Scalise: Reforms We Can All Support
Press Release
Tonight, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise joined House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), House Financial Services Committee Chairman Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), Congressman Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.) and House Republicans to express his support of H.R. 3746, the Fiscal Responsibility Act, which establishes basic reforms, such as work requirements and streamlined permitting processes, to reinvigorate America's economy and combat the Biden Administration's tax-and-spend agenda.
Click here or the image above to view Leader Scalise's remarks.
Leader Scalise's remarks:
"Look, there has been a lot of hard work and a lot of late nights that have gone into changing the spending trajectory in this town that has brought us to this point. We've got over 31 trillion dollars in debt, and tonight is no different. You see how late it is. The work's not going to stop for a long time. There's a lot of work that needs to continue to go into fixing all of the problems that President Biden has created.
"You see inflation through the roof. You see the struggles that hardworking families are experiencing because Washington went on a multi-trillion dollar spending binge over the last two years. And [President] Biden didn't want that spending binge to end, but the American people had a different idea when they elected a House Republican majority committed to finally getting spending under control in Washington, and that's what this bill is about.
"You know, something you haven't seen in a long time in this town is that, when a major bill comes to the Floor, we actually give our Members time to read the bill before you vote on it. We have a 72-hour minimum that we allow every Member to read the bill and the more that people read this bill, the more they find in terms of real conservative victories that are going to help us get spending under control and get our economy back on track. And you have to do both. You will never get to a balanced budget unless you do two major things: one is control Washington spending obsession, but also you've got to help get people back to work. You've got to help get the economy moving again, and there are a number of pieces in this bill that never would have existed if [Congresswoman] Pelosi was still Speaker of the House.
"Everybody knows that if we were at this point today, and Republicans were in the minority in the House, all that you would be wondering about is, "How much more spending was Washington going to do over [the] current year? How many more taxes are hardworking families going to have to pay?' Because guess what? [President] Biden wanted more taxes in this package, and Speaker McCarthy insisted not a dime in new taxes would be in this bill or any other bill that comes out of this House majority, and that's made crystal clear in this legislation.
"We restart the student loan paybacks. That's a 60 billion dollar windfall for all those families who actually do pay their bills; for those families that didn't go to college; or especially for those families who went to college and took out student loans and pay them back, and think it's fair that everyone else has to do the same thing they did. And it wouldn't be fair, if some hard working, single mom working two jobs right now has to pay so that somebody who took out a student loan -- and is sitting at his parents house right now, making 35,000 [dollars] a year not working -- she has to pay his loan back. That wouldn't be fair.
"And you know what else we do? We put work requirements in place -- something we haven't seen in a long time. Something by the way, that was an originated idea back when [President] Biden was a senator and he voted for it. When Bill Clinton was President working with a Republican majority, something that helped get people out of poverty and back into the workforce, paying interest programs like Social Security that are going bankrupt under [President] Biden's spending binge -- but because people will be working again, that is going to help us shore up Social Security.
"So this bill does all of those things, and more: real spending cuts [and] real reforms. Permitting reforms that allow us to build roads and bridges again. Why should it take 10 years to build a road project where, sometimes, if a group that just wants to kill a project, you can go through all the environmental reviews and there might be five different agencies that are looking at your permit? And as soon as they file lawsuits and block one area, you succeed a year-and-a-half later, and they go file another lawsuit and it's another year-and-a-half. And finally, eventually people just give up and they stop building things in America. Well we create a one-stop-shop in this bill so that you still have to follow all the rules, but it's not gamed. You can't go from agency to agency to try to stop a project. You can only go to one place and there [are] shot-clocks on the federal agencies.
"Anybody who's ever tried to build something in America, if a federal agency asks you for information, they don't just say, "Whenever you get around to doing it, send us the information.' They give you a shot-clock, and if you don't meet that deadline, you're going to get fined, or you're surely not going to get your permit. And yet you give them that information, and you might wait six months or a year longer to hear back from the federal agency. Shouldn't the federal agency have the same shot-clock that you -- the taxpayer -- have? We put that in this bill too.
"So again, there are a lot of really important reforms that are in this package, something that I think everybody has been waiting a long time to see from Washington. Not how much more is Washington going to spend but, for once in a long, long time, Washington is actually going to spend less money next year than it is this year, and that's a reform that all of us can support."
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