Southern Border

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MOORE of Utah. Mr. Speaker, we have several Members who are going to have a chance to speak here tonight. Tonight, of course, ahead of tomorrow's State of the Union Address, Members will share about ways the Biden administration has failed their constituents, from the border crisis, to the spike in violent crime, to out-of-control inflation, and also a need to protect the most vulnerable among us, the unborn.

I am grateful to host tonight's Special Order and provide the opportunity to highlight important issues facing families in every district.

I have said this for the last few years. As I have watched--and of course it is a political metric--I have seen the approval rating continue to decline and to decline and to decline from what we have seen from President Biden. It shows you that the American people are watching, and this is affecting their everyday lives.

For the most part--I would hope this to be the case--most Americans aren't necessarily paying attention to a lot of what we are doing here, and I hope they are happier and better off for it. A lot of the stuff that we do here doesn't necessarily resonate with them. They get frustrated with a lot of what we do here.

However, when you see that type of reaction from the American people, it is showing that the policies from the Biden administration are directly impacting and hurting their everyday lives. They are seeing it in so many different ways in their communities, in their families.

I am hopeful that, in my role as vice chair of the Republican Conference, I am committed to doing it and helping other Members credibly communicate how this is affecting their constituents' lives.

Additionally, today, we use that opportunity to be able to share a little bit about what is going on and hopefully offer some solutions, as well, to how we can better address this and how we can counteract so many of President Biden's failed policies.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MOORE of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Tennessee for his comments. Of course, when they become personal stories is when they become the most tragic.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MOORE of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Maryland for his remarks. It has happened to me before as well, so he is welcomed for being able to clear that up.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MOORE of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I say to the gentleman from New Jersey that that was the easiest request I have had all year. I appreciate hearing the stories of his father and I, of course, offer my condolences to him. It is an honor to be able to hear stories of his father's extraordinary life and service. I thank him, sir.

Mr. Speaker, I thank you for this time and opportunity to be able to share more of what we are trying to highlight this week.

It is a very important week as is any State of the Union and every State of the Union should be important. Regardless of your party affiliation, this is a moment to hear from our President and to compare and contrast in a lot of cases policy differences, but also highlight where it is that we do agree.

I am having a Tennessee heavy day today.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MOORE of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Tennessee and I appreciate his message and his involvement as we try to use this medium to communicate with the American people. Oftentimes, a cable news interview here or there gets a lot more hits than social media, but we need to be speaking to the American people from the House floor and this is a great opportunity to do so.

I am going to share in buckets a message that I hope that I can really drive home. My whole entire objective for being back here, personally, not necessarily in my role as vice chair of the Conference, but my personal objective to be back here is to rein in wasteful spending and to deal with our debt and deficit crisis that we are facing.

I will get a chance this evening to share more context for that.

We get overlooked quite a bit. I hear some scoffing going on in the Chamber, but we all know that it is very important and the entire Nation is reliant on the West for things that matter, second only to tourism, but all the other critical things that we need.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MOORE of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Washington for her remarks.

As Members of this body know, we began this year, the U.S. national debt, surpassing $34 trillion. We have seen Members from both sides of the aisle talk about this extensively. We have had debates on this growing national debt for decades now and as I mentioned moments ago, it is the reason I am back here.

It is the reason that I missed my son's little league playoffs last night, which they made it to the championship and suffered a tough loss, but they played their hearts out. The only way that I can go back home and tell my 11-year-old, hey, son, sorry for missing your little league game here and there and the many games that I have to miss is because I can also counter that with I am doing everything I possibly can to make sure that your future mimics what my future looked like.

Candidly, mine is even going to be in a position of very heavy debt in my major working years, but we have to recognize that this will limit our next generation more than any other factor. The fact that interest alone will be the second largest budget line item in our Federal outlays within a year or two is the most concerning thing that keeps me up at night.

Yes, I will continue to talk about this. I will continue to debate this. I sit on the Ways and Means and Budget Committees, which I believe is where the vast majority of the work can be done here.

Ways and Means because it covers the programs, the large government programs that get established and never voted on again. In Budget we can set the tone, we can set the stage for what we all try to coalesce around as the people's House.

This debt puts a strain on not only the country's finances, but American families' pocketbooks. It goes particularly to what we saw with inflation. As I entered into Congress in 2021, January 2021, just a few months after President Biden or maybe a month or two after President Biden took office, and the Senate had just switched to Democrat controlled, so Senator Schumer took over as majority leader in the Senate and Republicans had a very strong November few months prior to that, but didn't quite take over the majority, what took place in Congress, in Washington is what you call one-party rule.

During one-party rule, what you are allowed to do is every budget cycle--and it is a little bit of a gray area, but once a budget cycle, you can pass a bill on party-line votes. You don't need the filibuster in the Senate anymore. You can bypass that and you can go big with your legislation.

Republicans and Democrats have used this over time. President Biden decided to use this for what is called the American Rescue Plan. The American Rescue Plan in its entirety was basically a $2 trillion bill that had no offset spending and was directly related to the inflationary pressures that our Nation experienced after that.

Inflation happens because of the monetary supply issue, with too much money chasing too few goods. That is what that bill was. It was a massively inflationary bill.

It wasn't the only cause. We were coming out of COVID. We were having supply chain issues. Those were all factors. We saw 40-year high inflation, and it was just months after the congressional Democrats and President Biden, on party-line votes, passed the American Rescue Plan. It wasn't much of a rescue. We saw 17-plus percent inflation, and that varied among different types of goods and services, but it was insane. The American people bore the entire brunt of that.

To tame this inflation, how you do this, the Fed goes through their process. They raise interest rates. That is a significant factor in how you tame inflation. However, the other piece that was not coincidental, Republicans took back control of the House of Representatives. With that, we were able to clamp down on President Biden's massive spending initiatives, from the Inflation Reduction Act to the American Rescue Plan. Those were two of the largest that went fully on party- line votes.

In addition were all the other things that were in the works and needed to be addressed. Some even earned bipartisan support, but the $5 trillion--we were talking about over $5 trillion of new spending-- directly goes to massive inflationary pressure. Republicans clamped all of that down.

Then we went through the process of the Fiscal Responsibility Act. Last June, Speaker McCarthy negotiated a way to take a look at our appropriations process, among many other things, like permitting reform and other things that were very positive out of that bill and actually find a way to do what has not been done in my time here for sure, but probably within the last decade when you could take a look at our appropriations process and say, look, let's continue to support defense and veterans, and let's find wasteful spending in the other 10 or so bills that go through the appropriations process.

We did part of that today where we were actually able to break that trend of maintaining parity between those two things. That has been something that has been important to my Democratic colleagues: If we are going to support defense and veterans, you need to also make sure that you support all these other bills.

We were able to break that parity between the two and find real wasteful spending that was going on, and we came together. We came together today in an overwhelmingly positive vote to finish a portion of the appropriations process and find more wasteful spending. We are going to put that on a lower trajectory.

With House Republicans being in the majority, our plan is to clamp down on the massive spending proposals that you saw from President Biden in his first term; and then as a secondary approach, we are going to take the normal things that we do back here, the things that are a part of the standard of what we do need to accomplish with an annual budget and find areas of waste, and we have been able to successfully do that.

I love being a part of that. I came back here, like I mentioned, to deal with our growing debt and our deficit, find wasteful spending and create policies that don't do what happened in 2021 and 2022. President Biden took over with inflation in the range of less than 2 percent, and it climbed more rapid than anything. We are still feeling the struggles with that. Homeowners who are trying to purchase a home are paying mortgage rates that they shouldn't have to be paying that are so incredibly high. That was the reaction to that massive inflation, and that comes directly from Washington and from bad policy.

House Republicans effectively forced President Biden to recognize it and kind of put that on hold. We did our part with respect to inflation by controlling the monetary supply. You have to raise interest rates and you have to control the monetary supply because massive government spending always leads to inflation. Every economist will agree on that. They don't usually agree on much. Our job the last year and change has been to be able to show the American people how we are being responsible on a fiscal footing.

Some other ways the Republicans are working to lower costs for families and taxpayers include fighting back against President Biden's student loan agenda. The administration has attempted to circumvent the rule of law and leave hardworking Americans who didn't go to college with a $559 billion bill to cover these unpaid student loans. In December, House Republicans passed legislation that would put a stop to this reckless and unfair proposal.

House Republicans have also led the charge on a progrowth tax policy.

Before I get into that, I get this question a lot when I go and do townhalls back home, and I love to be able to engage on this concept of student loans. For the most part, particularly in Utah, people are categorically frustrated with President Biden just forgiving loans years after the fact. That approach was deemed unconstitutional. Then he has taken another angle, and he keeps trying to do this.

My opinion on this--and I believe it would be strongly backed by good research and data--is that if the government is just going to forgive loans, A, you obviously have more of a deficit issue because those loans have been given out in a government-spending approach knowing that some of that would ultimately come back with whatever interest is charged on those things.

If we just forgive that, there is obviously a deficit issue there, but if you forgive that, another aspect is we are creating a culture, and it is going to teach my children that there are no consequences. It is like: You will be fine. At some point this will be forgiven, and you don't necessarily have to plan and be productive with this. I think that resonates with most people, particularly back in my home State.

The third piece is something that I get into a lot with a lot of folks that they are not necessarily thinking of. The fundamental problem with what is going on with all of our entire student loans, student tuition universe is that tuition costs are rising so fast that students are having a tough time getting out ahead of it.

If we, as a Federal Government, signal to those institutions, those educational institutions, hey, you know, we know you have been raising your rates a lot, but we are also just going to start forgiving a lot of this stuff, do you think that puts pressure on those institutions to actually keep their costs under control, to constrain what they are doing?

No. They are feeling that they can actually continue to raise rates as well because people are going to be more inclined to just borrow more.

Folks, that is a recipe for disaster. It is a bad cultural aspect, but it does not communicate to the institutions. I love representing the universities that I do back in Utah. I know my colleagues are so sick and tired of me talking about how great Utah is, when I hide behind numbers like first in economy and first in volunteerism, and all these amazing things that we are first in--I am getting some looks here right now--but they deep down know how amazing Utah is.

My intent on this is not just completely boastful--that is part of it--but to just highlight the fact that universities across the State of Utah are heavily focused on ROI. You can go and speak to their administration and hear about what they are doing: dynamic credentialing, a dual-mission program.

Before I sound so ruthless by saying we shouldn't forgive loans, the State legislature in Utah--a very strongly conservative State legislature--has provided an opportunity for juniors and seniors in high school to have free tuition at tech centers so they can go learn to be an EMT or a welder. They can go learn to have a skill or trade, a computer science degree, work in audiovisual. They can take that and if they want to create a career out of it, being an apprentice electrician, a plumber, they have an opportunity to go and start building their career. If they take that and start doing that work, they are actually going off to a 4-year degree where they are working at a higher-paying job keeping their tuition down. All of our universities are focused on ROI. It is not out of just sheer, oh, I just don't like President Biden's tuition plan. It is not going to accomplish what it needs to accomplish.

I just want to continue to highlight these specific economic factors that we have enough information and data to prove: This is why inflation is caused, and this is how you get out of it. It is painful to get out of it, but I really do appreciate being part of the House Republican Conference that is controlling the monetary supply, limiting government spending, and signaling to the markets that we are trying to do something about this debt and deficit.

We are going to use the debt ceiling opportunity to say, look, in order for us to increase the debt limit, we are going to have to make changes, and we have got to actually implement some of that today. It has been an awesome thing.

I am happy to share all of this as much as I can. I will continue to do so, but we have the opportunity now to hear from the great State of Pennsylvania, Dr. Joyce will share his message. I appreciate his constant involvement in making sure that we can use this opportunity and floor speeches to communicate not only to his constituents but to those who are paying attention and willing to hear us out. We have so many things we want to be covering.

I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Joyce).

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MOORE of Utah. I thank the good doctor from Pennsylvania. Now to another Western State, which we have established is so important to our Nation, all the factors that we provide to those East Coast elitists and everything east of the Mississippi.

I welcome the gentleman from California to share his message this evening. In tomorrow's state of the Union, we will hear from our President. We need to hear this message. Again, we will compare and contrast. We will find unity on certain things, but it is incredibly important for us as House Republicans to highlight the concerns that we have, which are many.

I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. LaMalfa).

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MOORE of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California, and I think he summed up every State of the Union that has ever existed quite well.

There will be areas and opportunities of unity and things that we can be focused on together. I am hopeful that we can use this as a case to talk about the real issues that we are having and the fundamental problems but also solutions.

We know them. We can talk energy policy. We can talk immigration policy. We can talk economic policy. I can do that all day long.

I will wrap up here as to not belabor it but to just point out: Rise above it, President Biden. Rise above it. Look back to the previous administration's policies with things regarding the remain in Mexico policy, the Migrant Protection Protocols.

It is a simple concept. You cannot just say Mexico won't do it. President Trump and Vice President Pence forced the issue with our Mexican neighbors, and they got them to agree this was good for both countries. Whatever limits cartel activity is good for both nations.

Don't hide behind the fact that there is a partnership with Mexico, and you can't do it because of that. It is simple data that shows we can be effective, create these relationships, and improve our situation at the border dramatically with just that one change.

That is just one of many different types of executive actions that you can take. We have already passed it. You can't say we are not willing to legislate on this issue because we have already passed it. The Senate refuses to take it up. The House passed it. The Senate refuses to take it up.

Take some action, President Biden. Talk to your Senators and to Senate Leader Schumer and convince them that there are opportunities there. There are things we can do to reverse some of your bad policies.

Don't just look at the previous administration and say, all right, I have to do everything different from them, and then all of a sudden, it leads to these catastrophic events.

Take a look at data, see what works, and implement it. It is as simple as that. It is what the American people recognize, and we have to be willing to follow it.

I highlighted a lot of things about economic policy, from inflation to everything. Those are things that affect every single American. If we just focused on energy policy, economic policy, and immigration policy, we could really make an improvement for Americans across this great Nation and set ourselves up for success.

I hope I will be able to hear some of that. I am not hopeful that we will hear productive solutions. There might be plenty of rhetoric spewed, but we have to be able to find a way to get those three things that matter most and that affect my constituents and those from every single district across the Nation the most.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source