Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and House Republicans sharply criticized Democrats for rising inflation, high energy costs, and alleged fraud in the Affordable Care Act. Meanwhile, Americans are seeing positive economic signs: gas prices have hit a four-year low, grocery costs are easing, and bigger paychecks are coming for military personnel following the passage of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
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NewsTranscript
00:00I didn't bring my box today.
00:19That's terrible.
00:21Well, good morning, everybody.
00:23Hope you all had a good weekend.
00:24Let me be clear and start off with saying that Democrats didn't just cause inflation.
00:32They lit the match, they watched it burn, and then they poured gasoline on the flames.
00:39They buried families under regulations, spent trillions on pet projects, and railed against
00:46American paychecks to appease who?
00:49Their radical base.
00:50And Americans will never forget who did that, because we will continue to remind them.
00:56During four long years of Biden inflation, hardworking families actually did the right thing.
01:04They tightened their belts.
01:05They canceled vacations.
01:08They put groceries back on the conveyor belt.
01:11And they drained their savings just to keep the lights on.
01:14Because Bidenomics sent energy costs skyrocketing.
01:20Under Bidenomics, and in those four years, let me just paint the picture for everybody.
01:25Home heating oil shot up 44%.
01:29Gasoline climbed 48%.
01:33Electricity costs went through the roof, rising 29%.
01:39And abundant American natural gas rose 27%.
01:45Those were under the four years during President Biden.
01:47That economic punishment crushed the American dream for millions of Americans.
01:53But there's actually good news.
01:55Thanks to President Trump and Republicans in Congress, the comeback is underway.
02:01And America loves a good comeback story.
02:05Now, it won't happen overnight.
02:06You don't rebuild a burned-down home in one day.
02:11And after four years of economic arson, there's a lot to clean up.
02:18But House Republicans are here with the fire extinguisher.
02:22We are rebuilding the economy that working families can afford, and so that working families can thrive again.
02:30This week, we're laser-focused on passing legislation that actually lowers costs.
02:37And guess what?
02:38It's already working.
02:39Gas prices are at a four-year low.
02:42Grocery prices are finally coming down.
02:45And wages are actually rising.
02:48And next year, Americans will see bigger paychecks because of the Working Families Tax Cut Acts.
02:54Remember, the Democrats voted, and they wanted to give every single American a pay raise.
03:02Every single American, the Democrats, voted to raise your taxes.
03:08Thank God Republicans voted to not let that happen.
03:13Last week, we cut red tape and peeled back Biden's burdensome regulations, and we're doing it again this week.
03:20This is all part of an agenda to lower costs and increase paychecks for hard-working families.
03:27Real reforms to roll back Washington's overreach and put the power back where it belongs,
03:34with the workers, with the families, and with actually the job creators.
03:39Government in Washington doesn't need more power.
03:43We actually believe that the power lies with the people, unlike the Democrats who want to tell you what to do, when to do it, how to do it.
03:51The Democrats believe they are a better steward of your money than you are.
03:56We don't believe that.
03:57That's why we're putting the power back in your hands.
04:00And what are Democrats doing again?
04:03They're going toâyou think they're going to vote to lower costs?
04:07I don't think so.
04:08I think the Democrats will vote against giving you bigger paychecks.
04:14I think the Democrats will vote against relief for American families.
04:19They're fanning the flames of the crisis that they ignited, right?
04:25So we will continue our work without them.
04:29And watch how they vote, right?
04:30We will continue our work without them.
04:34Because asking Democrats to fix inflation is like asking an arsonist to join the fire department.
04:42This week, we'll vote to lower electricity prices, secure supply chains, and modernize permitting to make energy more affordable again.
04:52Because House Republicans are cleaning up Bidenomics, ending Biden inflation, and restoring an America that is strong and respected again.
05:05We are restoring an America that is affordable and prosperous again for every single hardworking family.
05:13And another piece of important legislation that will be on the floor this week is the NDAA.
05:19And I don't think there's anyone better here to talk about it than Representative Kiggins.
05:25So right now, I yield to Representative Kiggins.
05:30Well, good morning.
05:31I'm Congresswoman Jen Kiggins, and I proudly represent Virginia's 2nd Congressional District.
05:36I'm also a Navy veteran, former helicopter pilot, a Navy spouse, and now a proud Navy mom.
05:41So it's certainly a privilege to be here today to talk about this year's National Defense Authorization Act, which should see a vote on the floor today.
05:49This is over $900 billion of money that we can send to our warfighters and to our military families.
05:55There's a large chunk of that that's dedicated to ships, submarines, aircraft, the actual warfighting resources and tools that we need to just exemplify peace through strength throughout the world.
06:06That part can't be overstated.
06:08We've done so much with this administration just to reprioritize peace through strength.
06:13That's how we keep peace in the world is by being that deterrent, by being that strong fighting force, but also taking care of our military families and our men and women in uniform.
06:21We did so much good work last Congress with the Quality of Life Task Force, and we continued that work into this year's NDAA.
06:28We looked at pay raises.
06:29We gave a 3.8% pay raise to our servicemen and women.
06:33We looked at housing.
06:34We put $1.5 billion back into housing infrastructure improvements.
06:39We know that there's a lot of room for improvement there, and I'm thankful that the Secretary of War has prioritized a task force to specifically look at where we are housing our men and women.
06:47We looked at child care.
06:48We have money specifically dedicated to new child care facilities.
06:52We looked at DOD education.
06:54We're pressing on DoDEA to look at things like no cell phones in schools that are on military installations.
07:00There's a lot of money in there for health care that we want to make sure we're providing good health care for our men and women who serve and their families.
07:06We put other things in there for licensures to make it easy for providers to be able to serve our military community, and we even looked at things that were making it unifying the accession process because we heard a lot of challenges with young people who want to serve that they're being looked at differently for different types of medical history issues.
07:24So we changed those things, a lot of meaningful change.
07:28One of the things I'm most excited about is how we've prioritized our military sea lift command.
07:33In the Navy, you know we don't have as many ships as we probably should, and we're working on that shipbuilding exercise.
07:38But in the meantime, I have my military sea lift command folks who are stepping up, who are civilian partners in providing that peace through strength on the seas.
07:47And we left them out a little bit of the discussion with the quality of life issues, so we included them back this time.
07:53We took out pay caps for military sea lift command pay.
07:56We made sure that our military sea lift command members could shop at the commissaries and exchanges.
08:00We're protecting our commissaries, making sure that they are available and there for our military families.
08:06So a lot of good things to take care of the people who serve, but then also that technology integration piece, the contract awarding, the procurement acquisition reform.
08:15We've done many, many good things to the tune of, again, over $900 billion.
08:19So it's a privilege to have been a part of the team that put that together.
08:23It's a mission.
08:23It's a mission that we all share here in Congress on both sides of the aisle of taking care of our military and making sure we remain the greatest in the world.
08:31Thank you so much.
08:32And with that.
08:35Thank you, Jen.
08:36Fraud, fraud, and more fraud.
08:42It seems like every day there is a new discovery of stolen taxpayer dollars in my home state of Minnesota.
08:50And who is smack dab in the middle of it?
08:53The self-acknowledged liar, incompetent, failed governor, and failed vice presidential candidate Tim Walls.
09:02But with the world now watching, Walls can no longer hide from accountability.
09:08I want to thank President Trump and his all-star administration for pursuing justice for the hardworking taxpayers of my state of Minnesota.
09:18Secretary Noem, Secretary Besson, Secretary Duffy, FBI Director Patel, Administrator Loeffler, Dr. Oz, Stephen Miller, Border Czar, Tom Homan,
09:27and even more in the Trump administration have sounded the alarm and taken action finally.
09:34On behalf of the people of Minnesota, thank you.
09:37In addition to exposing and eliminating rampant waste, fraud, and abuse,
09:41President Trump and House Republicans are delivering on our promise to restore affordability and opportunity for the American people.
09:48With legislation to streamline permitting, unleash American energy, and increase opportunities for Americans to invest in their futures,
09:56we're working to lower costs, support American jobs, and spur business innovation.
10:01In particular, the nonpartisan Invest Act, led by Congresswoman Ann Wagner, is going to cut bureaucratic red tape.
10:09It's going to empower small businesses in this country and entrepreneurs and give Americans more freedom to invest, build wealth, and save for the future.
10:19This will be another great week for America First Wins.
10:24And with that, I yield to our leader.
10:28Thank you, WIPP, and really appreciate the work that the WIPP has done to remind everybody about the fraud that was going on in Minnesota for years.
10:38It's finally getting, I think, more coverage, not as much as it deserves, but alarming, alarming that so much of that was going on right under the nose of Governor Walz
10:49and the brutal waste of taxpayer dollars.
10:54We're going to continue, as President Trump is this week, to focus on affordability and lowering costs.
11:01You saw President Trump go to Pennsylvania yesterday to talk about a number of the things he's been working on in his administration
11:07and working with Congress to lower costs for families, but it's important to remind people what he inherited
11:14and what was going on in this country under the Biden administration for four years when you saw prices skyrocketing,
11:22energy costs skyrocketing, interest rates skyrocketing, and Democrats in Congress never cared about any of that.
11:29They let it happen.
11:31They looked the other way over and over again.
11:33An open, porous southern border that President Trump not only said he would fix as a candidate, but now has fixed as President of the United States.
11:43And when he talks about the things that he's doing to lower inflation, we're finally seeing some relief,
11:50but we're going to continue working to lower costs for families.
11:55And it's something that is not only important to President Trump, it's important to this House majority.
12:01You know, we talked a lot about health care in these last few weeks here at this podium,
12:06but our committees have been working on very serious proposals, all focused on lowering costs for 100% of American families.
12:16While Democrats talk about less than 10% of the American people,
12:22we have been talking about what we can do to lower health premiums for 100% of American families,
12:30while also giving options to people who are trapped in unaffordable care act plans.
12:35Where Democrats want to keep them trapped, we want to give them options.
12:41And so we've been working and meeting with different caucuses within our conference for weeks.
12:47The committee chairs have been talking about the very specific bills.
12:51We've been meeting and getting ideas from a lot of our members who have great passionate ideas on health care.
12:56The Doctors Caucus, doctors who practiced medicine in the private sector and then they came to Congress.
13:03They still have great ideas about how to restore the doctor-patient relationship that Obamacare broke.
13:10So many things about health care that the Affordable Care Act just destroyed, starting with the title of the bill.
13:17Nothing is affordable about the Affordable Care Act.
13:20And Republicans want to fix that.
13:22And so what we did today in our conference just a little while ago has had a really productive discussion
13:30about all those ideas that the committees have been working on, not just ideas, actual bills.
13:37And we are now focused on bringing a number of those bills to the floor next week that we have consensus on.
13:44There are still some areas that we don't have full agreement upon, and we're going to keep working on those.
13:50And we've committed to work on those early into next year, but starting next week,
13:56voting in the House on bills that will focus on lowering premiums for 100 percent of Americans.
14:05Let's see where Democrats stand when it's not just giving money to insurance companies
14:10and propping up failed Obamacare plans, but actually helping 100 percent of Americans have better choices and lower health care premiums.
14:18So we're going to continue bringing bills to the floor that work on fixing problems that Democrats have created
14:25and delivering on the promises we made to the American people.
14:29And our champion, who is our lead person, who is helping unify this very narrow Republican majority,
14:39but very effective Republican majority, is our Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson.
14:46Thank you. Good morning.
14:47Our majority is narrow, but we were happy to add a new member this past week,
14:53and we've administered the oath now to Representative Matt Van Epps of Tennessee.
14:57You're really going to love him. He's a combat veteran and a dedicated husband and father,
15:01a very effective state official from Tennessee, and now he will be representing the folks of Nashville
15:07and 14 counties here, and we've added him to his committees this morning formally and officially,
15:12so he has hit the ground running.
15:14There is a lot going on here.
15:15We wanted to talk with you about some of those things this morning,
15:18and I'm so grateful for this leadership team for giving you the report so far
15:22and for Representative Kiggins, who is an extraordinary member of Congress.
15:25As you know, a decorated veteran and somebody who's so committed to our nation's defense
15:32and our military servicemen and women and her expertise and all these things
15:36has been so greatly appreciated.
15:37We're glad to have her this morning.
15:39Now, look, we've had one of the most consequential, most productive,
15:42most successful Congresses in the history of this institution,
15:46the 119th Congress, in spite of those small margins.
15:48The Republican majority has been working in lockstep.
15:51With the Republican majority in the Senate, even though that one's small as well,
15:55and, of course, with our strong Republican president and his administration.
15:59And the results of that cannot be questioned.
16:02And I see this false narrative right now, oh, they haven't done enough.
16:04Oh, pray tell.
16:05Listen, the Working Families Tax Cod, the big, beautiful bill,
16:09took about six months of the first part of this Congress to put together
16:12because it was so consequential and so comprehensive.
16:15And there are so many things in that bill that our members are going to be so excited
16:19to go and run on and talk about in the upcoming election cycle
16:23because we inherited an absolute disaster from the Biden administration.
16:28Virtually every area of public policy was decimated.
16:31And we had to rebuild from the ground up in many of these places
16:34and make all sorts of changes and reforms to get America back again.
16:37And we did.
16:38And we put it all in this one landmark piece of legislation
16:41that will have consequences for generations.
16:44And it will be seen and written by history to be one of the biggest things
16:48that the Congress has ever achieved.
16:50And among those things was an approach to beginning this affordability agenda
16:55because, remember, we inherited massive inflation from the previous administration.
17:00It's no secret affordability is a flashpoint, right, in recent weeks.
17:04And we had four catastrophic years of Bidenomics that we inherited.
17:09The Biden administration spent like drunken sailors,
17:11and they attempted to tax and regulate their way to prosperity.
17:15And we all knew when they were doing it that it would not work.
17:18It had exactly the opposite effect.
17:20The result was inflation skyrocketed.
17:23Gas prices reached record highs.
17:25Homeownership declined.
17:26Credit card debt increased.
17:27All those things that everybody felt and they're still feeling now.
17:31Now, the American people gave us a mandate in the election.
17:34The president won the Electoral College soundly.
17:36He won a big majority popular vote.
17:40We got the highest vote total for House Republicans in the history of this institution,
17:44and they charged us to go fix this.
17:47We began that process with the big, beautiful bill,
17:49and we have never let up on the accelerator.
17:51We keep it going day by day, week by week,
17:54notching away at this, trying to fix everything that the previous team broke.
17:58Now, I wish we could flip a switch right after the election and make it all go away,
18:01make it all right, but you know that's not how the economy works.
18:04It takes some time to implement new policies and root out the bad things,
18:09and that's what's happening.
18:10It is a fact that the Biden administration and their Democrat enablers in Congress,
18:14we cannot forget, wrecked the U.S. economy.
18:17That's what happened, and we had to take it over in January.
18:20This is why Democrats' newfound claims about affordability are just patently absurd.
18:24Okay, here are the facts, and you know this.
18:26Many of you don't write about it, but these are the facts.
18:29And they're undisputed.
18:30They broke the economy, and now they want to lecture to the American people about affordability.
18:34They opened our borders, and now they want to lecture to the American people
18:39about immigration border enforcement.
18:41They broke the American health care system.
18:43They caused premiums to skyrocket,
18:45and now they have the audacity to tell Republicans that the only way to save it
18:49is to throw hundreds of billions of dollars to health insurance companies,
18:52which would merely fuel a system that is rife with fraud, waste, and abuse.
18:57You cannot be an arsonist and a firefighter at the same time.
19:02That's the message for the Democrats.
19:04Let's be very clear about one thing.
19:06When the Democrats talk about health care affordability, okay, this catchphrase that they have,
19:10they are talking about one thing and one thing only.
19:12They are talking about continuing handouts to big insurance companies.
19:16They do not want to, they do not want, they have no ideas, they have no desire to fix the broken system they created.
19:23They just want to subsidize it.
19:25And subsidy is a big word.
19:26It means they're taking taxpayer dollars and funding a broken system.
19:30That is their entire affordability agenda in a nutshell.
19:33This agenda does not lower health care costs.
19:37All it does is hide the cost of the failed law, which we assume is the point.
19:43And their proposal, which is a three-year extension of these enhanced subsidies,
19:48the Democrat COVID subsidies that they created, that they put the expiration date on for this December,
19:54that proposal, to extend that for three years, is devoid of any reforms to clamp down on the rampant waste, fraud, and abuse.
20:02And it continues to provide taxpayer-subsidized health care to Americans who are making hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual salary.
20:09It doesn't make any sense.
20:10Now, you heard Whip Emmer and Leader Scalise reference the massive fraud that's just been uncovered in the last week or so in Minnesota.
20:17We know that this has been going on around the country in these deep blue states,
20:21and now the evidence is starting to come forward.
20:24It's staggering.
20:25It should upset.
20:26It should anger every American that this is where their dollars are being wasted and abused.
20:32A new report by the Government Accountability Office, which I haven't seen too much written about yet.
20:36You should look into that.
20:38It is an eye-opener as well.
20:39It makes clear why it would be a dereliction of duty to just extend subsidies without massive reforms to them.
20:47Over the last two years, this is investigators at the Government Accountability Office.
20:51They submitted 24 fraudulent applications for the ACA subsidies, the Unaffordable Care Act subsidies, Obamacare.
20:59Of the 24 fraudulent applications that they created intentionally to just see what would happen, 23 of them were approved.
21:10These applications were completely fraudulent.
21:13The investigators did not submit any Social Security numbers, citizenship documentation, or reported income documents, and 23 of the 24 applications were still approved.
21:2418 of those, by the way, are still receiving coverage as they were as of September of this year.
21:29That means the Obamacare Exchange and insurers didn't verify any of the information that they were supposed to under the law, and they proceeded to pay tens of thousands of dollars to insurance companies for people who do not exist.
21:42The GAO report also found that 29,000 Social Security numbers in 2023 and 68,000 in 2024 were used to receive more than one year's worth of insurance coverage.
21:56In other words, multiple people were utilizing the same Social Security numbers to openly defraud the American taxpayers.
22:03The GAO also found that more than 94 million was sent to insurers on behalf of dead people, okay?
22:11This is the system that Democrats in Congress want to extend without reform.
22:17It's unbelievable.
22:19Listen, these are undisputed facts.
22:20The Democrats broke America's health care system when they gave us the Unaffordable Care Act, Obamacare, 15 years ago.
22:27Remember all the promises?
22:28I mean, some of y'all were here.
22:29Oh, the average premium in the average family is going to go down to $2,500 a year.
22:33You're going to be able to keep your doctor.
22:35You're going to love this system.
22:36None of that was true.
22:37In fact, it's the opposite.
22:39And premiums have risen because they broke the system dramatically over that time, in some areas as much as 70 percent, in some over 90 percent.
22:47And those things are still on a trajectory to rise further.
22:50Now, what are we going to do about that?
22:52The Democrats had a chance to vote to make life more affordable earlier this year in the Working Families Tax Cut, the big, beautiful bill, and they blew it.
22:59The House version of the bill, you may remember, included cost-sharing reductions.
23:05We passed that out of the House.
23:06We sent it to the Senate.
23:07And what that would have done is it would have lowered premiums for the average American family by over 12 percent.
23:15Democrats fought to strip that out of the bill.
23:18Every American watching today should remember that.
23:21The Democrats had a chance to actually lower your premium six months ago, but they refused because they wanted to keep health care as a political football.
23:30They do not want a solution.
23:32They want an issue.
23:33That's what this is about.
23:35They used the American taxpayers.
23:36They admitted themselves during the longest shutdown in U.S. history a few weeks back as leverage in this cynical political game.
23:43So in the coming days, what you're going to see is the other party, the Republican Party, continuing to do the important work that we've already begun to actually lower the cost of health care and reduce fraud.
23:54And we hope Democrats will join us in those efforts.
23:57There are there are two parties in this town.
24:00One has no intention and no plan and no desire to lower your health care costs.
24:06They really haven't put any good idea on the table.
24:08They just want to subsidize a broken system.
24:09Check them on that.
24:10The Republican Party, on the other hand, is already demonstrating that we know how to do this.
24:14We're not just talking about it.
24:15We've done it in the working families tax cut.
24:17You will remember in the Medicaid reforms.
24:20We went after program integrity.
24:22We didn't change the substance of Medicaid, as they've claimed falsely.
24:26We went to program integrity.
24:28Why?
24:28Because we owe that to the American taxpayers.
24:31We got ineligible recipients off of Medicaid and we cut out the fraud, waste and abuse.
24:35And the CBO said they've calculated it saved one hundred eighty five billion dollars for American taxpayers and reduced premiums.
24:43We reformed it to strengthen Medicaid.
24:46We those same principles are going to guide us in the months, in the weeks, the days and weeks and months forward.
24:51As as Leader Scalise noted, we have some low hanging fruit.
24:54We have some things that every Republican agrees to.
24:57Democrats won't remember.
24:57But they don't actually want to fix this problem.
24:59But you're going to see a package come together that will be on the floor next week that will actually reduce premiums for 100 percent of Americans who are on health insurance, not just the seven percent.
25:12Remember, the covid era subsidy only covers seven percent of Americans.
25:15And it was passed and extended without any reforms at all.
25:19It would only reduce their premiums by four percent.
25:21So they're using that as a red herring.
25:25The overall system is broken and we're the ones that are going to fix it.
25:27You will see that laid out.
25:29Thanks to the good work of of Chairman Cole and all of our appropriators.
25:36We have our our appropriations process that will be going forward as well.
25:41We're moving those through the regular order process and that's the way it's supposed to work.
25:44So you'll see many of those going through the process.
25:47And we think we can get it all wrapped up by the end of that deadline on January 30th.
25:51And you'll see that process continue over the days and weeks ahead as well.
25:54I will say this again.
25:55This Congress has been the most productive and successful in the modern era.
26:00And I think one of I think you make an argument one of the top five of all time.
26:02You've heard me say that.
26:03Look at the evidence and the facts.
26:05Don't listen to the talking points.
26:06This team has delivered with small margins what the American people asked us to do and
26:11what we promised we would do.
26:13And that work has just begun.
26:14It will continue in earnest all the way through the end of this year as we as we sprint through
26:19the end of the this calendar year and we start the new session in January.
26:23We never let take our gas or foot off the gas.
26:26So with that, take a few questions.
26:28Yeah.
26:29Well, look, it's an important principle.
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