Press Releases

WASHINGTON, September 28, 2021 — House Republican Conference Vice Chairman Mike Johnson (LA-04) today delivered the following remarks at the weekly House Republicans press conference. The Congressman joined Republican Whip Steve Scalise (LA), Budget Committee Ranking Member Jason Smith (MO), Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Kay Granger (TX), and Representative Beth Van Duyne (TX). 

Read the Congressman’s remarks as delivered below:

“Thank you all for joining us today. I'm Mike Johnson, the Vice Chairman of the House Republican Conference and I'll kick things off.

“Folks, our country should be on the rebound right now. When they took office, President Biden and House Democrats inherited a turning tide, an economy rebounding from the pandemic and a country that was eager to unite.

“Today, however, it's a very different thing. It's difficult to imagine how much worse they could have botched our country's recovery. During what should have been a time of hope, optimism and recovery, our country instead faces a multitude of crises.

“We've got an economic stagnation problem at home, we have a raging border crisis close to home, and of course, now we have foreign policy crises around the globe.

“In the face of all this, the Democrats in this House are doing everything they possibly can to push through a $5.5 trillion spending package. It would be higher taxes and higher spending spread over two bills that are linked together by the House Democrats.

“The first is called an infrastructure bill, but it's not that at all. It's a spending bill. And only a fraction of the spending would actually go to things that regular, everyday Americans and all of us regard as infrastructure. Negotiators assured us the bill would be paid for, but it's not. They insisted it would not raise taxes, but it obviously does.

“Nowhere in the legislation are there any regulatory, permitting, labor or energy policy reforms that would streamline the broken bureaucratic processes that kill infrastructure projects. Remember, this bill is all spending and no reform.

“Most concerning of all, we were told that passage of this bill would satisfy the spending appetite of enough Democrats to impede passage of their separate $4.3 trillion party line spending bill, but it will not. We know this is true because all 50 Democrats in the Senate, including Bernie Sanders, still voted for it. And House Democrats are fighting about whether to consider either the $1.2 trillion spending bill or the $4.3 trillion spending bill in the absence of the other. Almost no one believes that's possible.

“House Republicans would have supported a standalone bill that was paid for and actually targeted to our nation's infrastructure needs. But we cannot support legislation that does more to pave the way for reckless Biden-Schumer-Pelosi tax and spend agenda than it does to pave our roads.

“The second bill, well, the Democrats still don't know what they want. It could include mass amnesty, it could include taxes on prescription drugs, or a carbon tax, or any number of other terrible provisions. The one thing they do know is that they want to spend $4.3 trillion of taxpayer funds at a time when our national debt is about to exceed $29 trillion.

“Democrats have a mere three seat majority in the House. There's a 50-50 deadlock in the Senate. Does any objective person think their mandate is to ram through the most partisan, most expensive legislative package in the history of this country using the slimmest majority possible, and before they even tell the American people what's in it? We say ‘no way.’

“If they hadn't just voted to legalize abortion up until the moment of birth, I'd say this is the most ridiculous thing we've ever seen.

“The American people do not want this, and House Republicans are going to do everything we can to make sure this charade is stopped.”

Congressman Johnson is the Vice Chairman of the House Republican Conference, a member of the House Judiciary and Armed Services Committees, and a former constitutional law litigator.

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