00:00Great champion for the Second Amendment and a good friend and Budget Committee
00:03member, Mr. Andrew Clyde.
00:04Gentlemen, second ask for one minute.
00:06Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
00:08My Democrat colleagues have challenged why the deregulation of silencers is in this bill
00:12and why are we removing the $200 tax?
00:15Well, under the law, they are firearms and therefore protected by another law enacted
00:19in 1791 called our Second Amendment of our beloved Constitution.
00:24The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed and neither shall it
00:28be taxed.
00:29Chief Justice John Marshall in 1819 declared that the power to tax includes the power to
00:34destroy.
00:35If you can tax it, then you can destroy it.
00:37You can raise the tax so high that almost no one can afford it and then you really don't
00:41have a right at all.
00:43But the Second Amendment is an unalienable constitutional right, God-given, that governments are required
00:48to protect not to tax.
00:50The Supreme Court in the Heller decision of 2008 declared the Second Amendment to be an
00:54individual constitutional right, further protecting it from taxation, just like the right to tax.
00:59to speak and the right to vote.
01:01This bill simply restores that right from over 90 years of draconian tax.
01:05My Democrat colleagues have asked, how did this get in the bill?
01:08What was the deal and who asked for it?
01:10No deal.
01:11I believe the Speaker, with the purest of motives, simply wanted to restore a constitutional
01:15right.
01:16And who asked?
01:17Me.
01:18I asked.
01:19I yield.
01:20Mr. Speaker, perhaps it's because it's now past 4 AM, but I feel like I've entered the
01:25twilight zone.
01:27We have 13.7 million Americans, at least, who are going to lose their health insurance because
01:33of this bill.
01:35Another $500 billion worth of cuts to Medicare on top of that.
01:40And what is one of their last speakers talking about?
01:43A tax cut if you buy silencers.
01:47This is bizarre.
01:49The reality is millions and millions of Americans are going to lose their health coverage all to
01:56help subsidize tax cuts for billionaires, oh yes, and also tax cuts for those who buy gun
02:02silencers.
02:04And with that, I'm happy to yield one minute to the gentleman from New York, distinguished
02:08member of the Agriculture Committee, Mr. Riley.
02:11The gentleman is going to ask for one minute.
