Insider Trading, Capital Access, Budget, Appropriations, NDAA, Disability Work

Good afternoon. The committee will come to order. Without objection, the chair is authorized to declare recess at any time. Before we begin, I want to take a moment to recognize Ashley Anderson, um, a member of the majority of staff on the committee, who'll be leaving at the end of this month. Ashley started in Congress in twenty seventeen with Martha McSally, then went on to work for mister rechenthaler, miss miller-meeks, and then came to the rules committee as policy director for chairman burgess in twenty twenty four. Ashley, it's been a pleasure to work alongside you and we'll certainly miss you here at the rules committee. All of us are rooting for you in this new and exciting chapter of your career. You look entirely too happy. Ah, now we turn to the business before us. Today the Rules Committee is convening to consider four measures, H R six nine five five, H R seven zero zero eight, H congres one one three, and H R nine seven seven zero. H R six nine five five, the Main Street Capital Access Act, would tailor bank regulations based on the size of the financial institution to spur local bank formation and to empower community lenders. When the Dodd-Frank Act was signed into law, community and mid-sized banks were unnecessarily subjected to a regulatory structure designed for large complex financial institutions. This caused a ripple effect throughout communities across the nation. local lending was suffocated, and the American people were the ones most affected. H R six nine five five insures community lenders can focus on serving families, small businesses, and local economies, making life more affordable for Americans and empowering Main Street. H R seven zero zero eight, the Stop Insider Trading Act, would prohibit members of Congress, their spouses, or dependent children from purchasing stocks that are publicly traded. Additionally, this legislation would require members of Congress to disclose publicly each intended sale of stocks with the clerk of the house prior to its sale. Further, should any infractions occur, the House Ethics Committee would issue a fee, a fine, to the offending member equal to two thousand dollars or ten percent of the value of the covered investment, whichever is greater, plus the net gain realized from the sale. In addition, this legislation aims to restore trust in our election systems by implementing a common-sense requirement of showing a valid photo ID, to vote in federal elections. Twenty-four states already require photo ID to be presented prior to voting. Heck, you even need to present a photo ID to utilize the Olive Garden's never-ending pasta pass. Eighty percent of the American people believe showing photo ID at the polls makes sense. It's beyond time to make this simple first step to securing our election system. HCONRES one one three, the concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal year twenty twenty seven, unlocks the very first step in advancing our third reconciliation package under the House Republican majority. This concurrent resolution covers three issues of paramount importance. Providing additional resources for baseline readiness, so that the men and women of the armed forces are given the tools they need to carry out their missions successfully. Securing American elections, an issue that the American people remain very attuned to and support through and through. And supporting our nation's farmers and ensuring that our nation's food supply and food security remain as strong as they can possibly be. I look forward to the forthcoming testimony of our colleagues on why advancing this first step of our third reconciliation measure is so important. Finally, we turn to H R nine seven seven zero, the continuing resolution that would fully fund the federal government through December fourth of this year. The house has been working diligently to pass stand-alone appropriations bills, consistent with regular order. While we remain optimistic about the work of Chairman Cole and our colleagues, in this process, that does not mean we should blind ourselves to the reality of the time-line ahead of us. We will likely need some kind of short-term extension to keep some, if not all, of our government open past the end of the fiscal year. Providing a buffer to continue our Article-one duties of funding the government is prudent, responsible, and necessary. I note that Democrats supported virtually all of the current funding levels for agencies. They should do so again to responsibly ensure that an unnecessary collapse in government functions will not occur this fall. Unfortunately, if passed as prologue, our Democrat colleagues may very well once again prove themselves incapable of supporting the continuity of government given their previous shutdown antics. I hope that is not the case today. We have the obligation to advance funding immediately so that the government does not bear the brunt, once more, of political gamesmanship and obstructions spurred by our colleagues across the aisle. With that, I now yield to the ranking member for any comments he wishes to make.

Well, thank you, Madam Chair, and let me begin by that i want to associate myself with your kind words about ashley's uh service to this committee um and we wish her nothing but the best in her next chapter um and um you know the people who serve on the staffing of the rules committee work awfully long hours um um probably more than any other committee uh and we don't thank them enough but i wish you all the best ashley and now uh madam chair there's a lot uh before us today including two bills that we already considered three weeks ago uh they're back on the agenda because republican leaders sent everyone home before bringing these bills to the floor since they didn't have the votes to pass their own rule so now we're doing it all over again and then there are few new things before us today first a a budget proposal that that includes seventy three three billion dollars for donald trump's new never-ending war in iran that congress already voted to end a twelve billion dollar band-aid for farmers who are hurting which i would say is a pretty big admission that trump's tariff policies have devastated american farmers and of course uh ten billion dollars to indulge the president's insane election conspiracy theories i don't know how many of you watched his speech last thursday but it was both wacky and scary you're wacky because it was one conspiracy theory after another scary because this guy is actually sitting in the oval office Uh, together, this budget framework outlines nearly one hundred billion dollars, that's billion with a B, in funding, with zero pay-fors. Even Republicans know this thing is a dud. One Republican said, and I quote, " Ninety-five billion dollars in new deficit spending, no offsets, and not one provision to lower the cost of living." End quote. Other Republican members have called it, quote, " dead on arrival". There's also a continuing resolution to keep the government open. The funding deadline is months away and Republicans are already admitting they cannot finish their work. Instead, they're trying to punt our work until December fourth. We also have before us the Stop Insider Trading Act. I absolutely support a ban on congressional stock trading. You shouldn't be able to use public power for private profit. I agree with that one hundred percent. But the idea that this Republican Congress has suddenly seen the light is a joke. The net worth of Donald Trump and his family have grown on a scale without precedent. We just found out his own teleprompter operator has been illegally cashing in on calci bets. I mean, the corruption is staggering. And now the president wants to sell early access to his market-moving social media posts to those who can afford it. This president and this Republican Party are rotten to the core and corrupt through and through. This is a nice little game they're playing, bringing the stock trading ban to the floor and attaching it to get this, an unrelated partisan bill to make it harder for American citizens to vote in elections. But that's what they're doing, and it's a game to them. It's all a game. If they cared about corruption, they could have banned stock trading eighteen months ago. Uh, and they could have brought a bill to the floor to address the blatant, brazen, shocking corruption at the White House. Instead, we get this totally inadequate and insufficient bill which they know is dead on arrival in the senate and finally there's republican so-called main street capital access act lovely name wall street must have focus grouped it this bill makes bank mergers easier regulators weaker and oversight looser what could possibly go wrong republicans run the house they run the senate and the white house what they lack is any idea on how to use it to make people's Power is supposed to be about helping people. And instead, this majority uses uses it to protect the president, to pay off the powerful, and to funnel more money into yet another endless war. The American people deserve a hell of a lot better. And I yield back my time.

Thank you very much, Mister McGovern. Without objection, any prepared statements that our witnesses may have will be included in the record. I now welcome our panel, Chairman Arrington and Representative McGarvey, from the House Budget Committee. Your full statements will be submitted for the record, and we ask that you summarize your statement in five minutes. Chairman Arrington, I welcome your testimony.

Thank you, Madam Chair, Ranking Member. Uh, I agree with Mister McGovern, the American people deserve better than what they've gotten for the last year and a half. But what they've gotten is a Democrat party that I don't recognize in my ten years of service, persistent, habitual, um, never-ending obstruction to stop the president from succeeding in advancing the policies and the agenda, the American people overwhelmingly support it, and voted for unilateral uh or uh republican leadership in congress uh alongside of this president uh that has made it difficult to govern what was unprecedented from my democrat colleagues is now par for the course exhibit a the first shutdown of the entire federal government over a clean CR. It's the first time it's ever happened from my Democrat colleagues. Both parties have participated in these uh shutdowns. I will readily concede that.

Yeah.

But the first time a clean CR was rejected just to keep the f- the government funding at the last year's funding levels, until we could meet out a compromise solution. What was their reasoning? What was their counter-offer? to repeal the the program integrity measures that we put in place in the big beautiful bill to stop waste fraud and abuse to prevent people not eligible illegal or people who are able to work and not working siphoning money off of the safety net programs that are there for our most vulnerable americans it was the longest shutdown in history before the next democrat shutdown this time it was shutting down the Department of Homeland Security after we had agreed four corners on funding the government. They shut down homeland, they handcuffed our border patrol agents from protecting our borders, they uh they basically shut down our coast guardsmen from defending our ports, CISA agents from defending our critical infrastructure against being hacked, for over seventy days. They held the American people's security hostage until we used a reconciliation bill to break the obstruction and fund ICE and CBP because they defunded it. To be clear, they shut Homeland Security down, and then they defunded ICE and CBP. We had to turn it on unilaterally through reconciliation. We didn't get a single vote from Democrats on that. Now here we are, in the long train of obstruction abuses to do something before November as the window closes that is not just meaningful, it is important, it is critical, it is urgent. Support our troops, strengthen our sup- our food supply, and safeguard the integrity of our elections. Madam Chair, um, the obstruction and resistance at all cost and on all fronts goes beyond shutdowns. For the first time in sixty-five years, or what is at least sixty-five years of a tradition of bipartisan support for the NDAA National Defense Authorization Act, that are the policies that undergird our entire United States national defense, have been held up in the Senate by the Democrats. Prior to that, based on a temporary personnel decision of the president, They held up FISA seven O two, a critical security tool for our intelligence community to stop Chinese espionage, to stop terrorism, to stop drug trafficking. This is this new shameful era of obstruction and I presume that the motivation is to placate the left-wing Mondami socialist base of the party. I have no other answers. So Madam Chair and members of the distinguished Rules Committee, uh I present to you uh a reconciliation bill that will provide emergency funding for our sons and daughters so they have baseline battlefield readiness, emergency funding to provide resilience and strength to our food supply that we all benefit from, And lastly, uh, again, uh, the consent of the governed and a functioning democracy requires integrity and confidence in elections. And I will quote former Speaker Nancy Pelosi in twenty seventeen, after the twenty sixteen election, based on the phony Russia collusion that was debunked later by an independent council, And I quote, " Our election was hijacked. There is no question Congress has a duty to protect our democracy." Well, here's where I agree with her. We have a duty to protect our democracy. And when half the country has n- little to no confidence in the outcome of our elections, because we don't have basic safeguards like a photo ID, I I think it is incumbent upon us to act and act uh with purpose and with urgency and with that idea.

Thank you very much, Mr. Arrington. Mr. McGarvey, you're recognized. Thank you. Welcome to the Rules Committee.

Thank you, Chairman Fox. Thank you, Ranking Member McGovern. Actually, thank you for your service. Best of luck in your next chapter. Um, I'm here on behalf of Ranking Member Boyle and House Budget Committee Democrats to talk about what is actually in this bill, and I think importantly what is not. But first I wanna start off with something that my colleague, Chairman Arrington, addressed. and he addressed the need for people to work together. Let me talk about that for just a second. You know, as a candidate, Donald Trump promised the American people two things I actually agreed with. He said no more foreign wars and that he would lower costs on day one. Here's the thing. Those weren't just empty, worthless campaign promises. They've become actual and dangerous lies. More than eighteen months since he took office, we are fighting a foreign war in Iran. Seventeen American service members are dead. Three were killed just this past weekend. One was nineteen years old. Three more Americans dead after Donald Trump declared a total and complete victory in the war that he started. This war has cost us American lives. This war has cost us tens upon tens of billions of dollars. and we are getting nothing in return. It is the president's incompetence that has made our world less safe and stable than the day that he started this war and because of Trump's war, because of Trump's tariffs, and because of this lapdog Republican Congress, families in Louisville, Kentucky, and across this country are paying more than ever for groceries, for rent, utilities, for health care, and just about everything else. But here's the thing, it's not happening by accident. These aren't just broken promises, these are deliberate policy choices by the House Republicans. Let's look at the first Republican reconciliation bill. We're on the third one right now, the first Republican reconciliation bill, the one big beautiful bill as everyone called it. It gave massive tax cuts to billionaires and the wealthiest corporations, while taking trillions of dollars away from American families' health insurance. It took money away from kids and seniors, moms who were just trying to put food on the table. So they did a second reconciliation bill, and the second reconciliation bill, what did it do? It gifted ICE seventy billion dollars. That was on top of the already one hundred and forty billion dollars that they gave them the year before and what is this money going toward? Fifty-five deaths in ICE custody since Donald Trump took office. Kids used as bait, families ripped apart, people killed on American streets. Just this past week we saw two Americans killed by unfit and untrained ICE agents. So you think that the third reconciliation bill, this would be the one where they finally do something about affordability for American families. Spoiler alert. It's not. The bill's forty-seven pages long. It doesn't include one single word about lowering costs for the American people. There is not one word in here about affordability. Instead, Republicans used this to add nearly a hundred billion dollars to the debt and deficit of this country to fund the most unpopular war in American history. But back to the original comments by the chairman about working together, we do wanna work on things that I think are broadly popular. During the budget committee mark-up, Democrats offered fourteen common-sense amendments to try to make this into a bill that does anything to help families. We tried to reverse cuts to Medicaid and SNAP. We tried to lower health insurance premiums, repeal Trump's tariff taxes, stop taxpayer dollars from funding an unauthorized war on more ice brutality. I offered an amendment to make sure that the taxpayers would not be forced to pay for Donald Trump's ballroom. What happened? Republicans rejected every single amendment. They said no to health care. They said no to food assistance. They said no to lower gas prices. They said no to ending the president's corruption. But for Donald Trump's foreign war, here we are. And House Republicans are happy to open the checkbook. This is a budget of broken promises. It puts American people last. As we sit here, we sit in this fancy room, and we're talking about rules and process and budgets and reconciliation. We may think that the American people are sitting here watching. They're not. They're not talking about reconciliation. They are at home right now. talking about their bills, they're talking about rent, they're talking about healthcare, they're talking about groceries, they're talking about gas prices. They are sitting here wondering what they're going to do about utilities and prescription drugs and why their paychecks don't go as far as they used to. And they're asking a fair question. This is a question we should ask ourselves. The American people are asking this question. Why can Republicans always find money for billionaires and wars? but never for the rest of us. Because that's who they serve. The Budget Committee Democrats are ready to work with anyone who is serious about lowering costs and making life easier for the American people. This bill does neither. I urge my colleagues to reject this bill, and thank you, and I yield back.

Thank you, uh, Mister McGarvey. Uh, Miss Fischbach, do you have any questions? Mister McGovern.

yeah thank you Madam Chair um first of all let me just say i gotta i i love you republicans you don't take responsibility for anything i mean you control the house you control the senate you control the white house

mmm

i think you control the supreme court and nothing is your responsibility boy it must be nice to live that way um and uh i'll just say um one thing when you guys wanna get things done i mean you do um when you wanted tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires i mean you shoved that through added four point seven trillion dollars to the debt you get that through uh i wish we could have stopped it but you got it through when you wanted to cut medicaid by a trillion dollars you did it in a nanosecond snap by two hundred billion dollars you're gonna increase hunger in this country i mean i mean so the idea that uh you know uh this idea that somehow you can't get anything done yeah you do the stuff you get done unfortunately is bad for the american people uh but uh but everything is somebody else's fault it's never your fault um and don't even get me going on corruption or on fraud or a waste or abuse i'm looking at what's happening in the white house right now and the silence of the entire republican conference i mean that that that is complicity that is complicity and history will record that you were silent as this president ripped off the american people uh i've never seen anything like it and it makes richard nixon look like a boy scout but chairman errington in twenty twenty four you came before this committee and you said quote at a time when our national debt is approaching thirty five trillion "We are adding almost eight billion dollars to the debt every day, and we pay sixty-two cents on every dollar just to service the debt. We must lead Congress toward a path of fiscal responsibility. The trajectory is unsustainable and is arguably the biggest threat facing our nation." You ended your remarks by saying, and I quote, " Not paying for our spending is not only irresponsible, it is irrational. We cannot continue to thrust the costs of things we think are important onto the backs of our kids and grandkids. " End quote. Uh, Chairman Arrington, do you still believe that our debt is one of the biggest threats facing our nation?

I do.

Um, so, Chairman Arrington, can you affirm the basic fact that since January twentieth, twenty twenty five, since President Trump and the Republicans ins- assumed full control of government, the national debt has increased by three point three trillion dollars, from thirty six to thirty six point two trillion to thirty nine point five trillion.

it's a misleading stat because the economy has grown uh with the cuts that we made on waste fraud and abuse in total for the first time in a decade the deficit to g d p has gone down under republican leadership and this president's watch

no you you you disagree with the

the cbo s that's a direct quote from the cbo

yeah but you disagree with the that our that our uh debt went from uh went from thirty six point two to thirty nine point five cause i think that's

We have we have we have unf we have liabilities in social security,

That's pretty clear. Right.

Medicare, we have liabilities across the board that are outpacing our

But, Mr. McGarvey,

our sources of revenue.

we just need those are accurate numbers?

Yes. In fact, another stat we can look at, um, the debt of this country from George Washington through Bill Clinton was about five point seven, the debt from George W. Bush and Donald Trump alone is nearly double that.

chairman errington isn't it true that you um and everybody on the republican side here voted in favor of a republican reconciliation bill that is projected to add four point seven trillion dollars to our nation's debt over the next decade

not true

another seventy billion dollars uh that uh that provided funding for ice and cbp

the ice and cbp was simply a replacement of what would have been discretionary funding for ice and cbp when every democrat voted to defund it

did you vote for that

of course i wouldn't defund icend c b p that's yes sir

sir uh chivalry to can you confirm that the plain text of the budget resolution before us right now instructs committees to propose legislation that would increase the deficit by as much as ninety five billion dollars with no requirement that it be paid for

mister mcgovern ever since i've been here and probably for a hundred years when we are in conflict and our military needs supplemental resources to keep our troops safe, we'd we we have never offset it. And the two hundred billion dollars that you and your colleagues gave to Ukraine, that was not offset. So I don't expect we should do this any differently.

Yeah, but you, but you said, I go back to you, not paying for our spending is not only irresponsible, it's irrational.

That's, I agree.

We cannot threaten you to trust uh the cost of things that we think are important, onto the backs of our kids and our great kids.

That's, that's correct.

I guess, the question is how come how can you come before the committee and advocate for spending tens of millions more taxpayer dollars on top of the trillions that you have already added to the deficit while not requiring any of this,

It's a fair question.

by the way, not not just the military stuff but other stuff,

Yeah.

why then none of it is is painful.

It it's a fair question.

Yeah.

And I think we have to ask ourselves as a Congress why we provide emergency funding, supplemental appropriations for emergencies, because those emergencies require expeditious action, A, and B, if we don't act we'll spend a lot more money. Now, that doesn't mean we shouldn't budget for emergencies. We needed to do a better job of that across the board.

What wa- was it an emergency to give tax breaks to billionaires and millionaires? Cuz that was not paid for either. I mean, I feel like it

It it was, in fact.

Okay, all right. Well, I'm glad.

In fact.

So we we just have a disagreement. Uh, you think emer- an emergency is a is making sure that uh millionaires and billionaires get tax cuts? The big corporations? Um, I I just disagree with that. That's a fundamental values question.

I didn't say that just for the record, although some after a twenty-one percent inflation tax would have said a twenty-two percent tax hike would be an emergency for their families.

Yeah, your budget resolution instructs the Armed Services Committee to increase the deficit by as much as sixty billion dollars, in order to use taxpayer dollars to cover more of the cost of the President's war in Iran. Are you aware that Republicans gave the Department of Defense an extra one hundred and fifty billion dollars last July?

Yes.

And according to the Trump Administration's own numbers, more than half of that money, seventy-five point seven billion dollars, has yet to be bent or even obligated?

I I know that we gave a hundred and fifty billion to the uh defense of our country.

Right. Right. So, right, so given that you've said that our nation's debt is such an existential crisis,

Yes.

wouldn't you agree that it is irresponsible to spend another sixty billion dollars in taxpayer dollars on Trump's war when you already have seventy five billion dollars available?

No, sir, because we were so in the hole after four years of of a president that didn't have not just regard for our readiness, but for what our troops were focused on in in terms of war fighting.

Right.

That first hundred billion was to make up for four years. Thank God we put that additional monies to prepare for

That's about seventy-five billion dollars, it hasn't even been obligated yet.

No.

I've also submitted an amendment, um, that I hope to offer in the Rules Committee, uh, later tonight, to use thirteen billion dollars out of that sixty billion dollars to add the major Richard Starr Act to the reconciliation bill. This would help combat, combat wounded veterans get the full support that they're entitled to. uh, Chairman, uh, erring to reduce support making my amendment in order to help these veterans?

We simply unlocked the reconciliation process, Mister McGovern, and you know the process as well as I do.

Right.

The policies will be meted out by the authorizing committee chairs, not myself.

But you would have no objection for me offering an amendment

So.

and and may- hopefully maybe getting advice from the board,

I I would simply our our focus

too. Cuz if we're not gonna pay for this other stuff,

Yep.

the the whole issue over the over the veterans' bill that we

Yep.

that we that republicans pulled last week was a lot of the veterans organization were upset that you were robbing peter to pay paul you were actually taking cutting veterans benefits uh on on one hand to uh increase veterans benefits for other groups on the other hand so this would this would alleviate that so that's what we are trying to do mr. mcgarvey would you be ok with us trying to do that

no in in fact i sit on the veterans committee uh ranking remember i think this is this is something where we actually all agree we should be taking care of our veterans Instead they are looking to actually, uh, take things away from veterans who are suffering from tinnitus, veterans who are suffering and and they're not willing to pay to help them.

So we'll we'll see what happens later today. Um, I think you'd all agree that affordability and the cost of living, uh, whether it's gas prices or child care costs are some of the top concerns of the American people. The question is why does why does this budget resolution not include anything to bring down costs? I mean, you don't have to just take my word for it, on July fifteenth the Republican congressman from South Carolina described your budget as quote " ninety-five billion dollars in new deficit spending, no offsets, and not one provision to lower the cost of living", end quote. So the question is why does your resolution why doesn't your resolution instruct any committee to propose legislation that would, for example, lower health care costs or help people who have lost their health care coverage regain it?

Uh, I would say that the first step in unwinding the cost of living crisis that was created by the failed policies of your party was to stop the wild reckless unbridled spending. This administration continues by the way a whole of government assault on fraud, not on domestic energy producers, but on fraud. And we cut, like I said, a hundred, I'm sorry, one point six trillion dollars in waste. We put pro-growth policies that gave us a three point eight

So

and a four point three growth rates before you shut the government down.

Right. It's It it so- it sounds like we're back to the let's blame Joe Biden. But why doesn't your resolution instruct um any of the any committee to propose legislation that would lower Americans' child care costs? Or why doesn't the r- resolution instruct any committee to propose legislation that would lower Americans' housing or rent costs? Or why doesn't your resolution instruct any committee to propose legislation that would lower gas prices uh for Americans' energy bills? I mean I mean, this is kind of the problem in a nutshell, and I'll close with this. You know, when it comes to war and tax cuts for wealthy uh and big corporations you guys trip over yourselves to spend tax dollars with no offsets this is your m o but when it comes to helping american families republicans think it would be waste it would be wasteful spending i gotta tell you i still do in-person town halls i don't know about you what i do and all people wanna talk about is the high cost of living they can't afford their rents can't afford to buy homes child care costs are under control health care costs are under control they wanna know why the hell aren't we focused in on that Uh, and instead we're focused in on, you know, giving with the well-off and the well-connected even more. Um, I think people have had it. Um, and I think uh, I think I think that's one of the reasons why you're gonna see every Democrat oppose this. Uh, and I hope some Republicans who care about fiscal responsibilities, will uh, fiscal responsibility will oppose it as well. I I yield back.

Thank you, Mr. McGovern. Mister Scott, you're recognized.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Mister Errington, uh, you know, I personally believe that we won the last election cause Americans want us to secure the border and stop the tax increase. I mean, the millions upon millions of people that were allowed to come into uh this country unchecked, in- intentionally unchecked by the Biden administration at at the behest of the Democrat Socialist movement, um, has had a tremendous cost to us. But we we were secure, we we were likely to secure the border and stop the tax increase from the Democratic Party.

That's right.

And the Democratic Party, we we stopped their tax increase. We didn't actually reduce the rate for millionaires. Am I correct? Like, no millionaire's tax rate went down. They just didn't get the tax increase that the that the Democrats wanted them to get. Is that correct?

Well, the ninety-two percent of the American people who are working people, I would suggest ninety-two percent that take a standard deduction actually got

Oh, absolutely.

uh another tax break as did working people who work overtime,

yep

work for tips,

you get tips you know if you're working for tips uh i eat at waffle house on a regular

et cetera.

basis not as fancy as some of the places most members eat at but i enjoy waffle house with my family um you know you're working overtime you got you got a nice tax cut, our senior citizens are getting a tax credit for on on the social security side because of some budget rules that we have to comply with uh that's the way that was done But we were like to secure the border and stop the tax increase that the Democrats wanted. And the end result of stopping the tax increase isn't this doesn't get talked about enough, I don't believe. But my understanding, according to CBO, tax revenue in the United States is higher than it's ever been in the history of the country. Is that correct?

That's correct.

And and actually, and you may not exactly know this number, but I looked it up, revenue for twenty twenty six is seventeen point five percent of GDP. The fifty year average is seventeen point three percent.

Yeah.

So just factually speaking, if you want more money, you have to grow the GDP of the country. You don't grow the GDP of the country taking all of the capital out of the private sector and depositing it in accounts where, you know, fraudsters are able to go get get it and um and nobody at the state level in certain states democratic states like Minnesota won't do anything about it.

That's right.

And so the one thing that I would tell you that I I wish we had done, I think the other thing people want us to do is to cut spending. And it's pretty clear to me that if you look at the fraud that is occurring throughout the United States, that simply stopping the people that should not be getting assistance from stealing assistance or dollars, I should say, from the US government. I mean, my understanding is CBO came out the other was it CBO s or Congressional Research,

CBO?

one or two people came out and said for every dollar you put into fraud prevention,

That's right.

it would generate a seven dollar return on the on the investment.

That's correct.

Is that correct?

That's correct. Because we have five hundred billion dollars, according to GAO, on the high side, but hundreds of billions for sure,

Hmm.

in fraud leaking out every year of this this government.

Yep. And and of course the Democrats are defending the fraudsters. I mean, that's what that's what's happening. They don't want us to cut spending. we we could get all of the cuts that we wanted simply by getting rid of the fraud in this country, I believe, at least the vast majority of them.

The enhanced COVID tax credits for Obamacare

Um.

that they wanted to shut the government down over?

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Uh, there were tens of billions according to GAO and CBO in fraud, and some of that w- was tens of thousands of social security numbers from dead people.

Yep. Yep. You know, all of that money was going to the insurance carriers

That's correct.

not to the hospitals, correct?

That's correct.

And and so they blame, you know, the challenge of the local ho- that local hospitals are having. And I'm I'm I'm getting some reports together on on on what is actually happening at local hospitals. But the fact of the matter is Medicare Advantage plans aren't paying their claims and and other things. And and because of the way the Democrats have done things, there's no mechanism to force these gargantuan insurance carriers to actually pay the claims that they owe the local hospitals. I'm getting together some reports on that.

Yeah.

But I i just wanna get back to some some basics i mean the fact of the matter is we were like to secure the border and stop the tax increase we did that they can scream that that billionaires got a lower tax rate and all of that is just nonsense um but the the main thing is with regard to the economy the tax papers didn't understand tax revenues are higher than they've ever been in the history of the country

yes yes sir yes sir and if you're going to bend the curve on the debt to GDP, which is the measure of our fiscal health, which we have lowered, the deficit is the input to the debt, and that's gone down for the first time in a decade, you have to do two things. What we did to root out waste and fraud and save money, and pro-growth policies that ignite the growth that we've seen, as I've said, one percent over CBO's projections gives us three trillion in deficit reduction.

The f- the final thing I wanna say is, is about, uh, the war with Iran. Every president, whether they be Democrat or Republican, has recognized the threat of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon. There is no civilian purpose for uranium enrichment beyond twenty percent. You could say five, but we'll stretch it and say twenty. No civilian use beyond twenty. It's widely accepted in the international community that you that that Iran was far beyond the twenty percent of enrichment and was continuing to enrich beyond those levels. Had President Trump not done what he did, Iran would have had a nuclear weapon within a short period of time. And they already had the ability to make, you know, dirty b- they had enough enrichment to do to do, um, to create a tremendous amount of damage throughout the world. And the fact of the matter is, the majority of terrorism

Thank you, Mister Scott. Miss Galen, you're recognized.

Thank you. I yield first to the ranking member.

Well, thank you. I I just want to say that, um, uh, listening to my, uh, colleague Mister Scott, um, you know i i i think maybe this is the biggest difference between democrats and republicans you think that people in this country should be happy that they should be grateful for all that they received under republican leadership and under the leadership of donald trump i will say to you go to any coffee shop in this country go to any vfw hall go to any union hall you know go to any workplace and talk to regular people about what's on their mind and they will tell you the issue of affordability is front and center

I do that.

If pe- pe- people cannot afford,

I see them at W- I see them at Waffle House,

people cannot afford

Walmart and other places, Mr. Governor.

if people, well, yeah.

Mostly Americans. I know, recognize how blessed they are to live in this country and do not want a socialist takeover,

Yeah.

like the Democratic Party has allowed.

Well, and they don't want a fascist takeover by the Republican Party either. You wanna go down that road? I'll go down that road. All right? As we inch toward authoritarianism, you know what, uh, people are sick of that too. They're frightened of a president who, whose ego is so fragile that he can't admit he lost that election. and and promotes all this wacky propaganda that scares the hell out of the average voter, including a lot of republicans. And I would also just say one thing on Iran, the street of Hormuz was open, um, and oil prices were coming down before this president launched this war, and now the trade is closed, gas prices are going up, which is also an affordability issue. So, I'm sorry, you think people are to be

G- gas prices are still lower than they would be if Kamala Harris had been elected.

You No, I that that's that's just

Oh, jeez.

but but that's ridiculous but anyway but uh but the bottom line is you go you go down this road you gonna keep thinking that people are happy and they should be grateful i will tell you uh you know uh you you will find out in november people are sick of this there is and by the way uh you know when you say that the tax cuts didn't help people who are rich i mean donald trump was up there bragging about the fact that one of his closest friends was able was able to buy a new private jet with the money he saved on the tax cuts

i i didn't say that

i don't know i don't know anybody who owns a private jet uh i i i don't hang around with those people like maybe you guys do but the bottom line is that average working people in this country feel they're getting screwed and they've had it and they wanna know why we're not focused more like a laser beam on the issues of affordability i yield back to that company

i think working people in this country love this country and they don't wanna sit for a steak over

thank you um claiming my time thank you mister scott um i do have to agree with the ranking member i mean at a time when the price of gas and groceries and healthcare keeps climbing Uh, you might think Republicans would come to Congress with a plan to help working families. Instead, they're back with a third, a third partisan budget bill. And once again, it's completely missing the m- missing the moment for my constituents, I think for most Americans. This budget resolution paves the way for nearly ninety-five billion dollars to be added to the deficit. That's on top of the trillions that have already been added by this administration through its misguided tax cuts prior reconciliation bills. Look, more than seventy billion would bankroll the president's ill-conceived senseless war. I mean, that's the monetary damage on top of the deaths that we're already seeing. It is the most unpopular war in American history. And presumably some portion of that will go to fund Pete Hegs' obsession with the testosterone levels of members of our military. Another ten billion dollars is going to fund Republicans' wild goose chase of a voter suppression bill. the save act that would restrict access to the ballot for millions of americans with provisions that even republicans acknowledge are unlikely to survive senate reconciliation rules it's interesting to hear a republican colleagues try to justify that bill they don't say that it's necessary to actually prevent election fraud or even voting by non-citizens because that's not true those things aren't happening at the levels they claim No, what they say is that the bill is necessary because Americans are concerned about the security of our elections. Well, of course they are. The president's been lying to them about that for nearly a decade. But back to the main point on this, not one dollar is devoted to lowering the cost of groceries, reducing health care costs, or slashing skyrocketing energy prices. Republicans keep promising to lower costs, but instead they keep shifting the economic burdens to consumers. through tariffs, through giveaways to billionaires and big business. Um, the only kind of welfare they seem interested in is corporate welfare, and boy, are we seeing a lot of that. So, apparently there's always more money for war or to clean up some of the economic damage caused by this administration. If Republicans were serious about helping American families, they would be working to actually lower costs, strengthen health care, invest in our communities through housing, through child care through all the things that americans actually need rather than golden ballrooms and ripped up reflecting pools and golden arches and all the other crap that keeps getting proposed by this administration so uh mister mcgarvey i i sense that you have some remarks you'd like to add in response to some of the nonsense we've been hearing

thank you miss scalen i i appreciate your remarks i wanted to go to some of the things that mister scott addressed specifically about Fraud and about the actual budget and the tax cuts themselves. Um, we all agree, right? Let's get rid of the fraud. Let's get rid of fraud, let's get rid of fraud, let's get rid of waste, let's get rid of abuse. Let's also remember what this administration is labelling as fraud or labelling as abuse. Uh, Director Vogt came in front of our committee, Mister Chairman,

Yes.

and he answered our questions because the thing about a budget is you can talk about things all you want. In a budget it's actually written down what you what you like and what you value. So he said there was fraud in the LIHEAP program, LIHEAP, low uh income home energy assistance program, right? But he didn't find the fraud in the program, he zeroed it out completely. Over a hundred thousand seniors in Kentucky who rely on this program to keep their homes w- warm in the winter and right now when it is blazing hot in Kentucky, to keep it cool in summer. This can be life or death. He he couldn't answer whether it's fraud for every single senior in Kentucky who uses this program. It is not a serious attempt. What they're trying to do is find little offsets that impact the people who are our neighbors who live in our areas every single day. And they're trying to cut those so that they can pave the way for the wealthy tax cuts that they have put in place. Now, Mr. Scott, I'm from Kentucky. I love Waffle House. In fact, if they served bourbon, I don't think I'd ever leave. But what you need to do is explain the tax cuts to the people at Waffle House the next time you're there because in this budget there were four point seven trillion dollars in tax cuts the wealthiest Americans got over fifty percent of that. If you make a million dollars in America under these tax cuts by twenty twenty seven you will have a hundred thousand dollars more in your pocket. But let's look at what we did for the people who work at Waffle House. There is no tax on overtime, there is no tax on tips. What does that actually mean? Because these tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, they are permanent, they are not going anywhere unless we can change it. The no tax on overtime, no tax on tips, it sunsets, they expire after three years. And what are they actually? The person at Waffle House doesn't wanna have a tax on their tips, what do they now have to do? Under this bill they have to itemize their deductions. They itemize their deductions, it sunsets after three years, There's also a twenty five thousand dollar cap in this. When you itemize your deductions on tips, you actually lose the fifteen thousand dollar standard deduction you get right now. This is no tax on nine thousand nine hundred dollars worth of tips for three years, but if you make a million bucks, you get a hundred thousand dollars, or if you're a low income senior, they're zeroing out your programs, they're taking food off the table, they're making health insurance less and less affordable for every single American and that's the numbers and the impact that are in this bill.

Thank you, I I appreciate that, and and it just galls me every time our colleagues start talking about fraud, when the actions of this administration show that that is not the focus, or at least not the focus with respect to the people who are committing massive fraud. I mean, if you just look at the fact that the administration has canned most of the inspectors general whose job it is to actually investigate and fi- and prosecute fraud, waste, and abuse, and have been doing a really good job at that up till now. When you look at the pardons that this administration has made for corporate tycoons who have defrauded Americans out of billions of dollars, and then they get a get out of jail free pass, which also removes their obligation to repay the seniors and the veterans and the folks who were defrauded, and and finally um i guess in addition to that you see the folks who have had their charges dropped when they made sizeable donations to either the president's campaign funds or his library or one of his golden ballrooms or something like that and then finally you just look at the front page of the wall street journal today which says justice department pulls back on pursuing corporate crime they've sent all their folks out to track down uh day workers at home and they are not going after corporate crime, they're not going after drug traffickers, they're not going after human traffickers, and they're sure as heck not going uh after folks in our government, who are defrauding the American people. So, I thank you for your work on this and I yield back.

Thank you, Miss Candler. Mister Griffiths, you're recognized.

I wasn't that dear.

Thank you. Miss Leslie Fernandez, you're recognized.

Hello, hello. Um, thank you uh very much. Uh, good to see you.

Chairman, Good morning, and good to see you uh ranking uh um you're the ranking member here today, um uh Margaret McGarvey, and thank you for the explanation uh about the fact that uh it's not really working people, it's not seniors, it's not people who pay taxes who have benefited from the deficit spending um that we have seen the Republicans engage in in the last uh eighteen months. and that's really what's key here is this is deficit spending deficit spending uh and uh chairman errington you've seen uh uh uh this chart i think you and i have discussed this chart before because it shows that uh republicans like talking about the deficit but really what republicans like doing is increasing the deficit and every here every presidency under reagan h w bush the deficit went up not by a lot under those two uh it went down during clinton uh during uh w bush it went up went down during obama and then boy under trump it just soared

hmm

came down a bit under biden and uh now you actually are have the yeah it could be distinction of being able to serve as chairman of the budget committee and will be able to retire and claim as one of, I think, your accomplishments that you have added to that deficit spending. And this bill before us is going to add to that legacy of deficit spending by Republican presidencies, if it ever got passed into law. And what we're hearing is that we're finally maybe some of the uh they call them hardliners i don't know what the right name for it is but people who say it's not good to do deficit spending are saying wait a minute there's no pay-fors in here there were no pay-fors in the seventy two seventy billion dollars that uh we passed last month either uh do you remember by how much trump raised the debt in his first term chairman errington

uh the debt has gone up by too much under uh presidents in recent times mainly because of the unfunded liability and uh entitlements that are on automatic spending. And - and just - just to be clear, we have a crisis of a balance sheet that has a hundred and forty trillion dollars that will be uh brought to bear on that balance sheet without the funding to deliver on the promises in those entitlements. That's the biggest reason it's increasing on everyone's watch But no one in ten years, to my colleague and friend from New Mexico, in ten years, no party, no budget chairman, no president, has worked to reduce the deficit to GDP like, like the House Republicans and this president. And CBO has uh confirmed that. It's over ten percent. And it's because we reduced wasteful spending by two point five trillion dollars it's because of the fiscal responsibility act that we forced democrats to the table to negotiate and have saved to date a half a trillion dollars just keeping discretionary spending flat and it's because we had paltry growth at a one point eight in the last quarter of president biden's we had a three point eight and four point three growth rate that is tremendous that is until democrats shut the government down to expand a fraud ridden covid era program that they said was temporary that would cost a hundred and thirty billion dollars with no pay-fors

the question the question jerry and i were intending was uh the question was a simple question um which was how much has uh how much did president trump increase the deficit

less less than joe biden did in the under democrat control

uh actually not actually not true at all uh it was by eight point four trillion dollars and joe biden actually brought the uh it he brought it down so actually when you look at the numbers and this is the issue is that when you look at the rhetoric when when you when you look at the rhetoric uh we'll actually

what's the source of that chart

what united states treasury i don't know if you you know you're a group of united states treasury but this is apart from the united states treasury we have we have handed it over

yeah i've heard of them yeah you can if i may just to just to just to fact check

uh we have

the the interest on the debt which tripled ok from three hundred and fifty billion to a trillion dollars under president biden because the spending created record forty year inflation, interest rates soared, and so if you add the extra cost in interest it's twelve trillion dollars,

So, the the re- the re-

magically.

the that's the idea,

I yield.

that the rhetoric of Republicans on the deficit does not match the numbers.

It's a fact.

And I think that that's the issue that we keep bringing up, and what are you doing it for, right? Uh, the four point seven trillion dollar price tag, that the cbo has told us the last uh the first reconciliation cost is the first reconciliation uh who are the big beneficiaries and we heard representative uh mcgarvey point that out they were the millionaires they were the billionaires and we brought amendments in this rules committee to say hey uh how about if we let the middle income tax cuts stay we extend those and instead say no tax cuts reordering over a billion dollars they said no how about over five hundred million they said no republicans continuously tell us where their priorities are and the last seventy billion dollars was for ice and what's happened in the last two weeks more shootings in the streets murders killings in the streets cause republicans refused to put any guardrails on and and i think that that's what we're facing here is there is uh you celebrate what came out of the one big beautiful bill you don't like the name anymore cause you change the name but what really came out of there is uh how many people lost access to medical coverage uh do you do you know that representative mcarvey

how many people lost access to

to medical coverage after passage of the one big beautiful bill

it is thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people.

It's five million people.

Yeah.

Five million people. And if we actually took what they intend to spend on more, we could extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits for, I think it's three years. So the people who are losing access to health care, they're all working families. Right? And instead we want, they want more war. And I think that that's the issue that we're concerned about. And I don't know if you wanna talk a little bit more about why these priorities, these budget priorities of the Republicans are hurting Americans' access to lower to act to health care and they're doing nothing to lower the cost for everyday Americans.

Yeah, I mean The stories that are coming into our offices, they're real and they're heart-wrenching. I had a woman from Louisville, Kentucky. Her name's Ann. Uh, she called my office and she is, she works two jobs. One of them she owns her own business. Her husband also is an independent contractor. They have a nineteen year old son who lives at their home while trying to go to the University of Louisville because he's disabled. Her health insurance premiums cost three hundred and twenty-five dollars a month under the silver plan of the Affordable Care Act. Because of the Republicans' actions in these budget bills, her premiums are going up to one thousand two hundred and seventy-five dollars a month. She talked about the fact that she can't sleep at night, that she gets short of breath when she thinks about it, that her son is still required to go to specialists multiple times per year, doesn't know if she's gonna be able to pay for it. She's doing everything right. She's playing by the rules. But the policy decisions coming out of the House Republicans and coming out of the Trump administration, they are giving millions of dollars to the richest corporations and people in this country and they are yanking healthcare away from people who are trying to make their way every single day doing it the right way. There are so many stories about this. I had a guy call me just a couple of weeks ago, his health insurance premium's gone up by a thousand dollars. This doesn't mention the fact that already in Louisville a birthing center has

And there is nothing in today's proposed budget, uh,

Uh, Uh,

uh, reconciliation that addresses any of these issues that you're talking about, Greg.

None of this whatsoever. In fact, you know, I was listening to the chairman, he he can argue all he wants to about whether it's a good thing, uh, to increase the debt or deficit of this country. What we can't argue about is whether or not it's happening. Reconciliation one, increase the debt and deficit of this country. Reconciliation two, increase the debt and and deficit of this country. This is reconciliation three, and guess what? Third time's a charm. They are re- increasing the debt and deficit of this country once again, And just look at the numbers, it's right here because it's a budget. Sixty billion dollar deficit increase for armed services, thirteen billion dollar deficit increase for intelligence, twelve billion dollar deficit increase for agriculture, a ten billion dollar deficit increase for house administration. And again, just look at the language. Don't believe me. Look at the language in the bill. They waive the Cutco provision. The Cutco provision is the fancy Republican rules term that they use for, you gotta pay for what you do. They waive it. Why waive it? If you don't unless you're gonna increase the debtor deficit. Um, so it's very clear what they're doing.

Uh, and I think that the other thing is we were here last week and they were they they they're they're allocating they're gonna send more money for work. But last week they were unwilling they were unwilling to pay for veterans' services for the the benefits that veterans need without a pay-for. But they're gonna spend this money without a paper. I think we should prioritize of veterans. And there is no instruction to the Veterans Services Committee, is there?

Our veterans get nothing in this bill.

So our veterans get nothing out of this bill. Shows you where their priorities are. And with that, Madam Chair, I yield back.

Thank you, Miss Leisure Fernandez. Chairman Arrington, this resolution is about security, funding our armed services, protect our national security, funding our nation's farmers to protect food security, and funding measures to protect election security. What would be the cost if we fail in our constitutional duty to protect America's security?

Madam Chair, I can't imagine if our troops could hear the conversation about pay-fors that every Democrat on this committee has supported supplemental funding for Ukraine, for Taiwan, for Israel. And now they're - they're taking exception with emergency funding for our troops in conflict. Right now, on the front lines, risking their lives. So let me tell you the cost. The cost is our sons and daughters can't be safe in saluting the Commander-in-Chief and doing their duty. This is bombs, bullets, and battlefield readiness. This is not modernization of the military, the three hundred and fifty billion requests that the president submitted for modernization. That's not what this is. It's emergency supplemental. And if I thought we could work that out on a bipartisan basis, we would do it.

And the number one duty of the federal government

Provide for the common defense.

is to provide for the common defense.

Yes, ma'am.

Thank you very much.

Yes, ma'am.

Any further questions of our witnesses on this panel? Seeing none, we thank you both for coming.

They they get shorter every reconciliation, Madam Chair. I I think we may be wearing Mr. McGovern down.

You're not.

Don't count on it.

She's she's a heavy gavel.

Do not count. Do do not count on wearing Mr. McGovern down.

No, I know that about this guy. Thank you for the time and opportunity.

Thank you. Thank you both for your good work. we appreciate you coming. Thank you, Mr. McCarver.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Yep.

I now welcome our second panel, Chairman Cole, former chairman of this committee, so he's chairman squared. Uh, and I understand that ranking member Deloro is on her way. um the two of you represent the appropriations committee your full statement will be submitted for the record we ask that you summarize your statement in five minutes and there is

alright good how you talk

ranking member deloro in all her glory chairman kohl uh welcome your testimony

thank you very much madam chair uh chairwoman fox uh ranking member mcgill Good morning, members of the Rules Committee, I appreciate very much the opportunity to testify today. I come before you today on HR ninety-seven seventy, the continuing Appropriations Act of twenty twenty-seven. Over the past year, the House Appropriations Committee has worked diligently to fulfill our Article one duties. Last month we completed our mark-up process for fiscal year twenty-twenty-seven, reporting all twelve bills out of the full committee by June twenty-fourth. It's the earliest date this feed has been accomplished since fiscal year twenty twenty. As of today, the full house of representatives has also passed three of these bills across the floor, including the Military Construction and Veterans Affairs bill, the Agricultural, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration bill, and the Rel- and related agencies bill, uh, and the National Security, Department of State, and related programs bill. I'm deeply proud of the work that the committee's done thus far. and I'm appreciative of the support we've received from the rest of our colleagues in this chamber. Unfortunately, current circumstances in the Senate make clear that Congress as a whole is unlikely to complete the full appropriations process by the start of the fiscal year. The fact remains that our friends and colleagues across the rotunda have yet to report any appropriations bills out of the Senate Appropriations Committee despite good faith efforts and reasonable negotiations, Political gamesmanship from the left has kept their process at a standstill. While I've not uh given up hope that we can enact at least some appropriations bills before the start of the fiscal year I'm also realistic, and I acknowledge the reality on the ground. Congress will need to enact a continuing resolution of some sort prior to September thirtieth to avoid a government shutdown at the start of the fiscal year, twenty twenty seven. Every member in this room is only too aware of what transpired over the last year. The threat of a shutdown is not only real, it's happened twice in the last twelve months. First, Senator Schumer and Senate Democrats plunged the nation into the longest government shutdown in history, last October. Not to be outdone, they then later pushed the Department of Homeland Security into the longest partial shutdown in American history. Both of these shutdowns were unnecessary, reckless, and irresponsible. It would be equally reckless and irresponsible to repeat the same mistake at the end of this fiscal year. Stability is necessary, which is why the House is moving early and taking the step of putting today's bill forward. H. R. ninety-seven seventy, the continuing Appropriations Act, twenty twenty-seven, will put in place a continuing resolution keeping the government open and operating through the December fourth of twenty twenty six. This will not only allow Congress time to continue our work on full appropri full year appropriations bills through regular order, but will also ensure that the government remains open through the November election and into early December. Some may ask why it is necessary that we take this bill up in July. I would simply state that it's never too early to do the right thing. The right thing for this body and for the American people, is to make sure that the government remains funded and remains open. Passing this bill now ensures that we, the House, have taken this important step prior to the August district work period. There will be no question about where the House stands. We stand squarely with our constituents who overwhelmingly want to keep the government open and providing services to them. Importantly, today's bill also does not contain a single poison pill writer, It's a clean CR, fully funding our government. This includes our military and defense needs, support for our veterans, and critical services for our constituents like roads, parks, child care, water projects, infrastructure improvements, scientific research, job training, and countless others. I look forward to continuing the FY twenty-seven appropriations process in the coming months. I thank each of you for your time and I look forward to your questions.

Thank you, Chairman Cole. Ranking Member Gelora,

Thank you.

you're recognized.

Thank you, Chairwoman Fox and Ranking Member McGovern, members members of the committee. Uh, good afternoon to all of you. It's great to be here alongside my friend, Chairman Cole, to discuss the stopgap funding measure released on Friday afternoon. I want to begin by stating clearly and plainly, Democrats do not want a government shutdown. In a perfect world, the months remaining between now and September thirtieth would be ample time to fund the government um on a bipartisan basis through the appropriations process, one bill at a time. However, given Republicans' refusal to write bipartisan bills in either the House or Senate a continuing resolution is necessary. If I am going to support a continuing resolution, it needs to continue government operations. exclude any poison pills, and it must maintain Congress's constitutional authority over spending decisions. At this time, the continuing resolution released on Friday does not meet that standard. The final homeland security bill passed unopposed in April, unopposed it was by a voice vote, by including a provision to remove all funding for the border patrol. Chairman Coe's bill does not continue that agreement, giving the Trump administration permission to use billions provided by this bill to fund border patrol without any substantial reforms to how that agency operates. It's a clear line in the sand that Democrats have drawn for months. In recent weeks, immigration agents have shot and killed residents in Maine and Texas, neither of whom were the target of enforcement operations, highlighting the urgent need for dramatic reforms to protect our communities from further violence. We have also been prevented this measure hastily put together with little more than a couple of days of thought. That is not the way to govern. The majority has not made time to gather information from our colleagues in the executive branch to identify any potentially critical anticipated needs, let alone anything that may come to light over the next couple of months, especially as we head into the heart of wildfire season and approach hurricane season. We are putting the cart before the horse by considering this legislation without understanding the full scope of what is needed to continue operations through December fourth. Uh, as a matter of fact, we have just received a lengthy proposed list of anomalies from the White House. But the process has made no time for us to evaluate these proposals. And this bill does not account for anything that is in these these proposals. And the chairman and I both know we go through these with a fine tooth comb to see what is flexible, and what isn't flexible. What are the needs that have to be met? Border patrol problems aside, Chairman Cole has put forward a plain bill, absent controversial writers, and containing most of the standard authorities we enact in these stopgap measures. That's a welcome change from most of the regular bills that have come to the floor this summer. But we still do not have all of the information that we need. We still have two months before the end of the fiscal year, and should not rush through an incomplete funding extension. We ought to wait for the information that we need to get it right the first time. This resolution was dropped on us on Friday afternoon, without any bipartisan negotiation. Had we been consulted, there are several provisions we would have pushed for to strengthen the measure, and to progre- and to protect congressional prerogatives. including the reversal of a proposed federal rule from the Office of Management and Budget that allows political appointees in the Trump administration to unilaterally block or terminate grant funding if they deem it not sufficiently in line with the President's policy priorities. If we had been brought in before the bill was released, we could be here touting a bipartisan agreement, with a plan to fully fund the government for the next fiscal year, before the end of this Congress. Instead, we are scrambling to jam through a one-sided stopgap measure three days before everyone leaves for the August recess. I'm deeply concerned about what may be attached to this funding measure through the rule that is passed out of this committee. There are some Republicans who have decided that they will not allow any legislation to be considered under a rule unless it includes an extremely partisan measure to restrict voting access for millions of American citizens. Under no circumstances will Democrats support that measure. If the position of my friends across the aisle is that they will shut down the government unless we severely restrict American citizens' voting access, I invite them to make that case to the public and see how the public responds in November. At minimum, I cannot support this bill without the inclusion of the technical language regarding the border patrol that was agreed on. It was agreed on as a bipartisan overwhelming voice vote in April, until we are certain that the Republicans will not use this legislation to advance their voter suppression measure. Beyond that, the decision to pursue this path without any bipartisan negotiations gives me serious reservations in moving forward. I'm happy to answer the committee's questions. I thank you and I yield back.

Thank you, Miss Delora. Miss Fischbach, you're recognized.

Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair, and um Chairman Cole. I think it's I think you mentioned it in your um in your opening remarks, but I just wanted to check again and make it make a point of it. How many of the twelve appropriations bills have passed out of your committee?

Twelve, all twelve.

And how many have passed the House?

three

and how many have passed the senate

zero

so

that includes obviously out of committee not just out of the senate itself but uh the senate appropriations committee hasn't gotten a single bill done yet and think it's pretty unlikely they're gonna get them done between now and september thirtieth

and and thank you for pointing it out i wouldn't have asked the question but not out of committee not out of the house or excuse me out of the senate and i mean senate's not obviously not taking their duty seriously if if they are not even um taking up the ones we have sent and doing anything and so i think this is the only responsible thing to do it's like you said they're probably not gonna do anything before september thirtieth or it's unlikely that they will and i think that to avoid a shutdown and let uh allow them more opportunity to get their work done and take it seriously i think this is a necessary thing that we need to do and uh so i appreciate you bringing it forward and i um it you know it pretty simple uh resolution pretty simple piece of legislation and so i think that um you know it it's easy to understand what's going on in it and so i don't think we need to have um you know three months to to um to digest what's going on in this i understand it and i think that everybody else does too and so i appreciate you bringing it forward and i appreciate the fact that you're taking the responsible approach in making sure that we are able to um in such a sense get their work done Thank you very much, and I

Thank you.

Thank you, Miss Fishbaugh. Mister McGovern, you're recognized.

Yeah, no, let me just uh first of all say that I I wanna remind my colleagues that the Senate is controlled by the Republican Party, and Susan Collins is the chair of the Appropriations Committee over there, so maybe there's a need for some change. Um, and I would uh, you know, I don't wanna prolong this. I would just I have respect for uh both the Chairman and the Ranking Member. Um, it just seems to me, based on what Mr. Loro just said, that uh maybe we could have reached a bipartisan agreement if there was a bipartisan back and forth before this uh this was announced and um maybe we can still can get to that at some point but uh um i don't really have any questions i just i just wish that this was more of a bipartisan process and maybe we would be maybe everything would be little bit different right now but it is what it is and i thank you both for being here and i yield back

thank you mr mr. scott you're recognized

thank you madam chair uh I would tell you it seems to me that the Senate's actually controlled by the parliamentarian, uh, Mm. not, uh, the Republicans over there. But I I just, Mister Cole, I looking through the things, I mean,

Tells Dr. Jones so.

I I don't see any reason for anybody to necessarily be to object to this. I, like you, don't have confidence that bills are gonna make it through the House and the Senate prior to uh, the end of the fiscal year. We only have, we don't have that many work days until then, to be honest with you, but, but I haven't seen the Senate take much action on, on anything yet. And so, I've, I think it's kind of smart to go ahead and take the potential chaos of a shutdown off of the table because of the amount of damage that it does to the American citizens and while I think it you know a shutdown probably works to the advantage of the Democrats politically because of the way the press operates and their messaging. apparatus, uh, is is very damaging to the American citizens in our country. And so I intend to vote for it. If you have any other comments that you'd like to to make as the chair, you're welcome to it. Other than that, Madam Chair, I'm I'm prepared to vote in favor of the continuing resolution.

Mister Cole.

Uh, all I'd point out is that, um, look, there's nothing in the bill to be against. It it just simply is a clean CR. And i've always had the philosophy i don't vote on bills uh because of what's not in them i vote against them uh or for them on the basis of what is in them there's nothing in here that's remotely controversial and look we've been through the two longest shutdowns in american history the longest shutdown of full government which senator schumer and senate democrat sprung on us and to say they control uh uh by the republicans simply not true because of the filibuster and that's just the reality Uh, and, uh, I don't want to go through that again. I don't want the, uh, final part of the, uh, campaign this year to be fought over a government shutdown. Frankly, I don't think people on either side of the, um, the partisan divide should want that. They should want to be fighting on the issues. I promise you this, if we shut down the government come September thirtieth, that will be the issue that dominates politics in the next few years. We're just trying to take that off the table for both sides make sure that there's certainty in funding the government that we don't have another one of these situations where we have lines at airports because two uh uh tsa agents aren't being paid for or any of those sorts of things. Just fund the essential things, we'll have the election, things can be sorted out, we'll come back after that. If the senate were moving, if they'd made as much progress as we have, uh then again I would uh I'd be happy to to hope that that would happen but i just don't see the time for it so let's remove the possibility of a government shutdown now through the election have enough time when we finish that election to come back and make some appropriate decision in the meantime we wanna keep working on appropriations bills i hope we keep bringing them to the floor i know the house has lots of things to consider uh but uh we're gonna continue to try and move the regular process along we wanna take away the possibility of a shutdown between now and the election because again we've seen that happen twice in this congress already uh generated by the senate, and i'm not willing to risk a third time if we can avoid that

there's a difference between having a majority and being in control you you yield back mr.

yes ma'am

miss canlon you're recognized

thank you um I hate to say it, but it feels like this continuing resolution is an admission of failure, not by our brilliant appropriators, but by House Republican leadership. Um, they're willing to give up one of Congress's most fundamental powers and duties in order to avoid another potential political loss, um, just before the election. Uh, you know, they're asking us to give a blank check to this administration because they can't manage either their republican caucus or to negotiate um actual bipartisan funding bills. So I think it's an insult to the appropriations committee because I know they continue to do good work on even under duress. But it's a failure of Congress to be doing this months before um the end of the year. Um and it also robs the house of the ability to direct funding to our districts, where we know we need it. It robs every member of the ability to highlight you know whether community health centers or local infrastructure or uh we've been able to um get additional resources for schools and libraries all that goes out the window with a continuing resolution um so so i'm not in favor of this i think it is an admission of of failure by the the republican leadership um i was struck ranking member deloria about something you said about the continuation of funding without guardrails for ICE.

Mmm.

At a time when in the last week to ten days we've seen two more killings of people on American streets under very very questionable circumstances,

Mm-hmm.

when we're still seeing a failure to have clear rules about use of force, um, all the money that has been sent to ICE, uh, amidst promises that they would be deploying, um, body cams for people to wear to remove some of these questions, We're not seeing that, but now we're supposed to give them more money. Is that what this bill would do?

Mm-hmm. Let let let let me be clear. First of all, I I just want to say there is there would have been no need to go down a road where there are difficulties here. As I said, you kno- you know, uh, the, um, the some of the provisions that are in the bill are fine, which we could all agree to. But the issue is that the Republican continuity resolution it does not include all of the sections of the fiscal year twenty twenty-sixth Homeland Security Appropriations Act. What it allows you, not with regard to ICE, because what they said is that there was no money that goes to ICE, but they have failed to put in what the agreement was, the funding agreement PL one one nine dash eighty-six zeroed out funding for border patrol. They did it in two ways. This Republican CR carry uh um omits that prohibition, that guaranteed zero for border control. And so that gives the administration the flexibility to fund border patrol with the money that has been provided to CBP, because we did provide money to CBP to carry out its its its its its functions of uh in a in a in a in a in a strong way.

Mm-hmm.

Um, Uh, so, and no one has said, and, and by the way, so that you understand, the, uh, uh, uh, uh, we discovered that, we being the Democrats, discovered this technical error, uh, and it was an error, I, I, I, I, I believe that that was an error, but nevertheless we then formulated language in the way to fix it, so we could move forward. That was denied because when the bill came forward, um, uh, it, it, it's, we noticed that problem, we drafted the correction. When it came forward on, on, on Saturday, Republicans did not make the technical corrections in the bill that was introduced on Saturday. So they made a choice. To allow the CR to potentially fund border patrol, no reforms as we have fought for over the last several months, uh, and quite frankly, as I say, this piece was passed on the floor of the House bipartisan in April by virtue of a voice vote. So why not fix it? So, th- this would allow them to potentially fund border patrol on top of the ninety point seven billion dollars that CBP has already received through reconciliation. And that's largely for border patrol operations. This could be, this could have been corrected. Um, and, and so I'm, I, uh That that's, that, that is it, and I got all the citations and what bill it is, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So it admits this language, uh, and I don't think that we can, um, what is it, there was a r- Ronald Reagan who said trust but verify, uh, we have no way of verifying that this money would not be used.

So so when when this bill was produced,

Yes.

you checked it over

What?

and in the process of verifying that it didn't have anything that

We drafted language.

Mm.

was different than what had been previously agreed to you,

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

you found that there were things that were different, and when you asked for corrections they didn't happen.

Uh, we drafted the language.

That's not good faith negotiation.

So. Oh, there we are.

Thank you. I yield back.

Thank you.

Thank you, Miss Candley. Mister Griffith, you're recognized.

Mister Chairman, if the Senate doesn't act, if we don't get these appropriations bills passed, um these sections that, uh, the ranking member has just mentioned would not be in the government shutdown period either, would they?

Correct.

And if we do the CR now, which I will tell you I think is the responsible thing to do based on past actions on the Senate side and it's it's not just the filibuster it's the modern filibuster that's been changed uh i- i- you know i- if you went to the filibuster before the seventies,

Mm-hmm.

you wouldn't have these issues, but nonetheless um but if the if the if we take these actions and then through negotiations with the house and the senate and and these uh things that the ranking member wants which have been agreed to by the by the house previously that would all be in the appropriations bill uh most likely would it not

correct

so and if there and there's no reason why if we pass a a cr to take effect should we not get appropriations bills and we do pass appropriations bills then the cr would not go into effect is that also correct

that's also correct

Now let me ask you this, cuz I'm I don't know the answer. If we if we approve, let's say the House and the Senate get together and we approve six of the twelve or so appropriations bills, does the CR only go into effect for the remaining areas that weren't approved?

That that's also correct. If we actually passed bills and they were signed into law, those would supersede a CR.

So this is kind of like buying that life insurance policy when you have children. You hope you aren't gonna die, but if you do, you want them taken care of. And am I correct that this is kind of like saying, okay, we're gonna have this policy here, we hope we get it all done by September thirtieth, but if we don't, while members are distracted in October, going off campaigning or trying to campaign for both the House and the Senate, then we don't have to worry about the government shutting down and not doing the things that the American people wanted to do. Is that my understanding?

That is correct.

And and has it been your experience in your district as it has been in mine that of all the issues we fight about up here, having the government shut down and having people worrying about whether or not there's gonna be, you know, this, that or the other, whether the money for f- disaster relief is gonna actually get get to where it needs to be whether or not the Blue Ridge Parkway's gonna be open in your district, may not be asking about the Blue Ridge Parkway, but similar functions like that These are the things that people care about the most. Isn't that true?

Uh, in my view, it is.

Yeah, it's okay.

And so what we're doing here is we're trying to do the responsible thing, recognizing that in the past there have been issues and problems.

Mm-hmm.

We're just trying to make sure that that government moves smoothly as we move forward. And then we can negotiate all those things. If we get these appropriations bills passed, that's fabulous, is it not?

I think it's a prudent thing to do, given what's happened literally within the last year i mean the longest government shutdown in history followed by the longest partial government shutdown history there's nothing in this bill that's remotely offensive to anyone it just simply continues saying and make sure we can have an election sort these things out but not shutdown the government with all the risk to public safety uh to the functioning of the economy put those things down and and again we've watched the democratic uh you know uh contingent in the senate do that twice already so making sure it doesn't happen a third time we think is the prudent thing to do

well and it's prudent not withstanding i mean doesn't matter who does what it just makes sure that if we're if we're negotiating points and we're arguing for our points um vehemently and respectfully but we can get an agreement by september thirtieth the american people don't have to pay the price

That's uh that's exactly the effort here.

I appreciate it. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and appreciate your work.

Thank you.

I yield back.

Thank you, Mister Griffiths, for the always getting to the heart of the matter. Miss Leisure Fernandez, you're recognized.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and uh hello, uh, Mr. Chairman and ranking member. I would note that uh in the short hearing that we've had so far, uh, we've had Republicans mention repeatedly over and over and over again, shut down, shut down, shut down.

I'm not talking about the shop.

Uh, and I've heard the ranking member talk about can we have a conversation about a CR so that we can work out matters, um, because a CR uh is best uh like an appropriations. I I always like it when uh the two of you come before us and say well we worked things out, right. We didn't each get what we wanted but we worked things out, and what I'm hear what I'm hearing today is we were giving this bill we've had very time to very little time to look and we have been able to work things out. Uh, and is is that a good summary of kind of what we're seeing here?

Yeah. I I mean the fact is is, as I said at the outset, uh, you know, I I'm not I'm I'm not gonna get into uh, you know, everybody's view is about the government shutdown. All I can just say it took you seventy-nine days to come to a conclusion I made, the very first day, is to say let's separate out uh uh the border security and and and ICE and fund Took you seventy-nine days to wanna do that, to pay these people. You know, you kept talking about it, but you didn't. That aside, we could come to an agreement here. Why are we not following what we said we would do, uh, in April of twenty twenty-six with regard to the, uh, funding of, uh, ICE, which is there, and the technical error? I don't believe anybody did this with malice or forthright. I think it was a technical error, but what is contemplated is not providing that fix and saying zero, as is in the uh in in the in the bill for this effort. That that is not a problem. By the way, I I might just add, look, I I've talked about the Senate a lot and you know what what they do or what they don't know, but I do know that uh, the - the - the chair and the ranking member there, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, chair Collins and ranking member Murray have talked about coming to a bipartisan conclusion on where we go to a CR which is not the case on the, uh, uh, on the - on the - on the House side. And again, look, we received this moments ago. How many pages is this? Some, uh, you know, twenty pages of anomalies from the White House. which have not been reviewed or gone through about what that means. For instance, the OMB proposal for section eight, you need language to address funding shortfalls and to maintain the current services for public housing agencies. Without the anomaly, public housing authorities would have insufficient funds to maintain assistance for tens of thousands of households. Shouldn't we take the time to find out whether or not we can get this right on the first go-round? All we're simply asking for is to take a look at the technical fix that's needed, that's make sure that the appropriations bill is not gonna be loaded down with the save act, as we saw with the state and foreign operations bill, uh, uh, that, uh, and talk about not a clean CR. That certainly wouldn't be a clean CR. We have no guarantees there of what comes out of the c- the - the - the - the committee here. And we could get to a bipartisan resolve of this, uh, if we were t- to move forward, uh, in, uh, in - in - in - in - in good faith. Uh, it defies imagination that we have now, uh, two months to go, we're going with half ideas and not full knowledge and understanding of what needs to go into a continuing uh re- resolution. And uh so, uh happy to continuing to talk about it. I - I - I will say one last word. You know, people talk about, " Well, let's wait and see." You know, uh very clearly, there hasn't been any level of trust built up by this administration. Let's take a look at rescissions. Let's take a look at impoundments. Let's take a look at reconciliation. Let's take a look at a rule now that OMB says no longer are we gonna provide uh grants across all agencies not only they're not gonna be based on merit or peer reviewed with regard to science but they're gonna go through a f- a filter a political filter with political appointees who know jack about what is in some of these bills, and they will make the decision as to where federal dollars are going to go. Both sides of the aisle should be so offended by that because we come to a conclusion. We win some, we lose some, but we come to a conclusion on a bipartisan basis of what our constituents have said that they want these dollars for. And we pass the bills, bicameral, bipartisan, president signs the bill, and then it gets reversed? Hell no. That cannot be the case. On both sides of the aisle. We cannot go forward. And as I said, we need some assurances here. We need to fix, and we need to be guaranteed that the save act is not gonna be part of this, part of this effort. Thank you. I yield back.

Thank you. I look forward to having a conclusion that has more bipartisan I look forward to your bipartisan uh conversations moving forward,

That's all.

and with that I yield back.

Thank you, Miss Leisure Fernandez. I don't see anyone else here. Um available to ask any questions of our witnesses i um thank you all very much for coming and uh making your positions

thank you thank you

uh perfectly clear

thank you

um thank you very much and you're excused

thank you

i now welcome our next panel chairman style and ranking member morelli from the house administration committee well i'm still looking for chairman style

i'm sure mr. morelli could represent both

oh

i'm not sure you're trusted to do that but

i'm working on my my my question form

Thanks.

and now welcome our next panel chairman style and ranking member morelli from the house administration committee your full statements will be submitted for the record and we ask you summarize your statement in five minutes chairman stile i welcome your testimony

chair fox uh thanks for having me in ranking ranking member mcgovern uh members of the committee thanks for inviting me to testify today in support of hr seven O O eight the stop insider trading act i also want to thank uh speaker johnson leader scalise with hemmer and their teams uh for their commitment to getting this common sense bill to the floor also want to thank uh a handful of our colleagues who are the front and center of this debate including uh your colleague on this committee uh chip roy uh as well as brian fitzpatrick tim burchett and apollina luna and others uh for their feedback and support throughout the process uh before the committee today is a rules committee print which combines the stop insider trading act with another measure the committee has advanced, the Voter ID Act. Together these bills will clean up Congress and strengthen election integrity. I'll begin uh by discussing the second section first, which addresses lawmaker stock trading. This section ensures that lawmakers cannot use their position to profit off insider information they may garner uh while serving in Congress. Under the bill, members of Congress, their spouses, their dependent children, are prohibited from purchasing securities issued by publicly traded companies. To sell a stock, members are required to provide advance public disclosure at least seven days in advance to the Clerk of the House or the Secretary of the Senate. The penalties uh associated with violations are steep. Members will be assessed a fine equal to two thousand dollars or ten percent to the value of the transaction, whichever is greater. In addition, violators must forfeit any realized gains from a profitable sale. Legislation, I believe, is critical to restoring public trust in this institution. Nearly fifteen years ago, Congress passed the Stock Act, which required lawmakers to publicly disclose stock trades. However, uh, the disclosure rules lack detail and can be filled filed a month after the transaction. This, coupled with increased attention to members' trades and particular by social media accounts, has fueled public frustration. I believe it's time we just stop allowing members to buy new stock. Doing so removes the appearance of impropriety altogether. Americans should be confident that lawmakers are working for them, not for their stock portfolios. Someone wants to go trade stocks for a living, there's a place to do that, it's called Wall Street. If you're here in Washington you should be working on behalf of the American people. The reforms in the stop insider trading act are common sense, and I think that's actually why they're so overwhelmingly popular. Now let me turn to the third section of the bill, uh the voter ID section. Uh Madam Chair, you may have seen uh the big news over the weekend. Uh, the never-ending pasta bowl is back at Olive Garden. Uh, I used to work at Olive Garden, so this hit close to home, uh, but to safeguard the integrity of their pasta program, Olive Garden, as you may have seen, implemented photo ID requirements. However, in jurisdictions across the country from Illinois and California and Minnesota, an individual can go to the polls on Election Day and cast a ballot without providing confirmation- without providing confirmation of their identity. In other words, Madam Chair, we're protecting our breadsticks more than our ballots in jurisdictions across this country. Our Voter ID Act implements common sense election integrity measures to require voters to show photo ID when casting a ballot in federal elections. This is another common sense policy, and again, I think that's why it's so popular with American people. Twenty-four states require photo ID to vote. This bill makes the same, that's standard, and takes it nationwide. Today we have a real opportunity to clean up Washington and increase Americans' confidence in our election. I encourage all committee members to support this legislation. I look forward to your questions. I yield back.

Thank you, Chairman Stile. Ranking member Murillo, you're recognized.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, uh, Madam Chair, to you and to, uh, Ranking Member McGovern and to all of my, uh, esteemed colleagues. It's always nice to be back in the Rules Committee, so thanks for the opportunity. to uh to be here and address the bill

and and former member of the committee uh

yes uh yes i'm sorry yes of course and most importantly um

yeah

madam chair as i have said repeatedly house democrats strongly support a stock trading ban from members of congress we also support a ban on the president the vice president and federal judicial officers from trading individual stock as well but none of that is before us today rather this bill is a crude combination two completely unrelated bills, the so-called stop insider trading act and the voter id act, the latter of which is already a crude reformulation of at least three other failed Republican voter suppression proposals. If Republicans were serious about ending stock trading by government officials, they would not have attached a subsection of the save America act as a poison pill. And if Republicans were serious about protecting elections, They would not have gutted CISA's election security unit. They would actually fund the work of election workers across the country, instead of indulging the president's almost childlike obsession with the twenty-twenty election. Instead, they echo his criticisms of state and local election administrators, both Republicans and Democrats, who patriotically and without favor do the unglamorous work of securing our democracy. Turning to the bill before us, I'll address both measures individually. Neither of them deserves passage. First, the so-called Stop Insider Trading Act. This bill would in fact allow members of Congress to continue to own and trade individual stocks. The bill will let members of Congress keep every single share of stock they currently own. The bill would allow members to liquidate their holdings at any time, profiting off years of ballooning investment portfolios. There is no divestiture required under this bill. And crucially, the bill does nothing to rein in the unprecedented, absurd, and deeply offensive corruption currently taking place in the White House. Donald Trump promised a booming economy and no new wars. Instead, he's enriched himself by billions and billions of dollars, picking winners and losers in the stock market while pocketing the profits. I welcome any chance for us to consider legislation to end insider trading in Washington including at the White House. But again, that is not what this bill does. So we'll have to wait even longer for real progress. And when House Democrats regain gavels in November after this, uh, bill inevitably and justifiably fails to become law, and we finally ban stock trading by Congress, by the President, and by the Supreme Court. Now to address the second fully distinct part of this bill, Voter ID Act. I have to say, uh, in the words supposedly of Yogi Berra, this feels like deja vu all over again. We will all remember the long list of failures. Republicans attempted to pass the Save Act, then the Save Act Part Two once again, then the Save America Act, and now the Voter ID Act. All these bills have the same purposes and the same origins. They aim to eviscerate male voting, needlessly burden millions of eligible American voters, and further President Trump's obsession with undermining our elections in aid of Republican Party priorities. and Republican politicians, not to further the aims of this republic, not to assist our democracy, but to do this in a partisan way. The show your papers regimen and regime passed and proposed in this latest iteration would be more restrictive than any in the country, currently in use anywhere, including in states like Texas and Florida, those liberal bastions of voting rights. In fact, several Republican officials have appropriately criticized provisions of this bill. as burdensome and potentially illegal. Republican Ohio Governor DeWin recently vetoed an anti-vote by mail bill almost identical to this one, noting its restrictions would, quote, "would not discourage fraud, would not add any real security, and would create an additional and significant burden for Ohioans to vote by mail." As I've said before, I support voter identification. But despite its name, the Voter ID Act is not a voter identification bill it's a voter suppression act and uh i might just say and my dear friend uh in colloquia i often agree with uh chairman style but equating an endless pasta bowl at a chain italian restaurant with a fundamental constitutional right to vote i think indicates how seriously we're taking this matter in our mark up committee democrats offered a reasonable voter identification provision as an amendment to this bill in a show of good faith we even retained a grant-making provision in the original text. Not only did Republicans reject our amendment, but they stripped out the grant-making provision in advance of today's rule. That's right, Republicans removed the only slightly redeemable quality of this otherwise very bad bill. Simultaneously, in a different vehicle, Republicans would instruct the Committee on House Administration to increase the deficit by ten billion dollars to impose save act restrictions that have died in the Senate. So I'll tell you this much. It's notable the majority has agreed to ten billion as a new baseline for federal support for election administrators. I'm going to remind people of that, and I look forward to a more effective, more secure use for that level of funding, uh, over the next year. But in the face of these two destructive bills, I would ask my colleagues to show some courage, oppose these foolish measures, and with that, I, uh, thank you for the time and I'll yield back.

Um, thank you both for your comments. Um, Chairman Stile, um, I did mention that the Olive Garden, um, has now instituted a requirement, um, for a bo- for, uh, ID in my opening remarks. Um, we, our friends across the aisle want to sow division by claiming that voter ID requirements for voters suppress voting. Did the largest study on this question, conducted by the non-partisan National Bureau of Economic Research, which tracked one point six billion data points over an eight year period, confirm that voter ID laws have no statistically measurable negative impact on voter participation

yeah that that's correct i think that's a really important point um you need an id to board an airplane open a bank account i i obviously make light heart of the uh the olive garden uh requiring photo id there's uh events that our colleagues on the other side of the aisle host that require a photo uh id to get in um and so the notion that somehow photo identification uh for voting uh is a uh i- is a barrier. It's actually the statist- the st- the statistics just don't support that. If you look at my home state of Wisconsin, we have a reasonably robust uh photo ID bill. I think there's room for improvement. This law does that. Uh but we, what we see is continued high voter participation, and I encourage high voter participation. I think that's a good thing. Uh and I think actually what we will see by requiring photo identification uh is people's confidence in our elections to increase. Uh, and this, this statistics really show us when people have confidence in their elections, they're actually more likely to participate. There's a lot of data that came out of the state of Georgia, after Georgia passed their state, uh, election integrity legislation. Um, and so I'm actually of the belief that we will see, uh, voter participation increase.

Ma- may I

But

uh,

Mr. Morelli.

I, yeah, just respond to it. I, I don't think that we face such profound differences in belief around voter id requirements my state doesn't have a photo id we do signature analysis as is done in many states but let's just assume for a moment that we could get together and decide that we have a national standard i i would say that for instance in north carolina i know you're well uh acquainted with it you can uh register to vote and vote with a driver's license even if it's expired for a year or less a public assistance program id card a student id or staff id from a list of over seven thousand institutions um that would not be the case under this this would be a much more restrictive voter id law that you attempt to pass than is in the state of north carolina in the state of south carolina in the state of florida in the state of texas as i said places that have placed a premium on voter id and support this but the bill before the house that you are considering today is far more restrictive and many of those ids

Well, I wasn't gonna bring up North Carolina, but since you have brought up North Carolina, I would say to you that we passed a cons- we we passed a law in the state, the Republicans passed a law in the state of North Carolina with no Democrat support to have um voter ID. That was challenged in court by a Democrat member of our Con- our Supreme Court stopped that from going through till it was approved. We passed a constitutional amendment supported by sixty-one percent of the people in the state. That was challenged by Democrats. We then passed another law. We finally, after about ten years of Democrats fighting us tooth and nail in North Carolina to keep from having a voter ID. All that people say to me all the time is, " Why do the Democrats fight voter ID?" Could it be that they wanna cheat? People do not understand why it's an eighty percent, I believe, eighty-two percent approval rating that we have id to vote it is an extraordinarily popular idea it took us over ten years in north carolina to get it back over the objections of democrats who who constantly didn't want it mr. mcgovern i'm

i i think the i'm i'm sorry yeah

i i yield back mr. mcgovern you're recognized

well thank you uh well i i i i i i i'll let the gentleman answer it it would be

Well, yeah, the only thing I would say, uh, and I appreciate is that the question is, first of all, voting is not a privilege, it's a right in America.

Right.

And I know the President always refers to it as a privilege, it's not. Maybe drinking beer is a privilege, maybe getting a bottomless bowl of pasta is a privilege, they're not rights. This is a right. All of the other rights flow from it. So you want to make sure, I think, and I think many people would agree, that as long as you're in a position to provide ID that proves who why is it such a restrictive list why are student id's no longer allowed virtually every state that has some form of photo id allows

right

the state university to issue a student id this bill wouldn't allow it

right right which is well let me let me just uh again say for the record that voting is a constitutional right it's not a lunch special uh you have a constitutional right to vote you don't have a constitutional right to a breadstick or or a bowl of pasta um and if your right uh to vote is denied you have lost your voice in our government so i mean these these analogies are are just are are

with you gentlemen the gentleman with you

happy happy to yield to the gentleman

thank you um we also have a right to bear arms but we have to show an id our ability to deal with it to buy a gun

yeah well i mean i again i um we can that's a whole separate topic uh

oh it's

madam madam chair it is a whole separate topic no have you have you said it

it that's oh oh oh yes

What I just wanna say on the issue of voting rights and voting integrity, my Republican colleagues in this administration have absolutely no standing. I mean, I I listened to this president's speech last week, it's forty minutes of my life I'll never get back. It was crazy. It was insane. Um, conspiracy theory after conspiracy theory, and all of my Republican colleagues here just kinda went along to get along. Well, whatever the president says, you know, I I get it. He can't stand the fact that he lost the twenty twenty election i know his ego is fragile but we're just gonna let him say whatever he wants and let him create doubt um in the minds of the american people that somehow our elections are not safe i read actually read the garbage that he said he released uh the the the all the uh intelligence basically is saying that there's no evidence that there's been any kind of foreign interference or uh in uh in our elections that the kind of the the the tool that foreign governments have is to try to create the impression that they may have um influenced our election as a way to discourage people from voting. Well, we don't have to worry about Russia or China or anybody else. Donald Trump's doing it all by himself, all because his ego can't stand the fact that he lost an election. And now my Republican friends are bending over backwards trying to do whatever they can to make it more difficult for people to vote. Chairman Stile, the introduced version of your voter ID bill included a grant program to help states provide eligible voters with free voter id cards. Your committee reported a version of your bill that also included this grant program. The bill published on the Rules Committee website also included this grant program. Then, for some reason, a new version was published that deleted this grant program. Why?

So there's different ways we wanna make sure all individuals uh can receive a NID. uh under supreme court jerry

i just wanna know why why why the grant program was deleted

i i was i was getting there if you'll give me the the the opportunity to to respond um

ok alright yeah

there there are multiple ways we wanna make sure that everyone can receive an id uh we're also going through a reconciliation process as you know this committee uh had a conversation i believe on that earlier uh today uh there

right

are fund now available uh in the committee on house administration something that we're looking at uh but under the supreme court uh everyone is allowed uh if it is so determined that it's needed uh as it will be under this legislation

but but you could have done it in this bill today

uh to vote yeah there's different avenues to how we're looking at it

uh i i guess i mean so without this grant program if a state does not provide

yeah

id's for free people without the specific forms of id required by your bill will have to pay in order to simply vote

i don't know the

and i guess the question is who who asked you i wanna know like who asked you to delete this grant program

i i actually if i can comment i don't think your previous statement is actually accurate uh I think if you as we look at the Supreme Court jurisprudence uh if if it is required states would be required to provide the ID the the the second

what what what what what what I'm just trying to who asked

question that you asked is we're looking at ways to make sure that these

yeah well who asked you to delete the grant program because it it was in the original bill,

I've had broad conversations with

it was reported on your committee, it was in the uh it was in in the on it was it was in the bill that was published on the rules committee website, so somebody just recently had asked you to to take this out, I'm just curious, who was it, was it the speaker, was it Trump, was it who?

No, there're there're broad conversations about how we how we ultimately uh, have all of these pieces of the puzzle work. We're also working in real time on the reconciliation piece.

I But why? Why why was it taken out? I'm just trying to understand why it was taken out. You had it in your original bill. It was in the bill that you reported out of your committee. It was in the um, bill published on the rules web site. So like, now now it's not there, and so I'm just trying to understand like why. There's gotta be a a reason why. Somebody asked you to do it. so i'm want i just wanna know who asked you to take it out and i wanna know why

yeah we're always looking at ways to improve and finesse bills and this is part of this is part of a broader conversation

so who asked you to take it out can you give us like a name so we can follow up with somebody to find out like what what you know like why was the i mean who yeah who's having this broader conversation

uh republicans in the house of representatives

oh ok so alright so uh so you asked the i'm reading the your your letter that you sent to the rules committee

Mm-hmm.

Um, and you're asking the Rules Committee for a closed rule on this bill, meaning that you don't want any amendments to be even considered. Yet you got a chance to amend this bill at the last minute by taking out the grant program. Why do you think your colleagues don't deserve the same opportunity?

Well, obviously that'll be a decision for you here at

Right,

the Rules Committee as to whether or not amendments are allowed.

but, but, but, uh, but you this w- w- u- usually, usually when we get a letter like this from a chair it's, it says that they asked the Rules Committee for an appropriate rule. You, um, actually, very, uh, very specific, saying that uh you request the committee grant a close rule

yeah i'm of the belief that the bill is ready to be brought to the floor we'll pass

yeah which is you but i so but you again uh uh you you you this was in the bill that you introduced that was reported on your committee that was you know uh published on the rules committee website you it it it mysteriously gets taken out you can't tell us who asked you to take it out or why it's taken out um and yet you ask you and you you kind of do something that most chairs don't do you know who usually ask for an appropriate rule you ask for a closed rule i i guess so that nobody could try to put it back in or to amend this in any other way i was just i i just don't understand why your colleagues don't deserve the same opportunity that you had to be able to remove something that again made it through your committee um and uh and uh and i i gotta tell you it just seems to me that this is just another example of all of you guys playing politics uh and you know And the reason why this matters is that these grants could have made it so the people without these ideas could get them. I mean, that that was the whole point of this. And um and I and and it's gone. And I and and I I so I again I I don't even know what the hell you guys are trying to do, but it's certainly not trying to preserve the integrity of elections, or to get more people to vote. Uh, you're trying to make it so that people will will be frustrated and can't vote. Uh, and again, I think that goes against what this country is about. Uh, Mister Morelle, you have submitted a substitute amendment to this legislation. Can you explain your amendment to us and what it advantages it has over Mister Stiles' bill?

Yes, so there's a, actually because there's multiple pieces of of uh of the bill that we uh would make better, but I I also just to your earlier point about uh amendments, we would make amendments and I would like to see an amendment that the previous the the that we revert to at least the portion of the bill that had the grant making, so my amendment would restore the grants. I think it was the only redeemable part of this bill would be to give resources to local uh, election administrators. They're doing hard work, they're doing it without uh, support from the federal government, and now this bill takes away what I consider the only redeemable part of the bill. They need support. uh they need support whether or not we add all these additional uh requirements on them or not um but at least it uh it would uh make the bill better I mean it's a bad bill but it would make it better to be able to provide some resources and you know the other the the other thing that we should note is that would they would be administered by the elections um um advisory commission and the EAC or the elections assistance commission commission And the EAC provides resources and support for local, state and local election administrators. So the whole point, and the president is now fired, so there are no members of the commission at all. Fired all the remaining ones. So the the the commissioners don't exist. The professional staff does. They could continue to do grant making, but I think it says, um, worlds about how the president views this. He continues to try to take guardrails off of the election system so that people will lose confidence. And I appreciate your comments about the president's speech the other night. I mean, the president's the one who took apart and, and eliminated the election security unit of CISA. And then he talks about the challenges, uh, facing, uh, our local administrators and vulnerabilities. Well, you're the one who's making it worse, not better. So the grants would be one. Uh, and then we have additional amendments as it relates to um the um uh the the um the um program that relates to the the um other part of the bill that that's entirely which as it relates to stock trading

yeah i'm just i'm just i'm just surprised that uh you know his request for a totally closed rule not an appropriate rule so clearly some thought in the

well it may also have to do if i might it also may have to do with amendments that

of course

could come from from other members that mirror the voter id requirements in the various states in some states you can use

right

concealed weapons permits you can almost always use student id's if you're trying to

right

control who can vote you have to make sure that there's no amendments because they might actually pass

and just going back to the all over the garden pasta bowl example uh my understanding that that's that you gotta put down in addition to an id a hundred dollars um so i hope what we're not trying to do here is kind of institute another poll tax um to yeah actually make it uh costly for people to vote and again i i i question about the grant program again it was in the bill that you introduced it was in the bill that you reported on the committee it was in the it was the bill published in the in the rules website and can't get an answer why it was removed can't get an answer who actually uh asked you to remove it i i guess we there's some back room deal going on and some back room in the capital here trying to figure out how to how to make it more difficult for people to vote you know but i mean cause uh because there's i we we have not yet to hear a good reason why it was taken out of this bill Uh, but, I mean, this is not the way you should be legislating, you know, on elections or, uh, protecting people's right to vote or on any of this stuff. I mean, this is just not the way you should do it.

Ma- ma'am,

Yeah.

if I might just make one other additional point, I this bill is not gonna pass the Senate. I think everyone in this room, anybody who's in the Capitol knows that. But you could have you could find yourself in a position, let's say this did pass, president signed it, but the reconciliation didn't happen, which is also highly dubious you could end up having this bill with no money in it so efforts to provide people with free voter id any of that would be without any resources to be able to carry out

and and we have no idea how that money in the reconciliation bill if it would ever pass would be used

right

i mean yeah i mean this is scary um and and this should not be a partisan issue um and not just democrats but republicans in this chamber who give a damn about integrity in elections ought to be outraged by what's going on with that idea back

Gentleman yields back, now recognize the gentleman from Georgia, Mister Scott,

Thanks, Mr. Chair,

for his time.

and I'm just listening to how ridiculous their argument is over not showing a photo ID. I literally showed a photo ID to buy Sudafed over the last couple of weeks, and they actually scanned the back of the ID to make sure that you can buy it. I also showed an ID to pick up, uh, some prescriptions for another family of mine, member of mine, the other day. And you know what? The people who were working behind the counter knew exactly who I was because we been doing business there for long long time although with pbms conducting themselves the way that they do not sure how much longer those independent pharmacies are able to survive that's a different issue though um but i wanna get to uh the stock issue you know chairman sile you and i have had this discussion before as you know i uh i had my series seven before i got here i i i look at the bill i i'm gonna vote for the bill i wanna i wanna bring up a couple of things though that i i wish we could just do that i think would solve a lot of the problems and you and i have had this discussion i appreciate your time with that i think i think the issue that leads to the confusion is the range on the trade so when you go and we fill out our disclosure you have a range of one thousand one to fifteen thousand fifteen thousand one to fifty fifty thousand one to one hundred thousand one hundred thousand one to two fifty, two fifty to five hundred and it goes all the way up five million to twenty five million um and you know sometimes when things get reported in blogs if you will just say you paid fourteen thousand dollars for a stock that's falls in the one to fifteen thousand range and if you sold it for sixteen thousand it falls in the fifteen to fifty and so sometimes when they do their calculation they'll say paid as little as a thousand dollars and sold it for as much as fifty thousand dollars and that certainly uh gives the perception if that's happening on a regular basis that there is tremendous amounts of insider trading going on uh in the halls of congress now let me be clear about this there are there is at least one member of congress that has been prosecuted for insider trading is that correct

yes

and uh but if you if you if you look at this form you can also go down and you can click other exact amount and i just really think if members and i i don't have much stock i have less than ten thousand left i think uh but you know i really think if we simply put the number of shares that were purchased and the price that it was purchased at or the number of shares that were sold and the price it was sold at it would eliminate a lot of the accusations and just wondering if that was discussed that's not a part of the bill but um i've actually started doing that when i do sell something sold x at this particular share value um any thoughts on that

you you bring up great point when congress passed the stock act fifteen years ago uh it was largely a disclosure regime and you correctly note that it gave large bans in which um those reports would be made available um if an individual wants to try to make a persuasion off of returns on any of those given reports especially uh under the uh the the rules of social media if you will uh one can one can sometimes tell a story that's inaccurate uh i think that's a broader challenge with how the reporting regime under the stock act operates this bill before us today uh is a little bit more laser focused in the aspect of insider trading as you correctly noted a member of congress was held accountable for insider trading insider trading already illegal uh and should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law i think one of the challenges we see is prosecuting insider trading is actually really difficult uh and so

hmm

due to the scrutiny that's been placed on buying and selling individual shares of stock um i think there is an opportunity to simply put in place a bright line rule that prevents members of congress from doing that and in so doing uh removing even the appearance of impropriety that an individual uh was engaged in a trade based on insider information

so we're saying that you can't buy stock

individual shares of stock upon upon being elected to congress exactly

individual shares of stock right and and so i wanna you know a lot of us have spouses that work and i wanna you know if you work for uh companies a lot of times the company four ok or four one k match may be done in stock in that company this bill doesn't prohibit the working spouse from four one k matches or or other things along those lines from from continuing to work at that employer

it

does it

eh great question so the the spouse uh of a member as well as dependent children are restricted under this as relates to buying and selling shares the exception that you correctly note what we call the spousal exception so if that income is earned in the ordinary course uh that is allowed so if your if your spouse works uh for coca-cola uh and they give a thousand shares of stock to every every employee at that pay grade uh your spouse would be able to earn that and again that goes back to the core concept here the the focus on this uh is not to prevent ownership of private assets the focus on this is to prevent an individual member from

sure

profiting off of inside information so if it's through the ordinary course of their business almost by definition your spouse is not engaged in a a uh a trade based on inside information garnered from the uh the members inside information

and if your grand if your grandparents started a company that then got bought and bought again and ended up

so we allow that

with shares of a company you are not forced to liquidate them you just can't buy more shares correct

that would be accurate

ok and those shares are also disclosed on your financial disclosure so people could see if you were

they would be

um ok so one one of the other areas uh i do have concerns about and i have i'd like to submit for the record actually a wall street journal article and if it wasn't wall street journal i wouldn't um pay much attention to it um i shouldn't say that i guess but it's probably true there's not much journalism anymore uh out there but the new washington temptation inside information and a prediction market account Do are we doing anything to and Mr. Chair I'd like to submit for the record that Wall Street Journal article, just as we're having this discussion, are we doing anything

What what was the date on that again?

I'll have to expand it with my eyes like they are. July the sixteenth.

All right. Without objection, so word.

July eighteenth. Are we addressing the polymarket issue?

Uh, in the committee on house administration, uh, which um um Remember Morgan Griffith, you're you're the the name tag is is off right now, so I as I looked right up there you're not Miss Chairwoman Fox.

Right.

Yeah, I'm not allowed to say this. Uh, Morgan Griffiths uh joins us on the Committee of the House Administration.

Okay.

We have a separate piece of legislation uh

Okay.

addressing that not included in this bill before us today,

Okay.

uh but I think it's one absolutely worthy of our efforts.

I I absolutely believe that there's probably more potential poor views there than there is even even in this with proper disclosure. We had we had a member a couple of years ago um that when their spouse was going before senate confirmation it was revealed that um there had been a fairly significant trade that had not been reported do you remember what i'm talking about i'm not gonna call the member but

uh i don't know that i i recall that but i could envision that occurring

ok so so there was there was a member of the house who was going through the confirmation process and then they went through an audit because of the senate confirmation process and in that comparison they found a trade that had not been disclosed um i i i guess one of my frustrations with this and i and again i support the legislation i think the ban on buying is is the is the right way to go with the solution but i guess one of my frustrations with this i had another member and they were being very critical of a republican who had bought a bunch of stocks i'm like well how do you know they bought the stocks because they filled out the disclosure. You know, the ones who don't fill out the disclosure are actually the ones that you probably if if if they're out there, the ones that you need to be more worried about. Is that a would that be a reasonable statement that

Ye- it it it's a great question, because in a lot of these uh broader ethics regimes, it's either a disclosure regime or a prohibition regime. And the Stock Act uh passed fifteen years ago was broadly a disclosure regime which then brings to light the concern uh this bill before us today, the stop inside our trading act has a specific prohibition which simply

Yeah.

removes the the um even the appearance of inappropriate actions.

Th- this this bill is is I believe it's well thought in a big step in the right direction. Uh it the ban is limited to purchasing individual stocks from publicly traded companies. I do worry about private placements. and um the potential with private placements i think that's something we probably need to address in the future but i i appreciate your work on this i look forward to supporting it and i think it's a broad broad step in the right direction

gentleman yields back now recognize the gentleman from pennsylvania miss scanlon for her time

thank you um i think we're way past the time where we need to be dealing with the fact that uh the public is broadly mistrustful of members of congress or the president or the vice president dealing in the stock market, because it has not just provided the appearance of impropriety or the appearance of using um government information for personal profit, but we've seen it actually occurring in real time and on an increasing basis, particularly with the white house. I mean it's interesting that our colleagues mentioned that there actually was a member of congress who was prosecuted for insider trading, a republican member, but even after the courts held him accountable, he was pardoned by this president. So we're not seeing the kind of um serious attention to preventing this kind of essentially insider trading from from occurring, and the American people have had it, they are fed up with it, congress needs to enact a comprehensive ban on members of congress as well as the president the vice president and members of their families from owning or trading individual stocks or having other financial dealings and i agree with mister scott i know he's leaving now but i agree that we should also be dealing with this with the prediction markets but unfortunately the bill that our colleagues are putting on the floor uh this week doesn't do any of that the bill only uh prohibits members of congress from purchasing additional stocks now i have never traded stocks myself but it's my understanding that the way you make money is when you sell the stocks and this bill does not uh prohibit them from selling the stocks and that's where the profit is made um and the public notice requirement in this bill is so weak it wouldn't prevent the kinds of transactions that have already eroded public trust things like a lawmaker unloading healthcare stocks that then promptly lost value after he voted in the big ugly bill last summer to uh to cut medicare funding by billions and billions of dollars if our republican colleagues are serious about government accountability we would have on the floor this week ranking member morelli's resolve restore trust in government act which establishes a comprehensive ban on stock ownership and trading for members of congress the president and the vice president or as a backup have the restore trust in congress act co-led by our rules colleague uh congressman chip roy which at least would comprehensively prohibit members of congress if not the president and vice president from owning and trading individual stocks uh instead after eighteen months of unprecedented self-dealing and personal enrichment by members of the Trump administration, Republicans are choosing to ignore the most significant conflicts of interest in government, while advancing legislation that barely scratches the surface. And if that weren't enough, they've combined this with this completely unrelated voter ID bill, which doesn't actually deal with any actual voter fraud, but instead suppresses votes. So we gotta get this straight. Republicans are refusing to address this problem that actually exists, the president, his family and some members of Congress getting rich off stocks, whose value change is based on official government action, but instead they're pushing the save act, a bill that would prevent hundreds of thousands of American citizens from voting in order to satisfy the president's obsession. about fictitious non-citizen voting. So, the corruption is coming from inside the House, but it's the White House, and that's where our attention should be. Brett Morelle, uh, can you talk about why the requirements in the stock bill that Republicans have put forward um is so inadequate particularly um when it allows them to continue to own and sell stocks?

Yeah, thanks. Yeah, you did a great job of summarizing, I mean there's several problems with this bill. First of all, it does not require divestiture. You can still own stocks, you can sell them, you're not required to sell them at a particular time, so you can wait until the appropriate time when it benefits you to sell the stock. And it also allows you to buy additional stock of those companies that provide you with a dividend. So if you get a dividend from SpaceX you can buy more SpaceX stock. So that's publicly traded. Second problem is it doesn't do anything with private sale, private stock. In fact, this isn't a hypothetical. Members of the house are trading in private stock, making massive profits from stocks in privately traded companies with federal contracts. It's happened, it's been highlighted, it's been it's been detailed, um, and in those cases, some cases, they've done it with a company that was then purchased by SpaceX, a publicly traded company. So you can make a lot of money still, so you don't have to divest public stocks. you can own private stocks and continue to trade in those. Does nothing to rein in the crypto market whatsoever. And we know the president and his family have made billions of dollars in the crypto space. Uh, the president also purchased Warner Brothers corporate bonds at a time when Warner Brothers in the middle of merger talks right now, over which the president's FCC will ultimately be able to make decisions. The president also failed on thousands of of trades to acknowledge and disclose them within the time required under the law. In fact, the president trades stock more than all of the members of the house combined, the president of the United States, yet he's not even covered in this bill for reasons, uh, well, I don't even know for what reasons. It it it it it is without realistic explanation why that would happen. And the other thing which I agree with mister mister Scott is the exclusion of the prediction markets is shocking i mean we see the abuses being reported every single day you know whether it's things about contracts or military strikes or some foolish things like when the white house press secretary is gonna stop her press conferences to the minute and find that some people can trade on that we we we know that it was reported over the weekend that representative luna shared with someone that J. D. Vance was gonna be chosen as Vice President cuz she had inside information, and she passed it along to someone with the express purpose of putting down a um, a contract in the prediction markets over whether or not it would be J. D. Vance and that person profited handsomely from this. This is, to, to the point you made, if we have any hope of restoring trust in American people and our government, we have to stop doing the things the President, the Vice President, members of Congress, and the judiciary have to stop doing things where the public feels there's inside information that we have access to, and many cases that we do, and are profiting from it. And this is, this is not that hard to do. There are bills, there's a number that you've referenced. We could do it in this bill. We'd need to take out the Save America Act provisions which don't deserve to be in this bill but we could change this, a required divestiture and private stock trades, um, and the crypto market participation, and prediction markets, let's give the American people the kind of government they deserve and that they want.

Yeah, uh, it is just unbelievably concerning and and offensive that, um, folks are supposed to be public servants, supposed to be serving the people, not themselves, um, continue to be able to, uh, use information that they obtain, as a result of government service in order to profit. Although we did see a new twist on that this week, when the president announced that he will sell access to his truth social posts. If you c- can pay a hundred thousand dollars or so, you will get early access to government action that will then move the market so it is literally pay to play if you pay off the president's social media media company you're gonna be able to make more money because you'll have advance notice i mean it is a culture of corruption that is truly mind boggling and we need to put a an end to it you had something else

well just uh the president is somehow under the idea that if you do things openly publicly it makes them ok so if he told you he was gonna rob your bank in the middle of the day and you know filmed it while he was robbing your bank that somehow that's no longer a crime because he told you he was gonna do it so developing for truth social where he's gonna give inside information to people who will pay

only then

significant amount of money so you're only doing it for economic advantages there's no other reason to have the app but think about this in the twenty first century the united states congress is gonna sit and allow the president of the united states who makes market making decisions every single hour is gonna allow that person to sell that information to private investors who will pay him for it, and we're just gonna sit here and go, okay, that's okay? I mean, does anybody in America think that's okay other than the members of Congress who are unwilling to stand up to him?

Well, I'd suggest that this Congress will say it's okay, but hopefully the next one won't. Thank you. I yield back.

Generally, he yields back, now recognize the the other gentleman from from uh Georgia, uh, Mister Jack.

Thank you, Mister Chairman, and I want to congratulate my friend chairman style on bringing this legislation before us and the work that you put into this topic to deliver a really impressive piece of legislation i'm curious could you explain to this committee from your perspective what are people voting against when they vote against this legislation this week

well i i think that's that's important to know we we hear a lot from our friends uh across uh what they would do if they were in charge they were in charge and they didn't bring any of this so i tell you you you get a pretty good idea what they're gonna do absolutely nothing This bill in front of us is an opportunity to ban members of Congress from buying individual shares of stock. And when this comes to this committee for a vote to give us a rule, if we're successful, I think we will be, we'll be on the floor, and if members vote against it, they're allowing members to to buy and trade, uh, individual shares of stock, as they are today. I think this is our opportunity actually for the most, uh, comprehensive, uh, and important um piece of ethics reform in the house that we've seen probably over ten years uh this bill before us uh is substantive it works uh it has broad support uh and i think we got an opportunity to make a huge change and and folks that choose to vote against it can go home uh and explain to their constituents why they think members of congress should be able to buy uh individual shares of stock um and two on the on the other side with photo identification uh this is our opportunity to make sure uh that all fifty states have photo id when individuals go to the polls uh it's pretty straight forward easy concept uh it's popular because it's common sense american people understand that we need to have uh basic common sense election integrity and you either support election integrity or you think that you should just be able to walk in as they do in the state of minnesota and vouch uh for up to eight people uh to cast their ballot

thank you very much mr. chairman i just submit um that not only is is banning stock trading from members of congress wildly wildly popular if you poll american so too are some of these common sense um uh requirements with respect to voting so this is this should be a wildly popular bill i hope the vote later this week uh reflects that and i will yield back to our distinguished chairman mr. griffith thank you

gentleman yields back now recognize the gentleman from colorado mr. neguse for his time of questioning

thank you thank you mr. chairman Thank you, uh, Chairman Stile and Ranking Member Morelli, uh, for being here and for your testimony. Chairman Stile, so the name of your bill is the Stop Insider Trading Act, correct?

That's correct.

Okay. You think that's an accurate description of the bill?

Yeah.

Okay. What does trading mean to you?

The buying and selling for profit.

The buying and selling for profit. I couldn't agree with you more. I look Webster's dictionary defines it as the business of buying and selling. This bill, as you said, bans the buying of individual shares of stock, right?

Mm-hmm. That's correct.

It does not ban the selling.

It it reforms the selling, of course.

It does not ban the selling,

It makes changes.

right? You're allowed to sell as much stock as you would like as a member of Congress under this bill. Is that wrong?

I think it's insufficient to describe it that way, but that what you said is accurate but misleading,

It is accurate, yes, correct.

but misleading.

Yes, it is accurate.

Accurate but misleading, yes.

So, so let's say there's a Republican senator who decides that they're gonna sell millions of dollars of stock the week before the COVID-19 pandemic begins in earnest. That's legal under your bill, right?

Of course they would have provided a minimum of seven days advanced notice.

Correct, and that would be legal

I'm not sure that you could do that in the time line you just proposed.

and that would be legal under this uh I'm this isn't a hypothetical a republican senator seven eight days before nine days before the covid-nineteen pandemic began in earnest sold millions millions of dollars of stock under this bill that would not be illegal right

but of course they would provide notice that's that's the part that you don't wanna discuss

yes I understand I understand the notice but here's what I don't understand why you go just well hold on I'll give you a chance to explain this

so

huh

you could defend it on the merits you've clearly decided that the buying of stock right? is a practice that you don't believe should be permitted by members of Congress. I agree.

Okay.

But for some reason you've decided that the sale of stocks, individual stocks,

Mm-hmm.

is completely fine but for the notice requirements that you've now imposed on this bill and I don't quite understand that disconnect because there are many bills many bills that have been introduced including a bill I introduced seven years ago with chip roy and other members of this body that has a hundred and forty cosponsors on it that would insure that the sale and the purchase of stocks is banned. And this bill does not do that. So I'm just I'm trying to understand why you've decided that it's permissible on one end but not the other.

Uh uh.

Sure, by all means.

Opportunity to respond? Great. Um, so the focus of the bill is to stop an individual from being able to profit off of insider information. So that that that core concept of what is the bill's goal, I think is really important. So let's go back to your example of an

Oh yeah, there you go, go ahead, sorry, go ahead. Uh, there you go, please, I want you to watch

So so let's go back let's go back to the example of an individual

that episode.

that made a significant sale prior to the pandemic, because I think that's actually a very relevant discussion point inside of this.

Right. Sure.

The point of the the predisclosure is that you it it prevents the individual from able to profit off of that sale because the inside the information is now publicly available. So if an individual is in a leadership role, say they're the chair of the intelligence committee of the house or the senate, that individual may have information leading up to a pandemic.

Sure.

Now, proving that information was inside, that's very difficult. I had noted that earlier. Proving insider illegal inside trades is actually very difficult for the Department of Justice. So my bill would require that you would provide an advanced disclosure of that. That would be, of course, market moving. It mirrors

Of the sale. Just of the of the notion of that you intend to sell this stock.

Right. That's an accurate statement.

Yeah, there's no so, okay.

So so, walking through the economics maybe. So in

No, I understand the example. I I will reclaim my time here, because I I wanted to give you ample uh opportunity here.

It's fine.

If you're the chairman of the Intel committee, and today you uh come across information that compels you to sell five hundred thousand dollars worth of stock, in a particular company that you own

mmm

you make that disclosure under the style bill right seven days i think or what's the notice requirement

minimum seven

minimum seven days ok uh i don't know that that's necessarily going to draw the scrutiny

you

of anybody in the public domain and if

well we we will disagree with that

a week from now or two weeks from now uh well stock trades are made everyday by members of the company

right well you know public disclosure would be prima facie evidence of insider trading

not much to then why not do that on the purchase

subject to the jurisdiction of the department of Justice.

Then why not do that on the purchase? Why have you decided?

Because there's no, an individu- that that's gr- actually a great question,

Those are different standards.

Mister Neguse. So, what we're looking at is real world situations where individuals enter Congress. So upon entering Congress, easy for all of us to agree, there should be no additional purchase of an individual share of stock. I think that's actually reasonably straight forward. You have made the choice to become a member of Congress. That's an obligation that we're placing upon you. An individual who is leaving their private life, who is making reasonable savings for themselves and their family, bought a hundred shares, they used Coca-Cola earlier, because we had the gentleman from Georgia here. Hundred, hundred shares of Coca-Cola, it's not like any other good American company that's working hard. They're using that to maybe save up for down payment on a home, their wedding, their child's wedding. Now they arrive in Congress. The question then became, what do we do? How do we think through this and how do we address this? We share the goal of preventing that individual from benefiting off of any insider information. Of course, if an individual was leading up to a major global event, and that individual's trade was noticed in advance rather than after one that would most likely be market moving such that the profit would be removed thus preventing the individual from from making it the

i don't i would just simply say cause i've got limited time i would say that i while i understand that there are members of your caucus and and frankly members of the democratic caucus as well who have concerns about divestment of stocks that they already own ok i understand that that's a concern that's been expressed by some members and so in so far as you're trying to address that concern you've adopted mmm this you know paradigm new paradigm that you've constructed mmm i would just say that that's the reason and that it's not this argument i just don't think that it's intellectually consistent so i i hear you uh you've you've made the argument it's

uh i'll get back time later then

you've made the argument and so yeah i'm sure my gentleman my colleagues on the other side of the aisle will give you more time if you like but uh i just don't think that that's it's it's an accurate argument in my view a hundred and forty members of this body, Republicans and Democrats have clearly unambiguously said we should ban the sale or purchase of stocks. Period, full stop. And there's a bill by one of the members of this committee, this august committee, the Rules Committee, and I look forward to making an amendment to this bill that you proposed to perhaps consider substituting Mister Roy's bill which would accomplish what I've described. i wanna make sure i'm understanding as a technical matter the ambit of this bill under this bill can you purchase crypto holdings

it makes no changes to the house rules in that regard

so you can't or you can't

it makes no changes in this regard

i don't uh is it allowed now

so how how's how's rules still apply you were you today are allowed to buy crypto you still chose

ok so that's all i'm asking it's not a trick question you you're allowed to ok

but that's that's what i was saying

individual placements cause someone else referenced this previously that they're

yeah

can you do individual purchase of individual placement of stock under this

individual shares of stock no

individual shares no private placements yes

the right the house current house rules would apply

correct ok so uh if it's easier i'll frame it that way i'll i'll use the

right yeah current house rules apply yeah but there i what i wanna make clear to people

ok fine

is that

who are listening is there are significant restrictions in place under

sure

house rules i wouldn't want somebody to walk away and think that no other rules

ok fine uh

apply i wanna make sure that they're clear that current house rules apply

ok let me frame it let's use your language let's

Yeah, I think it's more accurate.

Under current House rules, members of Congress can buy crypto holdings, and under your bill that does not change, right?

There's no change, right?

Okay, and under current House rules, members of Congress can buy stocks through private placements, and under your bill that does not change, right?

No change.

Okay, and under current House rules, members of Congress can buy stocks uh w- or excuse me, can buy industry-specific mutual funds, right?

That's accurate?

And that does not change under your bill.

That's not changed at all.

Okay, and under current House rules, members of Congress can buy uh bonds right

mmm

and under your bill that does not change

and still buy bonds

and there are countless other pieces of legislation that members of congress have introduced myself included that would ban all of what i just described that is the point i would say with respect to mister morelli's comment about the prediction markets i do not understand and perhaps you can illuminate this for me the house administration committee has jurisdiction over member participation in prediction markets.

Mm-hmm.

Right?

That's accurate.

Okay, you're the chair.

Along with others, but yes.

But you you've got principal jurisdiction.

We're one of them. Yeah. Yes, yes.

You're in charge. Okay. Four months ago, the United States Senate, on a bipartisan basis, on a voice vote, took action and said, you know what? No senator in this body is allowed to make bets on prediction markets. Every Republican, every Democrat agreed to it. Why can't we?

I I we have moved forward legislation, the committee and the house administration on this topic.

Let's do it today.

I look forward to I'd I'd be

Why can't we? I I'm I'm saying this happened in April.

No I

We could do a one-page resolution,

Yeah.

we could just literally cut and paste the Senate resolution, and we could pass it tomorrow.

Yeah.

C- will you help us with that?

Yeah, so I I've been supportive of making restrictions uh in in the prediction market space.

Why isn't it in this bill?

Uh, d- we have two different pieces of legislation. We moved through Obviously prediction markets are reasonably new and novel technology available to American people.

It took the Senate a day.

So we

It's a one page resolution. It literally is a paragraph.

Yeah, I don't

It just says members of the Senate are banned from participating in prediction markets.

I'm I'm fully supportive of my legislation moving forward if that's the question.

No, the question is, well, I guess I'll follow with Mr. Morelle. And maybe, Mr. Morelle, I would incur I I know you've been pushing on this, but maybe we can just write a one page resolution, which is take the Senate resolution, go to the floor this week, And apparently, according to Mister Stile, that that would meet with his approval. All right, am I am I wrong? Is that not something that you all have been able to debate in the committee? Mister Morelle.

Well, no, you're absolutely right. We can do by resolution and have it apply to House members and House family member uh members uh uh families of House members, dependents, and do just exactly what the Senate did. The alternative is to do it in a bill which isn't even in front of us, for reasons that completely escape my uh understanding. there should be a provision in this bill as as bad as this bill is how would you not include the prediction markets but yes to your point we could do a resolution doesn't have to pass a senate doesn't have to have the president sign it we can do a resolution pertaining simply to the house we should do that today

first i couldn't agree more and i would just i would hope uh that the majority republican house would perhaps emulate what your colleagues in the upper chamber did under john thrun and simply say instead of the delay in the we're just gonna ban it. And you'll certainly have my support, and I suspect you have a lot of Democrats who would agree with you. I do wanna talk about, uh, very briefly, because the chair has indulged me so, um, here on the vote, the what's it called,

And and and and and normally you say you all get to go on forever and ever,

the Save Vote Act, or the

because you have, uh, less people, but today you have more.

Well, the I you don't wanna tempt me here,

What's the thing?

Mr. Chairman.

Go ahead. Uh, if you can go ahead, please.

Um, I w- very quick question on the, uh save america would i don't know if we call it the reduced version or what what's the what's this new version called that

save the safe america life

section three of the uh safe the voter id

what is it isn't there a title of it the voter id or what would

no section three of the

or section three of the bill

safe america life

ok so my understanding is that in wisconsin the voters approved by constitutional amendment essentially a codification of the voter id law that had already been on the books in wisconsin right ok

uh that's accurate

and national conference of state legislatures has described wisconsin's constitutional measure which is the same as the statutory measure as the most restrictive in the country i don't know if you've seen that but

i i don't know if it's the uh i didn't i have not seen that that term but it's a it's a a reasonably good photo id law

reasonably good photo id law under that law, you can use a college ID.

Mm-hmm.

And under your bill, you can't.

Correct.

And I'm trying to understand why if that, as you said, reasonably good standard is good enough for your constituents and the people that you represent in Wisconsin, there are plenty of constituents of yours at a variety of different colleges and universities that you represent, that right now comply with what has been described by others as the most strict voter id law in the country by using their college id but their congressman is championing a bill that would tell them that they no longer can do that i don't understand that

yeah yeah we sure great question uh universities across the country including in my home state uh issue idds to non-citizens issue idds to illegal immigrants as many states do many of them blue states the state next to me the state of Illinois issues driver's licenses for example uh to non-citizens and including illegal immigrants uh and so this is a standard to say how do we make sure uh that we are protecting the integrity of our elections and we believe the best way to do that uh is through the forms of id as listed in the bill

so the Wisconsin standard really isn't the reasonable i think the word you used was reasonably good standard that doesn't sound like you're i mean it sounds like it's

i don't think it's i yeah i don't think the standard to get a student id is nearly as

No, no, no, I didn't ask you that.

Is it too big?

I said the Wisconsin law,

Right.

that sixty-two percent of the voters of Wisconsin a year and a half ago decided,

Yep.

they'd put in the state constitution,

Right.

that you five minutes ago described as a reasonably fair standard,

Yeah, it's

apparently did not meet

Well, it's definitely, it's, it's

the muster here at the federal level.

Well, sure. It's it's de- the Wisconsin standard is way better than a lot of other states. I mean, a lot of states have nothing, and the state of Minnesota next to my home state You can vouch for eight people, I think that's disastrous.

I w- Why not emulate it?

So, compare well, because I don't want to look anything like Minnesota.

No, Wisconsin. I'm saying why didn't you you're the Wisconsin mayor.

Because I don't I actually think we can do better. Yeah, so I think Wisconsin beats most states, no doubt. I'm not uniquely familiar with your home state's uh uh photo or voter laws, but I can tell you in my the neighboring states next to Wisconsin, we got some disasters on our hands.

How much time do you have under this law,

So

uh, if you vote provisionally, if you don't have photo id, to be able to then ensure that your vote still counts um what's the time stamp that you have

you'd you'd you'd reference back you'd reference back to your state law on on that

i thought the federal standard i thought the standard here was three days or is that wrong

is it oh it is three days i apologize i apologize three days

three days right so seventy two hours

so right so if you forget your id

you forget your id you got seventy two hours

yeah that'd be accurate

and if you don't do that then your vote doesn't count right

right you would not have cured your ballot that's right

correct do you know what that time period is in wisconsin

go ahead

it's a lot longer

yeah we also have we also have many weeks of early voting so an individual

lot longer

what

i hear you i hear you

could could go in and do their early in-person vote uh safely in the state of wisconsin if you forgot it you could show up day after day after day

look i would just i would just say if you're a mess i would just simply say uh obviously i'm i believe colorado has a gold standard but if it's good enough for the people of wisconsin i'm just again don't really understand why uh you would champion on the one hand the Wisconsin Standard,

Uh

and then simultaneously propose a far more exact thing.

I'd be If if the

And in my view

if the general don't give me the time I'd be happy to answer the question.

Uh no, I we've probably probably beaten this uh this horse uh to death here,

Yeah, you don't wanna hear the answer.

so in any event, I thank you both.

Gentleman yields back.

I will yield back.

And now I recognize myself and I will beat that horse. Mister Stile, is it not true that the individual states while they have sovereignty under the United States of America, or do not represent everybody in the nation.

That's right.

So, Wisconsin has a great standard for Wisconsin, but that doesn't necessarily mean that we want Wisconsin student I Ds changing federal policy. Isn't that accurate?

Uh, that's accurate. I I wouldn't say that Wisconsin's is flawless.

And so if the National Conference of State Legislature says it's

I'd just say it's better than other states.

That's accurate. There you go. Now I got a couple other things, cuz you all got into talking about some financial stuff that, you know, I'm just a poor boy from Southwest Virginia and I don't understand it all. I gotta tell you, and I'm sure there's some people back home don't know what this is. Now you all, if you have money and are big time in the financial world, maybe you do. What in the heck is a private placement? He said you you can still do private placements i don't even know what y'all talking about

that's not not something i engage in but under the house rules individuals can own a a host of different private assets

what is it alright i don't know what a what a what is a private placement he said you can buy a certain private placement

you you could ask your colleague describe private placement per his question if he'd like

uh maybe mr. morelli can answer he seems to be

her terminology

no i think this is just private offerings from companies that are not publicly traded but are privately issued private stock

Alright, and so as as both of you know, cause that's why I was that's what I was worried about,

That's like social banking.

cause he w- he it it implied that the gentleman implied he wanted to get rid of that, but as as you all know, having heard me talk about it, I got rid of all my six thousand dollars worth of stocks when uh the previous act was enacted, and uh the only thing I have is a small swimming pool entity that I have a ownership interest in, And if that's a private placement and we suddenly wanna ban that, I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. Uh, because that, that community pool might not exist if, i- if I hadn't bought a fair number of shares in it back in nineteen ninety-one and um, and I will confess, I sold a share this year. Uh, uh, sold is a is a loose term, uh, gave one to my youngest son when he turned eighteen. um one of the shares that i

so you're saying

so i understand there may be people doing big time stuff but there's also a lot of people if that's a private placement there's a lot of people who are doing things in their community where they've got a little community pool or some other thing that's more i mean it makes money some years

exactly

we might even make money this year but we didn't make money in the in in a number of years as well and the idea is to make sure that people have a place to uh go swimming, be on the swim team, play water polo, pick up, Stonegate rules water polo on Sunday nights, that kind of stuff. So let's make sure we're not throwing the baby out with the swimming pool water, so to speak. Uh, that would be my concern, but I didn't know what, uh, exactly what you're talking about. Now I do, and I appreciate that. The other thing on the sales, and I think the seven days, Mister Chairman, is probably a pretty good idea. I mean, if somebody wanted to argue about it being ten days, OK, maybe ten days is a little bit better, but But, you know, if you own, if you own some stock and you're not a a wealthy person and we've we've been going through some of this not with s- stock but with other assets, trying to figure out how are we gonna pay for that college education, um, this year, and I mean that was a discussion my wife and I had this morning before I left town, is what are we gonna jigger to make sure we get tuition paid and the room and board paid, and you know, what's it gonna look like in September when we get through paying all the big fees? and what's the monthly outgo gonna be and and so to say that a member who comes to congress gets elected and comes to congress and has a portfolio can't make a decision to sell that stock uh and for whatever reasons but most of the time most members of congress are not as wealthy as the public thinks we are and uh you gotta figure out how you gonna pay for things like college education i've got two in coming up on uh august eighteenth i'll have two in college at the same time and we're trying to figure out how to juggle all that now as i said we don't have the publicly traded stocks and this bill just deals with those publicly traded traded stocks isn't that correct mr. jeremy

that's accurate

yeah and uh i i think that's appropriate and i think it's a pretty good uh idea uh the mutual funds is pretty innocuous too you can still own the mutual funds and uh my other son who is more financially adept perhaps than i am my older one who is now twenty uh apparently and we've got to change our financial forms cause apparently he got a statement the other day in the mail and i saw and i said what's this he goes oh i bought a couple of thousand dollars out of my summer earnings last year in a mutual fund i'm like oh great i got it got to amend my public disclosure form uh to reflect that it's not big money but uh and i think the disclosure is fine But saying that they can't own or they can't sell, uh, is, uh, I think a little onerous and would discourage good people from running for Congress. Is there anything else you wanted to add as we've had these discussions going on now for a good while?

I appreciate it. Maybe just, uh, a couple things to note. And so, going back to the the seven day disclosure and how do you get there, looking at securities law, ten P five one plans are how publicly traded companies uh, manage their senior leaders, who by definition have inside information on their company. And so, as I noted earlier, actually enforcing insider trading violations is actually pretty difficult for the DOJ that's already illegal for all members and all Americans. They, it it's illegal, they should be held accountable, the DOJ should prosecute it. It's difficult to prosecute. The ten B five one plan on the publicly traded company side, what in large part they're doing is these predisclosures. And what it does is it sets up the evidence to prosecute an insider trading case. So, our, my, my, our colleague, uh, from Colorado was referencing this. Uh, and so if an individual made that public announcement seven days in advance, it would be pretty easy to show the time-line. Now, now let's, let's leave that one given person so I don't make an accusation on that given person. But let's, let's say an individual member, could you could document, had inside information on a given topic. They provide a seven day notice that they're going to make the sale, they then go and make the sale, and then the evidence is pretty clear that individual engaged in insider trading. That disclosure and that point in time actually gives great leverage to the Department of Justice to hold an individual accountable. It's more difficult under the current scenario because you don't see where that time line is. And so the reason publicly traded companies put these plans in place for their executives is to root out and prevent individuals for making insider information trades, which are illegal and should be prevented. And so what we tried to do is strike the balance to make sure that individuals who have successful private sector careers, and whatever that word is, whether or not it's it's successful that you own uh a local pool and are able to help people swim or uh maybe you or your spouse uh worked uh at a publicly traded company and that publicly traded company gave uh stock as part of the compensation. Um, or you used it to save up for, uh, either your retirement or, uh, for the education of your child. Um, it's the belief that we want to make sure that those individuals are encouraged and able to come to Congress in the same way we can have farmers and veterans, uh, come to this institution and serve. Uh, once you're here, you can't acquire new and additional individual shares of stock. I think that's a reasonable restriction to put in place. But the core of this bill is it prevents members of Congress from being able to profit off of insider information by putting in place a bright line rule. That is really important. If I can just quickly go back on the photo ID in my home state of Wisconsin, because I think it's relevant. Wisconsin, as I noted, has a reasonably good photo ID bill. I don't think it's perfect. I think it's reasonably good. Now, I think it's reasonably good in spe- in, specifically in comparison to what I view as disastrous states. And in Wisconsin, we can look across a river and across a state line and see a p- pair of really bad examples. Illinois to our south, Minnesota to our west. In the state of Minnesota, it's been noted on our committee, you were there at the hearing, uh, uh, Mister Griffith, uh, about how in Minnesota, not only do you not need a photo ID, an individual can come to the polls and vouch for up to eight other people to vote. We were making light-hearted comments earlier about the never-ending pasta bowl. Imagine rolling into your local Olive Garden and vouching for eight other people at your table that they too are who they say they are. Nobody thinks that's rational. So I think Wisconsin has a pretty good ID. We have a Supreme Court that's become hyper-partisan and hyper-liberal. And so, thoughtfully, our State Assembly and State Senate uh moved through and moved the Wisconsin uh legislation on photo ID into the Constitution as a mechanism to prevent our Supreme Court from driving forward a partisan, liberal agenda. Smart move. uh by our colleagues in the state assembly in state senate and so we enshrine that in the constitution that's good we don't we don't I don't want our state to look like Minnesota or Illinois Mister Chairman and so that said I think there's room for improvement and I I flagged my concern specifically uh as it relates to the standards some of our universities are using when issuing a photo ID it's a very different standard for example than the state of Wisconsin's department of transportation has when issuing a a driver's license or a state-issued ID. Uh, I think we are best served if we move to that higher standard, uh, rather than, uh, the lower standard, allowing, uh, universities to issue, uh, photo IDs with either limited, uh, documentation or, uh, giving those IDs, uh, to non-citizens or to illegal immigrants. So I appreciate you giving me the time, Mister Chairman, uh, you're back.

Yeah, and I will I will say this on the uh going back on the the stock issue. I think one of the nice things about the seven day rule and and everything you said was accurate but one of the things I like about it is if a if a wealthy member of Congress, more likely to be a senator, but still a wealthy member of Congress, suddenly said I'm gonna sell a million or two million or five million dollars of the share in the XYZ corporation, that gives the public notice that they're selling maybe out too too. Or that they'll take a look at it, or people will take a l role call and certainly report it. if there's a seven day notice and now that's not happening and it just happens and then people say well i wish i'd known he was gonna sell out of soul too anyway i i yield back and now i recognize the general lady from new mexico miss lager fernandez for her time

uh thank you so very much and i wanna go back to this idea that this is the stop insider trading act uh and we went over earlier that trading involves both the purchase and the sale you cannot have trading without the sale And, uh, Chairman, you said that the purpose of this was to make sure that Congress people don't make a profit off of information we get here from serving. Is that did I rep call you saying that correctly?

Yeah, as it relates to publicly traded company stocks,

Talk about profit. So let's let's go back to the question of do you make a profit when you buy a stock?

yeah. No.

You make a profit when you do what?

You may.

You sell the stock.

No. No, only if you sell for a profit.

That's when you sell the stock. So so as to clarify,

You could lose.

to clarify, you could lose, but that's your chance for making a profit, is the sale of the stock, right?

That's your chance, yeah.

And your stock stop insider trading act does not prohibit the sale of stocks.

Right, but it prevents you from profiting off of the sale.

No, it doesn't. You can profit as much as you want.

With insider information. I would disagree.

You can profit as much as you want. As long as you own that stock, you can profit.

I would disagree.

And that's where Democrats are going, is that we should not, Congress people, If you make the choice to come here, there should be a vehicle for you to be able to divest of individual stocks. That's what the bill that Joe Neguse and Chip Roy introduced, that's what the bill that we have presented, that's what the bill that Democrats offered as an alternative does. Is that correct, ranking member?

Absolutely requires divestiture. And uh, and may I just add the notion that a seven day waiting period, I appreciate, uh mister griffiths comments but honestly i don't think of a member of congress who learned that you know it's likely maybe boeing instead of northrop grumman was gonna get a military contract and they owned northrop grumman and wanted to get rid of their stock before that was acknowledged saying i sold ten thousand dollars worth of stock uh a month before anybody knows about it and i acknowledge it's seven days that that that does virtually nothing there's nobody sitting around watching in real time what members of congress are doing respectfully and there's no way to track that i i and and to your point you only make the money if you sell at a price that's higher than what you bought it at so you can only make the money and it's true you can lose money too but you get to control the timing of when that happens if you're not required to divest right i mean so that's and by the way if you already own stock and there's a dividend you can buy more of it so the notion that you can't buy is not true now it is more narrow but the buying holding and selling of stock is still allowed under this on the public side on the private side there is no they you know they haven't done anything here at all

but but and i think the concern is uh uh uh my my colleague from pennsylvania uh referenced it earlier that maybe what you wanna do is maybe lose less right and and you know here's the article that said that when you're gonna be making these big decisions about what happens we had a colleague that a week before he voted to significantly cut Medicaid and i'm quoting from an article here dated eleven twenty twenty five of um the first on n b c mr. mr. chairman which i'd seek to enter into the record a week before he voted to significantly cut Medicaid by a trillion dollars this representative dumped six figures worth of stock in a quartet of companies that manage nearly half of all Medicaid enrollees in the country now chairman

without objection

this your bill would do nothing to have prevented this sale correct

i would actually disagree with that

you disagree with that

yeah

you

it would do nothing I think that's an inaccurate statement of the bill

uh ok so would it have uh he would be able to have sold this stock You would have had to give notice,

No, you you would have provided you would have provided public notice of the sale.

but you would have been able to sell it. But he would have been able to sell it. It would not have prevented it. Might have it might have allowed the world to know before a a newspaper article came out, but it would have still allowed it. And they asked it.

Well, it depends, it depends on the the time line of that sale, of course. Seven days notice would require seven days to elapse.

If you would have all your all your bill does is fill out a form, and this is the thing, what the American public is mad. and they are mad as hell about is the idea that elected officials, both in Congress and the Senate and the White House, are making big bucks and they are the ones who

That's actually why this bill is so important. It it's it's about ending the profiting off of insider information.

It does not end the profit, it does not end the profit.

So you exactly you exactly nailed what they're upset about, and this is what the bill actually accomplishes.

It does not end the profit. It does not end the profit, because the profit is at the sale and none and this does not prevent the sale. You're continued

you are allowed to continue i am gonna move on uh banky member because yeah sure

it it well maybe you don't believe in market forces

well may i just may i just make one additional point even if you had seven days notice let's say the press did know they came and said hey we realized that you sold all your stock in some company you're gonna say it's because i was diversified or i it's not likely you're gonna say it's because i learned that the united states government is gonna be buy i mean it doesn't disclose anything yeah it gives i guess the press a couple of days if they're happen to be following your specific trades, and gives them a little bit of a head start on trying to figure out what you were doing. But let's be clear, no one is gonna say because I had information which led me to sell. But the good news is, I did it for seven days, so it gives you some advanced time to figure out what was motivating me.

Well, you get, it gives you cover.

I mean, it's a silly

All it does is give you cover.

Yeah.

And I think the bigger, the bigger, bigger, huge, like, gaping hole of this bill is that we might have information or we might be in this instance gonna be one of hundreds of votes the reality is there is a man and there will always be a man and hopefully someday a woman who can move markets much bigger than anyone of us and that is the president of the united states and this bill does not cover that at all and uh and we know that this is happening uh uh just uh truth social uh president trump said with regards to nvidia i've gotten all necessary permits uh i'm going this this company is gonna go through it's great he never told everybody on truth social that he had bought two hundred thousand to five hundred thousand dollars of that company's stock uh and a cnn investigation found that president trump is marketing stocks on truth social after he is purchased shares now chairman steele your bill doesn't cover the president or the vice president does it

is that a question no it it is focused on congress per the jurisdiction of the committee on house administration

well oh ok but we have jurisdiction congress has jurisdiction and we are the only ones who can say the president should not be purchasing or selling stock because he controls the market congress is the one and if we don't tell him nobody else is gonna do it is that correct ranking member

absolutely

and and earlier we had a conversation about uh the fact that president trump has now said that he is gonna sell early access to wall street uh on so uh truth social uh i don't know what you thought about that there was a conversation about it but i think in in the end uh chairman steele uh you never told us what you thought about having a president give access to wall street uh early on paid access for information that could move the market do you think that should be allowed

uh i haven't read those reports

ok well i'm gonna just tell you now president uh president trump has said that he would uh provide early access to wall street to choose social so that they would be able to make decisions about what's happening do you think that that is appropriate behavior for a president

i i haven't read the report so i'll read it following the meeting here

ok it's interesting you know uh i will say that uh josh harley josh harley actually said that what he thought that the idea that having a president uh buy and sell stock and market stock that there should be a bill that applied to him and what happened to josh hawley was that president trump came after him and i'm just wondering if uh republicans on the house side are equally afraid uh of this president coming after them for actually holding him to a high standard uh to any kind of standard with regards to owning and selling stock but i wanna go to another matter and that's this uh section three of the bill which is like save light i guess uh and what strikes me is that there are three forms of id now allowed and there is no tribal id allowed did did i miss that i saw three forms it says state id uh military id uh and

no there's there's

a passport

there's five forms uh allowed uh the fifth one being tribal id um issued i i could it'll take me a second to find you the the legislative text but it

it says

it's five forms

i'm i'm reading uh ok thank you i'm sorry i'm glad i asked that because i i addressed that section it does have a tribal id

you're welcome yup

but but the the other piece of this bill is that right now right you have taken away you have taken away the money that would allow states that would help states and you keep shaking your head but it's not in this bill and it is i'm going back to that awful analogy you all kept turning to of that this is like a bowl of pasta that you need an id to get a bowl of pasta and and ranking member you i'm a ranking member morella you spoke so eloquently about voting is not pasta voting is not a privilege it's not a privilege it's not something you do when you have enough money when you have enough money to be able to go to a restaurant and eat as much pasta as you want it is a right it's a constitutional right and the problem is that a lot of people do not have enough money to be able to own a passport they do not have enough money to be able to own a car and have a driver's license they do not have the kinds of money that allows them to easily access some uh a passport uh uh uh a driver's license or these other things and that's why a pot of money that would help people get the photo id's they need would be so essential. And ranking member morality, you seem to want to add to that.

Well, I just say this, that I I I think there's a little bit of a conflation of two different things. Voter id, as I understand it, is to prove to a poll watcher that you are who you say you are. That's all.

Right.

So why would student id not be acceptable the chairman said it's because it doesn't prove citizenship but that's not the point of voter id at the polls the the point of voter id as i understand it photo id is to simply prove who you are you're already registered to vote that's already done and so this makes it harder and i think it's because honestly they prefer that college students not vote so let's put a number of barriers in front of them and the id which clearly proves who they are i am joe morelli here's my id it says it right here i go to the university of wisconsin i go to the state university of new york i go to the university of new mexico that's all i am who i am and by the way if you look even in in in in places like every state literally allows student id because it's a way of proving who you are universities issue them that's a pretty basic thing most states allow hunter's license or gun permits or in some cases your utility bills um all you need to do when you go to vote if you if you're not willing to accept the system that a number of states have where you have signature analysis and you feel the need to have photo photo id why would you limit the number of photo id possibilities which simply allow you to prove who you say you are and by the way i don't know we've had i don't know how many hearings i haven't heard anybody bring to us people who showed id and vouched for to vote when it wasn't them i mean it simply never happens this is the other thing that's fascinating about this in the reconciliation bill they would give ten billion dollars which i'm glad for i mean we should be giving money to local administrators but a portion of that is intended to help facilitate this but we'd spend billions of dollars on something that isn't even a problem we got plenty of problems in this

One of our problems is corruption and the what we're seeing in this bill is it doesn't address corruption it just makes uh voting a little harder and that seems part the for the cause for republicans and with that mister chair uh i yield back.

Gentleman yields back. And now recognize the gentlelady from Indiana.

Thank you, Mister Chairman, before I get into my uh questions about the Stop Insider Trading Act, I want to give Chairman Stile an opportunity to respond to some of the um concerns that were raised about voter identification um Chairman Stile is there not also an affidavit option for those that may or may not have ID_s and what else uh can you tell us about the uh ability that this provides to give opportunities to vote while also safeguarding our elections.

Ma- you you bring up a couple good

You bring up, uh, a couple good points. We lay out in this bill in particular, uh, for situations where individuals are voting by mail, uh, that one can go through the process of including a less-for-digit social security number as well, uh, as, um, an affidavit. Uh, what we want to make sure is that everybody is able and eligible to vote, uh, builds on the previous point which i think is important to go back to which is about the need for some individuals who may not have resources to obtain a free id uh in my home state of wisconsin uh the department of transportation estimates uh that the cost of issuing an id uh knowing that the employees and the equipment is already there the the cost of issuing uh an id for an individual who can't afford one is little less than five dollars in the neighborhood of four dollars and fifty cents Last year, uh, in the State of Wisconsin, or was it two years ago if my memory serves me correctly, uh, roughly a hundred thousand people, uh, in the State of Wisconsin obtained an ID, uh, without payment, costing the State less than half a million dollars. So, the State of Wisconsin provides that to individuals that can't afford it, uh, recognizing that it's required, uh, to vote in the State of Wisconsin. Then the question becomes how do we pay for that? The total cost in a in a federal concept is reasonably de minimis, half a million dollars. about two percent of the United States of America, you could run that out nationally and get a pretty good idea. Uh, few million dollars to make sure everybody has it. If an individual doesn't have an ID in the United States, a state-issued ID, it's really important to help that individual get that. So I'm I'm a big supporter of making sure uh, that states are doing that. Uh, under Supreme Court jurisprudence, states would be required to do that. Um, whether or not the funds come through the expansion of HAVA grants, whether or not it comes through uh, reconciliation, uh whether or not it comes through appropriations um we can we can work that piece out uh but i think ultimately to make sure that individuals who if there are individuals who can't afford a state id we should help them get that uh i think that's important as it relates uh to student id's i think there's a lot of challenges on how some again not all but how some universities issue their id's that there are is not strict protocols

mmm

uh as it relates to that in comparison to the five ways that we allow for id's Uh, we all recognize that every State issues their uh, State ID or State Driver's License differently. We respect that difference, but we all respect that it's a robust and secure process. Um, and so relying on that, obviously, uh, if somebody has a passport, federally issued ID, if you will, that's allowed, and a tribal ID. Uh, that being the core concept I think strengthens the integrity uh of our photo ID requirements. Uh, but again, these are common sense and I know uh, some of our colleagues on the left uh struggle when we uh slightly make fun of all the different reasons and ways uh that you need an id the point is you need it for almost everything so goodness gracious if you need an id for everything let's just put the standard in place you need a photo id to vote so we don't have folks going to the polls voting in federal elections in the state of minnesota this november where one person walks in and vouches for eight other people the standard needs to be set you need to show photo identification to vote Now ultimately, I'd love to see the whole broader package go through, uh, with other election reforms, but this is the most basic common sense principle you can imagine. You need photo identification to vote, uh, and separate, of course, is the legislation, uh, that prevents members of Congress from profiting off of insider information to stop insider trading act.

Thank you. Um, we often hear the Democrats say voter fraud is not widespread and it, we look only to Bush v. Gore and the closeness of that presidential election and and to understand and we see it every day in our elections in my own hometown we had a city council race that came down to three votes uh and so it doesn't have to be wide spread to disenfranchise uh voters across the country uh so voter id is a critical component of preventing voter fraud um because it doesn't have to be wide spread to to uh threaten the integrity of our of our elections in the United States. How concerned are you with the President's most recent um report of China's influence in our elections and the uh urgent need to pass not just the uh voter identification uh provisions in the Stop Insider Trading Act but also uh in Save America?

Well, we we unquestionably know that there are actors that want to destabilize the U. S. election system. Uh, and so we should be cognizant of that and always working to enhance the integrity inside of our elections. Uh, to your earlier point, um, how many illegal votes or inappropriate votes should we accept?

Right.

And the obvious answer is zero. And so you you reference Bush v. Gore, uh, because for all Americans, uh, over a certain age, uh, they remember that election. Uh, but for you and I, uh not too far from our home state, Marionette Miller Meeks in the state of Iowa won her congressional seat by six votes. The Democrat who lost that race challenged that. Challenges come before the committee on house administration. And so this is when Democrats were in control. And they were driving forward uh trying to take Marionette Miller Meeks out of her duly elected position, uh at that time to try to expand uh their majority in the house.

Mm-hmm.

And so when we know house races, uh, because we have four hundred thirty-five house races a year, there's more data points, we know how close some of these races are. Many aren't called and decided for weeks after the election. That is when you recognize how important election integrity is, uh, in narrowly divided, uh, house and narrowly divided senate. Any movement can actually swing elections, and so making sure that we have this standard nationwide, uh, that we know individuals are showing photo identification when they go to the polls matters.

Mm.

That we know that the members that come from, for example, the State of Minnesota are the duly elected members, that there wasn't shenanigans in those elections. And I think that's really important to do in all fifty States. Uh, and this bill sets the standard and says, no, you need to have photo identification when you go to the, go to the polls and vote in federal elections. It matters, it's important, it's common sense, and it's easy to do.

that the House and Senate majorities uh in the presidential election will depend on the integrity of these elections. So I appreciate your work on that. And then, turning to the Stop Insider Trading Act, members of Congress are elected to serve their constituents and the American people not profit from non-public information. Um, however, uh, there, Ma- Americans rightly fear that some members of Congress may be using sensitive information to benefit their stock portfolios Uh, Congress passed the stop trading, uh, on congressional knowledge, the Stock Act, in twenty twelve. Uh, so lawmakers are already prohibited from using non-public information for their own uh, financial benefit. But many Americans, including me, remain concerned that the Stock Act is in a insufficient, uh, and that we must implement stronger measures, which brings me to the Stop Insider Trading Act, which I appreciate your leadership on. I'm a proud cosponsor of this bill. uh to to help insure that members of congress are not able to use their public office for private financial gain uh though we did take an important step uh congress did with the stock act more than a decade ago it's clear members of congress um though we are subject to the same insider trading laws as every other american under the stock act um more needs to be done on this front despite the existing safeguards that we have uh the American people remain concerned it's one of the the most um I would say responses I have received in in uh input to the office asking to support the stop insider trading act so this will build on existing ethics laws strengthening the framework with clear common sense guardrails to increase transparency and accountability chairman style um from your perspective what shortcomings have become apparent since the enactment of the Stock Act more than a decade ago, uh, why are additional safeguards necessary and what new restrictions in this bill will close those loopholes?

Uh, thank you, thank you very much, uh, you note, uh, the Stock Act passed about fifteen years ago and what it does and does not, uh, require. One of the challenges that we see with the Stock Act is, because the reporting is thirty days after the fact, Uh, and the reporting is within bands. Uh, that was noted earlier, uh, by our colleague, uh, Mister Scott. Uh, that that coupled, uh, with attention in particular in the social media space, uh, raises a lot of concerns. The question then began how do you prevent members of Congress from profiting off of this in the first place? What's what's the solution, uh, recognizing this concern? Well, let's let's prevent members from profiting off of any inside information they gain. let's make a bright line rule uh that you can't trade, you can't continue to buy and sell uh individual shares of stock. The bill accomplishes that goal, it puts in place a blanket rule on the acquisition of individual shares of stock, it provides seven days, minimum seven days advance notice uh for the sale, that provides the public uh notice of any sale, it would gut the ability to profit from that,

Mm.

uh and it would set up an individual's uh uh case in the event uh, that somebody was still trying to profit off of insider information, uh, to actually be prosecuted and held account to the law. I think this makes meaningful and substantive reforms, uh, and it's the types of reforms I think we need to pass here in the House.

It also, uh, will, uh, ban members of Congress and their families from purchasing individual stocks.

Okay.

I think that's critically important, um, because just because members of Congress might be banned, uh, their family members may also, yet currently be able to trade on information that may be accessible to members of congress um and the advance notice on selling those investments i think is a is an important step to increase transparency and restore public trust i think this is a must do i hope we'll get this bill through uh across the finish line again mr. chairman i wanna thank you for your tremendous leadership on this issue uh the american people deserve confidence

mister norman do you have any questions

uh thank thank both of you for testifying you know there's lot of question about this before brian you heard it in caucus meeting and i think others Has most of this been resolved, in your opinion?

Yeah, I actually think that we have a product, um, that, uh, should be able to garner the support of the overwhelming majority of the House.

Joe, you have any comments?

Well, I do have quite a few, but I'll, uh, I'll simply say this, that I think at the end of the day if we want Americans to trust us, if they want to have faith that the decisions we're making are in their interests, then we need to get to a point where we ban the ownership of individual stock by members of Congress, by the President, by the Vice President. Um, and until that time that we do and this bill doesn't do it, uh, doesn't really even come close to doing it, then I think we're gonna continue to disappoint the American people.

Well, we know things that the ordinary public doesn't. We have access to things that people don't, and, um, hopefully there's safeguards. You know, if you're a crook, you can beat any system. It doesn't matter what. But there ought to be rules on it and uh But I didn't get to hear much of your testimony, if any, but I heard some of the background on it, but thank you, each of you, for taking the time.

I think you can watch it later tonight when you're back in your uh apartment, if you have a few hours.

OK. Uh, you're back.

Thank you, Mister Norman. Um, seeing no further members here to ask any questions, i thank our witnesses for being here and you are excused

come to our building you're welcome thank you um yeah which one see thank you brian does see oh yeah i mean i don't know if i want to go i'll have to do that do you mind but we'll see if any of them are

I now welcome our next panel, Chairman Hill, ranking member Waters, from the House Financial Services Committee.

I think they're either big or small.

Here's a custom, please. Your full statements will be submitted for the record And we ask that you summarize your statement in five minutes.

Oh, hey, you wanna

One more. Your part.

Chairman Hill, I welcome your testimony.

Thank you, Madam Chair. It's a pleasure to be with the Rules Committee today to talk about HR sixty-nine fifty-five, which is the Main Street Capital Access Act. It was introduced by myself along with the chair of our subcommittee, Andy Barr of Kentucky. Since becoming chairman of the committee, I've made it a priority to restore strength and vitality to America's community banks. These institutions are foundational to our financial system, indispensable to our economy and a unique strength uh of our country. The legislation before you is about one simple idea. Let's help community lenders make it easier for small businesses and entrepreneurs to access the capital. They need to grow, hire workers, and strengthen Main Street America. For many small businesses, the greatest obstacle to expansion is not a lack of good ideas or hardworking employees, but it's access to financing. Community banks and credit unions remain the backbone of small business lending across the country, particularly in rural communities and in smaller cities. Recently, during our debates about a comprehensive housing policy that the ranking member and I were engaged in, you heard me say time and time again that six out of ten home construction loans come from our community banks under ten billion dollars. Our community banks and their credit unions, uh, they know their customers, they understand and they're often willing to finance businesses that larger institutions overlook. Unfortunately, over time, outdated regulatory requirements have made it increasingly difficult for those community-focused institutions to deploy their capital efficiently. Compliance costs have risen dramatically, and resources that could otherwise be used to make loans instead have been, uh, devoted to navigating unnecessary regulatory burdens. The Main Street Capital Access Act takes meaningful steps to modernize these requirements while preserving the safety and soundness of our financial system. It removes barriers that unnecessarily restrict the flow of capital to local businesses without compromising our strong supervisory framework that protects consumers and maintains confidence in our banking system. This legislation recognizes an important reality that regulation should be tailored Requirements designed for the nation's largest and most complex financial institutions should not automatically apply in the same manner to community-based lenders whose business model is centered on relationship banking and serving local communities. By improving the regulatory environment for these smaller institutions, we expand opportunities for small businesses that depend on them. Several times this year, uh, Congress has uh, taken on a strong bipartisan basis, votes, and passed this kind of concept of tailored regulatory compliance based on business size and complexity. This approach means that greater access to financing for manufacturers looking to purchase new equipment, family-owned restaurants seeking to open a second location, farmers investing in new technology, and entrepreneurs starting businesses right along all of our main streets. This is not about weakening oversight. It's about making sure that our regulatory framework is efficient, effective, and appropriately calibrated. Strong financial institutions and vibrant local economies are complementary goals, not competing ones. And the benefits of increased access to capital extend well beyond individual businesses. When small businesses can obtain financing, they hire employees, increase wages, invest in their communities, and generate greater economic growth. These investments ripple outward, supporting suppliers, creating new opportunities, local tax bases that fund schools, infrastructure, and essential public services. At a time when many many small businesses continue to face inflationary pressures, higher borrowing costs, and economic uncertainty, Congress should be looking for practical bipartisan ways to remove unnecessary barriers to growth. This legislation does precisely that. The Main Street Act spurs new bank formation, tackles banking deserts, and lowers significant barriers for new banks. It reforms the bank supervisory process to make it more transparent. The bill brings common sense tailoring back to bank regulation based on an institution's size business model and risk profile. And it provides certainty around regulatory approval of bank mergers and acquisitions. The bill improves bank resolution framework in a way that protects depositors promotes greater competition and allows smaller banks to meaningfully participate in the bidding process for the assets of a bank that has failed. It helps banks attract, retain, and enhance their funding sources to better serve American families and business. All in all, in my view, the Main Street Capital Access Act reflects the principle that federal policy should encourage responsible lending promote economic opportunity, and ensure that our community financial institutions can continue to serve the businesses and families that rely on them every day. I urge my colleagues to support hr sixty nine fifty five and i thank the chair and i yield back the balance of my time.

thank you chairman hill ranking member walters you're recognized

thank you very much uh thank you chair fowler we all care about community banks and credit unions for that reason i was pleased to work with chair hill on a pattern of community bank revisions that included in our landlocked market housing bill, the twenty-first century road to housing act. Oh, there it is. Now, even though Trump refused to sign it, that legislation has become the law of the land. And those provisions help community, lenders, and not mega-banks, big tech, payment apps, or even payday lenders, debt collectors, and credit bureaus. Unfortunately, that is not the case, for the bill before you today. H R sixty nine fifty five is a Wall Street deregulation hiding as a community bank bill. This package is made up of twenty-four Republican bills with just two Democratic bills. Tomorrow, Madam Chair, we mark the sixteenth anniversary of the Don Frank Wall Street Reform and Community Protection Act becoming law. That law was passed in response to the two thousand eight financial crisis, when, in case my republican colleagues have forgotten, millions of Americans lost their jobs,

Mm-hmm.

their homes, and their life savings. But this package ignores those lessons and rolls back a long list of safeguards and oversight of the largest banks. Importantly, the nation is grappling with an affordable affordability crisis and surge in financial scams and fraud, costing consumers tens of billions of dollars. This is all made worse because Trump has shut down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Voting for H. R. sixty-nine fifty-five would add insult to injury by hampering a future CFPB from issuing new rules, such as reining in debt collectors or abusive medical debt practices, but maybe that is the point. Furthermore, Madam Chair, this bill ignores the lessons from the failure of Silicon Valley Bank and other regional banks just three years ago these large re- regional banks failed after Congress rolled back capital, liquidity and other rules specifically for those banks. Nevertheless, this bill lets even more of these large banks escape critical safeguards, risking more failures. In fact, the sponsors of this bill were so zealous uh to raise thresholds, they increased one threshold that will add bad actors who commit fraud against a bank. Yes, you can make this up. There is a provision that will increase the amount individuals can defraud absolutely at a bank by then turn around and obtain subsidized financing from the government for those assets from the failed bank. H. R. sixty-nine fifty-five also falls well short of what we know can be done on a bipartisan basis to promote, preserve, and enhance access to banking services for main street communities. I have a letter led by the national community reinvestment coalition and signed by organizations all over the country, including Alabama, Kansas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Utah. They are opposed because the bill would quote " sharply limit monopoly and competition review for mergers involving roughly ninety-six percent of all banks." Compress merger review and sideline community evidence and weaken fair lending accountability. Americans for Financial Reform and other leading consumer group organization wrote a letter saying, I quote, "this radical legislation would compound an all ready aggressive deregulatory spree, taken together these changes would be more damaging uh than the some of their parts, leaving the financial system dramatically weaker and more vulnerable to instability and crisis quote unquote. Now, Republicans made a few technical changes at the request of Trump regulators, but let me give you another example of what they didn't change. Wells Fargo, which many of you may remember, created millions of fake consumer accounts and has been the subject of countless enforcement actions for consumer harm like discrimination and anti-money laundering deficiencies, would have a new tool to delay future enforcement actions even when consumers have been harmed. Madam Chair, instead of letting Wall Street put Americans and our economy at risk again, we should be working together to address the affordability crisis caused by Trump's failed economic policies, an endless war with Iran. So, I urge members to oppose this bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Um, thank you both. I'm going to defer my questions for um a little bit. Mister Norman, do you have any question, I'm sorry, Mister Griffin, I should ask Mister Griffin first. No,

I have no questions.

no questions. Miss Gantler.

Thank you. I I think we agree, America needs a strong financial system that supports community banks and credit unions and small businesses because they're the backbones of our our local economies, but we're concerned because of it, instead of advancing targeted reforms to support those institutions, what we have here is bundling together of the largest package of banking and Wall Street deregulation since the two thousand and eight financial crisis and it's just pretending to say that this is going to help main street instead of mega banks meanwhile president trump has spent the last year and a half dismantling the consumer financial protection bureau the agency that actually does protect families from predatory financial practices so we know the president's actions have already cost american consumers an estimated nineteen billion dollars in dismissed enforcement cases,

Mm-hmm.

pardon fraudsters, uh rescinded rules and the gutting of the consumer complaint system. This bill would go even further by weakening the ability of banking regulators to protect consumers and preserve financial stability. I mean, if our Republican colleagues were serious about supporting Main Street, they would work across the aisle on targeted reforms that strengthen community banks without weakening the safeguards that protect consumers and taxpayers and the economy. Instead, once again, this bill asks the American people to take on more financial risk so the banking industry can make more money and face less accountability. So, you know, I'm not in favor of putting the thumb on the scale for billionaires and big businesses and and leaving the American people to shoulder the risk. Um, Ranking member Waters, after the financial crisis in two thousand and eight, uh, Congress established a number of regulatory thresholds and supervisory authorities that this bill would change or roll back. Um, can you explain why those guardrails exist and what could happen if regulators lose the tools they need to identify problems before they become crises? And I think you mentioned some California banks.

Oh, thank you, uh, Representative Scalin. I just wanna say, in the way that you have described uh your concerns, that's exactly what is happening with this bill. As a matter of fact, I do believe uh that we have to be concerned about members who say that they support community banks, uh but really uh they are using this as a way to hide uh the deregulatory efforts that have been made by uh some members on the opposite side of the aisle. And to tell you the truth, I think that with all of the good work that we have done uh with the big housing bill, Mister Hill and I working together, our bipartisan effort, this will hurt some of what we have accomplished in making sure uh that we get rid of deregulatory work uh by many of those who would like to see the big banks uh continue uh to have more power and more control than they should. I reference uh Wells Fargo uh when I spoke just a moment ago. Everybody remembers the fake accounts uh that were set up. Everybody knows we worked very hard. We worked so hard we were able to undo those who sat on the board and the CEO uh at one point, so that we could try and clean up uh what was happening in Wells Fargo. Well, Wells Fargo really doesn't mind, it is the cost of doing business. We don't want our banks uh to be able uh to undermine um this kind of work that we have done um in order to uh save face, you know, for the big banks. And so this bill does not do uh what I think some will think it does in terms of support for community banks, in fact, I think will undermine much of the work that we have done.

Well, I I do wanna take the opportunity to thank Chairman Hill and yourself for the the incredible work you did in putting together the bipartisan housing bill, and uh overcoming a number of obstacles, not the we least of which is always the Senate, to get that get that passed and hopefully start providing more ho- housing options for Americans, cuz I'm sure you hear as I do. all the time how much housing problems are just driving uh so much of what's going on in our community so thank you for your work on that. I yield back.

Thank you, Miss Candler. Mister Norman.

It's it's one of the uh thank both of you for coming. This is one of the few times, Maxine, I think you're kinda happy with this bill, which is a good thing. Uh no, I appreciate your bipartisanship. Um, Chairman Hill, the camel's rating has been a subject of a lot of discussion, I know in my banking days where they felt like it was too much was left up to the whoever was judging the sensitivity, the capital adequacy, the

Mm-hmm.

has the appeals process, is there a time limit, and I notice that's in there if some if if a examiner is not fair and doesn't have the ratings that they feel is is there an adequate time for the appeal process? And is there ending time to get an answer on it?

I appreciate that, Mister Norman, and let me start out by saying that I couldn't disagree more with uh the ranking member's opening statement on her positioning of this bill. This bill is aimed at the heart of America's consumer uh b- banking companies, our con- community lenses. There's nothing in this bill that's gonna uh benefit the biggest banks in the country. In fact, to the contrary, this bill makes our local community banks and our small regional banks much more competitive with those big global Wall Street banks. It's just a fact. In fact, this bill allows them to now compete dramatically for both deposits and for resolution of banks when they fail, so that these failed banks don't automatically go in the hands of one of the biggest banks headquartered in uh in New York, for example. And I can walk through the more detail on that as we go through the the evening, but let me answer your question, Mister Norman. Uh, Don Riegel, a Democratic senator from Michigan in the nineteen nineties, said that one of the biggest frustrations he heard from his constituents in the Riegel-Neal bill that was signed into law in the nineteen nineties by President Clinton uh that bill said that banks ought to be able to question an exam output in some orderly way to have an ombudsman uh to allow them to assess with an independent view whether the bank had been treated fairly or not. And this was after uh, really ten tumultuous years in the economy in the nineteen eighties, where a lot of banks failed all across the country and a lot of savings and loans failed. But the government never really fully implemented that. And so in this bill we have a provision that allows, I think, for a much more fair examination process, that, uh, we got technical assistance from the regulators and from bankers. Is this a fair process by which people could question and exam output? I believe that's represented in the bill. And also we've facilitated in the bill that if they're not satisfied through that process, they can go to federal court of course, which is every citizen's uh right.

OK, well thank you. Maxine, you have any comment on that?

Well, you know, I'm just looking uh at what uh is in this legislation. Voting for H. R. sixty-nine fifty-five would add insult to injury by hampering a future CFPB from issuing new rules. such as reining in debt collectives or abusive medical debt practices. But maybe uh that is the point. Um, I guess all that I'm saying when I point to Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is there's still a lot of work to be done uh to help our constituents. I wanna tell you something I just read uh on the plane coming out. Walmart is putting beef under lock and key, uh, because the thievery that is going on by people who can't afford the increased price of beef uh, anymore is just ruining, uh, you know, their profit margins on beef. And so, why is this happening? It is happening because we have an affordability crisis. We need to be paying attention to what we do to protect our consumers, The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is there to make sure, uh, that our big agencies who have so much power are not working on behalf of just big banks, but on behalf of small banks. We can't excuse them or we can't let them off the hook. As a matter of fact, if you really wanna do something for community banks, separate big banks from community banks in a real way, instead of hiding, big banks hiding behind legislation supposedly for community banks.

Well, thank, thank both of you for testifying. Appreciate it. Uh, your back.

Thank you, Mr. Norman. Miss Leisure Fernandez.

Uh, thank you so very much, uh, um, Madam Chair, for recognising me and, and for the conversation today. Uh, you know, one of, uh, I, I'm a big fan of, uh, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Um, And I'm also very concerned that what we're seeing is President Trump is regularly pardoning fraudsters uh who provide tens of thousands, sometimes millions to his campaign or to his family's uh businesses and so forth. But who's standing up and fighting for consumers? Who's fighting for working families? Who's fighting for the people who are holding those credit cards, who are seeing those big banks gouge them. And uh that has in the past been the Consumer Financial Protection Bureaus. And uh before President Trump took off uh office, uh the CFPB had returned twenty-one billion dollars to Americans cheated by scammers. Twenty-one billion dollars.

Yes.

Right? And that's their money.

That's right.

That's their money. Um, and, but what we're seeing is that he's taken an axe to this great Consumer Protection Bureau. He's fired staff, uh, and, uh, this is cost consumers. And so, what does this bill do to protect the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau? I mean, it needs protecting now, too, doesn't it? Uh, ranking member Waters.

Well, um, you aptly mentioned the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which many of us have fought so hard. uh to have some place for our consumers uh to register their complaints. Prior to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, there was no place really in government uh that uh the average consumer uh could lodge a complaint. Well, I want you to know that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau helped millions, and you just mentioned uh the return of uh of assets and money or whatever uh that our consumers were able uh to experience. And so, if we don't have a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, those people who are being treated badly, who have been ripped off, uh, who have been taken advantage of, really, uh, don't have anywhere to go. And so, we've got to look out really for the consumer banks. We all, everybody knows that I and many of you, we really support the small banks. We really support the community banks. We wouldn't do anything uh to undermine the community banks but this bill does that it really undermines their ability to have a voice uh to have someone that's going to speak up for them when they have been defrauded etcetera etcetera and so we've got to fight against the bill i know some people will be tricked and they'll think that they'll be helping community banks not true and so i'm hopeful that we're able to get the message out so that people will understand like you do Exactly, uh what we have to be aware of.

Uh with that Madam Chair I yield back.

Thank you very much. Um, Chairman Hill, I appreciated the comments that you made, having grown up in an extremely rural area. I'm I'm very familiar with um how important rural banking is. Um, and I have very strong feelings about how bad Don Frank has been over the years and I'm glad that to see your committee coming in to correct some some of the problems with Don Frank um I I don't think that this hides the deregulatory effort on the part of Republicans I think I'm we're very of the deregulatory efforts that we're putting out there. And, um, what I am c- growing up again in a rural area, I'm quite familiar with how banks know how to make decisions. Because they know the people, they know the area. They can make a lot of great decisions based on, on the area. And frankly, I get a little put out. with the people who wanna help us, poor rural people whose institutions just can't get along without big regulations from Washington DC when they do much better. The bank in my community was a very small bank forever and ever and ever the most profitable small bank in the United States for a long time. and did a wonderful job. Um, uh, Miss Waters, you bring up the beef under lock and key. What about those flash mobs out there in California who came into the drug stores and the jewelry stores and stole when our economy was at its best in this country? It isn't, it isn't the economy, it isn't the affordability that makes people thieves. It's bad values on their part. Um, so I thank you both for coming today and bringing this good bill to us. And I look forward to

Madam Chairman, uh

uh discussing it. Do you have something you'd like to add?

I'd I'd like to add just because um couple things. The this bill is completely tailored to small banks. Just a few weeks ago on the House floor, on the suspension calendar, uh, we gave regulatory relief on the suspension counter, a hundred percent vote in this house by voice to tailor c- regulatory compliance for banks under six billion dollars. Of the five thousand banks in this country, probably forty-five hundred of them are under six billion dollars. And it's precisely that theme that is in this bill. So, first of all, this bill is absolutely written and tailored to uh, small community banks, both rural and urban, and if it's not, then why did the Opportunity Finance Network, uh, all across the country represent five hundred community development lenders? What about the National Bankers Association of African American banks? What about the CDFI coalition of urban, rural and native communities, uh, nationwide, and the Community Development Bankers Association, all support this bill strongly because it has that balance in it, And then this assertion that this is weakening consumer protection or consumer laws, nothing could be further from the case.

I don't believe that at all. I I don't believe that assertion at all. I appreciate your speaking up. We we need to get, would you like to get those on the in the record?

Well, I just would, I would just simply say that, uh, there's, this bill in no way weak- uh, weakens consumer protection. Uh, the walls on safety and soundness, like if you wanna stop a bank from unsafe or unsound activity are fully uh able to be implemented in this statute and the same for consumer compliance on fair housing, fair lending, equal uh opportunity uh credit opportunity. All those laws are in place and fully implementable by our supervisors.

Well, without objection, I can insert those letters of support um for

Yeah, without objection, I'll I'll give them. Put those

for this bill and for community banking.

May I?

I know the community bankers in North Carolina and I know how good they are.

Madam Chair, may I?

Well, I'm gonna inter I'm gonna recognize Mister Scott.

Okay.

Miss Water.

Madam Chair, um, I appreciate um the Chair and the uh ranking member being here today. Um, I've Mister Hill, do you have any further comments on the bill? I mean, I know I'm from a small town. And, uh, regulatory relief with small banks I think is important. Um.

Well, I ran one of those small banks before I was in Congress. I ran it successfully throughout the financial crisis. Our bank grew and was more profitable in the years of the financial crisis and following the financial crisis. And, but we were operated in very small rural counties, like ten thousand people in the county, in the Mississippi Delta. And I know that I spent more time worried about the next compliance exam or hiring the next compliance officer than i did in hiring the next loan officer because of the one size fits all approach on consumer compliance and safety and soundness laws. And what we do here is without comp- uh compromising the compliance or compromising safety and soundness, we tailor it to the business mission size and complexity of the institution. And I think this will really help particularly small rural institutions. I was just in the chairwoman's uh state earl- earlier today with a group of uh small uh banks from around North Carolina and - and they explained to me how they thought this would benefit them specifically in that regard. And if they are better off, then their customers are better off.

That's exactly right.

Yo- yo back to the gentleman.

I - I don't - I don't do much banking anymore, unfortunately. Uh, but I look forward to the day when I'm back in business and banking again, and I look forward to walking into a small community bank. where they know me and I know them, and I'm not just a number like you are with a Bank of America or one of those big boys.

And you know, you've raised a good point there because I mentioned at the top that six out of ten home construction loans are made by banks under ten billion. If you ask the biggest banks, uh, uh, in the country, what is your home construction portfolio in Arkansas, and the answer will be none. We don't do that business.

Ag is what?

And the pandemic. exposed that, uh, the biggest banks like Bank of America, rather than not picking on Bank of America's, but the largest five to ten banks have a credit requirement and a credit box that doesn't facilitate reaching out to a lot of small,

Mm-hmm.

rural, entrepreneurial, or local farm, or local businesses. And that's why small, our Main Street banks are essential. We don't wanna be Canada with four banks. We wanna have a diverse in size and diverse in location financial system. This bank uh this bill the main street bill will aid main street not wall street in help achieve that

i know b b and t and sun trust weren't necessarily your hometown community bank but they originated that way and kind of kind of bought them and you know kind of the the bigger they get the the less important you are to them and the less customer service you get out of them and so i i'll just tell you the the small banks are the ones that that i very much wanna make sure we're taking care of and i trust you uh chairman hill to do that so um and and competition is good for the marketplace

mmm yep

because that's where customer service will will will succeed with that madam chair i yield

thank you very much i thank our witnesses for being here uh we have no other members here to ask questions so thank you all very much for patiently waiting

thank you madam chair

and uh appreciate your uh being here i need a statement about containing no ok never mind

hey hey how are you

do you wanna move those now

right

and now welcome miss sport mr. magisiner

uh

uh yeah

and mr. davidson

thank you thank you

not the thing um i ms. bart you may submit your written testimony and we ask you to keep your remarks to five minutes i think it's

sir

yeah pull it close to you sir

Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, I want to explain why I did this amendment. Actually, there's an issue that came to my attention last week. Uh, it was on the floor when we had discussion about take care of America's Veterans Act, and there was a lot of confusion, so, a variety of ways to look at how we want to make sure that we going to fund the benefits for people when we go to send them to wars we're going to send them in the military. and there was some concerns, you know, to be able to fund the Richard Starr Act, you know, that, uh, you know, we would, um, you know, codify some of the VA actions that could potentially could cut benefits for future veterans, the current military. So I think, you know, to be fair, I think we need to make sure that if we send people to war, we're going to fund the benefits for them, so, including the current military. So I think there is a better solution. I think it should be bipartisan issue. So, and, you know, Major Richard is I think most probably committee familiar what is this act is, so it's kind of fixes in some way a loophole if you are uh in the military and you're medically discharged uh and to your combat related military you are not there for twenty years so you cannot get fully full military retirement and full VA disabilities offset but ultimately if you got injured in combat you probably couldn't stay you know for twenty years so I think it's fair for this, people who actually get this injury is that they can get both. And uh I think this Act, which is I think the fiscal of this Act about nine point four billion, you know, but this is germane to this reconciliation where we're going to be funding uh, Department of War, and uh that's who is actually going to provide for military retirement uh full military retirement pension. Um, I think this is, you know shouldn't be a partisan issue. uh, Representative Jen Jeff Andrew and Anna-Polina Lunat, who sponsored this amendment. I really appreciate that. And, uh, I know that we're going to be dealing with some offsets later, which is, uh, fine, you know, but, uh, we, Samson, could, uh, be dealing with this situation. And whatever VA does, really, they can do some efficiencies, they can change some things. You know, if they change something, there are some savings, it still goes to the bottom line, to go to our national debt. So ultimately, if VA is going to be saving something, twenty billion, you know, nineteen billion roughly, so we'll still be ten billions of savings if we just fund this particular act, because these people truly deserve to have, you know, full pay through retirement pension and compensation. So I think my amendment is very simple, it just increases that what CBO's course said, it's cost us nine point four billion to be able to, you know, treat our treat our veterans and militarily fairly. So, and this is just adds to the reconciliation, separate amendment and um you know seems like it should be not even a partisan issue, I'd appreciate your support and in um long run you know I think it will also might even be able to save us money but regardless what it is if we send people to war we should find the benefits when they come back we have a lot of heroic people serving in the military in tough situations and we as a country should appreciate that and I believe there's a best and brightest of our countries that save our republic fight for our republic so I would appreciate bipartisan support of this amendment, and happy to answer any questions. You're back.

Thank you. Mr. Magasino.

Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the committee. I come before you tonight disappointed but not surprised. I came to Congress to fight corruption, to stop bribes, to get dark money out of our elections, to ban members of Congress from profiting off their positions, by trading on inside information. And for a brief moment, I thought we might actually get it done this year. I worked with a bipartisan group of Republican and Democratic members, including Mister Roy, my my co-lead, to write a strong bill to ban stock trading in Congress once and for all. We introduced our bipartisan bill, the Restore Trust in Congress Act, with strong support from both sides of the aisle, and the support of the American people, who are disgusted by the corruption in Washington. But instead of letting us vote on that bill, the Republican majority is playing political games, because they don't want change, because they want politicians to continue to get rich off of their positions. So let's get one thing straight. The so-called stock trading ban that the House Republicans are pushing today would still allow members of Congress to trade stocks, to sell unlimited amounts at any time with insider knowledge, just like some former members sold stocks before the COVID-19 pandemic, because they knew what was coming before everybody else did. That would still be allowed under this bill that's being pushed to the floor today. And under this bill, members would still be allowed to vote on health care policy, knowing that they own a bunch of health care stocks, would still be allowed to vote on defense policy, knowing that they own defense company stocks, on AI policy, knowing that they own the stocks of those same AI companies. This bill would do nothing to end the conflicts of interest in order to make Congress work for the American people and not just the insiders. In addition, the Republican leadership has combined their bad bill with a completely unrelated and controversial bill about election administration. So whatever you think about that issue, whatever you think about voter ID, the decision to combine the two into one bill, rather than allow separate votes, shows that the Republican majority doesn't really want any of this to pass. It's just a political game to them. So I have introduced an amendment that will strike the language of this unserious fake reform bill that the Republican leadership has put in front of us, and replace it with the language from the bipartisan Restore Trust in Congress Act, a real ban on members of Congress owning and trading stocks with no gimmicks and no exceptions, the same exact bipartisan language that Mister Roy and a lot of other Republican members came together with us to introduce last year. That is the better bill because it actually bans stock trading as opposed to the one that the leadership is trying to jam through today, which does not. and everybody knows it. But there's one other thing that we must do. When we got our bipartisan group together and we started working on the Restore Trust in Congress Act, there wasn't a lot of talk then about the President trading stocks because up until that point President Trump, for all of his many faults, had not been an active stock trader while in office. But over the past year that has changed dramatically. So far in twenty twenty-six, and listen to this, so far in twenty twenty-six, President Trump has traded more stocks than every member of Congress combined, based on the public filings. He bought Nvidia stock right before he lifted export controls on Nvidia chips. He bought and sold defense stocks when making decisions about the Iran war. He even bought stocks of the parent company of the UFC right before the UFC fights on the White House lawn. No stock trading ban is complete if it doesn't also include the President of the United States. So in addition to fully banning stock trading in Congress, my amendment also will ban stock trading by the President the Vice President and the Supreme Court. Let's root out corruption everywhere. That is what the American people want and deserve for us to do. And I yield back.

Thank you very much. Miss Fedorchik, you're recognized.

Thank you, Chairwoman Fox and members of the committee. Uh, I appreciate Chairman Stiles' leadership on this legislation, and I support all the goals of this legislation. I have amendment before you that deals specifically and narrowly with some of the voter ID provisions in this bill. I, like most Americans, believe that only um uh eligible American citizens should vote in our elections. Requiring voters to present photo ID is a common sense way to do that. Americans des- deserve confidence that every legal vote is counted, and only legal votes are counted. My amendment fully supports that objective. In fact, my amendment exists because North Dakota already meets and in many respects exceeds the legislation, the election integrity standards this bill is designed to establish. North Dakota is the only state in the nation that does not require voter registration. Instead, for more than seventy years we've relied on a different system that emphasizes continuous voter verification rather than voter registration. Because of that system, North Dakota is exempt from the National Voter Registration Act. Our system already requires voters to present photo ID before voting. It verifies citizenship and residency through official state records. Our Secretary of State continuously updates our voter eligibility using information on residency changes, deaths, and other eligibility records maintained by the State. North Dakota has strong safeguards for absentee and mail-in voting. Voters must verify their identity before receiving and casting a ballot, and our election administrators maintain secure chain of custody procedures throughout the absentee ballot voting process. Our election laws are also include accommodations that work well for tribal communities while maintaining election integrity. Simply put, North Dakota has developed a system that is tailored to our state, protects the integrity of our elections, and has worked succe- successfully for decades. The concerns raised by our Secretary of State is not with the purpose of Chairman Stiles' bill. We support its purpose. The concern is that the bill amends the Help America Vote Act and that assume every state has a voter registration system. As currently drafted, portions of this bill expand requirements that are common practices for voter registration. This includes collection of social security numbers, use of military IDs, and voter affidavits, and other procedures that simply don't exist in North Dakota. In the opin- opinion of the secretary of state of North Dakota, Those changes would weaken North Dakota's election integrity by requiring us to move away from the system that already exceeds the objectives Congress is trying to achieve today. My amendment is narrow, it does not weaken voter ID requirements, it does not weaken election integrity, it does not create a loophole, it simply preserves North Dakota's long-standing election system. We should avoid unintentionally replacing one of the strongest election integrity systems in the country, with requirements that were never designed for a state without voter registration. I respectfully ask the committee to make my amendment in order. Thank you. I yield back and look forward to your questions.

Thank you, Ms. Fedorchik. Mr. Davidson, you're recognized.

Uh, thank you Madam Chairwoman and thanks to the Rules Committee for the work you do here. Um, you know, we have a number of bills that comprise uh consideration as part of this rule, so I will once again plead that we uh fix a problem, an unconstitutional and ineffective surveillance, uh, tool called the Corporate Transparency Act. Democrats installed it in the FY twenty-twenty-one National Defense Authorization Act and for some reason Republicans want to unilaterally disarm and not include even the ability to consider this as an amendment. Uh, whereas Democrats put it into the base text, wouldn't allow amendments, and forced it into law. They've done rulemaking that made a bad law even worse in practice. But thankfully the Trump administration uh has a rule in place that minimizes that impact. The bill I've got that relates to this has a hundred and ninety-three cosponsors. This is broadly supported and it locks in with the administration's doing, what it makes it law. So I plead with the committee, please make this in order, and ideally just incorporate it into the base text. I think that would be a better way to do it. We're also, uh, talking about budget reconciliation again, and look, um, you know, reconciliation's an important tool. We're in the House, I think uniformly frustrated by the Senate at times, but, uh, we're requesting ninety-five billion dollars on offset. One of the tools in budget reconciliation is to do just that. One of the points of the Budget Reconciliation Act is to pay for our spending. Sound money is essential to defending freedom. We don't currently have sound money. And since we don't have sound money, we must cut spending and grow revenue. Since we aren't cutting spending, uh, we should at least prioritize our spending so that we avoid increases that outpace our revenue growth. And while our revenue growth is strong, um, our spending is growing even faster. So, there there I I'd ask unanimous consent to submit this for the record. This is just a summary of that, but

Without objection.

Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. But, look, there there are easy ways to save money. Uh, conservative groups have provided them for us, uh, we debated them, uh, through reconciliation-one, reconciliation-two, the Republican study committees consolidated them, and various other, uh, colleagues have worked on this for years. So, I have four amendments. One would save four trillion dollars. on the ten year budget scoring window. And I don't think that's incredibly hard to do. Uh, i- and I think importantly, look, this is a budget window that because of our rules we lay out a ten year window. Well, what happens inside that ten year window? In twenty thirty-two, the Social Security Trust Fund quits working, which is the payroll taxes that are collected, uh, become insufficient to cover the payouts. And under current law, as scored in our budget and all of our CBO scores that from twenty thirty two and beyond they assume under current law that we're going to cut spending on social security by twenty percent now i don't believe a future congress is going to do that but i think it's irresponsible for us to put a budget out that pretends that that would even happen so this first amendment creates a mandate that all savings all of the savings that we get from budget reconciliation would go into that social security fund because it protects it and you know bad news doesn't get better with time kicking the can down the road isn't going to make this easier to solve down the road we should protect social security. And I think this would be a good way to do both things. I've got a related proposal, separate amendment, two point six trillion dollars. I got a different one that's a little easier, that's one point two five trillion dollars. And since we're only asking for ninety-five billion dollars worth of new debt, I got one that would save ninety-five billion dollars, but it would lock it in every stinking year. Look, we're bankrupting our country. It's not compassionate to bankrupt the country. Five dollar foot longs are twelve dollars. Houses have gone up eighty percent and payroll tax payroll wages have not gone up like that. And it's because we're spending too much money. So regardless of how important it is, we paid for a we we we fought last week over a veteran's bill. Caring for our veterans is a first-order priority. But because of the rules of the house and common sense, we found pay-fors. Now the pay-fors created a debate uh here and people thought maybe we could find better pay-fors, but the principle was we're going to pay for it. But you're telling me This new ninety-five billion dollar request we don't have to pay for? I- I'm offended. Now lastly, we're talking about, uh, you know, a bill that deals with insider trading. And I - I do object to calling it " insider trading", stop insider trading act, because insider trading is already illegal, um, a- a- and so I think we're confusing people. Insider trading is already a crime. But you do get access to a lot of information in Congress. I think the ethics rules already steer people to do the right thing. Um, But passing this law makes sense, but it should make sense for the executive branch and the judiciary branch too. So I have an amendment that would apply this equally to all SES employees and above in the executive branch. So that would include cabinet secretaries, all elected officials in the executive branch. It would uh include uh the judiciary branch as well. So I'd plead with you to make all of my amendments in order, let's give us a chance to represent the people that sent us here to represent them, and I yield back.

thank you mister davidson um does any member on our side have any questions mister mcgovern

yeah just briefly mister davidson i you know um we objected to the um your veterans bill cause you cut veterans benefits to pay for other veterans benefits uh but if you gonna pay for a veterans benefits then you gotta pay for the war um and this doesn't do that and i i asked chairman errington um here i have an amendment similar to yours on the richard starr act whether he'd be open to uh allowing us to make that in order and i got a blank stare so i don't know whether he was having a moment or whether he be we're just trying not to answer the question uh but i would hope that if your amendment gets blocked um that um that you will sign the discharge petition because otherwise i don't see how we're gonna get we're ever gonna get a vote on it so i hope that you'll sign the discharge petition if they block your amendment otherwise this is all talk and Mister Magaziner, and Miss um uh Fedorichek, I mean um uh just so you know uh when Chairman Stile came up to testify um he wrote a letter uh that's a little different than a lot of other chairs uh who who uh request rules they usually request an appropriate rule um but he was pretty clear um he wants a totally closed rule

Yeah.

uh to govern this uh issue um and i understand why because they don't want uh to expand their uh and make more effective the the stop insider trading act. Um, and I don't know what what the problem is um with North Dakota, uh but uh but the point of matter is um uh you know, we will see what happens, but he specifically asked for a totally closed rule. Yeah, you want

Okay, to clarify, I just want to make sure that we know we can try to fund a lot of things and I think the version that you have on the stretch petition is roughly ninety billion dollars, you know, so let's just fund nine billion To fund it's ten times more, let's just fund nine billion to fund you know what I'm just saying.

Oh yes for the, if if they don't make you remember in order to fund the team then they shouldn't.

No I no I'm just saying let's just fund well I'm just saying we can let's fund

No.

nine billion to truly deal with the nature of combat veterans you know not not expand

The veterans the veterans are thirteen billion. But but if they don't make you remember in order to use that then they are thirteen billion.

that so so would you would you do some sort of a lower amount or not not ninety billion,

That's not it's unfortunate.

ninety billion is a lot.

The veterans will be very disappointed.

No we do, no I think we need to do it, we need to fund some sort of more things you know so so

Well the veterans want a stamp. Yeah.

So

It sounds like the

Well, well your bill is too broad. You know, we need to truly deal with an issue we need to deal, not do more and more.

Well, the vet

So I think this is a bill, so will you support this on the floor,

I don't know if we're not gonna. The vet the veterans are are very disappointed.

the the this version? Yeah, no, they're very disappointed because it seems like you don't want to support this amendment. You want to have more stuff.

I have an amendment.

So would you support this amendment, Rankin member? Would you support this nine point four billion amendment?

I I have an amendment to make the richest star act in order.

So you only support the Democrat amendments, you don't support Republican amendments.

No, I maybe, yeah, but

Seems like we should be bipartisan on this issue.

Excuse me. You are in charge, your party is in charge of this Congress and in charge of this committee.

Yeah.

If your amendment is not made in order, it is not because four Democrats didn't vote for it. It is because all of these Republicans voted against it. So the that that's the issue. And all I'm saying to you is if they don't make your amendment in order, will you sign the discharge petition so we can have a vote? And I think your answer is no. And that's all I wanted to know.

Well, you have a different you have a different legislation on that petition.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Rankin member, but hopefully you can support if it's in order.

Thank you. Um, I do wanna thank the representative from North Dakota from bringing forward the fact that our elections are constitutionally run by the States and and the fact that there's some issues with the legislation that's being s uh pressed here um and how it would be implemented in the States I think is really telling uh Mister Magaziner I I hope um

Yeah, no, that's right. Thank you. And and again, when we introduced the Restore Trust in Congress Act last year, it was with broad bipartisan support, including by at least one of the Republican members of the Rules Committee. Mm. And I think you know, to rank a member McGovern's point, you know, the reason that Chairman Stile doesn't want an an open rule is because he knows that there is broad support in both parties for including the President and

Mm-hmm.

Vice President and Supreme Court for having a real stock trading

Right.

ban that actually bans stock trading and doesn't just pretend to.

Right.

And so if we can open this up, then I think you'll find broad support on both sides, and of course the American people as well.

Thank you. I yield back. thank you miss leger fernandez

uh thank you for your amendments uh we made many of the same points you did uh representative davidson of where they're willing to uh rack up the debt again and we don't really see them willing to uh raise revenue and so we're gonna have some amendments suggesting that there are ways to uh raise revenue to pay for what they wanna uh do and uh i i think it's like a half stock trading ban it's not really a trading ban it is uh you uh and earlier today chairman still said No, it's enough to just require disclosure of sales. Um, but that's not a ban, is it, of a presentment?

Well, we've had disclosure for over a decade and it hasn't fixed the problem.

Yeah.

All it's done is shown that there is a big problem. And, and again, under this so-called stock trading ban that's not a stock trading ban, members could still sell any amount at any time on any inside information and can still hold as much stock as they want while they're voting on the regulations and the laws for those same industries. So there'll still be a tremendous conflict And of course it does nothing to do address the the trader in chief right now, who is the president who's traded more than every member of Congress combined this year.

Outrageous and uh corruption action, and thank you for your amendments. And with that, Madam Chair, thank you all for your uh coming forward and explaining your amendment. And I yield back.

Thank you. Miss Fedorchuk, did you have some other comment you wished to make?

Uh, no, I just wanted to emphasize that the amendment i'm seeking is very narrow and it is recognizes that north coda already meets and exceeds the standards that we're trying to create for the rest of the country um of which i strongly support

thank you

Madam Chair?

Got it. Considered.

Madam Ma- Madam Chair,

All.

may I ask your name as consent to insert in the record written testimony from representative Courtney in support of his amendment number eight seventy eight uh to hr eighty eight hundred which would authorize six hundred and ten million for the construction of up to two medium landing ships by reducing funds authorized for the one big battleship program by six hundred and ten million.

Without objection. Is there anyone else seeking to testify on today's agenda? Seeing none, this closes the hearing portion of our meeting. The chair will be in receipt of a motion from the gentleman from Virginia, Mister Griffith.

Madam Chair, I move the committee grant H R eight eight zero zero, the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year twenty twenty seven, a structured rule. The rule waives all points of order against consideration of the bill. The rule provides one hour of general debate, equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the committee on armed services or their respective designees. The rule provides that in lieu of the amendment, the nature of substitute recommended by the Committee on Armed Services now printed in the bill, an amendment in nature of substitute consisting of the text of the rules print print, committee print one one nine dash three three shall be considered as adopted, and the bill as amended shall be considered as read. The rule waives all points of order against provisions in the bill as amended. The rule makes in order only those amendments printed in part A of the rules committee report. Amendments in block described in section three and pro forma amendments described in Each amendment shall be considered only in the order printed in the report, may be offered only by a member designated in the report, shall be considered as read, shall be debatable for the time specified in the report, equally divided in control by the proponent and an op- and an opponent, shall not be subject to amendment exceptions provided by section four of the rule, and shall not be subject to a demand for division of the question. The rules waive wa- the rule waives all points of order against the amendments printed in part A of the Rules Committee report or amendments in block, described in section three of the rule. The rule provides that the chair of the Committee on Armed Services or his designee may offer amendments in block consisting of further amendments printed in part A of the Rules Committee report, not earlier disposed of. Amendments in block shall be considered as read, shall be debatable for forty minutes equally divided and controlled by the chair in ranking minority member of the Committee on Armed Services or their respective designees. shall not be subject to amendment except as provided by section four of the rule, and shall not be subject to demand for division of the question. The rule provides that the chair and ranking minority member of the committee on armed services or their respective designees may offer up to ten pro forma amendments each at any point for the purpose of debate. The rule provides one motion to recommit. The rule provides for consideration of H R eight eight eight four, the removing barriers to work f for disabled Americans Act. Under a closed rule, the rule waives all points of order against consideration of the bill. The rule provides that in lieu of the amendment, the nature of substitute recommended by the Committee of Ways and Means, now printed in a bill, an amendment in the nature of substitute consisting of the text of rules, committee print one one nine dash three four shall be considered as adopted, and the bill as amended shall be considered as read. The rule waives all points of order against provisions in the bill as amended. The rule provides one hour of general debate, equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on Ways and Means or the respective designees. The rule provides one motion to recommit. The rule further provides for consideration of HCON RES one one three, establishing the congressional budget for the United States government for fiscal year twenty twenty seven and setting forth the appropriate budgetary levels for fiscal years twenty twenty eight through twenty thirty six. Under a closed rule, the rule waives all points of order against consideration of the concurrent resolution. The rule provides one hour of general debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the committee o on the budget, or their respective designees. The rule provides an amendment in the nature of substitute consisting of the text of Rules Committee Print one one nine dash three seven shall be considered as adopted and the con- and the concurrent resolution as amended shall be considered as read. The rule permits the chair of the committee on the budget to offer amendments in the house per- pursuant to section three O five A five of the Congressional Budget Act of nineteen seventy-four to achieve mathematical consistency. The rule further provides for consideration of H R seven zero zero zero eight the stop insider trading act under a closed rule. The rule waives all points of order against consideration of the bill. The rule provides that in lieu of the amendment, the nature of substitute recommended by the committee on house administration, now printed in the bill, an amendment in the nature of a substitute consisting of the text of rules, committee print one one nine dash three eight, modified by the amendment printed in part B of the rules committee report shall be considered as adopted and the bill as amended shall be considered as read. The rule waives all points of order against provisions in the bill as amended. The rule provides one hour of general debate, equally divided and controlled by the chair in ranking minority member of the committee on the house on house administration or their respective designees the rule provides one motion to recommit the rule further provides for consideration of HR six nine five five the Main Street Capital Access Act under a closed rule the rule waives all points of order against consideration of the bill the rule provides that in lieu of the amendment the natural substitute recommended by the committee on financial services now printed in the bill an amendment in for substitute consisting of the text of rules committee print one one nine dash three five shall be considered as adopted and the bill as amended shall be considered as read. The rule waives all points of order against provisions and the bill is amended. The rule provides one hour of general debate equally divided and controlled by the chair, and ranking minority member of the committee on financial services or their res- respective designees. The rule provides one motion to recommit. The rule further provides for consideration of H R nine seven seven zero, the continuing appropriations act Twenty twenty seven, under a closed rule, the rule waives all points of order against consideration of the bill. The rule provides that the bill should be considered as read. The rule waives all points of order against provisions in the bill. The rule provides one hour of general debate, equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking of minority member of the committee on appropriations or the respective designees. The rule provides one motion to recommit. Finally, the rule provides that in the engrossment of H R eight eight zero zero, the clerk shall, at the text of senate one three eight three is passed by the house. as new matter at the end of hr eight eight zero zero assign appropriate designations to provisions within the engrossment conform cross-references and provisions for short titles within the engrossment and be authorized to make technical corrections to include corrections in spelling, punctuation, page and line numbering, section numbering and insertion of appropriate headings and I so move

Uh Thank you very much, Mister Griffith. Um, is there um

Amendments, yeah.

Yeah,

Yes.

sorry. Is there any discussion on the motion from the gentleman from Virginia?

Yeah, Madam Chair, we have several amendments. We're gonna try to be quick, but six bills and one rule is an awful lot. But uh, I have an amendment to the rule, I move the committee make an order, amendment number nineteen, to H con res one thirteen, offered by myself. which would add budget reconciliation instructions requiring the house committee on armed services to submit changes in laws within its jurisdiction that increase direct spending by no less than thirteen billion dollars out of a sixty billion out of the sixty billion dollars that republicans allocated to the department of defense for the purpose of adding the major richard starr act to the reconciliation bill republicans gave dod a hundred fifty billion dollars last july they haven't used half of it now they want to send another sixty billion dollars for a for the war again without paying for it But when it comes to helping combat wounded veterans, Republicans insist on cutting benefits to other disabled veterans and raising VA home loan fees that's BS and that's why your bill was pulled from the House floor last week I urge a yes vote on my motion and I yield back and I'm gonna ask for a recorded vote.

You've heard the motion from Mister McGovern. Is there any further discussion? Hearing none, the question is on the amendment. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Mm-hmm.

Aye.

Aye.

those opposed say no no and the opinion share the no's have it

no

as for recorder vote

the clerk will call the roll

mr. fishbach

no

mr. fishbach no mr. norman mr. norman no mr. roy missus Howchun mr.

no

langworthy mr. langworthy no mr. scott

no no

mr. scott no mr. griffith mr. griffith no mr. jack

no no

mr. jack no mr. mcgovern

aye

mr. mcgovern i'm a scanlon miss scanlon i'm mr. neguse mr. neguse i'm miss ledger fernandez miss Ledger fernandez i'm madam chair

no

madam chair no

clerk will report the total

four a's seven a's

The no's have it, the amendment's not agreed to further discussion.

Madam Chair, I have an amendment to the rule, I move to committee make an order, amendment number seventeen to H con res one thirteen, offered by myself, which would add budget reconciliation instructions requiring the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure to submit changes in laws within its jurisdiction that provide sixty billion dollars for natural disaster recovery efforts. Communities across the country have been devastated by natural na natural disasters. This budget resolution includes no money to help them recover or rebuild. If we're gonna spend sixty billion dollars more for trump's war we should spend the same amount helping people across the us who have lost their loved ones friends and homes farms and businesses due to natural disasters i urge you yes for all of my motion and i yield back

there's a further discussion on the amendment from the chile government hearing none of the questions on the amendment all those in favor signify by saying aye

aye

aye

those opposed say no aye no peter is sure to go next

i yes for real cruel

the clerk will call the roll

mrs. fishbuck

no

mrs. fishbuck no mr. norman

no

mr. norman no mr. broy mrs. haldren mr. langworthy

no

mr. langworthy no mr. scott

no

mr. scott no mr. griffith mr. griffith no mr. jack mr. jack no mr. mcgovern

aye

mr. mcgovern aye miss ganlin miss ganlin aye mr. neguse

aye

mr. neguse aye miss ledger-fernandez miss ledger-fernandez aye madam chair

no

madam chair no

clerk will report the total

forty a's seven a's

the no's have it the amendments not agreed to

madam chair i have an amendment to the rule i move the committee make an order amendment number twenty to age offered by myself which would create a point of order requiring that any reconciliation bill resulting from the republicans fiscal year two twenty twenty-seven budget resolution must be fully offset or paid for and must not increase the deficit um and i would urge a yes vote on this

is there further discussion on the amendment hearing none the question's on the amendment all those in favor signify by saying aye

aye

aye

those opposed say no

no

no any opinion chair let me know if that

i yes for a rule comment here

the clerk will call the roll

Mrs. Fischbach no Mrs. Fischbach no Mr. Norman no Mr. Norman no Mr. Roy Mrs. Salchow Mr. Langworthy no Mr. Langworthy no Mr. Scott no Mr. Scott Mr. Scott no Mr. Griffith no Mr. Griffith no Mr. Jack no Mr. Jack no Mr. McGovern Mr. McGovern aye Miss Scanlon Miss Scanlon aye Mr. Nguz

aye

aye aye Mr. Nguz aye Miss Ledger-Fernandez Miss Ledger-Fernandez aye Madam Chair aye

no

Madam Chair no

clerk will report to toe

before you aye so nice

the no's have it the amendment's not agreed to

Madam Chair I have an amendment to the rule that move the committee make an order remember number one

Any further discussion on the amendment from Mister McGovern? Any further discussion on the amendment from Mister McGovern?

Just a reminder that, Madam Chair,

Mister, uh

just a reminder that uh anybody under the age of eighteen or over the age of sixty-four, sixty-five and over, or anybody who is medically or psychologically disabled or unable to work, was exempt from the work requirements in our bill.

Yeah, is it, but they're not they're not exempt from losing their benefits, and many of them are as we speak.

Uh, there's, is there further discussion? Hearing none, the question is on the amendment. all those in favor signify by saying aye

aye aye

those opposed no

no

no and the opinion tree has a no's at it so there's four people in the chair the clerk will call the roll

miss fishbug

no

miss fishbug no mr. norman mr. norman no mr. roy missus Howjan mr. langworthy

no no

mr. langworthy no mr. scott

no

mr. scott no mr. griffith

no

mr. griffith no mr. jack

no

mr. jack no mr. Mcgovern

aye

mr. Mcgovern aye miss Ganlin miss Ganlin aye mr. Nguyes

aye aye

mr. Nguyes aye miss ledger fernandez

aye

miss ledger fernandez aye madam chair

no

madam chair no

Clerk report the total.

Forty eight, seven eight.

The no's have it.

Madam Chair, I have an amendment to the rule. I move the Committee make an order of amendments number nine to H con res one thirteen, offered by Representative Tonko, which would add a section to the budget resolution requiring that no taxpayer funds could be given by the Trump Administration to people who were convicted of ass- of assaulting law enforcement officers on January sixth, twenty twenty one. Madam Chair, this funds a disgrace. People who assaulted police officers should not be given compensation for doing so. Last week, Acting Attorney General Blanch testified the fund was dead, but Senator Cornyn, during his questioning, raised continued concerns that the administration has yet to commit to that in writing so I ask that this amendment be made in order so we can debate and vote on it.

Is there any further discussion on Mister McGovern's amendment? Hearing none, the question is on the amendment. All those in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Those opposed say no. No.

No, I'm fine.

To pin your share of the no's on it.

Aye as for Rocault.

clerk will call the roll

Mrs. Fischbach Mrs. Fischbach no Mr. Norman no Mr. Norman no Mr. Roy Mrs. Hodgkin Mr. Langworthy no Mr. Langworthy no Mr. Scott no Mr. Scott no Mr. Griffith Mr. Griffith no Mr. Jack no no Mr. Jack no Mr. McGovern Mr. McGovern I'm Miss Ganlin Miss Ganlin I'm Mr. Nguz

aye

aye Mr. Nguz I'm Ms. Lester-Fernandez I'm Ms. Lester-Fernandez I'm Madam Chair aye

no

Madam Chair no

clerk will report to total

forty eight seven eight

the no's have it

Madam Chair I have an

the amendment's not a good

I have an amendment to the rule I move the committee make an order of amendment number

is there any further discussion in the amendment from mr. mcgovern hearing none the question is on the amendment all those in favor signify by saying aye

aye aye

those opposed say no no and you can share the no's have it the amendment is ready

no uh ask rural co-manager

clerk will call the roll

mrs. fishbach mrs. fishbach no mr. norman

no no

mr. norman no mr. roy mrs. Houchin mr. langworthy mr. langworthy no

no

mr. scott no mr. scott no mr. griffith mr. griffith no mr. jack

no no

mr. jack no mr. mcgovern

aye

mr. mcgovern aye miss ganlin

aye

miss ganlin aye mr. goose

aye

sure goose aye miss ledger fernandez

aye

was ledger fernandez aye madam chair

no

madam chair no

clerk will report the total

forty eight seven eight

the no's have it the amendments are under reach

that's chair i have an amendment to the rule i move the committee make an order of amendment number fifteen to hr seven zero zero eight offered by representative davidson which extends the stock trading restrictions the bill creates to judicial officers as well as all senior executive service positions and above uh including the president the vice president and any cabinet secretary and any political appointee i just say if republicans won't work with us to get a stock trading ban bill that is bipartisan and comprehensive at least you can make an order and amendment from one of your own members to expand the restrictions in this bill to include senior administration officials and judicial officers

is there any further discussion on the amendment hearing none the questions on the amendment all those in favor signify by saying aye

aye

aye

those opposed say no

no

no

uh

in the opinion chair the no's have it

as for roll call members

the clerk will call the roll

mrs. fishbach mrs. fishbach no mr. norman mr. Norman no mr. roy

no no

mrs. Hodgkin mrs. Hodgkin no mr. Langworthy

no

mr. Langworthy no mr. Scott

no

mr. Scott no mr. Griffith mister griffin no mister jack mister jack no mister mcgovern

aye

mister mcgovern aye miss galvin

mmm aye

miss galvin aye mister neguse mister neguse aye miss ledger-fernandez

aye

miss ledger-fernandez aye madam chair

no

madam chair no

clerk will report the total

four yeas eight nays

the no's have it the amendment's not agreed to

madam chair i have an amendment to the rule i move the committee make an order in amendment number two thirty two to hr eight eight zero zero offered by representative barrett which repeals in nineteen fifty seven a ums

you you've heard the is there any further discussion on the amendment

we'll see we'll see

hearing none the question is on the amendment all those in favor signify by saying aye

aye

aye

those opposed say no

aye

no and the opinion share the no's have it

i think this is a good place to end

the clerk will call the roll

Mrs. Fischbach

no

Mrs. Fischbach no Mr. Norman

so

Mr. Norman no Mr. Roy Mrs. Houchin Mrs. Houchin no Mr. Langworthy Mr. Langworthy no Mr. Scott

uh

mister scott no mister griffith

mister griffith no oh

mister griffith no mister jack

no

mister jack no mister mcgovern

aye

mister mcgovern aye miss ganlin miss ganlin aye mister neguse

aye

mister neguse aye miss ledger fernandez

aye

ledger fernandez aye madam chair

no

madam chair no

clerk will report the total

forty a's eight nays

the no's have it the amendment's not agreed mrs. ganlin

madam chair i've an amendment to the rule i move the committee make an order amendment ten to eight congres one thirteen offered by myself which would add budget budget reconciliation instructions requiring the house committee on education workforce to submit changes in laws within its jurisdiction to provide ten billion dollars to lower americans child care costs by increasing funding for child care and development block grants uh americans are struggling with the cost of living this republican budget resolution would add nearly a hundred billion in new spending but without a dollar devoted to addressing the cost of living crisis. My amendment would help more families afford child care, allow parents to stay in the workforce, and strengthen our economy by allowing, making it easier for Americans to raise a family. I yield back.