During a House Ways And Means Committee hearing on Saturday, Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY) called New York City Democratic Mayoral Nominee Zohran Mamdani a "marxist antisemite."
00:00In addition to the ruination of family businesses.
00:04Thank you, Mr. Kessler. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'll yield back.
00:06Ms. Tinney.
00:08Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you so much to the witnesses,
00:11and I really just want to thank the Reagan Library as well for hosting us.
00:17Mr. Moore might be the Reagan generation child,
00:21but I was so excited to vote for my very first presidential election for Ronald Reagan in 1980,
00:26and he's always been a particular idol of mine and also of my family,
00:31and I really think it's important to highlight,
00:35and I know everybody's been quoting Reagan, but there's so many wonderful quotes.
00:39The one I really meant the most to me, especially being a child of the 70s and 80s,
00:44is freedom is never more than one generation from extinction,
00:48and that's a great Reagan quote about freedom,
00:50and I think that's the contrast that you're going to see here on the dais,
00:53is the vision that we have of Reagan and see of Reagan with the hope of the American people
01:00and, yes, of immigrants coming here.
01:02And I think of my dad, who was a poor guy from New Jersey,
01:06whose parents came to the United States as immigrants,
01:10who found his way, paid his way through college and law school,
01:12and became a Supreme Court justice in the state of New York.
01:15And one of his most absolute favorite things to do as a Supreme Court justice in the state of New York
01:21was to attend and preside over naturalization ceremonies for new immigrants coming to this country legally
01:29who revered freedom, who loved the mission of our founders so beautifully reflected by Ronald Reagan
01:35and everything we read about in this room, standing up to the communism and the Marxism of the Soviet Union
01:43and tearing down the wall, so many important things that Ronald Reagan stood for.
01:47And yet I come from the state of New York with the highest Medicaid, the highest taxes.
01:51Now I think Hawaii might be a little higher, and yes, all you Californians,
01:55we actually pay more taxes in the state of New York than you do, and we have half your population.
01:59We also spend more on Medicaid than you do by higher percentages than the population.
02:05We have more people who are ineligible, 8 million people on Medicaid in New York,
02:09and only 5 million actually meet federal eligibility standards.
02:12We just want to see Medicaid realigned and strengthened for the people who are truly needy,
02:18and people in my communities, and that's what we're doing,
02:20because Medicaid isn't actually being cut, it's actually being increased by 20%.
02:25That's an increase, and only in Washington, D.C. would an increase be considered a cut.
02:30So these are really important principles coming from my state compared with, say, California,
02:35and the reflections of Ronald Reagan and what he saw for individual prosperity
02:40and empowering individuals and bringing them here to this country.
02:44And as a small business owner, this bill is really important to me.
02:4895% of the people in my district in rural upstate New York, mostly farming communities, small manufacturing,
02:54go to work in a small business, not a big, giant company.
02:59Most people are going to get a lot of the benefits from this.
03:02Probably almost, probably 95% are going to get benefited from this bill.
03:07And it's just really important to note that we care about immigration and legal immigration
03:12and making sure that we have people that want to come here and work and pay into our system.
03:19And I just wanted to actually point out a couple of things quickly,
03:23because a lot of people touched on things.
03:24But one thing I wanted, Mr. Timmons, maybe you could comment on this.
03:28And all of you have done a beautiful job today explaining your points.
03:32One of the most important things about this bill is, if you've talked about the one big, beautiful bill,
03:36full expensing, child care, tax incentives, small businesses, can you comment on those benefits, particularly?
03:43I was a single parent who had to go to work and had to rely on child care and many of these things.
03:47These are going to be great for my district in upstate New York and the highest tax residents, by the way, in the nation.
03:54Well, look, we have 400,000 open jobs in our sector.
04:00And anything we can do to incentivize the ability of individuals to enter the workplace, we embrace that.
04:10So the child care deductions are very important to our workers as well.
04:16So I do worry, quite frankly, Congresswoman, that we have a fairly large gap between the number of jobs that are available in all sectors of the economy,
04:33but especially manufacturing, since it's the most productive sector, and the number of workers that we're able to attract.
04:40Now, we're trying to do our job in the manufacturing sector by inspiring the next generation of manufacturing workers,
04:47but we appreciate the work that you're doing.
04:50And just as an aside, on the subject of legal immigration, the NIM has a proposal called A Way Forward
04:58that would help repair the system that's in place right now,
05:06and we hope we can work with Congress to enact that proposal, because we believe, too,
05:10that immigration is absolutely vital to the lifeblood of this country.
05:15I agree 100 percent.
05:16Legal immigration is going to be so important to building the economy of the future,
05:20and we believe in that as well.
05:22And I think that's the way to go, not illegal immigration, not empowering cartels.
05:27I have the northern border of New York in my district where 90 percent of the people on the foreign terror watch list
05:33are coming across our northern border to take advantage of the lax laws in New York state
05:37and to take advantage of New York City, where they can live freely in a sanctuary city.
05:43Now, under duress from an actual Marxist anti-Semite who is leading the Democratic Party
05:50for the mayor of the city of New York in the largest city in our nation,
05:55the driving economy in our nation.
05:57And now here we are in the Reagan Library, and a Marxist anti-Semite is leading the charge
06:02in our nation's largest city, in one of the most important cities in our nation.
