad was not allowed an education beyond the seventh grade by the State of South Carolina.
Thanks to Black churches. In fact, in my congressional district, there are seven HBCUs. Only two are supported by the State. The other five are church schools: The AME Church at Allen University; the Baptists at Benedict College and Morris College; and Episcopalians at Voorhees. The African Methodist Episcopal Zion, AME Zion, has a school up in Rock Hill outside of my district. I better mention Claflin University in Orangeburg, as well.
Mr. Speaker, as we talk about education and think about the Trump administration's efforts to minimize the importance of focusing on areas that have been left out of the process, I will mention a couple things here tonight that is going to run a little bit contrary to what my staff has researched for me.
The knowledge and skills of our young people and the things that they learn in school should not be limited to people who look like them or only people with similar backgrounds and experiences. We learn from each other when we bring to discussion a plethora of backgrounds and experiences that we can learn from.
I found that out in my own marriage. I was married to the same woman for 58 years. I remember when schools were first integrated and the courts demanded in the case called Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education in Charlotte, North Carolina, that we ought to allow busing to educate children.
Mr. Speaker, I thought there was something wrong with that decision. I didn't like it because I thought it put too much burden on students.
I went out talking about my opposition to that decision.
In fact, I spoke to a TV reporter who held the mike in my face and I waxed what I thought was eloquent until I got home. When I got home, my wife was standing in the middle of the door, tears were streaming down her face. I asked her what was wrong. I thought maybe something had happened to our daughter. We had one child at the time. I rushed toward her, what is wrong? Is something wrong with Mignon? She said no. There is nothing wrong with Mignon. I just saw you on television and there is something wrong with you. Sit down and let me ``splain'' something to you.
Now, it is one thing to get an explanation, but when the Gullah Geechee woman from South Carolina starts ``splaining,'' it is time to sit down, and I did. She told me about her experiences growing up in rural South Carolina when her class, her students did not have schoolbuses. They had to walk 2.5 miles to school every morning and 2.5 miles back home every afternoon. She told me that the White kids had buses. They would ride by them and throw urine-filled balloons as they walked.
She said to me on that day, they were not against busing then and you best not be against busing now.
I learned the difference in our backgrounds. I grew up on a paved street. I walked three blocks to my elementary school, six blocks to my middle school, and I am a graduate of Mather Academy. We called it a boarding school in those days. So I didn't know what it was like to have to walk 2.5 miles to school. Then I reflected on those children in Clarendon County, South Carolina, who walked 9.5 miles to school every day, no bus. The White kids had buses and they had to walk. Why? Because the superintendent of education said that yours don't pay enough taxes for buses. That is what we have been trying to get over in this country. That is why we had Brown v. Board of Education, which started in that little town of Summerton, South Carolina, as Briggs v. Elliott when a Federal
That is what this is all about, bringing people of different backgrounds and experiences together so that we can educate our children properly. When we see young people going to school, becoming educated, and trying to do the things that are necessary to prepare themselves for the future, we would do well as a government, a Federal Government, to reinforce the efforts of our States because when you give total educational responsibility to States, it means that the quality of education will be dependent upon the wealth of the State.
South Carolina is becoming wealthy, but it is not a wealthy State. We have States in our country that will not be able to afford the investment in education that other States can. We should not have an educational system with 50 different kinds of educational levels for our children. We should have a unified process, and that is what we have been trying to do with the Department of Education.
When the President closes the Department of Education and he then sends all of that back to the States, we will have people in one State getting a different quality of education than kids in another State. That is not what building a unified country is all about. E pluribus unum; Out of many, one. We ought to have out of many departments of education one Department of Education that would take on the responsibility of making sure that all of our children get the kind of education they deserve.
I will speak just a little bit to what my colleague just talked about here about DEI. I will say a little bit about DEI here as it relates to education and to the all-important industry that we have in South Carolina.
Now, this picture here is a picture that tells you a little bit about education and DEI. As you can tell, this picture is about the Revolutionary War. Now, a lot of people talk about Massachusetts and Virginia and what they did for the Revolutionary War.
Let me tell you something, if you were really educated properly, you would know that some, if not the most important battles, of the Revolutionary War took place in South Carolina. If you talk to people today about a war in South Carolina, they can only talk about the Civil War.
Yeah, it started there in the Charleston Harbor, but if you go back and look at the Battle of Charleston, that critical battle that we had lost twice, General Gates was not a good general, and then George Washington decided that he would get outside of his comfort zone. George Washington decided that he would not hold Nathanael Greene's background up in Rhode Island against him.
He sent Nathanael Greene down to Charleston and Nathanael Greene took over, won the Battle of Charleston, and changed the direction of the Civil War.
I love this kind of history. That is why way back in 2001, along with Congressman John Spratt, I authored a resolution to do a study of the Revolutionary War sites because I thought it was important for little children in the public schools of South Carolina to know what role our State played in the Revolutionary War. That was important to me because all they could see in their textbooks was what happened in the Civil War and that is all people knew about.
It took me all the way to 2019 to introduce the legislation, and I think it got passed in 2022. Twenty years we worked on this and then we had the big celebration. I am getting to this DEI stuff here.
We had the big celebration there in Camden, South Carolina, where I graduated from high school, this cannon was fired just about six blocks from the school I graduated from. The bill I worked on for 20 years finally became law. We took about 100 pictures that day. Look at this picture. The Congressman from the Fifth District you can see him standing there in the center. The Congressman from the Seventh District standing there in the center. Where is the guy from the Sixth Congressional District whose bill this was? Well, let me show you where he is. If you can see through this guy, you can see me. Why is that? It is called DEI.
They are saying the person who is in charge of taking the picture decided who he wanted to have credit for it. That is what DEI is all about.
I don't know what this gentleman is talking about. We all know what DEI is. We have been having trouble with these lights all day. I hope I am more than a silhouette back to my constituents tonight. We celebrate Thomas Edison as the most prolific inventor of American history. Why? Because we said he invited the lightbulb and that is true. I taught that when I was teaching history that Edison invented the lightbulb. I am proud of that.
However, what was not in those textbooks that I was teaching from, and I had to go to my own book to teach my children properly, because Thomas Edison couldn't get the lightbulb to work properly. It was not until Thomas Edison sat down with Lewis Latimer who had invented a filament.
Lewis Latimer's filament is what made Thomas Edison's lightbulb work. Then I am hearing from this administration that there is something wrong, uncomfortable about children learning about Lewis Latimer. Well, it is not uncomfortable for me to teach about Thomas Edison, why should it be uncomfortable for you to learn about Lewis Latimer because together they made the lightbulb work?
Why should we leave Lewis Latimer out of the textbooks and keep Thomas Edison in? That is what this administration is facilitating. That is why I saw on the front page of The Washington Post--I think it was this morning; it might have been yesterday--it was a big story about Harriet Tubman checking her stuff out of Federal facilities. What is this about? Why is it that it is uncomfortable for people to learn about that?
It is not uncomfortable for me. I was very proud of Albert Sabin. When Albert Sabin finished his professional career at the Medical University of South Carolina because Albert Sabin discovered how that little drop of serum on a lump of sugar would help eradicate polio.
I was proud of that. I know Jonas Salk had one too, but I like Albert Sabin better because Jonas Salk was a shot in the arm. Albert Sabin was a little lump of sugar. Who would rather get a shot in the arm than a lump of sugar?
I was proud of Albert Sabin finishing his career at the Medical University of South Carolina. I don't mind telling people about him. I don't mind teaching about him. What is wrong with teaching about Charles Drew, an African American who discovered the method by which we can refrigerate blood and save it until we would need it. What would we have done without that discovery? That is what the proper education is all about.
I mentioned here last week Charity Adams and Arthur Gregg. Now my colleagues think Arthur Gregg was from Virginia because that is where he retired, but he was from Florence, South Carolina. Charity Adams, Columbia, South Carolina, Fort Gregg-Adams.
Is that DEI because the Army decided that their contributions to the defense of this country were significant enough to name a facility for them? Am I going to see them taking their name off of that fort now?
We have taken Jackie Robinson's picture and resume out of the Department of Defense. I understand they took it back.
Why are you thinking about taking it out in the first place? That is what education is all about. We are in need of bringing our people together.
My number one industry in South Carolina happens to be tourism. When I came to Congress, the two big things in South Carolina were tobacco and textiles. Today, it is transportation and tourism.
Tourism is big for my State. People are going to come to South Carolina because of legislation on that southern campaign of the American Revolution. They will come to South Carolina to visit the South Carolina National Heritage Corridor. They will come to visit the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor. They will come for those three national parks we have, including the Congaree National Park. They
I just read the other day that already tourism and visitations at Myrtle Beach are down over 15 percent already. Why? Because this is the time of year that the Canadians come. They aren't coming this year. Why? Because of this foolishness, this big tax that is coming out. We can call it whatever we want to call it--a tariff. A tariff ain't nothing but a tax at the border. So, the people in Canada are staying north of the border rather than coming.
Charleston's tourism is down. That is going to be the case throughout the South.
We created these opportunities for us to have better economies because when we have better economies, we will have better schools, because we will have our children being able to get the education that they deserve.
I had these prepared comments here, and I apologize to my staff for the work they did over the weekend, but listening to my colleague denigrate the history of this country--that is what he is doing, denigrating the history--we ought to celebrate our history.
All of it wasn't good. My parents lived through a history that I don't want to see my children and grandchildren live through, but if we continue down the road that this administration is taking us, that is what is going to happen.
I am the ninth African American to serve in Congress from South Carolina, eight before me. The problem is there are 95 years between number eight and number nine. Why? Because of a history we ought to be ashamed of and should not ever allow to come back again.
Yet, the policies I am seeing coming out of this administration, the decisions coming from some of the courts in this country, seem to be wanting to take us back to that history that I thought we had gotten beyond.
I am proud to pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, but I am also proud to work in this body with people whose backgrounds are different from mine, trying to find common ground and how we can make what this country is all about accessible and affordable for all of its citizens.
I am proud to be a part of what I consider to be a great country. There is no need of being made great. We have to make that greatness accessible to everybody, affordable by everybody. That is what educating everybody is all about.
Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for the Special Order.
Mr. Speaker, I rise to voice objection to the Trump Administration's attacks on our Nation's education system, which I view as part of a wider attack on the fundamental principle that we all benefit when people come together, exchange ideas and opinions and learn from each other in an atmosphere of respect and good will.
At the same time Americans are calling for their leaders to do the things that are necessary to lower everyday costs so that they can better their conditions and plan effectively. Their schools--our greatest laboratories for economic development and individual advancement--are being targeted.
The repercussions of eliminating the Department of Education would perpetuate cycles of economic instability for generations of American families. As a former public schoolteacher, I know very well the value of education as a tool for upward mobility.
The knowledge and skills our young people learn in our schools are crucial to securing a good foundation for vocations and professions-- that provide financial security and family stability for decades to come.
The destruction of the Department of Education is compounded by another serious threat to our economic future: the indiscriminate, non- strategic tariffs the president announced on so called ``Liberation Day'' last week.
With markets tumbling in response to these exorbitant taxes--and that's what tariffs are, taxes--the only thing Americans are ``liberated'' from is their hard-earned retirement savings.
A small group of my Republican colleagues in the other body has moved to vote to reclaim their congressional trade authorities in response to the president's misguided tariff war on our friends in Canada, by introducing legislation to reclaim Congress's authority in the face of the president's recklessness. Mr. Speaker, it is time for this body to act.
At first glance, it may appear that dismantling the Department of Education and imposing slapdash sky-high tariffs have little in common beyond their destructiveness. I believe, however, that they both give us an insight into this Administration's narrow, dark, dangerous mentality.
Public schools and international trade are both fundamentally rooted in bringing people together.
Our public schools, at their best, bring children together from a wide array of backgrounds to learn with and from each other, on a level playing field, forming, in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a beloved community that will make our society stronger as generations emerge into adulthood.
International trade, at its best, brings together individuals and corporations from around the globe to do business with each other on a level playing field, each contributing their talents and specialties so that all can be better off.
You will note, Mr. Speaker, that in these descriptions of public education and international trade, I included the phrases ``at their best'' and ``on a level playing field.'' And it is regrettably true that in recent decades, our public education system and international trading system have not been at their best, and have not brought students, workers, and countries together, as effectively, they could have, to learn and to trade on a level playing field. As a result-- American children have been denied good educations, and American workers have been denied good jobs.
Yet rather than working together to seek constructive solutions, the Trump Administration has used these challenges as a pretext for destruction. And the result will be worse education and a worse economy.
Without the Department of Education providing resources and guidance, our public schools will move further from the unifying, excellent educational institutions that we aspire to have.
It is important to note that the Administration's aim to move the oversight and authority for administrating education completely to the states overlooks the lessons of history.
The Office of Civil Rights in the Department of Education was created because of the ongoing discriminatory practices in Southern schools denying education to African American students and students with disabilities.
Federal intervention was required to rectify the situation and ensure that states were complying with the letter and the spirit of Brown v. Board of Education, which ensured that children of different races could learn together.
With trade hobbled by confiscatory tariffs, including on some of our closest allies, American families will lose affordable access to the items they need to sustain and enrich their lives, and American business will lose affordable access to the items they need to make the products that sustain and enrich their employees and their customers.
This trade policy reveals ignorance of history as well, particularly the history of the catastrophic effects of the Smoot-Hawley tariffs during the Great Depression.
The common thread of the Trump Administration's misguided approach to these issues appears to me to be that they do not believe people of diverse backgrounds can come together in a mutually beneficial way-- whether they are coming together to learn or to engage in commerce. To the Trump Administration, the world is zero sum, where if there is a winner there must a loser.
I fundamentally reject that approach, and I believe the American people are rejecting it as well as they begin to suffer its harmful consequences. I believe that when people learn together and work together, all can be made better off.
One area where the Trump Administration's zero-sum worldview is having a harmful impact in my home state of South Carolina is in the tourism industry. Tourism is a clear example of people, interacting with unfamiliar people and places, benefit both the tourists themselves and the communities they visit.
This Administration's divisiveness is turning people off, and South Carolinians are suffering the consequences.
The tourism expected this year in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, a popular destination for Canadians subjected to the president's demeaning rhetoric and policies, is already down 15%.
Expected rates of tourism in Charleston have declined as well.
The success of a long-anticipated seasonal flight directly from Canada to Charleston airport is now in question as Canadians choose to vacation outside of the United States in response to the president's bluster.
You can see here on this poster a prime example of the tourism that bolsters my state's economy by bringing together people of diverse backgrounds to learn about our shared history: the Southern Campaign of the Revolution National Heritage Corridor.
This heritage corridor is one of three in my state along with the Gullah Geechee Cultural
I am particularly proud of this because it was a South Carolinian, great grandson of a Confederate soldier, J. Waites Waring, who dissented in Briggs, writing ``They showed beyond a doubt that the evils of segregation and color prejudice come from early training, . . . and that it is an evil that must be eradicated.''
These attractions illuminate examples of how tourism enriches people both financially and educationally by bringing them together with other people, places, events, and ideas they may not have otherwise encountered.
These mutually beneficial interactions sadly appear to be at odds with this administration's worldview.
It is a sad irony, I have observed over the years, that those with the outlook held by this administration are those who would benefit the most from learning from, and interacting with, those different from them--yet they are the most resistant to doing so and actively seek to prevent American children from learning these lessons.
I want to share a few such lessons I believe all of us would do well to remember and heed.
Over the Christmas holiday's, I held a viewing of the historical drama, The Six Triple Eight. The subject of the film is success of a regiment of Black female soldiers who overcame extra ordinary obstacles to eradicate a backlog in mail correspondence to American soldiers on the front lines of World War II and restore morale by ensuring servicemembers could communicate with their families back home. The leader of that group was Chasity Adams. (Gregg/Adam)
We also remember the all-Black Tuskegee Airmen who went valiantly into battle for the United States in the European theater. They gave a sense of confidence to their fellow airmen, many of whom would not fly unless they had the assurance that the Tuskegee Airmen would join them in the skies.
We also remember the first U.S. mission to orbit the earth and that the astronaut leading the mission, John Glenn, refused to go up into space without the final sign off on the orbital mathematics of the mission by NASA's Katherine Johnson.
These pivotal moments are all instances where the coming together of people of very different backgrounds had immense benefits for themselves and for all of society.
It is these types of events that this Administration's policies will make far less frequent by its dismantling of the Department of Education and of mutually beneficial international trade.
It is sadly no surprise that this administration seeks to prevent the teaching and celebrating of these types of moments in our schools and museums.
I'll close by reiterating the admonition to my Republican colleagues I shared during this hour last week: it is my hope that fairness and dignity will prompt them to speak out and act against this administration's reckless agenda.
If the economic destruction of the last week has a silver lining, it will hopefully be that it is awakening the American people to the destructiveness of the administration's divisive zero-sum agenda and making it clear to my Republican colleagues that the American people prefer an approach that brings people together.
I often refer to this Hall as America's classroom and in the classroom and the marketplace, even on travel and vacation--that we should lift each other up toward a better future for all.
Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Virginia (Ms. McClellan) for yielding, and I thank the gentlewoman for anchoring this Special Order hour tonight on behalf of the CBC.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak out against the Republican assault on every American's right to a quality public education in this country.
For decades, families have been promised the right to send their kids to good public schools, regardless of how much money they make or their child's disability. The actions of President Trump are a direct threat to making good on that promise, specifically for children with disabilities.
In February, parents in Georgia received this exact email, telling them that year-round counseling and support services meant to assist them and their disabled child in transitioning from high school to adulthood have been discontinued--overnight, in the middle of the school year.
As every parent knows, raising a child takes an incredible amount of planning and care, especially if your child has unique or special needs, and even more so if that child is one of color.
We would do anything for our children. The fact that a group of faceless government officials can go behind a parent's back and cancel programs that our kids rely on with no explanation is absolutely unacceptable.
It is more than wrong to pull the rug out from under families in the middle of the school year during one of the most formative times in a child's life, after recruiting and convincing them to participate in this program in the first place.
The Charting My Path for Future Success program was operating in 13 different districts across 11 States. It had actively recruited over 1,000 students with disabilities and their families, as well as 60 teachers, to take part in this program, some of whom uprooted their entire lives to be involved.
Seeing your child grow up to thrive, that is the goal of every parent. I have not met one parent in this country who didn't break their backs to make sure that they were offering their child every opportunity to be successful, and that takes on another level of significance when your child has autism, dyslexia, or another condition that makes learning even more difficult for them. It takes a different level of commitment, a different level of support, to ensure that they can reach the potential that all of us want to see fulfilled in our kids.
That is exactly what this program was doing before President Trump and Elon Musk actively decided that it was not worth continuing.
All too often it is, unfortunately, sink or swim for disabled students after high school in America. Students and their families are left behind despite being promised that their school would get their child on a path to success and independence.
Programs like these are the difference between students being successful in adulthood or regressing. They can be the difference between a lifetime on disability versus a good job that someone can actually raise a family on.
The President and Secretary McMahon claim that students with disabilities will not be affected by their plans to gut the Department, but they already are. Time and time again, they say one thing, and they do another. It is the American people and our students who are paying the price in this country every single day.
Emails like this, life-changing services for families being discontinued at random, this is the Trump-Musk plan for our children, and this is only the beginning.
The time is now for all Members in this body to speak up, to speak out, and to fight back against these attacks on our families in each and every one of our districts. It doesn't make a difference what district any of our colleagues are representing. All of our children are being affected. Every single one of us should be willing to stand up and fight back for our communities and fight back for our students before it is too late.
Mr. Speaker, I thank Ms. McClellan for yielding, and I thank Representatives McClellan and Clyburn for initiating this Congressional Black Caucus Special Order on education.
Let me just say that I have been so inspired by previous speakers, including speakers on the other side of the aisle who held their Special Order before this one.
I rise as a proud granddaughter, daughter, and mother of a public educator, and I rise today to vehemently oppose the Trump administration's actions to close the United States Department of Education.
I rise simultaneously to denounce the President's executive orders that have
I rise to oppose the President's deleting information from websites, such as to honor people like the Honorable Harriet Tubman.
I rise to oppose book banning.
I rise, Mr. Speaker, to oppose assertions that DEI are ``wicked ideologies.''
I rise to speak against the notion that diversity, equity, and inclusion cause division and hostility toward White males.
I rise to oppose the idea that Pell grants are a part of the remnants of extremist education that is against, of course, the nuclear family.
I rise against the notion that Pell grants are part of creating this hostile environment.
I rise, Mr. Speaker, to say that education remains a great equalizer in our society.
When Congress created the Department of Education in 1979, they did so noting that: ``Education is fundamental to the development of individual citizens and the progress of the Nation;
``There is a continuing need to ensure equal access for all Americans to educational opportunities of high quality, and such educational opportunities should not be denied because of race, creed, color, natural origin, or sex.''
Mr. Speaker, I am reminded that one of the Department's most important responsibilities has been to enforce various civil rights laws that prohibit discrimination through their Office of Civil Rights. The OCR is one of the Federal Government's biggest enforcers of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, investigating thousands of allegations of discrimination each year which deny African Americans, in particular, of an opportunity.
Mr. Speaker, I acknowledge and dedicate this poem to our great leader, the President of the United States, in honor of Maya Angelou, whose birthday was April 4. I dedicate to them a message from her from the grave about the importance of African Americans and our education in this society by Maya Angelou.
Mr. Speaker, I rise and stand here today not as a politician, but as a daughter, a mother, and a product of public schools. I am here because I know what education can do, what it did for me, what it has done for millions of children across this country, and I cannot sit quietly as one of the cornerstones of our democracy is chipped away.
What we are witnessing with the dismantling of the Department of Education isn't just a bureaucratic decision. It is dangerous. It is a decision that tells every child in this country that their future doesn't matter, that their dreams are negotiable, that their ZIP Code should determine the quality of their education.
Let me be clear, that is not just wrong, it is vicious because when we give up on our schools, we give up on our communities. When we defund education, we are defunding hope. We are telling a little girl in the south ward of Newark, a little boy in the Borough of Roselle, or a student living in Jersey City that their potential has limits, that they weren't meant to retire.
However, I know better, because I have seen what happens when we invest in our kids. I have seen how a great teacher can change the course of a life. I have seen how a Pell grant can lift up a family. I have seen young people go from classrooms with broken chairs to boardrooms and executive suites because someone believed in them.
I have often said that education is the one thing no one can take away from you, but right now Trump and his billionaire buddies are trying to take away the very structure that ensures our kids get that education in the first place.
It isn't about politics. This is about values. This is about who we are as a country. Do we invest in the next generation or do we abandon them? We are better than this. Our children deserve better than this.
I cosponsored H.R. 433, the Department of Education Protection Act, to prohibit the use of congressional appropriated funds for any reorganization or dismantling of the Department of Education. I urge my colleagues across the aisle in this room to fight for our schools, fight for our teachers, fight for every child who dares to dream beyond their circumstances because they are watching, and they are counting on us.
Mr. Speaker, the President of the United States signed an executive order to dismantle the Department of Education. It is very important for people to understand what calls for the closure of the Department of Education would mean to local communities.
The Department of Education is responsible for protecting the civil rights of students, supporting students from low-income backgrounds, developing and preparing educators, providing resources for English language learners, collecting statistics on enrollment, staffing, and crime in schools, and for the $1.6 trillion Federal student loan program.
Many parents are concerned about disruptions to programs and services that ensure that the 7.5 million children with disabilities and 49 million students enrolled in K-12 public education get the education they deserve.
President Donald Trump and his administration do not have the authority to dismantle the Department of Education. Only Congress has that authority. An agency created by Congress can only be dismantled by Congress. However, by firing 50 percent of Federal workers at the Department of Education and terminating funding for ongoing Federal education research, the Trump administration is making it difficult for the Department to accomplish its goals of ensuring equal access to education for all students.
The Department of Education does not influence public school curriculum, instruction, or instructional materials. Those decisions are already made at the local level by local boards of education.
I am trying to state the facts, to lay them out so that the people at home understand what is happening right now. This is not an emotional journey. This is not an effort to save a department that does not help people. It is, in fact, law.
The Department was created by Congress. There are 7.5 million students who receive special education services that the Department of Education ensures that they get. You heard Congresswoman McClellan say that I was a public schoolteacher for 15 years. I worked in a title I school district. I understand that it is rural communities, low-income communities, communities that don't have large tax bases that will be hurt the most. It is my community.
Education is the great equalizer. I don't understand how if we want to have conversations about making the
Ending funding or eliminating the Department does not end our legal obligation to provide services to kids who rely on public education. One of two things is going to happen in your communities: Either other services will be cut or local property taxes will be raised to compensate for the lack of Federal funding that communities will receive.
The thing is, here in Congress we go back and forth between majorities and minorities. We have policy debates and disputes, but our kids can't wait 4 years. They can't wait another congressional term. They can't wait until we figure it out because what we are actually doing today they needed us to do 20 years ago. There are so many funding gaps and so many services that students still don't receive.
I hear people talk over and over about the NAEP scores and how students are not at proficiency or where they need to be. I would encourage you to disaggregate those scores and look at the lack of funding over the years, look at the States that have disinvested over time in education. Look at the communities that don't value public education. Those are the communities that are dragging those scores down.
We have so much work to do here in the Congress. Our budgets are a statement of our values. In the same sentence or at the same press conference where the President talked about cuts to public education, he also talked about additional military grants to build aircraft. I don't understand how as a country we keep increasing military and defense funding and keep taking away from our children, whether it is education, food, or basic services that families need. I really don't understand it. Of all the things that we could be doing here, cuts to public education should not be one of them.
I will end by just saying, the President and the Secretary of Education keep promising that there is a plan. I haven't seen anything articulated. We don't know what happens next. We don't know how these services will be provided. He says that some things will go to HHS, and a small business will handle student loans.
For anyone who has actually worked in education, you know that by April, you are closing out your budgets. You are already planning for the next year, so we are already too late as far as giving information to schools as to what they do in September. They need to be ready to go on day one for the 49 million children who depend on public education.
Still there is no plan. We are weeks into this executive order, and no plan. Nothing from the Secretary of Education, nothing submitted to Congress, no concrete plan about who would take over IEPs, special education services, and the civil rights protections that are guaranteed by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. No plan. Just empty promises from an administration that has been dead set on cutting public education to the kids who need it most.
The Congressional Black Caucus and House Democratic Members are committed to continuing the work to make sure that these cuts do not go unchallenged because if they were as good as the President and his cohorts, Secretary McMahon and Elon Musk, say they are, then they would be here before Congress with a detailed plan to share with the American people of how this will work and what happens next.
Mr. Speaker, I can tell you, coming from a State like Connecticut where we value education, I want a high-quality education for every student. Even the kids in Louisiana with some of the lowest test scores in the Nation and even the kids in our rural communities, I want those kids to have a good, high-quality public education. I am going to fight just as hard for them as I will for the kids in my congressional district.
Let me first start by thanking Jennifer McClellan of Virginia and Jim Clyburn of South Carolina for anchoring this evening's Special Order hour on behalf of the Congressional Black Caucus.
I rise on this day in opposition to President Trump's unprecedented and alarming efforts to dismantle the Department of Education. With no consideration for the will of Congress or the will of the American people, Donald Trump has commenced an attack on education that we haven't seen the likes of since the racist segregationist Plessy versus Ferguson decision declaring separate but equal as an educational doctrine.
At a time when racial segregation is increasing in our schools to levels not seen since before the Supreme Court ruled that separate but equal had no place in the United States, Donald Trump's actions will not only make our schools more segregated and less equal but they will put quality education out of reach for countless young Americans today and in the years to come.
No matter what justification the President gives, we know the real reason he is tearing apart the Department of Education. That is to steal money from public schools and funnel it into private ones that don't care about teaching our kids, only indoctrinating them into the cult of Trump.
Mr. Speaker, make no mistake. These attacks on the Department of Education are deeply, deeply unpopular in every corner of the country. In fact, two-thirds of Americans oppose them. They oppose them because families from all walks of life rely on the Department of Education to meet their children's needs.
Districts with high rates of poverty depend on Title I funding to serve their students, just as parents of children with disabilities or special needs depend on IDEA funding to give their kids the care they deserve.
In New York's Ninth District alone, the administration has already clawed back $4 million in funds that our schools were entitled to. That figure is as much as $300 million across our State.
Because of Trump's war on education, classroom sizes will balloon. Teachers' recruitment will plummet. Higher education will be inaccessible for thousands of students. Money will be taken from students with disabilities and special needs and given to the President's allies.
Let's be clear. The President's actions represent a disturbing new step in his crusade against public education and all it represents. I reject his war against education, just as I will reject whatever bill comes before Congress to further damage the Department of Education.
Mr. Speaker, I want to end where I began and that is with the story of my mother who lived to be 94.
She was the third youngest of 14 children in the Gulf Coast of Mississippi where the only school available to her was the Catholic church because Mississippi did not deem Black children important enough to educate. She wanted more than the life that was available to her siblings, her parents, her great-grandparents, and her grandparents. She had to move to go to high school.
She ended up running the Federal TRiO programs at Virginia State University to ensure that a little girl, whether she is in Petersburg, Virginia, or a little boy on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, would have the same access to an education, no matter their parents' financial situation, no matter the obstacles in their way. As a mother of two children in public school who has spent almost 20 years in public service, I have dedicated my life to making sure that every child has that same opportunity.
The Department of Education doesn't run schools. They don't set the curriculum. They fill the gaps that State and local governments have been unwilling or unable to.
Without the Department of Education, there is going to be a little girl
Every Member of Congress in this body was privileged enough to get a good education to get here, but not every child we represent has that same ability. The Congressional Black Caucus, as the conscience of Congress, will fight for every child no matter their ZIP Code, race, creed, or background to get that education.
Mr. Speaker, I thank you for your attention tonight and I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record the following:
We have seen this Administration attack diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility in the federal government and, by extension, in schools, workplaces, and public services and research--attacks on civil rights that we have not seen since the 1960's.
DEI, regrettably, has been attacked by the Republicans and this Administration to erase contributions and accomplishments of so many Americans. We have seen the Administration remove references to Jackie Robinson's military participation. References to women in health care research or women who served at the CIA have been erased. References to the plane which carried the first nuclear bomb in World War II, the Enola Gay, because artificial intelligence flagged it as a reference to the LGBTQ+ community, so they wanted that erased along with everything else. And now, they are attempting to ``rewrite history'' with the latest executive order targeting the Smithsonian Institute. Specifically, the Executive Order singles out the African American History Museum for its ``corrosive ideology.'' Before these relatively recent attacks, diversity itself had been the goal--in fact, the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954 said that segregation of children in public schools, solely on the basis of race, denies the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities, even though the physical facilities and tangible factors may be equal. Regrettably President Trump, during his last administration, appointed dozens of judges who, during their confirmation hearings, refused to say whether Brown v. Board was properly decided.
Last week, the President signed an executive order to dismantle the Department of Education--a department that was created to ensure that students' civil rights were protected. The Department actually does very little in education--most of its work is civil rights, guaranteeing rights of low-income students. Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act: money in low-income areas to offset the effect of funding education with the real estate tax, guaranteeing that low-income areas will be at a disadvantage, so we put money in Title I. ED helps low-income students, racial minorities, dealing with achievement gaps, English as a Second Language, and students with disabilities. On higher education, they deal with access, Pell grants, and student loans. Some of the proponents of the elimination of the Department of Education campaign on the slogan of `states' rights.' We remember that campaign was used in the 1960's by those who wanted to maintain segregation.
The Trump Administration's war on diversity, equity, and inclusion programs are not just limited to education. It prompted a purge of federal agencies of employees who supported DEI initiatives, culminating in the unprecedented firing of EEOC Commissioners. Without their presence, the EEOC actually lacks a quorum and is essentially unable to protect the rights of workers whose rights under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act have been violated.
Similarly, President Trump rescinded Executive Order 11246, which has been the cornerstone of civil rights protections in federal contracting since the 1960's. This Executive Order ensures that federal contractors must take affirmative action to ensure that they are not discriminating against workers based on race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or national origin. These actions ensured that taxpayer dollars were not being used to fund discrimination.
But despite the President's reckless actions and the acquiescence of congressional Republicans, we need to assure the public that many are still fighting for diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility.
Now, this is not just a fight in Congress. That is why we have asked these organizations here today to remind us why civil rights need to be protected and to tell us what they are specifically doing to combat those attacks.
Let's be clear: We are not here to do what I call ``celebrating the problem.'' We know what this Administration has done, and we know what this Administration is doing. We want to let the public know what we are specifically doing to fight back, and know how the public can join into that fight.
opening statement at education and workforce full committee hearing
I would first like to start with the elephant in the room. There is current reporting that President Trump plans to issue an executive order to eliminate critical programs at the Department of Education and call on Congress to eliminate the entire department. But then I recall that that's exactly what Project 2025 said the president should do--it said that on page 319 of Project 2025.
The irony is not lost on me that we are here to discuss the ``state of American education'' while the current Administration is actively discussing how to dismantle the main federal agency responsible for ensuring safe, quality education for all students. According to polls, the majority of voters oppose the abolition of the Department of Education. I also know that I, and every Democrat, will do what we can to ensure the Department continues.
Now to the issue at hand. As reflected in the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) data, schools are struggling to make up for lost time in the classroom following the COVID-19 pandemic. Achievement gaps, which existed before the pandemic, have widened. According to that assessment, math and reading gaps between higher- and lower-performing students continue to rise, as Black students continue to be more than 10 points behind their white peers in all subjects.
In 2021, Democrats passed the largest one-time investment in education in the history of the United States in the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), to provide schools with the resources they needed to reopen classrooms safely and make up for lost time due to the pandemic. Without this investment, we would undoubtedly be in a worse situation today. However, the American Rescue Plan Act was only a band-aid on the larger issue of underfunding in schools. It is abundantly clear that we need sustained federal investment over time to overcome decades of underfunding.
Unfortunately, instead of investing in our children, Republicans are stuck on proposals that will only create more challenges for students. Consider that the first education bill we considered this Congress targets--indeed bullies--transgender youth. Also, my Republican colleagues have misrepresented programs intended to expand diversity, equity, and inclusion as a problem in education. Republicans have threatened to ban books, police bathrooms, and take away funds from communities that need them most. Simply put, the Administration is promoting a warped version of DEI--discrimination, erasure, and inequity.
This all serves to distract Americans so that they will not notice the privatization of the American education system with taxpayer funds going to private schools, the resegregation of public schools, the erosion of services for students with disabilities, cuts to the student loan program, and distracts from the price of eggs going up. And while some folks may be hollering about imagined ``DEI problems,'' many in the public will fail to notice how the taxpayers' money is being siphoned away from public education and the student loan program to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy and well-connected.
And so, Mr. Chairman, I know that we can all agree that every student in this country should have access to a safe, welcoming, and well- funded learning environment. That begins with eliminating disparities in education with sustained federal funding. This Congress, Committee Democrats will reintroduce legislation such as:
the Rebuild America's Schools Act, which would make a critical investment to repair and rebuild school facilities--particularly in high-need areas.
the Equity and Inclusion Enforcement Act, which would restore the private right of action for students, parents, and local civil rights groups to bring discrimination claims based on disparate impact under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
And the Strength in Diversity Act, which would provide resources to states or school districts that want to voluntarily develop plans to integrate their schools.
We have to take steps to lower the cost of higher education for students and families. To that end, we'll also reintroduce the Lowering Obstacles to Achievement Now (LOAN) Act, which would lower the cost of college for current and future student borrowers and their families by making critical reforms to the student aid system, including doubling the Pell Grant, improving the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, and making loans more affordable and accessible.
Allow me, to that end, to promise to my colleagues and students across the country, that we will not go along with programs to dismantle our education system. We will fight any
Mr. Speaker, let's have some fun with math and the reality of what is going on in the world.
First, let me get something off my chest. I hate it when I make a mistake. Mr. Speaker, have you ever had that moment when you say something as you are walking down to your next meeting and you go: oh, damn it?
Last week, I was walking through a series of different numbers, and one of them was a proposal, or a discussion coming out of the White House. It was about taking the top tax rate and just letting it expire.
I think I said it was $32.7 billion. That is for a single year. Just multiply it by 10. That is what the actual math would be.
Mr. Speaker, one of the reasons I am sort of stressed out of my mind right now is more than the chaos we see in some of the financial markets and trying to understand the tariff issues and our leverage on other countries and their leverage and what is going on there.
I don't think we are spending enough time talking about our own work. Last Friday--actually, it may have been Saturday morning--the Senate passed their version of a reconciliation budget. It was a completely unserious document.
I am going to show over and over here how they took a pass on doing what was difficult. If this is a negotiation between the House and the Senate, for example, Mr. Speaker, if you have ever bought a car or been in a negotiation, when one side gives a completely unserious offer, the other side often has to walk away until they get serious.
There are real things going on in the world. Here is an article from the other day. I have a small stack of these. It is talking about bond markets and debt markets and others starting to unload U.S. debt.
Mr. Speaker, today, if you are a geek and are watching the 10-year bond--I was watching it over a period of an hour or so. I saw the 10- year bond move by about 20 basis points. Now, in geek speak, that is a big deal. Apparently, it has been 5 years. Think about some of the crazy things that were going on 5 years ago to see that sort of movement. We are stressing the crap out of the markets.
Why that is important is this country borrows about $60,000 to $70,000 every second. That becomes $250 million every hour. Last year, for every dollar we took in, in tax receipts, we spent $1.39.
The reality of it is you borrow 39 cents out of every dollar. For the $5 trillion we are going to take in, in tax receipts and we are going to spend $7.1 trillion or $7.2 trillion. Maybe we don't screw with the bankers.
Mr. Speaker, the reality of it is your savings, this government's bond fund, the family on the other side of the world that has savings, that is the money that buys our debt.
Ray Dalio, the Bridgewater founder, has written these articles that say we have a problem. The basis of the problem is there is not enough capital in the world to deal with the bingeing of debt coming from the United States and coming from China. Now it is starting to come from Europe. In Germany, it looks like they are going to be lifting their debt cap.
When we borrow, we are also competing with other countries in the world. The United States, I think, is now maybe 13, maybe number 12 on the credit stack. Think of this. I believe Greece can sell a 10-year bond cheaper than the United States. That is worth thinking about.
Let's actually walk through what is going on right now with the reconciliation budget. Let's sort of explain. Why do we do the reconciliation budget? The Budget Control Act of 1974 created this mechanism that if we are going to cut spending--and it gives us one of the few times in life where we can actually work on mandatory spending, the things that are on autopilot.
For most Members of Congress in their entire career, everything they vote on is borrowed money. When we vote on defense, when we vote on nondefense discretionary, the things we do get to vote on, every dime of it is all borrowed. Last year, about $300 billion or $400 billion of mandatory, earned benefits, those things were on borrowed money.
Mr. Speaker, start to understand. Here is what is going on. You have heard we are doing these reconciliation budgets, because that is a whole mechanism to be able to move something through the Senate, where only 51 votes are needed so it doesn't hit that 60-vote filibuster. That is the real reason we do this whole dance.
Remember how many people are so upset. David, you are going to cut spending over the next 10 years. This is the baseline money. We are scheduled to spend $86 trillion over the next 10 years. At best, the House resolution adds $2 trillion of spending reductions and modernization over 10 years. $86 trillion is the baseline spending. We are talking about trying to trim $2 trillion out of the $86 trillion. This causes people to lose their minds.
Have we lost our sanity in this country? We can't find--that is what--2.3 percent? Forgive my math. I am trying to do it quickly. That is Armageddon? Does that give us a sense of just how addicted the bureaucracies, the society, and the business models out there are to U.S. borrowing?
There was another thing that happened last week that really should have taken people's breath away. This is sort of behind the paywall. We have found other articles that write about it. Moody's Analytics, the people who study what is going on in economics and businesses, put out a paper that in 9 budget years, 30 percent of U.S. tax collections are going to go to just pay interest.
So, Mr. Speaker, you pay your $100 in income taxes, 30 percent of it just went to interest, and this is before the Senate or what we are trying to do in the budget reconciliation.
Remember, Mr. Speaker, I am going to show you the Senate document is completely unserious. It piles on stunning amounts of debt.
Mr. Speaker, does this scare anyone that in 9 budget years, 30 percent of your taxes you pay go to just cover interest?
Am I just an idiot for coming behind this mike every week and trying to show the math?
I get my brothers and sisters around here:
That was interesting, David. I am still going to vote for piling on more debt because, well, let's be honest, my voters want stuff, and I will be out of here by the time this blows up.
It probably doesn't blow up. What happens is you hit a moment where the money required to finance the debt like this consumes everything. You hit a moment.
I showed a chart a couple of months ago, 1 month ago, that showed if we went back to a six handle, so it is 6 percent interest rate on U.S. sovereign debt, which we were right up against in, what, the mid-, early 2000s, 2005 and 2006. We went to a 6 percent interest rate. About 45-plus percent of all U.S. taxes went just to cover interest. If we go to 9 percent, it is the majority of U.S. taxes go to cover just interest.
Part of that is because right now we are sitting what, $29, $30 trillion of publicly sold debt, so the actual debt is about 36.6 or something like that. We are in extraordinary measures so the actual debt number is a little distorted right now because we are borrowing internally and we have got to pay that all back. So watch interest rates pop when we finally raise the debt ceiling, and now we have to refund all that money back to the accounts plus the interest that they missed.
Mr. Speaker, you start to think about we have to refinance--and some of this gets refinanced two, three, four, or five times in a year because you are borrowing 30 days, 6 months, so we will refinance about $9 trillion, and we are going to issue about two, $2.2 trillion new debt.
Tiny movements of interest rates are really stressful. The Federal Reserve, what was it, 1 week or so ago, lowered their economic growth projections for the United States for the next 3 years. Just that lowering, I think they lowered us from like 2.1 to 1.7 percent this year, that is almost $200 billion of tax receipts in a single year.
Just that movement of lowering down economic growth projections is more than we are talking about trying to reduce spending if you take it over 10 years. It is like this place is incapable of understanding the scale of the trouble we are in.
I have tried to show this a couple of times. I am not beating up anyone. I am just asking people. I desperately want to extend the 2017 tax reform. I was on the committee. I am one of only four or five people still on Ways and Means who actually helped to write the 2017 tax reform, and those portions expire at the end of this year. I believe it is the absolute right thing to extend them. We should just pay for it, because when we don't pay for it--our base number, now you are going to see two differences here. We are using the next 10 years, so that takes us to 2035.
The Senate budget, they did a gimmick. They used 2034. We couldn't figure out why we couldn't get the numbers to match up. They played a game. They only used 9 budget years.
We are scheduled to borrow over $22 trillion over the next 10 years. If we do all the tax reform but don't do pay-fors, but add interest on it, that is another 6.8. If you basically add then a number of the President's additional priorities but don't pay for them, don't try to find a way, then you end up at $74 trillion of borrowing in functionally 9 budget years, 10 years.
I am going to show you a couple of boards here, Mr. Speaker. If you actually add it up, we are functionally talking about almost doubling what took us 240 years in debt to build up, we are talking about doubling it, well, close to doubling it, in the next 9 years. Have we lost our minds?
This is what you heard a number of us fussing about, Mr. Speaker. We can't figure out what the Senate was thinking.
Were they just in avoidance of we don't want to tell anyone, we are going to try to do something that should not even be that hard.
Remember $86 trillion in spending, the House was just trying to do 2, and I thought 2 was absolutely anemic. We should have covered all 4, $4.5 trillion.
One of the hardest votes I made in my decade-plus here was standing right there and swallowing saying: I am going to vote for this, but I am really unhappy because we are capable of doing more. And if we don't start to telegraph to the bond markets we are going to do something serious, at what moment does the bond market say: Screw these people. They are just not serious. They are consuming the world's capital. Let's charge them more.
Mr. Speaker, do you really think the United States with our exorbitant privilege of having the world's reserve currency and being the country that people want to come and do their business in, move to put their capital in, do you think that is our birthright?
Remember, Mr. Speaker, up until World War II it was Great Britain that had the world's reserve currency.
We are squandering our place in the world. People run around saying: Well, we need to push down the value of the dollar.
You have trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars around the world that are held by people, and you are going to push down the value of their holdings. Just understand every time someone says something like that, Mr. Speaker, you can actually start to see the full faith in the United States start to taper away.
We are about to squander this extraordinary privilege we have because the world trades in our currency. They need to buy our debt because they need to hold our currency because that is what they dot nominate in, that is what they trade in, and that is their peg.
If you look at this chart, Mr. Speaker, new Senate budget resolution, that is functionally another $8.5 trillion in deficits.
Here is extending the tax cuts in 2017, and then they made a margin there for additional spending, either it be some of the other priorities, no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, those things, and then we have another $520 billion in additional spending.
Can you see this line here, Mr. Speaker?
You can't really see it. It is $3 billion of cuts. That is what they put on to their budget resolution. If we borrow $6 billion a day and their budget resolution is 3, actually our borrowing is actually a little more than $6 billion, it is 10, 12 hours of borrowing for an entire year, and this is for a 10-year budget. That is what they gave us.
Oh, but, David, when negotiations start, it will actually get filled in. Except we are negotiating--we put $1.5 trillion of savings with the hope of getting to 2, and they give us $3 billion. Remember, 1 trillion is 1,000 billion.
Mr. Speaker, you wonder why some of us are cranky when our colleagues down the Hall give us basically crap to work with.
Let's actually start to walk through what this actually means to us as a body. When we finished the last budget year, we were $28 trillion of publicly held debt. That is the debt we have to sell. When you hear someone say $37 trillion in debt, remember, Mr. Speaker, there is a portion of that we borrow internally. We reach in debt trust funds and other things. We borrow the money there. We pay interest on it.
People say: Oh, you borrowed my Social Security money. Yes, and they got actually a pretty good interest rate back.
Here is the baseline. Remember, Mr. Speaker, why is this not $22 trillion? It is because they were using a 2034 number. We caught them playing a game there. Then they added another $6.9 trillion on top of that, and what do you get, Mr. Speaker?
Here is what you get: Functionally when we all got elected this last November, the United States sovereign debt was around $28 trillion. When we finish this 10-year cycle, we are going to add another $28 trillion if we do what the Senate sent us. What took us 240 years to build up, we are going to double in the next 9 budget years, next 10 calendar years. Go team. That is the morality of this place.
People say: It is hard, David, to explain to people that we need to modernize, we need to change the way we deliver services, we need to use technology, and some programs we should just stop because they have been outdated for decades.
This is important here. This is without any of the disaster aid, this is without the economic potential slowdown, so tax receipts are coming down, and this is without a war. I mean just using actually what were optimistic numbers of the next 10 years' tax receipts, and what we are talking about doing right now is over the next 10 years doubling what took us 240 years to build up in debt.
Does anyone care about your retirement? Does anyone have kids? Think of this: It may be insane--my wife is my age--but I have a 9-year-old daughter and a 2\1/2\-year-old little boy we have adopted. Yes, they are brother and sister, so that explains it.
When my little boy is 24, 25 years old, every tax in the United States, every tax, has to double just to maintain baseline services. We are raising kids that would be part of the first generation to be structurally poorer than their parents because when you borrow money, it is a tax. It just means you are going to let someone else pay it with interest. It is not free money. It is a tax.
Sometimes taking on a certain amount of debt is what you have to do because the thing that Republicans and Democrats are terrified to tell our voters is, in the next 10 years, almost 100 percent of U.S. sovereign debt is interest and Medicare. It is demographics. We got old.
Mr. Speaker, one of the things going on in the entire Western world and also here in the United States, we don't have enough young people. If you look at our demographics--when you hear people talk about that, as soon as I say ``demographics,'' I know people turn the channel. There is a very good chance that, in the last 12 months, we had more deaths than births. It wasn't supposed to happen for 7.5 years, according to the Census Bureau, but there are a couple of datasets out there saying we may be up against already having more deaths than births.
Understand the way we deliver and finance the earned entitlements, the earned benefits. Today's worker pays for today's retirees. Last week, I showed a number of charts that, those numbers in 10, 20 years, it is you and your partner, you and your spouse and a little bit more, you have your own retired person you are paying for. That is not Republican or Democrat. It is demographics.
In 2033, so 7.5 years from now, the Social Security trust fund is empty. The law says you cut benefits. That would be a 21 percent cut, meaning in 8 years, we double senior poverty in America. Yet, if you talk about how you want to try to save Social Security and all the steps you have to do, all the inputs, because it turns out it is complicated, that side over there is going to run attack ads beating the crap out of you because you mentioned the words ``Social Security'' even though you are trying not to double senior poverty. That is how immoral this place is.
Remember, our math from last year is the first full year with the Social Security trust fund gone. Just the shortfall is over $600 billion. The scale of what we are talking about is brutal.
Mr. Speaker, you intend to be here for another decade, so you are going to get to deal with it. Every day we wait, that math gets more and more difficult.
Let's go back to the Senate's reconciliation budget. Here is what they gave us. They are using a 2024 gross debt number of $21 trillion. It is really $22 trillion, but we will let them because they made up some numbers in their budget.
Remember, they played some games on growth projections. Functionally, 32.7 percent of the next decade they gave us is additional borrowing. They basically decided that, over the next decade, let's add another third of debt.
What are we going to do? For those of us in the House who give these beautiful speeches that it is immoral to do this to our kids and crush people's future retirements, what are we going to do? Are we going to step up and say: Look, Republicans, we have priorities. The White House has priorities. We just have to find ways to finance them.
Are we that terrified to tell the truth?
A couple more of these, and hopefully, I won't have bored everyone to death. The Senate budget provides for $5-plus trillion in new deficits over the next 10 years. Then, you add in the additional spending. You start to go over. Even our budget reconciliation, I thought, was unacceptable.
It was one of the hardest votes I made, and I can't make up my mind how much I regret it. Sometimes, I really regret it. Some moments, I am hoping that the leadership team that said they would work with me-- because I believe we can find a trillion dollars in savings in just modernization. Remember, those inefficiencies are the people's business models, so you already see the hallways full of lobbyists trying to stop them.
Take a look here. Here is the debt we were going to add. Here is the additional debt the Senate adds. They made it functionally even double what we were talking about. Increasing the deficit results in higher interest costs. This is one of the things. We forget to tell people the truth.
There is a model out there--CBO actually ran it for me--saying if interest rates went up 1 percent on this policy baseline, and I am tired of talking about it, in the 30-year window, you broke the Congressional Budget Office's model. Let me say that again. We broke the CBO's model. It went over 250 percent. The problem is their computer only goes to 250 percent. It just hit it.
We are now pushing levels of debt so high we are breaking our budget models. Go team. Even with what the Senate just gave us over that 10- year period of time, stack on another $1.1 trillion of interest. We didn't buy anything. It is just interest.
The House proposed trying to get to $2 trillion in spending reductions. Dear heaven, I hope we can be tough enough and disciplined enough to get there. I have produced all sorts of documents. I am not one of those people giving speeches. I am showing up with binders of ways you can get there. Much of it isn't cuts. It is just using technology to change the way we deliver services.
The Senate, remember, a billion dollars and a trillion dollars are very, very different things. They functionally gave us $4 billion in spending reductions. That is what they thought we were worth.
Mr. Speaker, I know I am being a bit redundant on these boards, but I am trying to make a point. We sure give a lot of great speeches around here of the greatest threat to our Republic. It turns out to be the scale and the speed we are burying this society in debt.
Then, we hit moments like this, and we are going to happy talk our way through it. We are going to lie about things. Oh, we are going to make up a pretend growth rate, and that is going to produce $2.6 trillion. Our own reconciliation budget, there is going to be $1.7 trillion of additional cuts in discretionary, but you can't really do that in a reconciliation budget. It is completely unenforceable.
We should be ashamed of ourselves. Look at something like this. Understand the scale of what the Senate--you know, the 2017 tax reform, in its full score of debt, it turns out to have come in at less than half that. Take a look at the CARES Act, the American Rescue Plan, and all these things that we as Republicans railed against because of the data produced. This is the Senate reconciliation budget.
Do you see why I am angry or disappointed or just bewildered? These are tax cut extensions without trying to make any attempt to pay for it.
Remember how a moment ago I was telling you we start to break the budget models?
The driver of our debt ultimately is our demographics. The left will say: No, Republicans need to tax people more. Okay. Yet, we have shown the studies over and over that every Democratic tax that has actually been proposed and scored produces about 1.5 percent of GDP. The cuts we have talked about are about 1 percent of GDP. You have a big 2.5 percent there if we both did everything.
Mr. Speaker, we are scheduled to borrow about 7.3 percent of the economy this year. Does anyone see a math problem?
Why is it so hard around here to tell the truth? We say things that are just not mathematically true. My family used to have a saying: At some point, the math is going to win, and it always does.
Mr. Speaker, thank you for tolerating a bit of my rant, but it is my way of just saying how disappointed I am with even my friends. I have a couple of really good friends who are over in the Senate, and they were just desperate to avoid doing what was difficult, so they threw it in our lap.
Mr. Speaker, we as House Members get to make a decision: Are we going to do what is right and moral and what actually sets up the future for economic growth?
Very last point. Almost 2 months ago, the Congressional Budget Office did a model that says, if you want to maximize growth over the next decade, pay for as much of the tax extensions as you can. Do them because that will maintain consumption. You don't get a lot of growth from it. Where you really get the growth is the expensing side and continuing some of the business tax, the passthrough tax portions. Yet, if you pay for it, you don't screw up the capital stack, the money that you borrow for your small business, for your home, or for your car.
It looks like we are going to screw it all up. Let's not let that happen, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.
The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 9 o'clock and 21 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Tuesday, April 8, 2025, at 10 a.m. for morning-hour debate.
