Adopting the Rules of the House of Representatives for the 118th Congress

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to support the Republican rules package and our return to common sense in the people's House.

I want to point out a few line items in the rules package for particular praise.

This bill returns to the historical norm of in-person meetings and in-person votes. No more proxy voting or remote committee hearings. Let's do the work in the people's House.

This bill returns to the Holman rule. If ever there was a time for this House to stop paying the salaries of bad bureaucrats, it is now. Tony Fauci deserves that step.

I think knowing this rules package was coming is one of the reasons why he has now mercifully left government service. The power to fire unelectable bureaucrats who abuse their power is a central reason to support this package.

In the past the 3-day rule has been abused--bills being dropped in the dead of night to be voted on 2 mornings later is just wrong. Moving to a true 72-hour rule will end that abusive practice.

Eliminating the Gephardt rule to ensure that this House has a true debate over whether or not to raise the debt limit is a move in the right direction for fiscal sanity in the people's House, and so is the three-fifths majority requirement to raise taxes.

I thank my fellow Freedom Caucus members and my friends in House leadership for making these necessary changes to the House rules package, and I ask my colleagues to pass this package.

Now, since Ranking Member McGovern mentioned the IRS bill coming up, let me just point out that we need to rescind that.

Mr. Speaker, do you know what 87,000 IRS agents equates to?

It equates to 200 new IRS agents in every congressional district in this country. That is 1,740 new IRS agents in every State for one purpose: to go after small businesses and hardworking Americans to try to raise money to pay for reckless spending--reckless spending that has cost $31 trillion in debt in this Nation.

This is the right thing to do.

I tell you what, Mr. Speaker, we could repurpose those agents to the southern border, or we could repurpose them and let them build the Keystone XL pipeline.

There were an estimated 61,000 lost jobs with the Keystone XL pipeline when the Biden administration canceled that project. But yet we turn around, and the government hires 87,000 new IRS agents to go after your constituents and mine, Mr. Speaker.

I mentioned earlier the number. Look it up.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source