Kevin McCarthy (00:04):
Well, thank you very much. I want to thank the dean, Mr. Calvert, for putting this together, and to my colleagues from California. I'm so very, very proud of you and to my friends for coming. I appreciate the kind words. To the constituents, thank you. Thank you for ever giving me this opportunity to serve you. To America, I loved every single day. Less than 13,000 people have ever been given the privilege or the honor to serve in this body. To those colleagues on the other side of the aisle, I thank you for the work you've done. We may disagree at times. I disagreed with the vote on this one too, but one thing I think we must quite understand, and if there's advice I can give, do not be fearful if you believe your philosophy brings people more freedom. Do not be fearful that you could lose your job over it. (01:11) I knew the day we decided to make sure to choose to pay our troops, while war was breaking out, instead of shutting down, was the right decision. I also knew a few would make a motion, because somehow they disagreed with that decision. Do it anyways. I would do it all again, but there's so much we had been able to accomplish in a short amount of time. I watched on a clip the other day, and they took a short clip of a quote of mine, and I had the privilege of being leader for five years. I think about, did I leave this place better than I received it? I remember coming, sitting where Congressman Calvert was, and it was a State of the Union. The Democrats had won the majority. I had got elected minority leader while another colleague from my state, Nancy Pelosi, got elected speaker. (02:18) I watched the Democrats stand up, and they were very diverse, they looked like America. I watched us stand up. We had lost the majority. I quote and say we looked like one of the most restrictive country clubs in America. I thought, at that moment, I could be the leader of a declining party, or I can focus on what I know, brought me to this party, conceived in liberty, dedicated proposition that we are all equal. I would take that message to places people didn't think they would vote for a Republican, and that California delegation at that time was pretty small. And yes, it was competitive. Having the speaker from California, she would put out that she was going to win a lot more seats in California, but I'm proud to say, in those election cycles, we picked up five more seats in California. (03:15) That's larger than our overall majority. Five more in New York, Oregon, in Arizona. In that same timeframe, the party I love lost in the Senate, both cycles lost the presidency, but we won. The secret? The quality of the candidate. When I looked at Young Kim Michelle Steele, John Duarte, David Valadao, these are unbelievable seats, that that idea wins in. I look at our party today. It doesn't look like it did five years ago. We were winning in places you haven't seen before. When I look to the future, I think it's much brighter. Why? Because the ideas are different. We look at the time I served as speaker, we didn't ignore the border. We actually secured our border with the smallest majority here to govern. Even when we had a large one, we could not do it. (04:20) That came from the subcommittee of the chairman of Tom McClintock, brought people from all sides of the aisle together. When I watched the gas price just skyrocket under the Biden administration, we didn't sit back. We made it our number one priority and passed Energy Independence. The public sits above, but for those four years, they didn't get to. We opened this place back up, because it is the people's house. We created the select committee on China to make sure America be competitive. We put our accountability on the weaponization so the American citizen would be protected. We made the largest cut in American history in this body voted for. Welfare Reform to get people and help them to get back to work. The largest rescissions in American history, where money was appropriated not used. (05:22) But only in Washington, would you let it still be there. As we watched across the country, crime rise, and DC want to go the same way, first time in 30 years, this body stood up. 170 on the other side of the aisle thought you should decriminalize carjacking and others. The president threatened to veto it, but we did it anyways, and we stopped him and it became law. We believe in building things in America, but we watched many times the laws we thought that were passed before to protect us only slowed us and weakened us. For the first time in 40 years, we reformed NEPA. We did all this with the slim majority, but what I'm most proud of is what the future holds. The legacy will be about the ones I see who serve here now, and I know the potential of what they will do. I know the potential of this nation. (06:42) I'm so thankful to be given the opportunity to serve. I will be departing, but that doesn't mean I'll stop serving. Those across this nation should join together to become those citizen legislators. We cannot let this body fail to do the jobs they're so most basic that we should do every day. We should never allow this body to stop for doing what is right. If you come across that question of whether you should do what's right out of fear of losing your job, do it anyways, because it's the right thing to do and this is what the nation requires. I think putting people before politics is always the right answer, and I thank my friends for their kind words. I thank them for their friendship that will not end, and I thank this nation for creating a body that is represented by the people. I think we should rise to the occasion one more time. With that, I yield back. Thank you.