Leader McCarthy Delivers Remarks After Meeting With President Biden

Statement

On Infrastructure:

"[Infrastructure] is one place where I think we can find bipartisanship and it's one thing I brought up to the President. We have to start with the definition of infrastructure…

"That's roads, bridge highways, airports, broadband -- those are the places we can find common ground and work together.

"The other thing I think America wants to know is that you're not going to wait a decade to build it. I brought up to the President that we need NEPA reform… We need to streamline, not wait 10 years. If we want to be competitive, we need to have things built now…

"I think there's an opportunity for us to work together on infrastructure. Now, let me preface that. We're not interested in anything including tax increases, and it's got to [deal with actual] infrastructure… and we need to make reforms so we can actually build the roads -- not decades away."

On the Economy:

"I also took the opportunity to talk to the President about my concerns about the rise in inflation, especially the numbers that we see today… We are incentivizing people not to work in America.

"We need to get people back to school, back to health, and back to normal…

"And the idea that spending trillions of dollars into this economy when you have supply restraint is actually the reverse of what you want to do to… make sure we don't have the inflation go up…

"When you watch inflation, your gas is going up -- remember gas prices today, national gas prices, have not been this high since President Biden was Vice President. You're watching food costs go up, housing costs go up, lumber costs. There is inflation everywhere, so raising taxes is the biggest mistake you could make.

"Remember the economy we had when we lowered taxes: 3.5% unemployment rate, everyone had opportunities, regardless of where you were in America."

On the Border Crisis:

"I also raised the concern along the border, having traveled there a few times, of what I'm seeing there… Those are places we can work together and should work together."

On Israel:

"I'm [also] very concerned about what's happening in Israel, and we did touch on that at the beginning. The President brought that up. I commended the President for his comments yesterday about Israel's [right] to defend themselves, and they should [have that right]."

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