Speaker 1 (00:00):
… overreach in our school and other institutions and much more. We have a unprecedented opportunity here to juxtapose 2017 versus 2021 when Republicans had the control of the three, Democrats had control of the three, and you get a chance to look and see what took place. And I'll just kind of simplify it into something and finish my remarks.
(00:21)
In 2017, Republican leadership invested in the American worker and the American family. In 2021, Democrat leadership invested in the bureaucratic structure of this country. There is only one that produced massive amounts of inflation for our country, and we know that took place shortly after President Biden took office. We have a tiny majority, but we won that majority hard fought for 2022. And with that, we have worked to accomplish all the things that I just listed. We've held the Biden administration accountable and made our case for why unified Republican leadership is the best path forward in righting these wrongs.
(00:59)
It's been an honor to be a part of these historic efforts, and I joined the leadership team up here in saying that we can't wait to hit the ground running for the 119th Congress with the united House, Senate, and President Trump in the White House. We will make a big impact on how Washington works and how each… For each and every American. Our conservative and productive agenda will create more jobs, keep more money in Americans' pockets, secure our borders, lower crime, make government more efficient and cost-effective, and support families and much, much more. The interest of the American people will be at the heart of everything we accomplish the next year and we can't wait to get started. And with that, I turn over to our whip, Mr. Emmer.
Mr. Emmer (01:34):
Thanks, Blake.
(01:37)
The end of this Congress marks a turning point in history. In this election cycle, Americans overwhelmingly rejected a Democrat party that puts illegal immigrants over American citizens, a commander-in-chief who doesn't know which way is up, a vice president who thought she could awkwardly laugh off her role in breaking everything from the economy to the border, and a Senate majority leader who allowed house Republicans historic common-sense legislation to collect dust on his desk. Americans chose a new era.
(02:15)
Our 47th President, Donald J. Trump, will make his triumphant return to the White House in 34 days and he's ushering in a new golden age of America. Under President Trump's leadership, our Republican trifecta will hit the ground running on day one to undo the damage Democrats have done by securing the border, fixing the economy, unleashing American energy, and extending the Trump tax cuts. We will also work with President Trump's outstanding cabinet picks to deliver on our America First agenda. These guys will shake up the status quo here in Washington, which is exactly what Americans voted for and what they want. I must confess, I'm looking forward to a cold Christmas in Minnesota, but I think I can speak for everyone on this leadership team when I say we also can't wait to come back here in January to get the job done. And with that, I turn it over to our majority leader, Steve Scalise.
Steve Scalise (03:17):
Thank you, Whip. And for the gentleman from Minnesota, I know the cold weather, it can't be cold enough. It's probably warm for you right now. I want to open up by wishing you all a Merry Christmas and we have a lot to do the rest of this week, but we all look forward to getting back home to our families and enjoying a great Christmas as we get ready for what will be a very busy and productive new year, and a really important new year for the American people as we turn the page from the last four years of this disaster that's been the Biden-Harris administration.
(03:52)
As we finish up the important things that we have to do this year this week, and I know the speaker's going to talk more about the CR, getting government funded, making sure we take care of disasters and our farmers here in America, and the important work that will be done this week, I think it's important to look back, as Blake did as well, on this last two years since we took the majority. This Republican majority has been focused on fighting for those hardworking families who are struggling under the weight of the failures of the Biden-Harris administration. We started off by saying, "We're going to promote energy security again." If you look at what the Biden-Harris administration has done, waging an all-out war and an attack on American energy, that has driven up costs on families, that has been one of the indicators that's led to high inflation.
(04:43)
Their runaway spending and their anti-American energy policies under President Biden and Vice President Harris has been the precipice that has driven a lot of this inflation. When you go to the grocery store, when you go to the pump, that has been devastating for families. We laid out a better way. We passed a bill, H.R.1, to show the country how we can produce more energy in America, how we can lower costs. Not just at the pump and when they're paying their electricity bill, but also when they go to the grocery store and so many other things that they buy.
(05:15)
The border crisis is something that we've highlighted for four years now. We've called on President Biden to fix the mess that he created, but he refused to do that. So we said, well show the country how you could actually secure America's border when we came together and passed H.R.2, the strongest border security bill this country's ever seen. And we worked very closely with President Trump as he talked during the campaign about this issue and let the American people know crystal clear that if he comes back into the White House as President of the United States, he will secure America's border, and Kamala Harris made it clear she wouldn't, as she said on The View, "Wouldn't change a thing from the Biden…"
(05:59)
So if we do get the House, Senate, and White House in January, which we now have, this mandate from the American people, that we will have already started the process to show the country how we can get it done so that we can start moving in January to address these problems. And in fact, we didn't wait until the election to start addressing these problems, we have for months and months, and over a year and a half really, put that work in so that we'll be ready to go to work day one in January for the American people, to address these problems that has been plaguing them, that were created by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, that will be fixed when Donald Trump becomes president with a Republican House and Senate. And again, as I wish you, Merry Christmas, the leader of the house today, and in the majority by the narrowest of margins in January, but it doesn't matter, having the majority is what's important, is our Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson.
Mike Johnson (06:59):
Thank you, Mr. Leader. Good morning, Merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah. This is a good time to be an American. And I want to tell you that we've been watching with great excitement what's happening. It's 34 days until President Trump takes the oath of office, but he's already begun the power of the Trump effect. And you see what's happening at Mar-a-Lago. There's more activity there than there is on Pennsylvania Avenue because people around the world recognize that a new sheriff is in town, a leader is back. And yesterday he announced that SoftBank will be investing $100 billion over the next four years and creating 100,000 new American jobs. That's just one more piece of good news of much more to come. America is already on its way to becoming great once again, and that's just because of the change of leadership.
(07:45)
So we're excited for President Trump's second term. You've heard a little bit about that this morning. It officially begins in January, of course. And he has an incredible team around him. I've been visiting with the various cabinet appointees, nominees. Looking forward to meeting with Kash Patel and David Sacks this week and have been talking with all of them along the way. I think they're all on a path for confirmation and that's an exciting thing. An important principle for us to maintain around here, the president gets to choose his team, and we're excited for that to be resolved in the early part of next year.
(08:21)
But as we near the end of this year, I just want to say… Just stop and say a word of thanks to the leadership team here. These friends have done a great job in helping us to lead the conference over the last year and… Last two years. Helping me for the last year-plus as the Speaker, and Leader Scalise and Whip Emmer and Elise Stefanik, who's our conference chair, who she will soon be serving the Trump administration and a new capacity, our vice chairman, Blake Moore, who's stepped in to fill the void here, an extraordinary team. They've done a great job and I want to thank them for that.
(08:51)
And despite all the challenges we had, we were able to secure key wins in this Congress. You heard Blake and Steve recount some of that beginning with H.R.1, the energy policy that we advanced, and H.R.2 on the border. We held this disastrous administration accountable. We impeached Secretary Mayorkas. We held Merrick Garland in contempt of court. We fought to secure the border. We passed, as I noted, H.R.2, the strongest border security legislation in history and the legislation to stop taxpayer funds from going to sanctuary cities, and to deport illegals who've been arrested for committing crimes like violence against women and DUIs and social security fraud and fleeing law enforcement. We did that. We advanced that legislation.
(09:33)
We exposed Democrats support for non-citizen voting, and we passed legislation that would ensure that only Americans vote in American elections. I think the attention that was paid to that had a big deterring effect in the election cycle. I think we put people on notice that that's a violation of the law on a serious offense, and we have to get that legislation codified in the year ahead. We launched a House-wide investigation into anti-Semitism on college campuses to protect our Jewish students and hold administrators who sympathize with pro-terrorist students accountable. We passed legislation to counter our adversaries since the Biden administration refused to. We passed a CR to overturn the Biden-Harris administration's radical rewrite of Title IX that allows men to compete in women's sports. We cut funding for military DEI programs and eliminated the DEI Office within Congress. We made sure that taxpayers are not going to fund transgender procedures for the children of military families. So much more. We know that we're just getting started and there is so much ahead of us.
(10:32)
We are excited about beginning the new Congress in January. We're eager for what's ahead. We have a lot to do. As we've said on the campaign trail all year and I said in this room many times, we have to fix everything, and that begins early in January. Let me talk briefly about the funding of the government. The CR is coming together. Bipartisan work is ongoing. We're almost there. We've worked really hard to achieve consensus on a bill that responsibly funds the government into March of next year. It'll go to March 14, and that date was chosen because it coincides with the calendars of the House and Senate and it makes sense for us to get the appropriations done. But our aim is to do it early in the year, not wait until March, and all the appropriators and the people on the committees of jurisdiction are already working to do that.
(11:18)
We've been working around the clock to get the CR done. It was intended to be, and it was until recent days, a very simple, very clean CR, a stopgap funding measure to get us into next year when we have unified government under the Republican Party. But a couple of intervening things have occurred. We had, as we say, as we described them, acts of God. We had these massive hurricanes, as you know, in the late fall, Helene and Milton and other disasters. We have to make sure that the Americans that were devastated by these hurricanes get the relief they need. So we are adding to this a disaster relief package and that's critically important.
(11:55)
Also important is the devastation that is being faced by our farming community. The agriculture sector has really struggled. They've had effectively three loss years and commodity prices are a bit of a mess, and you've got input costs that are skyrocketed because of Bidenomics. You put all those factors together, droughts and all the other conditions, and you have a lot of small family farms and ranches and people who supply the food for the country in dire straits right now. And so Congress recognizes that need, and so we've had to add a little bit to that as well.
(12:29)
So what would have been a very skinny, very simple, clean CR, these other pieces have been added to it and a couple of things that are related to all that. But I'm not going to get into much more detail because it's almost done, but we do expect text today and we are going to try… Let me answer your question in advance. I believe in the 72-hour rule. I've said that to all the House Republicans this morning. I believe we ought to try to pass this on a rule to go through regular process. We're committed to all of that. We're going to take care of these obligations and get this done and then we're going to go to work in unified government in the 119th Congress that begins in January.
(13:06)
Last thing I'll note today, we'll be voting on the Midnight Rules Relief Act, and we all believe in the separation of powers and that it's wrong for the executive branch to circumvent Congress's role as the lawmaker under Article I. So with this bill, we're going to make it easier for Congress to flex that Article I muscle, review the litany of regulations that presidents like to issue at the end of their term. House Republicans are reigning in executive overreach, and I hope this is a bipartisan effort. It should be because it's about maintaining our role as the legislative branch, the first article of the Constitution. With that, I'll take a few questions. Jeff?
Jeff (13:40):
Speaker Johnson. Good morning. Thank you. You said back in September there would be no more Christmas omnibuses. We're not doing any omnibuses. I know what you said had to be added onto this bill. But how is this not yet another Christmas tree at the holidays?
Mike Johnson (13:54):
Yeah. Well, it's not. It's not a Christmas tree. It's not an omni.
Jeff (13:57):
[inaudible 00:13:57] downstairs saying that they called this a cram down, they said it was garbage. I mean, those are your own numbers-
Mike Johnson (14:02):
Well, they haven't even seen it yet. Well, I've got a couple of friends who will just say that about any end-of-year funding measure. This is not an omnibus, okay? This is a small CR that we've had to add things to that were out of our control. These are not man-made disasters, these are things that the federal government has an appropriate role to do. So I wish it weren't necessary. I wish we hadn't had record hurricanes in the fall and I wish our farmers were not in a bind so much that creditors are not able to lend to them anymore. We have to be able to help those who are in these dire straits, and that's what the volume of the pages to this is. So it is not an omnibus, this is a CR. Again, we're not doing all the [inaudible 00:14:43] bills, we're doing a CR to patch us into the first quarter of next year so that we can put our fingerprints on what those final spending bills are and we're looking forward doing that.
Speaker 6 (14:51):
Speaker Johnson?
Mike Johnson (14:51):
Yes, sir. Front row.
Speaker 6 (14:54):
Can you give us a sense of how robust the help is for farmers? The American Farm Bureau says without a five-year farm bill, without significant economic assistance, many farmers will go out of business. They won't be able to secure operating loans from lenders and they need some kind of sustenance. In fact, the president of the American Farm Bureau put a figure on it. He said… I asked him what would be satisfactory, he said, "$15 to $20 billion. 30 billion, realistically, but that's out of the question. So somewhere between 15 and 20."
Mike Johnson (15:28):
Yeah. We carefully assessed it. We can't do all of it right now, but I think what you'll see reflected in this final package is 10 billion, okay? To start that. In addition to that, the USDA moved some things around and they've added 2 billion for specialty crops that they announced in late November. So help is on the way. And I've talked in the last 24, 48 hours to a number of the leaders in the [inaudible 00:15:52] community who say they are greatly relieved by that. They understand it's not everything, but it is something to bridge that gap and allow the lenders and the creditors to help those who are preparing to put the crops… Plant the crops in the spring.
(16:05)
The timeline, the sequence of events, is important, and we think we're giving them a big boost of relief at exactly the right time, in the nick of time, frankly. So there's always more to do. There's always more to do. But I think this is an important step for Congress. I think the people involved understand that. And it sends a signal to lenders and creditors that Congress will not abandon our food producers.
(16:25)
Here's the thing, if you have small family farms and ranches that go out of business, or they can't make it one more year and they can't get a loan to do it, they're gone. The kids move to the cities and there is no more family farm. You might've noticed nobody, very few people start family farms. These are third, fourth, sometimes fifth generation operations. You have to have them. You have to have diversification in the food supply. You have to have producers so that we have fruits and vegetables and nuts and all the things that we need that farmers and ranchers provide to America. We cannot rely on other countries for our food supply. The food supply is directly related to national security. So all these things are being factored in, Congress is doing the very best it can under difficult circumstances, and I think that'll be a big boost to the industry. Let me go… Yep.
Speaker 7 (17:06):
Last question.
Speaker 8 (17:07):
First of all, are you confident that you can get a majority of your own conference to back the CR? And if not, are you worried that could crater some of the support for the Speaker vote in January?
Mike Johnson (17:17):
No, I'm not… Look, I'm not worried about the Speaker vote. We're governing… Everybody knows we have difficult circumstances. We're doing the very best we can out of those circumstances. With regard to the vote, yeah, I certainly hope and am working towards the majority of our group. One of the things I think that could be a factor in that is if we're able to push this forward through a rule, which I prefer, and allow for a pay-for for a lot of this, then I think that is something that's important to a lot of our members.
(17:43)
Look, we also recognize that in the midst of providing the aid and doing the things that the federal government is responsible for doing, we also have a large national debt. We're excited about the opportunity next year of having the DOGE effort underway and for going in and authorizing programs again instead of just appropriating, and getting back to the basic functions of government so that we can reduce not only the size and scope of government, but the size and scope of the national debt as well. So all these are competing interests, all of them are balanced together. These are the hard choices that lawmakers have to make. But we will get the job done, as we always do. We will keep moving forward, and in January we have a new lease on all this. So we're excited about that. Looking forward to that opportunity.
(18:23)
Again, Merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, to all of you. I hope we don't see you here again before the end of the year. All right, thanks so much.
Speaker 9 (18:30):
Can you one more, sir, about your conversation with President-elect Trump over the weekend, sir?
Mike Johnson (18:33):
No, I won't talk about that.